Islander Lori Robinson Fisher works from home. That’s because her full-time job is being a stay-at-home grandma. The youngest one is two years old; the oldest is learning to drive a car.

To keep up with friends and Island happenings, Mrs. Fisher began logging onto Facebook daily. This has been her routine for a while, she said, but two years ago, she noticed a pattern online.

“I would go on Facebook and just see negative comment after negative comment,” Mrs. Fisher said this week at her Edgartown home. Originally from Chilmark, Mrs. Fisher has lived on the Island her entire life. “I’m an Island bumpkin,” she said.

She could relate to the venting — summer traffic gets congested, the price to take a ferry off-Island continues to rise, there is always a lack of cell phone reception somewhere. “But I got tired of going on Facebook and seeing all the negative,” she said. So in August of 2012, she created a private group on Facebook for about 20 friends. She named the group Islanders Talk.

The rules of Islanders Talk: be nice, no name calling and no politics.

The rules of Islanders Talk: be nice, no name calling and no politics.

But about a month after creating the new group, Mrs. Fisher said Islanders Talk grew from 20 of her close friends to about 100 people.

“My friends just started inviting their friends and then they invited their friends,” she said. Within a year, the group began growing by the hundreds, and eventually, rather than inviting people to the private group, people started requesting to join. As the group’s creator and sole administrator, Mrs. Fisher is the only person who can accept people into the group.

“It’ll always be a private group,” said Mrs. Fisher. “We have to make sure there are no spammers.”

Today, that private group includes over 2,600 members, and it continues to grow, Mrs. Fisher said.

“I get anywhere from two to 10 requests a day from people asking to join the group.”

The group includes selectmen, police chiefs, business owners, attorneys, teachers, doctors and even high schoolers – although most of them are 18 years old.

“There are some students requesting to be in the group that are 14, 15 years old but that seemed too young . . . I have to draw the line somewhere,” Mrs. Fisher said.

The page has become a place for sharing all types of information and thoughts related to the Vineyard. In the past year, Mrs. Fisher has gone from checking the page twice a day — once in the morning and once in the evening — to monitoring the group every hour. Her constant attention is to make sure everyone is following the rules.

“Be nice, no name calling and no politics,” she said.

But it wasn’t always that way. People used to be able to talk politics. “Some people were being very political,” Mrs. Fisher said. “I wasn’t sure what to do. I could see the benefits, but also why it wasn’t a good idea.”

So she turned to crowd sourcing. “I made the group decide. I wrote a post that said: You have three hours to decide if we should have politics or not. Whatever has the most votes goes.”

Politics lost to no politics by 12 points, she said. “So that’s how that was solved.”

It’s just one example of how the group works, she added.

Mrs. Fisher is the only person who can erase something posted on Islanders Talk, (using what she calls her “poof wand”), aside from the person who published it on the page. To date, Mrs. Fisher said she has removed about 120 posts and kicked out three people from the group entirely.

Mrs. Fisher also said Islanders Talk has played a part in assisting with crime solving for Island police departments. “Over the past few years the police departments on the Island have created Facebook pages,” she said. “If they post something important — like a missing person — I’ll re-post that information on Islanders Talk.”

In a July interview with the Gazette, Edgartown Detective Sgt. Christopher Dolby said that Islanders Talk has been especially helpful to his department this year. “What Lori Fisher is doing with that page has been really great. She spreads the word quickly and then our posts get shared and then reshared across Facebook,” he said.

Mrs. Fisher also said people on the Vineyard use Islanders Talk to post updates on boat cancellations and car accidents that cause road closures. “It keeps everyone from clogging up traffic,” she said.

Posts on the page extend to traffic jams off-Island, too. “I keep an eye on traffic accidents in Bourne, too, in case Islanders are off-Island for the day.”

Mrs. Fisher reads the newspaper every day and often posts articles on Islanders Talk. Businesses also use the page to post daily specials. “Some will even say if you mention Islanders Talk you get 10 per cent off,” she said.

Random acts of kindness are also shared. “Recently, this girl moved to the Island and posted on the page that she was having a hard time finding people to hang out with,” said Mrs. Fisher. After the post, a group of women got together to arrange some gatherings for the girl. “That’s what I love seeing. That’s what makes me really enjoy doing this.”

“Back in the 70s everyone knew everyone’s name, everyone walked every street and people just got to know one another by being on the Island,” she recalled. But in the early 90s, when the Island population grew, that all changed, she said. “I remember being at a football barbecue for one of my sons at the high school and looking around and thinking, ‘Who are all these people? Who are all these parents?’”

That feeling never really left, she said. And although Islanders Talk has created a community on cyberspace, the group consists of thousands of people who wouldn’t know one another if they were sitting side-by-side on the boat.

But that’s about to change.

In January, Mrs. Fisher is teaming up with restaurateur J.B. Blau to host the first Islanders Talk social.

Mr. Blau said the get together will take place at one of his restaurants, depending on the size of the gathering. “I think it will be good for the site . . . we are all Islanders and it’ll be a good camaraderie thing, and a good thing for the Island,” Mr. Blau said.

Mrs. Fisher is looking forward to the live event, but also knows it won’t change how she spends her days — running Islanders Talk and taking care of her grandchildren.

“I just can’t imagine living anywhere else . . . or doing anything else,” she said.