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Developing Online Communities?
Johnny asks: "I'm involved with a project that is looking to develop an online community for technology oriented business customers. Although there are various communities on the web, there is no centralized source of information for the customers. If you could develop an online community to encourage collaboration and information sharing, what features would you want included? How would you go about including features that are widely available in other places (weblogging, message boards, wiki) and generating buy-in from customers."
a discussion board and a wiki into a portal, and it would be easiest if all these were developed with similar technologies (I know all of this could easily be done with existing PHP-based apps). A blog-like component could be created via tying a page on the portal site into a forum that resides in the discussion board, or you could integrate dedicated blog software.
Also, given that your community will want to deliberate and reach decisions, you would likely want peer-rated discussion and enhancing polling in the board. Of course, wikis also provide for "talk", but IMHO, wikis are best left for collective reference/documentation building, not ongoing discussion/deliberation.
As long as you provide the portal/hub that ties together the ability to build a community reference, discuss/deliberate subjects of importannce, and somehow come to decisions, you will then have the basics of an online community.
Of course, this is all just a nutshell off the top of my head.
Hope this helps.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
There are very few software packages that come to mind that include all the features you're looking for. Take a look at some of the portal systems such as PostNuke. There are tons of modules out there, but also be cautious. Most OSS systems are still evolving, thus breaking backwards compatabilities. There is another option, and that's start with a blogging software and write or adapt the different parts you'll need. Either way, don't do a half-ass job at it (read quality control.
The biggest problem I've found with this kind of thing is getting people to take notice and care about a project. After all, you will need people who are willing to donate their time and resources to the project, right?
If you've identified that there's a need for this type of community (since you say there's no centralized source), then wouldn't you already know what information you want included?
Building an online community is no different than building a successful website, successful blog, or successful discussion forum: you need to have something that differentiates you from the hundreds or thousands of other related websites out there. If you've identified something unique you can offer, or offer in a better way, then you've already answered your own question. If you just want another site to do the same things as existing sites, then you will fail.
Perhaps this is off topic, as I have no suggestions for software features, but coincidentally, I'm currently engaged in a very spirited dialogue here on slashdot that addresses the treatment of novices or beginners who may not have enough experience to ask for what they really want in an online community. To address your question, I think whatever moderation system or customer support you may implement ought to make extra efforts to be inclusive and take care of the well-meaning but often clueless guys. The greatest asset of any online community isn't the mechanism or web feature of the portal, it is the participation of the members and the spirit of community they set out to build.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
The question is this a open source free community or a closed
source community supported by a bunch of venture capitalists.
I was at "Garage.com" in 2000, it's been 5 years, but the claim was
communities are dead and VC's only invest in hard technologies.
That out of the way, to make a comunity work I think you would need
software that is extensible (not very much PHP based sites are very well extensible,
most don't even use an object oriented structure). I personally think the only reason
programmers tend to shun OOP, is they are most often terrible designers and
are not very good at hacking OO designs. I also think that Object Oriented and
extensible Open Source is like silver bullets, crosses, and garlic to the vampire of capitalistic commercial vendor lockin. So there is a lot of hoopla about the problems
with OO, when its really a lot better way of designing and coding than using a functional
language. You just design programs crappy first so you know what you want then you fix
them the second time around in a OO framework. PHP is a good scripting language to use because you can do both methods and its well supported.
So first I would pick a PHP based service.. Second I would obtain a copy
of "Enterprise Architect", not for the UML tools, but you can parse in PHP
scripts and obtain the Object Orientedness of the solution by using EA's
backwards engineer feature.. I use this on new technologies I employ to determine
if the coders of the solution are intent on making a good design.. If you see
a lot of classes that are inter-related, you know its a good coder. If you see a
lot of classes with tons of methods, you know the coder is C programmer who
doesn't know crap about OO design.. If you see no classes at all, you know the coder
of the solution is either a wizard or a newby (and are probably interested in
some form of vendor-lockin).
Then check to see if the solution is extensible, look through its features,
see if it has AJAX support, see if it uses XML, see what standards it
supports, do a search on google for it, does it come to the top on your searches?
Top most results on google are there due to popularity and how many unique
sites link to that page and how many unique links point to their sites.
Of the features you would want on the service, I would suggest a few,
such as Instant Messenger, AJAX based utilities that periodically check the
server for people online, to help people message each other. Also the service
should be MySQL based, it should be easily configurable for the user, but
high level sysadmin access should be available only by CHMODing files on the site,
otherwise someone can come in through a security hole and change the site design..
