Thx for your comment

You say “When users register without managerial approval, they’re self-selecting themselves.”

To clear up our current scenario…

Anyone can roam around our communities as they are all open and they can choose to subscribe. They can also leave blog comments, but they cannot contribute to forums or have a blog unless they are members.

They are free to request membership, it’s up to the facilitator to accept their request.

On my other post (which you have commented), my query was should we open it up so you don’t even have to request membership. Which means anyone can roam around and contribute to the forums in any community.
And whether this affects the dynamic of the existing community.
And if membership loses it’s meaning?

You say “if you get a clique bent on debating an off-topic until they threaten to change the focus of the community… open another forum and mass-move those threads”

I agree, it’s great how a forum can splinter into a new community.

But if a batch of new people need a forum, I happy for them to start their own community rather than trying to find an existing community for them to be absorbed in.

Their forum may be buried in an existing community, and the community name doesn’t reflect their forum. In other words they want their own house to hang out in, rather than renting a room.

Sometimes when searching our community directory I would not have known to look in that community to find a forum on a specific topic, as the name of the community is different to the nature of that forum. Findability becomes a disadvantage when you are piggybacking on an existing community.

You say “You can’t keep the community small and cozy like a corner pub forever… but you can build a very attractive beergarden, full of specialised nooks but sharing where it is useful”

This is true, a community can self organise into little spaces, until they may want their own community, as the homepage starts becoming 40% relevant to them. Whereas in their own community the homepage would be 100% relevant.

You say “Better big and orderly than fragmented”

This depends, if it’s too big you may not get the participation you want, due to people naturally feeling more comfortable to contribute in tight groups. In this case better having multiple communities with high participation, over one with low participation.

Again, it’s cultivating a landscape for people, not for a topic.

You say “I don’t believe in users creating subcommunities on a whim (”bottom-up”). It makes for loads of dross, content fragmentation and empty forums. It needs to be user-initiated, but it needs to be sensibly assessed before it gets implemented.”

I see your point. Our communities are more like portals/websites with blogs and forums. But if they were like FaceBook groups, then I think we would have bottom-up creation (as these seem more liteweight and intuitively designed)

I’m loving the post series, but there’s such a number of topics touched that it’s hard to comment .

Just two loose shots:

- When users register without managerial approval, they’re self-selecting themselves. They’re proving they’re interested enough and have enough to say (or believe so) to make the effort, and also that they like the environment enough to bother. Usually, they will be more qualified to know all that than any manager.

- Yes you can fight a waterfall , keeping a community on-topic. You just need to make it easy enough to divert offtopics somewhere else that’s out of the way and still fun for the writers. In other words, if you get a clique bent on debating an off-topic until they threaten to change the focus of the community… open another forum and mass-move those threads. Done with. Now you have your community and they have their own playground, complete with background.

And an opinion. You can’t keep the community small and cozy like a corner pub forever… but you can build a very attractive beergarden, full of specialised nooks but sharing where it is useful (i.e. it makes no sense to subdivide conversations about a process into several forums). You can deaden things a bit by growing too much, but you can much more easily kill off a community if no-one can find the relevant conversations and their context easily. Better big and orderly than fragmented. IMHO .

And finally a political incorrectness. I don’t believe in users creating subcommunities on a whim (”bottom-up”). It makes for loads of dross, content fragmentation and empty forums. It needs to be user-initiated, but it needs to be sensibly assessed before it gets implemented.

Best regards,

Miguel