Thoughts on Community - Part 1

(This is an article that I wrote back in October but it wasn’t put on my blog, it was just sitting in my backpack account. I looked at it and figured I’d move it to my blog!)

I’m working on a couple of sites that tie into the whole “web 2.0” community concepts we’ve all grown to know and love.

While meditating on the similarities of each site I noticed that you aren’t really making a community. You are facilitating community interaction.

Let’s look at a community. To be as plain as possible, it’s a group of people who share a specific interest. This could be government, cultural heritage, passion for design, or workers in the technology field. These are all communities.

Now what makes a community effective or successful? Look at the notion of a bad neighborhood and good neighborhood. I’ve been in both.

Bad Neighborhoods tend to have a high amount of people who don’t participate or communicate. They don’t say anything about the graffiti, they tend to be indifferent and closed off from one another, everyone is out for their own survival, and if one household is treated wrong it’s that household’s problem.

Good Neighborhoods tend to have a high level of participation. You may have some indifferent people, but the overall amount of participants keeps the community thriving. If something is wrong with how clean a neighborhood is, the crime, the schools, etc. The community comes together and fights to get it the way that the community deems appropriate.

So, here is the question – ‘how do they do it?’ How do you make a good community out of a bad community? Well, let’s look at what a good community does. They tend to create events or venues that give the community an opportunity to come together. There are crime watch associations, housing associations, rallies, etc. They also do a great deal of free marketing.

That’s right, FREE! For example: The new guy/gal moves in and the community welcomes him/her with open arms. They go over, say hello, and recommend some things that happen around the community that that individual may enjoy. They reassure people that they count and they matter. Then they tell them where they can go express themselves.