Keeping their trust is crucial and takes fastidious integration among technology, design and content. Sharp says he wanted users to be able to vote on the quality of postings then tally the points to reward the users who post the best content, while driving other members to that content. He also wanted software that could handle lots of traffic. It handles 7 million page views per day, but Sharp says it can handle 25 million to 30 million per day. The moderators are hosts to the community - and students of it, living like anthropologists in a society they seek to understand.
Community is fragile and delicate and highly affected by small elements of the Web design.
Nowhere is that statement more evident than in sites that try to just graft a community component onto another Web site. But users craved those features and quickly began using them them once they were added. Even a popular community needs someone to keep conversations on track. Moderators keep monomaniacal participants from spinning threads off into tangents, establish a norm for behavior and make sure unruly users get warned or expelled. They have to treat each other with respect so that when we kick somebody out, it's not because they're bad but because the community isn't going to work if they're bad.