Online Communities Talk

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Required Elements of Sustainable Online Learning Community

1. magnet content authored by experts (http://www.photo.net/portraits/intro)
2. means of collaboration (a forum; one question)
3. powerful facilities for browsing and searching both magnet content and contributed content
4. means of delegation of moderation
5. means of identifying members who are imposing an undue burden on the community and ways of changing their behavior and/or excluding them from the community without them realizing it
6. means of software extension by community members themselves (every programmer a user)

The first large-scale online communities: USENET ("Google Groups")

• rec.aviation.soaring
• http://netscan.research.microsoft.com/