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The Internet Books Media Book Reviews

Hosting Web Communities 57

Posted by JonKatz from the -people-people-people-trust-trust-trust- dept.
Do you feel like you belong in many -- any -- Web communities? Lots of people and companies try and host successful Websites, but few pull it off. Cliff Figallo has helped do it three different times, and has written a workmanlike, useful book about what it takes -- good design, time, patience, great software, trust and the right people. He never loses sight of what the user wants and needs. Here is a review of Hosting Web Communities, on how to build enduring and yes, profitable communities online. (Read more below.)

Hosting Web Communities: Increasing Customer Loyalty and Mainta
author Cliff Figallo
pages 448
publisher Wiley
rating 7/10
reviewer Jon Katz
ISBN 0-471-28293-6
summary It takes people and trust to build a community site

*

Creating Web communities on the Net is one of the more important social and business challenges of our time, but few people or companies seem to know how to do it with skill.

Into the fray comes Cliff Figallo, author of the useful no-nonsense Hosting Web Communities: Building Relationships, Increasing Customer Loyalty, and Maintaining a Competitive Edge, from Wiley.

Like many books about the Net these days, this one is cast in part as a business tool, probably for marketing reasons. And no doubt it will help individuals and companies -- especially small ones -- who want to establish viable Web communities.

But despite the practical packaging, the book takes aim at anybody who wants to join or run one.

Figallo knows whereof he speaks. Director of Community Development for Salon and its Table Talk discussion site, he spent six years as director of the The WELL, arguably the world's most influential and enduring virtual community. Figallo also helped develop AOL's first chat interface, "Virtual Places." That would put him in three especially coherent, community-minded Web enterprises.

Hosting a successful, bona fide Web community is rough.

As Figallo notes in his introduction, three themes recur: "The first is that community is a social constant looking to take hold in an environment of unrelenting change. The second is that trust is essential for community to happen. And the third is that meaningful relationships, far more than size, determine the success of online communities." Figallo's gift is that he sees the web community clearly from every perspective: host, user, designer, businessperson. He understands that at some point, community has to pay the bills in order to survive.

What is an online community? The word gets tossed around so much that, Figallo points out, the very term "virtual community" has been reduced to meaningless jargon. "A sense of belonging," is his answer. "Unless that feeling is there, no manager, advertiser, or promoter can claim the presence of community, no matter how much commonality exists in the users' interests and demographics."

"Community" is not synonymous with "harmony." Virtual communities don't have to be cheerful and sweet. But users must feel included. If you feel like you're part of a Web community, Figallo argues, you probably are.

Authoritative and common sensical, Figallo draws heavily on his own experience and scores of examples to make his case about flow, interface and atmosphere, helpfully backing up every point with illustrative URL's and examples.

He also offers counsel on how to preserve free speech and other online values while curbing the endemic flaming and erratic communications styles that have done in too many Web communities.

Hosts are essential to the building of relationships, he insists. They not only openly maintain the meeeting place -- arranging chat room schedules, starting and naming new discussion topics, keeping order and serving as librarian for online resources -- but they also act as "social adhesives" between the people who meet there. They help create certain essentials, including an interwoven web of relationships that last through time.

"Where these attributes exist," writes Figallo,"they solidify loyalty to the group and, therefore, to the Web site that support its activities. Members return regularly and in doing so, affirm the feeling that they belong, and maintain the relationship identified with the site. They come back because they are rewarded for doing so with valued facts, feelings, advice and opinions. As time passes, they help construct a history that is shared with others, adding to the feeling that they are part of some greater entity."

Figallo has come closer than most people in recent memory to defining the social structure that has to occur -- in conjunction with the design, interface and configurations he also outlines -- before the term "community" has any real meaning in connection with cyberspace.

One interesting chapter focuses on gathering business clientele into communities. Small business sites selling specialty items have become the mom-and-pop stores on the Internet, Figallo writes, selling to customers who can now be found anywhere there's a dial-up connection. Although companies like Amazon get most of the attention, the Net has spawned thousands of electronic shops, and it's reasonable, even necessary for these entrepeneurs to see their customers as members of "communities," because they want them to keep on returning.

In the past decade, countless "communities" have cluttered the Net, but only a handful are memorable, effective, or enduring. Figallo's publisher undoubtedly thought it could snare an audience by presenting the book so distinctly in business terms, but don't be put off by that.

This is a strong, convincing look at what it really takes to build enduring and yes, profitable communities online: the deployment of software and architecture and, above all, people, that permits humans to get to know one another and to keep coming back.

