Adam Tinworth has blogged his 10 Things I've Learnt About Online Communities. At the risk of messing up the whole Ten Commandments analogy I'd like to add a couple more:
11. Longstanding members will always complain that it's not as good as it used to be. Don't worry about it. They're the virtual equivalent of an ancient retainer who can remember when all this was fields. They're a sign of a mature community that feels ownership of itself. (Unless they actively try to prevent change, in which case see Adam's point 10.)
12. Never start a community site or service because you think it's an easy low-resource way of getting user generated content. It isn't, they're hard work, often resource-heavy to maintain and require more committment than you probably realise.
(Thanks to Robin for the link.)
Comments