“I am not an Athenian or Greek but a citizen of the world – Socrates”. If you agree with this famous quote or even if you disagree with it, still It’s a right of every common citizen of this world to be aware and concerned about what’s going on and around the globe keeping behind all the differences of nationality, language, culture and caste and to contribute even in any small possible way to make more mutual understanding and friendly atmosphere to live peacefully while respecting each other’s views and opinions. With such small but effective contribution of more than 16000 people who are interested in debating on vast numbers of subjects including international politics, sociology, terrorism, human rights and many more, here I am presenting a wonderful online community on orkut.com named International Relations.
To define International Relations, no definition can suit best as this “International Relations is a branch of political science which deals with relationship among states vis a vis their foreign policies. IR draws upon diverse fields such as philosophy, sociology, economy, law and other social sciences with respect to interactions and relations of states and non state actors. Discussions pertaining to IR often deal with diplomacy, strategic studies, and conflict resolutions.”
Orkut’s IR (International Relations) community is one of the most active and well organized communities. The journey of IR community went successfully through the leadership of more than 2 different owners from last 5 years. Vidar Stefansson is the present owner of IR community since last one month. In his early 20s Vidar is half Icelandic and half Norwegian, presently residing in Norway and studying medicine at the University of Bergen (in Norway). He is quiet passionate about international politics and that’s the reason he is on orkut’s IR community, however he never considers himself as an active member in terms of posting threads in the forum but a regular reader of ongoing debates, although these days Vidar is much active in the community than before.
International Relations community is a best place to witness the reaction of the world’s biggest news and events. Any breaking news gets its separate room to discuss it in this forum. Healthy debates sometimes even turned violent but it doesn’t cross its limit, that’s because of the team of moderators and also because of the maturity and intelligence the members are carrying with themselves. From the nature of the subject IR seems to be a very serious community and it has to be but there are also some great numbers of lighter threads where members can have some jolly times with their fellow group members like IR Music Recommendation thread where they post their favorite music videos and links etc, there are few more off topic threads like IR Quotes. In all, you can find unlimited number of discussions and debates in this forum on every possible subject related to International Relations. Although orkut.com has a majority of Indian and Brazilian members but IR community on orkut has members from all countries and continents. “. We have Christians, Muslims, atheists and Hindus. Most of our active members are young (in their 20s), but we have older participants too. Overall it’s a varied mix of people with all kinds of opinions.” Vidar said, when asked about the demography of the community in an email conversation.
While reviewing IR community, I came across a very interesting thread which helped me in understanding the thoughts of these dedicated IR Community members who gives at least an hour to this community by posting, replying or reading different threads every day. “And the point” is the thread which has many personal opinions posted regarding why and what IR community is giving or making differences in anybody’s life. Dale Sundstrom a graphic designer from Chicago has replied “I’ve learned a lot about other people’s perspectives and been able to share my own, usually with people I would otherwise never get a chance to interact with. It’s helped me learn about issues I wasn’t aware of or didn’t understand clearly, and develop my own opinions on them.” Another active member has said “Reading the forum every now and then helps me develop my opinion on logical non biased lines. Helped me respect people for their opinions and cherish the gift of 21st century ‘freedom of expression’.”
The forum is well managed by 5 dedicated moderators from different part of the world, Vidar is proud of his team, he said: “Along with my team of moderators, our role is to settle disputes and keep the community from succumbing to flame wars, trolling and spam. We also handle admissions, trying to screen out probable trolls. The community has been running quite smoothly for a good while now, so it hasn’t been much work so far, thankfully. In the past, the owner and moderators have had to step in to keep the community from boiling over from heated debate, especially about Indian-Pakistani disputes.
Overall, things have calmed in the past year or so, as members have realized that everybody gains from having a community where sensitive topics can be discussed without personal insults and trolling.”
As Facebook is more popular social networking site worldwide, I also asked Vidar that does he think that IR Community could be more successful on Facebook than Orkut? He said that Orkut has better forum interface than Facebook so, IR community on Facebook could not get as successful as Orkut’s. However, there are some technical flaws on orkut which Vidar wants to get reached till orkut’s technical team by the medium of flockpost.com. That’s about moderating the community forum:
He said, “The “pending members” screen is totally inadequate for handling large volumes of membership requests. It’s very time-consuming and boring to approve or deny membership to one person at a time, when you have dozens or even hundreds of requests pending. The “pending members” screen only allows one to view ten applicants at a time, and one can’t scroll through them to find specific applicants. I would be very grateful if the interface could be improved to allow me to approve or deny multiple profiles at once, and to allow me to view more than ten applicants at a time. Furthermore, I would like to be able to scroll through all pending requests, not just the ones randomly assigned to the “pending members” screen. If you know anyone who is involved in the Orkut technical staff, I would be grateful if you could pass on my complaint.”
No doubt that orkut.com and similar social networks are not only became the medium of connecting with friends but it’s also becoming an international stage for people to meet and discuss on some very serious and important global issues, IR community is one best example. Over all, it’s a great community for debates and to meet some very interesting people.
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