The online communities I've seen work best generally:
⚫ Are selective. Actual or de-facto barriers to casual participation exist.
⚫ Are focused around a specific interest. Usually topical, occasionally by geography.
⚫ Are based around discussion from people interested in receiving as well as transmitting. The traditional exceptions to these are trolls and spammers, but I had a brief experience on mailing list that was heavily subscribed by people in the entertainment industry some years back. It was horrible. For, several reasons: people in love with the sound of their own voice, top-post/forward style messages (3 lines on top of 3000 wasn't uncommon), and ultimately far too many participants for the forum. Even though it wasn't spam / trolling / SEO, it was about the worst and most useless forum I'd ever seen.
Having well-established formatting and quoting styles matters. That's one of the things I enjoy about reddit, especially as compared with G+: the richer markdown, and inclusion of blockquote syntax, helps hugely. One idiot on G+ (who I finally blocked, for various reasons) had the habit of using an inline quote/response format, but his marking syntax (python-style quote tagging, I think), was all but impossible to follow. Dealing with his BS and difficult-to-follow style really weren't worth it. Oh, and it'd be nice if HN had a proper blockquote markdown as well ...
Also from G+: I noticed that without a proper "plaza", what you tended to end up with were, effectively, cocktail parties: hosts (users) who has a sufficient level of followers that they'd kick off conversations, as well as a good seed, and policing of guests to keep everything in line. Discussion nucleated around posts and specific users. Not communities, not topics, not pages.
Communities were and are effectively dead outside a very few exceptions, largely due to the inability to filter out crap. And even with the cocktail-party mode, there was a very narrow goldilocks zone: too few followers and discussions wouldn't get off the ground, too many and it rapidly got inane (effectively somewhere between a college kegger and a street brawl), and hosts who were either uninspiring or absentee would (respectively) garner similarly inane commentary and/or have largely directionless commentary.
I find the dynamics of discussions fascinating.
Hrm. I'll take a look at your project, but that website gives a horrible first impression. Try to make your text text. Not some kind of art statement.
⚫ Are selective. Actual or de-facto barriers to casual participation exist.
⚫ Are focused around a specific interest. Usually topical, occasionally by geography.
⚫ Are based around discussion from people interested in receiving as well as transmitting. The traditional exceptions to these are trolls and spammers, but I had a brief experience on mailing list that was heavily subscribed by people in the entertainment industry some years back. It was horrible. For, several reasons: people in love with the sound of their own voice, top-post/forward style messages (3 lines on top of 3000 wasn't uncommon), and ultimately far too many participants for the forum. Even though it wasn't spam / trolling / SEO, it was about the worst and most useless forum I'd ever seen.
Having well-established formatting and quoting styles matters. That's one of the things I enjoy about reddit, especially as compared with G+: the richer markdown, and inclusion of blockquote syntax, helps hugely. One idiot on G+ (who I finally blocked, for various reasons) had the habit of using an inline quote/response format, but his marking syntax (python-style quote tagging, I think), was all but impossible to follow. Dealing with his BS and difficult-to-follow style really weren't worth it. Oh, and it'd be nice if HN had a proper blockquote markdown as well ...
Also from G+: I noticed that without a proper "plaza", what you tended to end up with were, effectively, cocktail parties: hosts (users) who has a sufficient level of followers that they'd kick off conversations, as well as a good seed, and policing of guests to keep everything in line. Discussion nucleated around posts and specific users. Not communities, not topics, not pages.
Communities were and are effectively dead outside a very few exceptions, largely due to the inability to filter out crap. And even with the cocktail-party mode, there was a very narrow goldilocks zone: too few followers and discussions wouldn't get off the ground, too many and it rapidly got inane (effectively somewhere between a college kegger and a street brawl), and hosts who were either uninspiring or absentee would (respectively) garner similarly inane commentary and/or have largely directionless commentary.
I find the dynamics of discussions fascinating.
Hrm. I'll take a look at your project, but that website gives a horrible first impression. Try to make your text text. Not some kind of art statement.
Update: Yeah, I'm sorry but that site's just too painful to read. Show this to your Web team: http://www.contrastrebellion.com/