Online "guilds" share featurs of real life gangs

j-beda writes: In June 2009, Dr Neil Johnson published a paper titled "Human group formation in online guilds and offline gangs driven by a common team dynamic" in Physical Review E that found the way in which WoW "guilds" form can be described by a mathematical model that can also be applied to an unrelated group of people, namely street gangs in Los Angeles. Since "Any group that satisfies these fairly autonomous, competitive criteria would also (fit the model)," said Dr Johnson, the findings are of interest to though combating international as well as local terrorist cells.