A sense of Well being

A most influential online community celebrates its 15th anniversary.

By Jon Carroll, Farai Chideya, Mary Mackey, Susan McCarthy, Steve Silberman and Mary Elizabeth Williams

Mar 31, 2000 | "The world's most influential online community:" That's how Wired magazine described the Well in a cover story two years ago. And that's, of course, in perfect keeping with the original goals of Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand and software entrepreneur Larry Brilliant, who started the seminal community 15 years ago -- on April 1, 1985. The two, inspired by existing bulletin board services (BBSs), figured they could create something kind of cool if they set up their own BBS and invited exceptionally interesting people to participate.

Soon a gaggle of writers, artists, scientists and thinkers struggled with the arcane posting software and began conversing online, developing "virtual" relationships and roughing-out guidelines for acceptable behavior in a text-based community. After a few years, some "Wellbeings," as they called themselves, expressed consternation that the group had grown so big and prolific that people could no longer read all the new posts in a day. But they didn't give up -- in fact, it seems they just wrote more; these days, it's not unusual to find 90,000 words of new posts to the public "conferences" or topic areas in a day.

And plenty of exceptionally interesting people, like the ones Brand and Brilliant hand-picked to start the party 15 years ago, still hang out on the Well, trading ideas, decrying conspiracies, critiquing movies, restaurants and each other. The sum total of their communication has provided an invaluable road map over the years for anyone interested in exploring the possibilities and problems inherent in the notion of community online.

To commemorate the first 15 years of the Well -- which started with the Whole Earth vision and rounded out with the Well's acquisition last year by Salon.com -- we asked several Well members to share their thoughts about what makes the Well what it is.

Jon Carroll makes imaginary friends
Farai Chideya learns rules, jargon and how to choose her battles
Mary Mackey decides against summering in Moldova
Susan McCarthy becomes the life of the party
Steve Silberman discovers something better than a time machine
Mary Elizabeth Williams graduates from misfit to Miss Popular

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