Category Archives: Community

The goal of many communities should be building capacity. This means developing their ability to plan and execute actions that help achieve their collective goals. It is actions such as recruiting, fundraising, promoting, creating information, helping members achieve their personal goals, connecting members, partnering with other organizations, lobbying, running events, and making an impact onContinue reading “Building Community Capacity”

Onboarding in a community is all about information. New information takes energy for members to process. Every step of the onboarding process takes energy from members, and every member has different energy levels. When the energy runs out, they lose interest in the onboarding process, or worse, they leave and never come back. This isContinue reading “Offensive and Defensive Community Onboarding”

Many people think of onboarding only when a member first joins a community, but onboarding happens every time a member re-enters a community space. Communities should always be onboarding. Onboarding is the process of providing members with the context necessary to function in the community. It is needed because context changes constantly. Communities create aContinue reading “Always Be Onboarding: Creating Community Arcades”

Have you ever visited an internet community, seen an overwhelming number of posts and messages, and decided to “mark all as read” or give up on reading any of it? In doing so, you are declaring information bankruptcy. Information bankruptcy is a common problem for communities to have. When there is too much information toContinue reading “Community Information Bankruptcy”

Incentives matter. We do what is incentivized, avoid what is disincentivized, and ignore what is not incentivized. A key way to set incentives is through rewards. Give someone a trophy for winning, and they’ll try harder to win. “Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.” Charlie Munger Rewards shape everything weContinue reading “Say What?! Rewards for Communication in Internet Communities”

Communities, at their core, have a series of events that keep them moving. These events can be news, rituals, actions, announcements, and more. They create a community clock (imagine the numbers replaced by these events), and keep the community ticking. Without them, the community dies. The clock must be powered by either external or internalContinue reading “The Community Clock”

Do you ever wonder how internet communities persist despite trolls, grifters, bullies, and other undesirable characters? How do members persevere and remain positive despite these bad actors? Most communities don’t have employees to manage or create content. Most people are too busy or distracted to contribute, yet many communities still function well. Why doesn’t everyone’sContinue reading “Saints, Knaves, and Moralists of Internet Communities”

We think of internet communities as one collection of people all interacting with each other. This isn’t true. People can only maintain a certain number of relationships with others. They have limited time to gather information about a group, build relationships, and stay engaged. This limits the size of the group they can interact andContinue reading “How Dunbar’s Number Makes Or Breaks A Community”

A community exists that is ideal for you. How do you discover it? Many of us are trapped in communities not ideal for us. We don’t get the most out of our time there but don’t know the other options. We are jealous of people who find their ideal spots. They have created connections, grownContinue reading “How To Discover Your Ideal Internet Community”