But few do. There are some purely online writers groups, and they are popular. People prefer virtual contact to physical isolation. But virtual contact with persons who only ever exist as text is also very difficult to maintain or trust. Some such virtual communities are built around known writers working as mentors in the first mode we described earlier.
Some students find mentors who can teach through the medium and whose comments are truly helpful.
Others do not. In either case participation in such a community means starting over. Other such virtual communities have no overarching selection process, so that joining these is the literary equivalent of dialing a strange number and seeking advice from whoever answers the phone. It worked for Joseph Conrad. The writer-generated subcultures are continuing to work.