To me, what Wenger describes as "modes" of belonging seem to be more like "modes" of thought. 

Engagement represents the "now" mode where the member is fully engaged

Imagination represents the "future" mode where the member is free to think about which trajectory to take and what possible new trajectories he could form.

Alighnment represents the glue that bonds imagination with engagement to ensure that the community could work together towards a common enterprise.

The word "belonging" sounds funny.

Reading "some degree of non-participation is necessary to enable a kind of participation that is less than full" made me think of consulting companies who swoop in and try to solve a bounded problem for a company rather than getting fully involved in the work. 

It is that aspect of peripherality that allows them to gain a wide-spectrumn of knowledge (being able to free up resources to work on multiple projects as opposed to dwelling into one) and the ability to think "fresh."

I feel that a lot of
the concepts that Wenger bring up lack concrete examples (at least for me).

To help clarify the abstract
concept of trajectories, a concrete example can be formed around studying
through an academic major while at a university.

As we progress and take
more classes, we start to refine our identity (focus of concentration).
We also take peripheral trajectories (attending seminars) which we do
not fully participate in the area of study but our benefit of ignorance allows
us to give fresh views to the presenter's topic. People who take intro classes
to test the waters are on the inbound trajectories to becoming full
members. After becoming a full member, insider trajectories in the form
of specialized workshops / clubs become available. A student can also work on interdisciplinary
projects traveling down boundary trajectories. Students studying at the School of Information can is a great example of
following a boundary trajectory.

“The questions worth attention, I suggest, do not concern fixing or selecting the right identities for us in politics and law but instead ask how to strike a productive stance toward the paradoxes of individual and social meaning.”

I feel like stereotypes and racism happen because of a lack of or poor transmission of information. When people don’t know, they have to assume. When they assume, they bring in social mirrors and media influences.

It seems the eCommunity developer has to focus on EITHER "common identity" (strong mission statement for the entire community, i.e. wikipedia) OR "common bond" (relationships amongst members, i.e. facebook). As time goes on, the incompatibilities slowly start to melt away and both “common identity” and “common bond” develops.

The author argues that both contribute to the cohesion of a community but they contribute in different ways. It seems like developing towards a “common identity” in the beginning is more beneficial in developing a booming eCommunity since it encourages new member participation, discourage social loafing (which encourages content), and sets a common tone for all the members coming in (which will result in higher quality content in the future).

+s (pluses)

By exposing a person's racial identity and forming a stereotype, a member
could establish their presence faster and instantly attach an identity. This could
invoke more response / interactions amongst other members (especially in
race-oriented communities). "Since I know this person is Asian, I wonder
what he thinks of this issue..."

Byron concluded that racial self-identification is used to establish a social
position. A racial identity could also lead to quicker clustering and
agreements amongst members. "He must know how I feel too..."

This blog covers the "typical life" of a community oriented mailing list.

I think these rules might've been true a couple years ago but nowadays the interactions that the page the author told me happens on forums and not mailing lists. I think mailing lists nowadays are more or less used for announcements.\
 
Connection-wise this kind of reminds of of some of Kim's Chapters when she talked about the different roles that people assume and also the article on conflict management.

I don't know how applicable this is since we don't plan on having a mailing list with multiple threads.

This paper was honestly very confusing for me. One of the
things that I picked up was that extrinsic rewards discourage intrinsic rewards
in the topic of motivation. The rest of the paper was pretty much paragraph
after paragraph of pure test without pictures. It was very hard to get through.

I do agree with the fact that extrinsic rewards discourage
intrinsic rewards. One of the most practical examples is homework. It seems
like a lot of the readings for this class is very interesting. However, I think
of it as homework and put it off into the last minute. If this were just some
reading on the side, I probably would finish all of it on time. I think giving
out extrinsic rewards could be very dangerous as well if the qualification of
the reward is misleading. This often lead people to try and work the system.