communities are increasingly transient

This note last modified December 20, 2021

If there’s an online community for something you are interested in, you can easily join it and leave. That ease is very good, but it means that many of the aspects of what makes a strong community (namely length of time, trust, etc.) can’t exist. Thus people overrely on gatekeeping to ensure their communities keep out undesirables. (Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on context.)