  Humans need a sense of community (SOC), and social media platforms afford
opportunities to address this need by providing users with a sense of virtual
community (SOVC). This paper explores SOVC on Reddit and is motivated by two
goals: (1) providing researchers with an excellent resource for methodological
decisions in studies of Reddit communities; and (2) creating the foundation for
a new class of research methods and community support tools that reflect users'
experiences of SOVC. To ensure that methods are respectfully and ethically
designed in service and accountability to impacted communities, our work takes
a qualitative, community-centered approach by engaging with two key stakeholder
groups. First, we interviewed 21 researchers to understand how they study
"community" on Reddit. Second, we surveyed 12 subreddits to gain insight into
user experiences of SOVC. Results show that some research methods can broadly
reflect users' SOVC regardless of the topic or type of subreddit. However, user
responses also evidenced the existence of five distinct Community Archetypes:
Topical Q&A, Learning & Perspective Broadening, Social Support, Content
Generation, and Affiliation with an Entity. We offer the Community Archetypes
framework to support future work in designing methods that align more closely
with user experiences of SOVC and to create community support tools that can
meaningfully nourish the human need for SOC/SOVC in our modern world.
