On Many-to-Many, Clay Shirky posted an interesting article about Kvetch- a "community" that was built as a place to let people complain. It eventually died and the Eulogy of Kvetch makes some interesting points about the role of identity in a community.
The Kvetch community was different than most sites you'd call a community. There was no login, completely anonymous posting, no search, no member profiles or reputation management, etc. It was just a place to anonymously let off steam.
What's interesting is that a community still grew around the site. And, in the absence of the community tools (member profiles, etc) the community found ways to connect and develop relationships.
Some key parts of the Eulogy:
People try to connect even in the harshest climates. I never expected this site to actually connect people. After all, the posting was random, and there were thousands of posts. And yet, people tried. They posted responses to other posts, and posted them dozens of times to increase their likelihood of getting seen. Stupid, but valiant.
Wherever there are people, there’s the potential for love. I know that Kvetch was responsible for at least one marriage. A union born of kvetching. Amazing.
Every collaborative project eventually outgrows its owner. You start a project like this because you have a certain way of looking at the world. But when you open it up for group participation, it always changes. In this case, the amount of hostility the site attracted was sometimes shocking. For me, a kvetch is supposed to be a clever observation of one of life’s funny little annoyances. But for others, it was an excuse to really let out their deep dark angry side. And there’s nothing wrong with that, I suppose. It’s just not what I wanted to cultivate.
Identity is important, even in ephemera like this. Posters created specific identities and protected them vigorously, even though there were no memberships so anyone could post under any name. It lead to some very passionate turf wars over names that anyone could claim.
What this tells me is that (in many cases) it's not about the tools, it's about the people. In this case, it may have actually been the lack of tools that allowed the community to get traction.
In any case, I think this leads to the idea that if people *feel* like they are part of a community, the "online" part of that community can work in the most basic forms. People will use what they are given to create those community connections, even if the tools weren't built for it.
I think this is an important point for those of us designing online community web sites: The most sophisticated technology in the world cannot create a community -- only the people can do that -- the technology is just a tool.