You can purchase this book from ThinkGeek.
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Review: Hosting Web Communities More

Review: Hosting Web Communities

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  • Forums? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Personally, I think RetroFaction.com is a good example of a place with a good non-general topic (emulation/classic gaming for ALL operating systems) done right, really for the people. Sure the articles aren't 100% accurate, but what is nowadays? I know the hosts of the site personally(irl), and it strikes me that they are much friendly to talk to than other emulation-related sites' staff. Zophar for instance has some total asshole running it now, and it's _the_ emulation site, zophars goes through staff like a warm knife through butter. But a site like RetroFaction.com never seems to have many visitors even though the site is heavily Linux/BeOS/OtherOS-friendly. Especially as the head dude at RetroFaction.com works for LinuxGames.com as well. Pretty fucked up the way things work out.

  • gay,com worked (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think it is rare, but a few examples exist such as gay.com. That site facilitate meetings and social activities both on the web and in the real world.

  • Redundant (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Creating Web communities on the Net is one of the more important social and business challenges of our time

    ...but creating Web communities not on the Net is one of the more difficult technological challenges.

  • By the author's definition, I can't belive that Slashdot wasn't included in this book...

    Slashdot wasn't very "big" when the book was written back in 1997, early '98.

  • I'm a part of a virtual community. I even help run it. I estimate we have a little over 200 members. Web communities can get too big. Much too big. Compare my SlashDot number to yours', for instance.

    Wade.

  • What is now IWETHEY originally happened more-or-less by accident. We originated as a magazine's online forum. It worked because the software was easy to use, fast and efficient, and there were always things to talk about. We left when the magazine changed it's forum software to something that simply wasn't up to par (over our protests, no less), chosen by someone who had probably never used the old stuff.

    Wade.

  • I've been hosting a web community for the past 4 years. I learned that the best way to be successful is to go with what interests you.

    EvilNET [evilnet.net] has been a refuge dozens of small gaming, anime, and computing-related sites. The primary thrust of of the community is board and computer gaming.

    Any idiot can do it. It takes an idiot with a vision to make it last though.


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!

  • I don't know enough to even be on the level of someone who's read an "HTML for Dummies"-type book, much less to know how to write it so that it looks like what you need to type without actually turning into a link, but a left-pointing bird's mouth (less than or equal to sign), followed by an upper case letter "a", followed by a space, followed by the letters "href", only uppercase, followed by an equal sign, followed by a double quote (shift-apostrophe key), followed by the actual link, which in your case was http://www.livejournal.com , followed by another double quote, followed by a right-pointing bird's mouth (equal to or greater than sign), followed by the text that you want, which in your case was livejournal, followed by another less than or equal to sign, followed by what I call a "frontslash", the one below the question mark on most keyboards, that leans to the right at the top and to the left at the bottom, followed by another uppercase letter "a", followed by another equal to or greater than sign seems to work for me.

    Let's try it.

    livejournal [livejournal.com]

    Okay, it works in preview at least.

    I looked at the source for this page and apparently the only thing that you did wrong (according to the unwritten rules of Slashdot html) was to not enter "href" in uppercase.

    If someone really wants to patch slashcode, they can change the "No Score +1 Bonus" to opt-in instead of opt-out, so that it defaults to off.

  • ou can't build an online community that isn't there already, at least potentially. that is, maybe all grandmas already talk to each other, and you let them do it on the web, too. or maybe all grandmas *would* talk to each other if only they could.

    I agree for the most part, but one exception to this would be where the medium is the community, as is the case with WebTV and Blogger. The service that facilitates the comunication and community in these cases is the exact interest that binds the community together.

    Kevin Fox
  • thats worse than regular flaimbait because you were being egocentric and condescending in a high school 90210 "i'm better than you" sort of way. you actually meant what you said, most people are just out for kicks.

    your the pathetic one, fagot

    1010

  • Here are some pics of the Fuckedcompany.com [fuckedcompany.com] on the road tour in San Francisco. The online community is alive.

    http://albums.photopoint.com/j/AlbumIndex?u=148239 6&a=11168760 [photopoint.com]
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I have reservations about any book that claims to be able to define a "successful" web community, let alone how to duplicate that success. The most successful web communities seem to be happy accidents (see userfriendly and this esteemed site)

    I agree 100%. Look as well at www.counter-strike.net, www.ars-technica.com, etc.... "Happy Accidents" sums it up very well.

    The best advice seems to be to offer information on something you enjoy and believe in, and people will eventually find it and start to contribute (thanks Google!). If it's meant to be, it's meant to be.