Also sites that are non-OO tend to be very easy to hack, especially if they
PHP's globvars turned on. I'm currently developing an online education and
instruction system in PHP that is plenty Object Oriented, it does quite a lot for one guy just working on it, like I have capability to track users, I ask objects in the structure questions and they handle complexities that would be tough to handle in a functional language
design.
Anyhow.. I hope this gets you on the way..
If you are interested in the instruction system, contact the one in charge
at "ferguson lynch" I work for them.
Just say no to license servers!!
Signs that your project to start an online technical community is off on the wrong foot:
1) Ask an already established technical community "how to begin"
2) Stating a goal of "generating buy-in from customers" in the same sentence that admits "features that are widely available in other [free] places"
Perhaps this is off topic, as I have no suggestions for software features, but coincidentally, I'm currently engaged in a very spirited dialogue here on slashdot that addresses the treatment of novices or beginners who may not have enough experience to ask for what they really want in an online community
If you're going to recommend that we read a dialogue then at least link to its root instead of your ending leaf.
3) Turning to Ask Slashdot for reliable answers.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
Netnews is ideal for this sort of thing. Once users subscribe, they'll see new messages as they are added to any of the relevant groups. No need for complicated RSS feeds, no endless paging through blogs, and no struggling to get people to visit your web site frequently. Google will even archive and index your newsgroup for you.
How would you go about including features that are widely available in other places (weblogging, message boards, wiki) and generating buy-in from customers."
Use OSX.
I don't know how exactly, but this is Slashdot...
"community" and "customers"
sort of opposite concepts. In one, people are choosing to work together on something. in the other there's a central power who's trying to get a group to buy something.
The biggest failure of "online communities" in the 'net days is that most of them are corporate sponsored marketing schemes rather than actual communities.
1) Ask an already established technical community "how to begin" ;-)
2) Stating a goal of "generating buy-in from customers" in the same sentence that admits "features that are widely available in other [free] places"3) Turning to Ask Slashdot for reliable answers.
4) Asking the same thing twice...
5) ???
6) Profit!
I'm involved with a project that is looking to develop an online community for technology oriented business customers.
Sell your idea to ebay, they might like you. (and the highest bidder wins!)
If you could develop an online community to encourage collaboration and information sharing, what features would you want included?
That's easy, BitTorrent.
How would you go about including features that are widely available in other places (weblogging, message boards, wiki) and generating buy-in from customers.
1) Visit homepages of said OSS
2) Get the sources
3) Right-Click Ctrl-V
4) Get headache integrating code from multiple projects^W4) Discover 'magical' missing libraries^W4) Consider rewriting everything with existing code as reference^W4) Give up^W4) ????
5) Profit!
A forum looks like the most important for me for a community.
The manual might come in a wiki structure giving people the opportunity to add their own observations.
You might consider some blog like construction to give people a place to showcase what they have done with the technology.
Looks to me like you're just looking for a shortcut to profit. Ask /. , whip up some kind of ASP.NET website, tell boss it's handled.
I'd probably diss you further but you provide so *little* information... Still, I'll attempt a translation.
==========
I'm involved with a project
- I got saddled with a task nobody else will take 'cause they're WAY more competent.
that is looking to develop an online community for technology oriented business customers.
- we want to sell sell sell sell sell sell sell sell sell
Although there are various communities on the web,
- I know the web is a big place. a scarey place. I'm too (1) dumb to find what I need (2) lazy to find what I need (3) stupid (lazy and dumb) to find what I need
there is no centralized source of information for the customers.
- see above (you mean "our customers", right?!)
If you could develop an online community to encourage collaboration and information sharing, what features would you want included? How would you go about including features that are widely available in other places (weblogging, message boards, wiki) and generating buy-in from customers.
- I know some buzz words, but please see above.
============
It really torcs me. this has got to be the lamest posting I've ever seen on slashdot.
All a site needs to grow is targeted traffic. You can slap together YATechMessageboard.com and spend an initial investment on traffic. Throw in a free t-shirt or caffeine breath mint promotion. The need to differentiate is a myth. Replicate content, buy traffic, count the money.
You will fail? Absurd.
You have pointed out the obvious, homeskillet. Dude is working on something and you are the noise cluttering his signal. Brashly using the web as a tool like this and getting a few egomaniacal nerds -- his target market -- to respond is far from lame; it's a great idea.
If you feel let down by your little online community, take it up with your editors who allowed something so offensive to you to spoil it.
