No people, no community. When I joined the early, free-wheeling WeLL in the early 90s, Howard was hosting half a dozen conferences, each of them a swarm of activity. This is the context for this article. Nonetheless, many of these principles apply to moderating any on-line discussion. For example, A feeling of ownership.
Participants become evangelists.
A place where everybody builds social capital individually by improving each other's knowledge capital collaboratively. Enable people to create a gift economy for knowledge-sharing. Make newcomers feel welcomed, contributors valued, recreational hasslers ignored All online systems tend to fail to cohere without careful intervention. All online social systems are challenged by human social foibles and technological bugs that tend to split groups apart. Remember that both civility and nastiness are contagious.