    This book just appears to be another in a long line of books (remember "Creating Killer Websites"), people (Jakob Neilsen), and organizations (any "internet marketing" group) who continue to wilfully misunderstand what the 'net is about.

    Here's a hint - despite all the pretty pictures, it's still about content. Even the porn sites understand this.
  • Cliff's book and Amyjo's are really the best. She's more into a strategic view of communities and their structure, whereas Cliff focuses more on the tools and skills required of hosts regardless of architecture. In my opinion, your best bet would be to use both books, because they're complementary.
  • I pretty much agree with you, Kevin: you build a platform for community, and the community builds itself. However through structure and leadership you can influence the community's direction.
  • Here's my community: The Netropolis Collective [netropolis.go.to]

  • It takes more than sticky to make a community.

    Who are you ? I've never seen you before, I don't want to talk to you. Maybe you're fascinated by siege engines [codesmiths.com], but I don't know this, so I don't know that I'd enjoy talking further with you. Slashdot is "efficient" at content presentation, with threading, thresholds etc., so I don't pick up on all of these "out of band" communications. This efficiency is also detrimental to personalised chat - on Usenet, with a threaded newsreader, then I can cheerfully witter away to one person out of a million and everyone else just dumps the thread. It doesn't affect my vKarma, as that's still high due to my valuable contributions in other threads. On Slash, I'd be whacked with an "OffTopic".

    It's not enough to have a communications channel, and a persistent identity. It's also necessary to allow community members to build up a profile of who they're talking to, and what they're like outside of the core topic.

    Gratuitous book plug [amazon.co.uk]. This is a book by a colleague of mine, here at HP Labs. Everything I know about Virtual Communities, I learned at her series of talks on them, so I recommend the book.

  • I don't think I've ever gotten a link to post correctly on slashdot. I for some reason just become a complete moron whenever I type text into a small box.
  • I checked the reviews at both Fatbrain and Amazon (what Amazon is most useful for...I mostly buy from Fatbrain and BN). At Fatbrain, the author was the only review...and he gave himself, guess what? 5 stars...you guessed it!

    Of course, I'd be concerned if he said..."Yeah, this is a piece of crap. don't buy it". At the same time, I immediately went in search of the reviews on it [amazon.com] at Amazon. It got four stars from four reviewers (I'm going to do some more homework). One of the reviewers, suggested this book by Amy Jo Kim [amazon.com], which got five stars from 17 reviews. Granted...these are on-line reviews, but I am really interested in picking one of these books as I am working on a slashcode based community and want some more input/perspective.

    Any other good related books anyone know of? (Besides those listed in the 'Other people who bought this...')

    Galego

  • I think it's important to try less to create a community, and more to just think of it as offering a service to people, and you're just providing the space for them to make the community.

    Good point. Let's say for example that I build all the houses in a neighborhood...did I build a 'community'? It's the people and the interactions that produce the community. I don't think you can necessarily 'design' or 'build' a community...but you can guide, facilitate or nurture one. You can set up rules/guidelines with them.

    As someone else pointed out, you do need to be somewhat specific, but understand that things will happen there that you didn't expect...and those things might be great serendipitous (do I get extra Karma for a five-syllable word? :) advancements for you or someone else.

    The only problem I have with /. is there is very less discussion and a lot more posting (kind of like pissing to mark territory). I check back to look for replies to my posts, but rarely find them. When I do, sometimes they are intelligent and good discussion. A lot of times, they are flames (I even had someone bash my sig as their response to my post) or other less useful comments. Other than that...I like Slashdot and am excited about playing with slashcode to design and build...err...I mean, foster an on-line community/discussion site.
    Cheers

    Galego

  • I think what is required is not so much interests, but rather a presence. Let me give you an example. Check out Snooplife.com [snooplife.com] a website aimed at South Asians worldwide. Now you would think that such a broad category would make it almost impossible to form relationships and make it a solid community. The main reason for its success (and I know of relationships formed from the website) has been the moderators's (namely me) to moderate nicely, encourage good topics, and present an online and mysterious, yet alluring presence. You join in as friends, and contribute and show the way, and make sure the crap gets deleted. I am of the opinion that people are willing to form relationships almost anywhere as long as the atmosphere is nice, and there is a central "dictator" (thats what they call me) to keep control. :)
  • The main problem is, too many communities are made by corporations or people who don't really care about what the community is for. The site has to be run by people who have a strong interest in the community in order for it to really be a community. Otherwise, it's like the Queen of England making decisions for Pocatello, Idaho.

    I'm the founder of an online Wheel of Time community, the Netland White Tower [cjb.net], which has existed since 1997. Because we're all volunteers, everyone in charge has a large interest in the community, and I think that's partly how we've been able to be successful. In the end, I think solid, interested leadership will matter much more than any tips a book could give.

    -- Qirien, Academy of Defenestration

  • "Communities are emergent entities. You can't build them intentionally unless you realize that and create a product, service, or theme which inspires people to want to talk to others, not specifically to 'be part of a community,' but because they want to share at the more basic level."

    you can't build an online community that isn't there already, at least potentially. that is, maybe all grandmas already talk to each other, and you let them do it on the web, too. or maybe all grandmas *would* talk to each other if only they could.

    the first trick is accurately identifying those communities. the second is providing them an environment that actually works for them. and that *does* require building, in the sense that it requires discerment (what tools work for which communities?) and effort at getting people to stick around long enough to discover that they're part of a community that means something to them.

  • The 'communities', I feel belong to are mainly Slashdot and The Open Directory Project [dmoz.org] (I'm an editor there).

    Why? Mainly because the people there are funny, like the sort of things I like, and we can allow have 'input' onto the site - /. has comments and moderation, ODP has its internal editor forums, editing the listings and a good 'community'.

    Communities happen - if you try and 'force' it, they just won't work... IMHO


    Richy C.
  • including an interwoven web of relationships that last through time

    How many of you have a relationship with other members on Slashdot? It seems that Slashdot seems to have a set of phrases and jokes that we can use to communicate with each other, but do any of us really have a relationship with each other?

    and if we do, does that mean we are going to have to start remembering each others birthdays, and having phone conversations where we yell at each other?

  • Success of any community is dependent on two groups - the leadership and the membership.

    Leadership is required to give focus, do the grunge work, and set (if not enforce) the community norms.

    Membership requires mainly that the people involved actually care enough to stay involved.

    I'm a member of an online community, and a leader in that group. They got their start on Prodigy, playing Rebel Space, and established a virtual sense of "place" on the Prodigy message boards. Over years, people gathered to meet in person, developed alliances, friendships, and emnities, and all of a sudden there was a "comminuty" there. Once the game (and the boards) were dropped, they took responsibility for maintaining their connection by creating a home for themselves on the Internet.

    We argue, we fight, we have lame flamers - but the ones who really don't work out, so far, have left on their own. Even without the original glue that pulled folks together (the Rebel Space game), the group exists - not bad, eh?

    Then there are the twice-a-year parties :-D

  • So you are being sticky like slashdot doesn't necessarily mean there is a community... hmm...

    but what prompts people to post comments? Discussion doesn't exist in a vacuum...

    I ask earnesdtly (speeling be damned!)

    E.


    www.randomdrivel.com [randomdrivel.com] -- All that is NOT fit to link to
  • A very successful commercial example of an online community, and one for which I wrote most of the client software, is OKbridge [okbridge.com].

    OKbridge caters to serious players of contract bridge. Its appeal within its niche is astounding, with many members who have bought a computer and figured out how to get onto the Net just so they can join. Members create partnerships, compete/kibitz/chat online, and meet in face-to-face tournaments around the world. Marriages among them are common. Many world champions and other famous personalities are regulars.

    Back in the early 90's OKB was free, and the only client ran under Unix in text mode. Now members pay around $100-200 per year for the privilege of interacting with each other. Last I checked there were about 20,000 of them.

    OKB does have free competition, including Yahoo and MSN Gaming Zone, yet continues to thrive. It's little known outside of the bridge playing community, and would have made an outstanding and instructive example for the book.

  • Well, the subject pretty much says it. There is a community here in the sense of a group of people congregating together, but there is certainly a social aspect missing. Why not start #slashdot or some other form of synchronous chat to supplement the asynchronous discussion?

  • True, the Linux pimping/M$ bashing does alienate some folks, but maybe that's part of the point. A community is typically a group with some set of traits/ideas/concerns/etc in common. Throwing Linux advocates in with M$ afficianados[sp?] is not a terribly good way to find common ground. That, and the fact that anyone with an account can filter out the things they wish not to see [think every story about M$ is to bash it? filter the topic. Likewise, tired of every Linux post being unbridled praise? Filter away my good man]. Personally, I have no trouble with the /. bias. As small as Linux still is on the world stage, it NEEDS a zealous core user group. Likewise, with all of the past and present abuses that come down the pipe from Redmond, M$ likely deserves a good deal of the bashing it receives [simply put, you don't get to be THAT huge without doing some evil somewhere along the way, just look at US history]. If you, or others, don't agree, you can either post your opinion and say so, or filter out the noise an concentrate on news about Aibos, Anime, etc.

    -={(Astynax)}=-
  • They not only openly maintain the meeeting place -- but they also act as "social adhesives" between the people who meet there.

    By the author's definition, I can't belive that Slashdot [slashdot.org] wasn't included in this book...

  • and yes, profitable communities online. Heh - you mean like slashdot did?

    Anyway - I haven't read this book, but I recommend any readers interested in the subject to check out Phil Greenspun's Online Book [arsdigita.com] - he prefers some pretty whacky languages, servers, and databases - but he gets many ideas accross very clearly regardless.

  • Oops - Phil's book is called Phil and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing.

    If you want to check out a successful example of an online community, check out photo.net [slashdot.org].
  • I'm part of a community, and slashdot ain't it. /. is where I go to be an informed geek. My other community is a group of ppl I correspond with via email and irc, of whom I know many members in meatspace and am actually planning on living with some of them.

    The difference?

    On slashdot, people who talk about their kids get modded down.
  • A Ford Ranger group? Are you serious? That's pretty sad. Porsche, I understand. Corvette, sure. Even Pokemon collectors makes sense. But, Ford Rangers? You've got to be kidding. That's pretty damn pathetic if you're serious.

  • I'm a proud owner of a 1993 Ford Ranger XLT SuperCab with just under 115,000 miles on it. I'd love to join this community. Would you please send me the URL?
  • no web community ive seen has had the enduring sense of community as the old bbses of yore... talking with other members, playing games with them... all in a context that wasnt about making money for the operator but was usually a hobby. I think thats what makes a really *good* community is that its ran by people who care about the members more than the profits.

    Anyways, now I have to plug my software (open source, yes). It's called COG. It'll run under anything OS you can get java working on. It's pretty easy to setup, and lets you create and customize virtual communities to your heart's content. I want to bring the hobby community to the internet, and with broadband now a reality rather than a dream, it really does work.

    Check it out, i've got a demo site of my own The Machine [2y.net] that runs it.

  • I don't think I've ever gotten a link to post correctly on slashdot. I for some reason just become a complete moron whenever I type text into a small box.

    I'll submit a patch to slashcode today that will change the "preview" button to say "click here if you are a complete moron"

  • > Thats my recipe.. can anyone implement it? In todays day of litigation and corporate fear of the former, probably not.

    At the risk of being laughed at, or worse, ignored:

    this is my current worldview of how this stuff ought to work, tempered by the reality that some of the stuff I want to do I can't because the technologies aren't mature enough yet.

    Feel free to tell me where I've screwed up or gotten it wrong. I've been focussing on the site and technology to get it right, and now am just starting to think in terms of marketing to help people find it, because I hate "under construction signs" and I'd rather do it right than do it now.

    slash@chuqui.com
  • I gotta get used to using the preview button (mutter)

    it helps if I don't mung the URLs:

    http://www.hockeyfanz.com

    (moderated to -33 for braincramp)

  • ... communites, but I've seen that such a coimmunity can and does work, and if it's strong enough, will weather damn near anything thrown at it.

    Cafe Eblana, the messagebase I host and maintain, was first founded about 6 years ago, becoming the first Squaresoft-centered messageboard on the world-wide web.

    The messageboard has gone through 3 different webspace hosts, and four different maintainers, and yet, has remained essentially the same. Many people have posted here in excess of two years or more (and that's forever in internet time ;), and there are quite a number of "oldbies", i.e. people that have been around since the board fisrt starting.

    We still get a good number of new people every year... and how do we do it? Simple. We aren't out to make money or accomplish some overreaching objective-- we've stayed true to the original founding premise: a fun, relaxed atmosphere where people can gather to post and debate about anyhting they want... the only bond besides our affiliation with the board is our shared love for console RPGs...

  • A little sharper in tone than I'm inclined to be, but these comments are right on, especially point #1. As a carpenter, I was on TheVines looking for articles relevant to my work and had to drill down through thevines-->home-->home improvement-->tools and equipment-->hand tools-->saws to find an actual article. This after trying to figure out which of seemingly hundreds of paths to follow just to be pointed in the general direction of content.

