William, You wrote: "The main purpose of any group with set organizing principles or statutes may not be to discuss those principles but inevitably it seems to me they'll sometimes do so. this obviously happens at certain given times (e.g., when they're dividing into subgroups, working groups, merging, breaking up...)." It is one of the reasons for Tuckman's is applied to groups, online and offline, despite the limitations of the original studies. That is, many persons can see the "Norming" phase (and others) happening on spontaneously created groups, even online. "It seems to me that there is always a kind of meta-narrative in any group. Is that tribal? Does tribal mean level of technological sophistication?" There's a beautiful book from Adams written in 1988 "The academics tribes" which explains how it happens in academia. Now this might be appropriate to extend to online behaviours of academics or not (it all depends on how much an academic feels invested into keeping the "honor of the tribe" high online as well), however it makes one think. Rosanna