 Online Hospitality: Moderator Guidelines and Community-Building Tips - http://www.well.com/confteam/hosting.html Gail Ann Williams writes about building conversation and community in online environments, adapted from the WELL Host Manuals. |
 Online Community Building Concepts - http://www.well.com/user/gail/community.tips.html List of fundamental principles to consider when starting a new community site. |
 WELL Conferencing Team - Community Building and Hosts Manual - http://www.well.com/confteam/ The WELL's description of conferencing, why it's the best tool for building community, and how to get starting in a conferencing environment. Links include the WELL Host Manual. |
 About.com: Community Online - http://webdesign.about.com/od/community/ Editors' web site picks for fostering an online community and personalizing web sites. |
 Salon.com Technology: Netscape to community: You're evicted - http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/04/06/netcenter/index.html As Netcenter's forums fall casualty to AOL-merger cutbacks, participants mourn. |
 Salon.com Technology: Must AOL Pay "Community Leaders"? - http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/04/16/aol_community/index.html Article by Janelle Brown discussing issues on the use of volunteers to manage a site's online community. "The volunteers may feel good about giving their time, but the for-profit online communities are clearly profiting from those volunteers' services." |
 Club about Online Communities - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/clubaboutonlinecommunities/ Whenever you provide people with the ability to communicate online then community develops. This club is about the development and management of online communities. |
 The Mailing List Gurus Page - http://lists.gurus.com/ A resource for finding, participating in, creating, and managing Internet mailing lists, from the authors of The Internet For Dummies |
 Community is Dead; