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Building Online Communities

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the build-it-and-MAYBE-they'll-come dept.

chromatic writes "I've published an essay about building online communities on the O'Reilly Network. It pulls together several thoughts gathered from observing sites like Slashdot, Everything2, and Perl Monks."

3 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Simply put .. well said. by shri · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >> Regular users will develop a sense of community ownership. As a whole, their content contributions probably outweigh yours.

    This has to be one of the facts that I've had to face, going into my third community site. You create and direct when the community is starting up. Once its established, your role becomes more understated and less direct. You guide and influence. You don't direct.

  2. Political sites have been doing this by AppyPappy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For quite a while. FreRepublic and DemUnderground have been around for a while. FR since 1997 anyway.

    And let's not even harken back to the BBS days. They were much more community-like from messaging to games. If you want to build a community, it takes lots of time. Lots of time.

    --

    If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem

  3. Maybe an Anti-community? by Gerry+Gleason · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Or maybe in keeping with the theme from that paper about Postmodern programming, we could call it a postmodern community.

    At first, I was going to respond to the grandparent to say that /. is a community, but on further reflection, I think I would say it is both. You can read /. for interesting links and such and never really see or experience the community aspects. Or you can skip the headlines, and 'cruze the journal circuit' as you suggest.

    Clearly there is a lot of diversity of opinion, although moderation tends to reward certain viewpoints closer to the center of the bell curve. The community values as expressed through moderation are not mainstream, and I would say it is defined by a high level of tech knowledge, but I wouldn't say it is fringe.

    I love /. because it has a similar feel to netnews in the early days, and the moderation tends to push the trolls and flames further away. It's also pretty clear that most slashdotters have not been around since those early days, so they might not even know what I'm talking about here, but they have the same in-your-face, prove-your-assertion attitudes that were present all along. That's what is cool about it, it bridges between generations of hackers. Some came of age after HTTP and HTML revolutionized the technology of online community, and others were part of the hobbie computer movement that started it all. Moderation means I don't spend nearly as much time reading through BS arguments and other drivel as the old days (essential since the wider ready of the modern internet means even more people who would disrupt things just for attention).