    For a refreshingly clean and simple interface, the forums at http://www.macfixit.com are great.
  • But as concentration in the bricks-and-mortar retail world has proceeded apace, variety in products offered has diminished, thus opening up new opportunities. Witness microbreweries, which have spring up to provide a tremendous variety as all mainstream beer has become so much fungible rice water...And as grocery stores become department stores of food, I spend more and more of my food dollars in cheese shops, produce markets, food co-ops, etc. I'm obviously more the exception than the rule, but it's not clear to me that the exception is becoming more exceptional...For example, the California power crisis, coming as it does in a context of energy company mergers, has illustrated the advantages of off-the-grid electrical generation...
  • "you can't build an online community that isn't there already..."

    I disagree! If an online community is an emergent entitiy, which at least some online communities clearly are, then it follows that some communities are only possible online.

    If chess lovers get together online to analyze the great games in chess history, then, yeah, that's simply an online manifestation of a community of interest that predated the internet. But an emergent community is by definition one whose conscious purpose only arises out of the interactions between its constituent parts...
  • The guy's heritage with the WELL is not questionable, but I'm going to remain officially skeptical about the idea that commercial enterprises can just follow some guy's advice and build a functioning community.

    People don't generally want to participate in a venture whose sole role is to make some other a$$hole wealthy; and hey, that's appropriate. People's own interests have to be taken into account. There has to be an emormously strong draw, a type of community that can't be found elsewhere. The geek community that makes up /., the intelligent nouveau liberals that makes up salon.com's table talk, etc. And even in these two cases, the commercial aspects have largely been focused elsewhere at the time the community started.

    Communities have to feel free to post whatever they want, whenever they want, for example, to truly be effective at being communities. Commercial ventures won't withstand that sort of thing. They have to allow endless criticism of themselves, their products, their staff, their management... how many public companies would go for that?

    Communities have to feel that they will continue to exist, that their feet won't be pulled out from under them because the last quarter was a bad one or because their favorite moderator was laid off.

    Take a look at this list of mostly-successful communities running vBulletin [vbulletin.com] and see how many are commercial in nature. There's a reason for that!

    There's a reason why I wrote my sig the way I did -- and BTW, I wrote this sig a week ago, so this is not just some self-serving situation. My own community is over ten years old, having survived as a local BBS, a netted BBS, a telnet BBS and now finally (as of a week ago) a web-based community. Some of the people there have been there since the inception. If it successfully makes the transition to web-based community, it will be because the users wanted it, not me. And that's my final point: you simply can't force community into existence!

  • I've been on QuakeNet [eu.org] IRC for a few years now and I can certainly say it's a proper community. Others have mentioned IRC however, so I'd like to concentrate on something tied to that community which is Barrysworld [barrysworld.com]. Barrysworld is a UK based gaming service provider which has been the heart of UK online gaming for a few years now. They started off being run by a few people in their part-time and recently got proper funding and became a company.

    Whilst I'd like to go on and on about them, it's late so I won't. However, I would like to draw your attention to recent happenings at Barrysworld. Basically, their second round of funding is due, and the backers have decided to pull out. Unless someone steps in before a week on Monday (Feb 5th), Barrysworld will close forever. Read the announcement [barrysworld.com] and official press release [barrysworld.com].

    This came as a huge shock to all of us who are part of that community. I think there was a future for Barrysworld as a company and it's a real shame that investors are too scared with all the recent .com failings to make that happen. People have worked very hard indeed to run Barrysworld and they've got to where they are by respecting their community and vice versa. When the news hit IRC noone could believe it. People are truely upset. Take a look at some of the comments on their forums [barrysworld.com].

    The Register has a good article [theregister.co.uk], and the BBC has one too [bbc.co.uk].

    It means more than the loss of a few game servers, a nice gaming dialup, and a website... Barrysworld also host the main UK servers for QuakeNet which is going to cause big problems when they go down (although I've been told there are plans to relocate those). Barryworld was the centre of the UK Quake3 scene without a doubt. No one else is in a position to take that on. The excellent leagues they ran will be no more. The community is broken. We're upset. If you've got a few million quid to spare, you know where to send it.


    --
  • I think it's important to try less to create a community, and more to just think of it as offering a service to people, and you're just providing the space for them to make the community.

    The userbase is far more important than the actual site, and the people running it need to know that. I'd imagine most people that read /. on a regular basis find the threads far more interesting than the articles themselves. The articles should be seen as just a foundation for discussion. Indeed most of the criticism that I see here about /. is started when the people running the site use their article postings as a chance to influence others with their own thoughts on the front page, rather than discuss it with the 'masses' in the threads.

