Sue's Tasks Wenger and Jean Lave -Task three

I have chosen this website
http://www.friendsreunited.co.uk/practices as my online community of practice.

This is a website where people can find old friends you have lost touch with and discover what they are doing with themselves now by getting back in touch with them and organising reunions. These people become part of a community by signing up and getting back in touch with people that they havn't spoke to in years. People they went to school, college, university or worked with. Many people on this website have the same interst in finding people they have lost touch with and work together to help find one another buy joining up to this site and sharing their life experiences through posting photographs and writing notes etc and learning together as a group what each of them are doing with their lives now. Giving this website a kind of 'joint enterprise'.
Many people are actively involved in this website and with progression can catch up with many friends from the past. People join up with this website with a certain goal in mind to find a particualr group of people that have been part of their lives. Once they have found through searches their friends they can always keep intouch with each other on this website and develop a sort of online community.

I think it is quite like a community of practice as with this website you know the people you are talking to as you have known them before. Unlike other online communities of practice whereby you don't really know people so the interaction between people involves a lot more of you using your imagination as you can't see them you have to rely on words rather than face and body expressions to get to know the people as you arn't interacting with people face to face like you would in real life. Not that this means it cant become a community practice i think its just harder to build.
With this freinds reunited there is a section where you can join up to 'reuinions' where people plan to meet up with each other agen so they are seeing each other face to face again after years and years which makes the joint enterprise easier.

I wouldn't say this website particulary had anybody who was in more power than anybody else. However like a community of practice there is more people with more experience than others and know there way around the website better than new comers would as they have been members for a while so new people will look up to them. They have steps as to how you can go about finding your friends for newcomers to the site .They tell you information of what other people have done and experienced so you get a rough idea and can get advice from them and there experiences on the site.
On the top right hand side of the page there is the section for new people 'New to friends reunited' this is where you give your details and any advice is given to make you feel comfortable with what you are joining and to help you regain good relationships with the people you wish to. The same as if you were to join a community of practice offline you would be welcomed and slowly introduced when starting somewhere new.

I think is a good example of an online community of practice as it is a place where people can build on their past friendships together and learn of each others interests and experiences together. Would anybody else agree?