The key to developing an effective online community is a compelling vision, a clear voice, great leadership and professional marketing and communications skills. look 5 years down the road to where online communities should be rather than the multitude of personal vanity sites currently so endemic among the wannabe digerati, commentators and 13-year-olds-seeking-attention of the world. These are the communities set in the same rigid plain bread template format that are currently clogging up the airwaves and have an average readership of 5 - counting the originators grandmother and dog. Now some would say that smacks of commercialism - and they would be quite right. But the reason people "buy" is because what is being provided delivers something of value - and there is a cost to providing that effectively. For further information see www.webcommunitybuilder.com .
You can find interesting information here: http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilb ert-20060216.html
lucm, indeed.
It's been done before.
If your potential customers want to talk about [your product related things] they already are. Somwhere else. Getting them to migrate over to your (heavily moderated) community ain't going to happen.
The marketing effort needs to have it's own marketing effort.
Next, assuming that people want to have a community and don't, it takes a a critical mass of users congregating in the same place at the same time to get a community in motion. At least 10,000 willing participants within a very short time. This is hard to do for a compelling product. If you're just selling nuts and bolts, you're going to have to bust your ass to get enough people to the site to make a community. If the most recent message on the boards was posted two days ago, no one is going to want to hang out.
Staffing?
Even slightly active community takes several people to moderate properly. Most companies who attempt to set up a community are surprised by this maintenancecost. In the end this dooms a successful community because the company can't control it.
So...
Since you're probably doomed, I would do something very simple. PHP-Nuke with most stuff turned off, and a good forum mod. (Good = easy to moderate, good at blocking spambots).
I'd avoid a wiki, they require someone with both vision and good organization to set up properly, are a pain to maintain, and are a community Resource, not a community.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCom munitieswithSo.html
Lowtax, the mastermind behind Something Awful recently gave a speech on this topic at the University of Illinois. His entire presentation is available online, and is definitely worth checking out.
A dialogue is an exchange between two voices (di - 2). Whereas the larger group discussion I was a part of addressed a newbie's experience level and the appropriateness of his somewhat basic question, my conversation specifically touched on the role of slashdot and the responsibility of the slashdot as a community. I felt my leaf more directly addressed the issue raised by the submitter, but no one is keeping you from reading the rest.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
I have found forums to be the key in the communities I participate in. You can build other things around them, but the forums are the bedrock. Other then that, check out what Guy Kawasaki has to say in: The Art of Creating a Community
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
Forget about it. You cannot build communities; communities build themselves. And as somebody else mentioned in these comments, if your community needs something from, needs something built, they'll let you know. They won't be shy about it. The fact that you have to ask here already means there is no basis for your "community".
Also, if you want to do research into the needs of your target audience, you do not ask the readers of a website that subtitles itself News for Nerds what to do, unless you wish to start a competitor to Slashdot. Instead, you go to your target audience and ask them.
That somebody is paying you for this beggars belief.
building content, content and again content. And for that you need users who provide content, editors who prove read content and a leader who assures the flow of content. There is no problem to find a leader, just choose yourself (or me if you like :-) ). There's no problem to find editors, in the beginning it could be yourself as well or later some of your best users. But it's impossible to find users who provide content, just forget it unless you have this exceptional idea, this outstanding vision and this absolute determination to success and work for it.
If you want to know what I'm talking about on a sample just have a look at my idea, my vision and my determination, have a look at http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
Yikes. It sounds to me like you want to create something without any specific goal other than "creating a community" and "generating buy-in" which seem to be a bit vague for a business plan, at least.
I'd say including features widely available in other places (such as Slashdot or Digg) isn't going to let you take over existing sites. In fact, often new features end up not really being used at all. (For example, Slashdot journals have a very low participation rate).
But what would help is content. Content, after all is what's made this site popular, and what makes all good sites great. It's not interfaces, not design, but content, whether that's from a community, or editors, or both. But it still needs to be about something. Mentioning that a site is about "today's technology" is so mind-bogglingly vague that you won't be able to attract an audience.
I'll give you an idea though, free of charge. As far as I know it hasn't been widely implemented anywhere - or to put it more clearly, I haven't heard of it (which doesn't mean much). Why not create a review-aggregating hardware site? Something that combines content from other sites (AnandTech, TomsHarware, SharkyExtreme, CNet, etc) to give a best-of-the-best overview for any number of components. I just checked these three sites and unbder each category, I was looking for a recommendation. I click on video cards, I expect to see something like "This is the top video card right now: XYZ 5000S Xtreme5" but no, that didn't show up.
Why not create a hardware site that's like Rotten Tomatoes or Game Rankings. Gives you an overview of the overall options one has and recommends the best.
Then you can top it off with wikis and comments and blogs and RSS and what have you. But you need an idea to propel you.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.