    I haven't been with /. since the beginning, only the past two years or so, so I can't really comment on the initial growing pains/patterns. But another communitish site that has been doing well that I have been participating in from early on, href="http://www.livejournal.com">livejournal, has been extremely good about implementing the users requests, and gaining a lot of loyalty. The admins realize that their users are the livelyhood, their best and only real advertising is word of mouth, and that the users will define what the community is, and their job is just to make sure the servers can handle it. They go so far as to encourage related software development from the userbase.

    It seems to me that /. as a community sort of suffers from too singular a mentality in the leadership, clashing with a more varied and diverse user base than they imagine. Things like the relentless microsoft bashing and shameless linux promotion from the very people running the site seem to alienate many of the intelligent readers, just go through the threads about MS' DNS servers going down on wednesday. The usual argument is, it's taco's site, he can do whatever the hell he wants. That's ok, but /. presents itself as a community, which is more than just a website, and if it wants to continue to nurture that, it has to realize that it's serving other people now, not its creator.

  • Okay, I think most of us would agree that Slashdot is not a community. It has discussions, but no community. I'll read a post by someone, maybe become more educated, but I won't think to respond and chat.

    In the old BBSes (well, the multi-line boards at the end), you could log on to chat, and you'd invite your friends to join to chat (which is now handled with IM/ICQ), the difference was, you'd also interact with other groups.

    At random times, you'd be on, your friends wouldn't, and you'd chat and meet new people.

    On the Internet, that's gone.

    It used to be, getting a modem limited the participation, so there was a shared interest. Then, configuring your modem and a terminal program was a limitation. The web has no enterance requirements, so building community takes effort and creativity. There are limitations to HTML (it wasn't designed for this), and there is a need to create a useful interface for Interacting that will work and provide some community.
  • I have reservations about any book that claims to be able to define a "successful" web community, let alone how to duplicate that success. The most successful web communities seem to be happy accidents (see userfriendly and this esteemed site)

  • Visit ArsDigita to download the ArsDigita Community System ¥ACS [wwwarsdigitacom], a completely Open Source set of tools for building online collaborative communities© Go to the education section for help©

    Also, read Philip & Alex's Guide to Web Publishing [wwwarsdigitacom]© If you are serious about online community development, this is required reading© I have never seen a better work on online community development©

    I've reviewed the book at The Assayer [wwwtheassayerorg]©

  • I question the notion that the net has spawned a community of 'thousands of online shops'. Katz seems to mention this quite often, I recall one of his recent articles mentioned 'mom and pop' e-stores or something along those lines.

    While there is no doubt a lot of places to buy things online I'm not sure that it necessarily constitutes a community in the traditional sense of the word. The trend in the brick and mortar retail world is toward gigantic, all encompassing, department stores. Hardware shops that used to sell lumber and botls have been replaced by warehouse sized outlets that not only carry lumber, but TVs, applicances, and other items formerly out of the realm of hardware. The grocery business is heading the same way: it is no longer enough to just carry food, you have to offer clothing and toys and furniture as well. At least this is the case in the US.

    I see online shopping heading that way as well. Times have gotten leaner and I expect that many small specialty e-tailers have been driven out of the market. This would seem to be to damage any sort of community feeling that the mom and pop folks have. If the players keep chaning and there really isn't much money to be made then that should be the trend. Even the larger shops like Amazon have not exactly been tearing it up sales wise.

    Regardless, the online store community seems to be a recurring theme for Katz but I'm not sure where the evidence is.

  • online communities: (Score:3)

    by Maeryk ( 87865 ) on Thursday January 25, 2001 @06:55AM (#481875) Journal
    1) streamline it.. i dont want to click through a million and a half checkboxes and free emails and popup banners to get to where I am trying to go. Try having the wigs that come up with your web concept actually *use* the sucker a few times before releasing it.

    2) KISS.. not everyone on the net is a techno-genius..

    3) Be realistic in your claims.

    4) Have some kind of content review, so that people who go there can have other things removed if they dont like them. I am not advocating "censorship" per se.. but I am advocating that I am not going to hang out on an online community that has five health rooms, and a white power room right next to it. No-one is saying you cant say waht you want, just not *here*

    5) Take some responsibility for your hosting/setup.
    I used to hang out in an EFNET channel that was the closest thing I have ever seen to a "virtual community".. we had births, we had deaths, we had marriages (mine among them) between regulars.. it was *wonderful*.. parties, etc.. but the line got blurred when some people let the power get to their heads..

    6) make it available to people who want to have *fun*.. if you have moderators, give them guidelines, put pick people with a good sense of humor.. not people who will remove you because they dont like your nick, your religious choice, or your jokes.. (within reason.. see # 4)

    Thats my recipe.. can anyone implement it? In todays day of litigation and corporate fear of the former, probably not.

