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Thoughts on Online Communities: Clay Shirky - A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy
Somebody from Joel on Software forum recommended this article on behavior of online communities:February 21, 2006 1:18 PM
http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
Thanks to Mr. Shirky for raising some pitfalls to be aware of. Seems at this time I'm more liberal then he is. Thru the reading I feel his idea that we should create barriers for behavior we think is bad. What if we let the community to decide what is "bad"? No - not the community - beware of "tyranny of the majority" - but a concrete individual can be responsible for its own actions and avoid what he think is bad.
This will be a goal for talkinghub.com . To help individual to work with what he think is good.
Also I have new thing to add to his list of things. When we are talking about online communities, there are no rules.
We can note some social online patterns from the past. Those patterns are pretty weak. And we can have much different result even with a small change.
Denis Krukovsky.
2 more in web social socialsoftware online link forum shirky talkinghub psychology community
Adding an additional thought
As I look back on the communities that I've worked with, it is screamingly apparent that the largest enemy of long term, and note I do say long term, usage of community software, is the larger corporation. Each community that I've worked with beginning with WebChat Broadcasting, moving along to other role play and similar sites, has been taken over by a larger corporation( in the case of WBS it was Disney/Go, who effectively killed the community and closed the site within a relatively short time span.Therefore, based on first hand knowledge I'd have to say that the community is not its own worst enemy, but the larger corporation, who thinks it has a better way of operating that community than the individual who nurtured it into being..
RD.
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