I sort of am sorry to agree. People are more rushed and have less of an attention span than previously. Still I think that avid readers still want to stay in one world, one story for a long time. Serialization could be the answer. Cut War and Peace into parts and it's just as readable now as when I read it back in the days before the whole world had ADD. Just don't try Anna Karenina. That one should be cut right in half. It has two stories, one a snooze, and the other good.

I disagreed with the primary article in the general but not in the specific. Some sites touted as online communities are NOT communities in the human sense of the word. As someone that has created an online community of ten years standing (of the small performance cafe kind to use an earlier good metaphor) I know from personal experience that deep, lasting, and meaningful relationships have been built there. Many of my community members have been with me since the beginning. They helped to build the site with their hard work and with their cash when needed. There has been no venture capital, only loyalty. We were born of a similar site that folded after corporate money was invested which then proceeded to tear apart the real human aspects of the site brick by brick.