Building Community Online - Where's the Town Square?

I've been spending the last couple of weeks recharging my batteries, so to speak, in relation to my social media activity.   It's not exactly a creative block - I know, generally what my next several vlogs, audioboos, and blogs might be about - but I'm also after a more productive use of these resources.  

Productive, in my case, extends to both the practical (how can this help me really) to my more community-based interests.

The concept of community online is a bit difficult to grasp - especially as technologies change, new sites develop, and new concepts emerge.  In the real world, a group of communities form a city or, at least, common geographic area with common interests.   In the YouTube world, there are countless communities based on individuals (or more generally speaking, channels) - but few opportunities for the larger YT community to "gather" to explore common interests (to "grow" the overall community, for example).  

There have been and continue to be attempts - websites and attempts at limited community governance - to bring this world together for the "common good."  The "Common Good," of course, may be as hard to define as "common sense."  Still, I think there's a great opportunity in certain areas to act in concert to achieve individual goals, while at the same time preserving and expanding the vibrant individual communities each YouTuber builds.

One of my hopes for Vidcon was/is that it can offer the opportunity to create unified efforts to help build the community - an effort, perhaps, not based on the corporate YouTube structure, but on the establishment of vlogging as a platform (living largely on YT, but ultimately not limited to that world).  Combine Vidcon with BillTVMacon's online NoCon concept, and the result might be the beginning of a central community "town square."