    Maeryk

  • No (Score:3)

    by dingbat_hp ( 98241 ) on Thursday January 25, 2001 @07:18AM (#481876) Homepage

    Relative to the amount of time involved in using Slashdot, I would rate it as having the lowest sense of community of any on-line potential community I've yet seen.

    I've done this stuff for aeons now; BBS, CIX, Usenet, mailing lists and Web-hosted boards (never did MOOs, IRC or ICQ though). The "community" of groups has definitely declined in inverse proportion to the technical complexity of their host, but Slashdot is noticeably low, even by web-hosted standards.

    Why is this ? Well the "content to wittering" ratio on Slashdot is high. Even the Trolls are more about "bad content" than community-building witter. Karma also reduces witter; you can't karma-whore by being charming, just by flaming M$oft and posting links to some new geek-toy. It's the "pointless" witter that builds communities though.

    I miss Usenet. I'm really hacked off with the number of e-groups I need to follow work-wise, when I know they're really better candidates for NNTP. I don't like working on shared protocol development, when the best backup is on some free-hosting DotCom with a dodgy business plan and a potential to collapse tomorrow.

    I know of the non-Usenet Usenets (which I certainly won't post links to here), but this need for secrecy is what itself reduces their worth; it was great in The Old Days, when a shared interest in haddock juggling put you in touch with a worldwide community of fish flingers, but now alt.haddock is just H4XX0RZ and Pr0n spam.

  • Re: /. bias (Score:3)

    by cowscows ( 103644 ) on Thursday January 25, 2001 @11:43AM (#481877) Journal
    A zealous core group of users isn't a bad thing, infact it's a testament that the community matters to some people. I just think it can be bad when the administrators on the site tend to support that so much, to the point where they neglect or inappropriately attack the rest of their users, the majority of their users, who aren't part of that zealous core group.

  • It's hard to find one that works (Score:3)

    by Rurik ( 113882 ) on Thursday January 25, 2001 @06:43AM (#481878)
    There are many sites that try to be too general. Like, a website community for the elderly, or for mothers. Well, when you get that general, there are 2000+ other sites that gearing for the same audience. You have to specialize in a single field, that doesn't rely on age, and have it be one where people want to check frequently for more information or help. One that I like to participate in is for Ford Ranger owners. A site where anyone of any age or sex can just talk about trucks, speed, modifications, cops, etc. You want to keep visiting because you want to see what the newest products are, and the newest trends to incorporate on.
    You have to create a community based around something that people have pride in, rather it be their vehicles, their computers (hardocp), their homes, their stereos, etc. Regular 'teen hangout' communities are dying by the wayside because they just throw a thousand people into the mix and let them bleah on forever.

  • Re:Formula? (Score:3)

    by happystink ( 204158 ) on Thursday January 25, 2001 @09:34AM (#481879)
    Well, there may not be a formula for making an extremely popular site, or the MOST popular site, but there definitely are certain guidelines that you can profit from immensely. Slashdot may not have struck out to create a large community, but it did, and now looking back you can easily pinpoint a lot of factors as to why this happened, and learn from them, and use them as guidelines. It's nice to say there is no formula, but really, a bit of formula does keep the baby happy.

    sig:

  • Constructed communities rarely work. (Score:4)

    by KFury ( 19522 ) on Thursday January 25, 2001 @07:52AM (#481880) Homepage
    For the most part you can't make a community, especially if youre a big company trying to build a fan community around yourself. Creating a forum usually gives your critics a high podium to shout from, without much of an interest in actual discourse.

    There are notable exceptions (TiVo [avsforum.com] comes to mind), but a lot of companies (and other organizations) get the idea that if they build a room, it'll become a community.

    The truth is the web is so much vacuum that creating an empty space by no means ensures it will be filled with content. True online communities don't have one single home. Slashdot members form a community, but Slashdot itself isn't the community. Bloggers form hundreds of tight-knit communities, but Blogger [blogger.com] isn't a community, nore were they trying to be one when they started. All three of these sites tried to provide a great service, and the community grew organically.

    TiVo's web board was just a quick addition to satisfy customer requests for a common area, and now it's flourishing grandly on its own. WebTV's community center is the same way.

    Communities are emergent entities. You can't build them intentionally unless you realize that and create a product, service, or theme which inspires people to want to talk to others, not specifically to 'be part of a community,' but because they want to share at the more basic level.

    Kevin Fox

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