Blackwell Synergy - J Comp Assist Learn, OnlineEarly Articles (Article Abstract) Full Circle Associates: The BookShelf. 6 Steps to Kill Your Community. There have been a number of new platforms popping up recently that claim to increase your user engagement, get you more comments, increase your traffic, and more, through means that I consider short-sighted and harmful. Since people seem not to mind, I thought I’d write a guide for how to increase the number of comments you get by 400-1,000% and ruin whatever shred of community you had on your site. Don’t Moderate. Allow anybody to post anything regardless of whether it contributes to the conversation or not. Stupidity, libel, hate, curse words are all okay because in the comments you have plausible deniability. Make sure people know that whatever they post will live forever, and anything goes. The few smart people you did have in your comments will enjoy responding to these folks.
As a bonus, here are a few extra that don’t make any sense to me, but seem to be popular: Abandon Search Engines. Shameless: IntenseDebate does all of the software stuff right, or will shortly. Like this: Yahoo! Teachers. Common Craft - Social Design for the Web. Common Craft - Social Design for the Web: Are You a Member of the Flickr Community? Really? Boris asked me this question recently and it made me think. In fact, I got lost this morning down a rabbit hole reading about people who are most definitely members of the Flickr community.
Though the relationship quite strange, Thomas Hawk, the CEO of competitive photo sharing site Zooomr, is one example of a devoted Flickr community member. He has solid credentials and cares about Flickr - even though it manifests itself in negativity from time to time. I point to Thomas because he is an example of a vocal community member and one who has an influence. Me? I do not consider myself a community member. Why? Me - I just like Flickr. For organizations that are interested in "community" the key point is that your customers are the ones who decide if there is a community or not. How do you encourage the feeling of community? It's all much harder than it sounds, but it's becoming a necessary skill and it can produce amazing results. Want another example? Audience vs. Community at apcampbell. In his presentation last week - part of the TESOL sponsored EVO 2007 online workshop in Webpublishing in Open and Participatory Environments - one of the topics Clarence Fisher talked about was the importance of digital literacy in society and education.
For me, a key point he emphasized was the difference between audience and community. When it comes to Webpublishing, it’s easy to fall into the habit of writing for an audience, which can lead to sensationalism if carried to an extreme. We should instead be striving to cultivate community in our online interactions, which invovles examining our inner orientation and, if necessary, changing our habits of posting content, away from a ‘presenting’ mentality toward one whose intent is to open discussions and make meaningful connections. This same practice can be carried over into our physical lives as well, balancing our self-centered tendencies with a community orientation. Doxory. How to Build a User Community, Part 1. « Cognitive Seduction and the "peekaboo" law | Main | What our readers want you to read! » How to Build a User Community, Part 1 Most user communities take a typical path--the newbies ask questions, and a select group of more advanced users answer them.
But that's a slow path to building the community, and it leaves a huge gaping hole in the middle where most users drop out. Actually, this isn't the biggest problem with most user communities. It was precisely that idea that led to the original javaranch... in 1997, the comp.lang.java newsgroup was just too nasty a place to ask questions. But most user communities--especially the new ones--aren't hurting for people asking for help, they're in desperate need of people willing to help the newbies. Encouraging a "There Are No Dumb Questions" culture is only part of the solution. The best way to grow a user community is to get even the beginners to start answering questions. Your ideas? Posted by Kathy on December 3, 2006 | Permalink TrackBack. Community data sharing and tagging. By Eric Kansa, Alexandria Archive Institute The Alexandria Archive Institute is now “beta-testing” Open Context. Open Context is a free, open-access online database resource for archaeology and related fields.
It is a highly-generalized tool that pools and integrates individual researcher datasets and museum collections. Funding for the development of Open Context came from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Open Context has a variety of demonstration datasets now available for exploration and testing. To help make sense of this widely varying body of material, we have developed a user folksonomy system. We believe Open Context represents some significant achievements, but still requires further development. We would also like to see some of this framework incorporated into institutionally-backed digital repository systems.
Attachment Sizeopencontexth.jpg 103.02 KB About the Author Eric C. Emerging technologies for web-based communities. FrontPage. Online Community: Is there a there there? | FunnyMonkey - Tools for Teachers. Some interesting reading on online communities and what relationship (if any) they have to a person's offline, in the flesh communities. On D'Arcy Norman's blog, he questions the role his online interactions play in his daily life, and whether his participation in online communities comes at the expense of decreased participation in his immediate surroundings. There are some great responses to this post, and the whole thread gives some nice grist for the mill for those of us who spend (too much?) Time thinking about and participating in online communities. While I've mentioned this article before, it bears mentioning again: Danah Boyd's recent talk on MySpace.
For good measure, we all should check out the Pew Report on the Strength of Internet Ties.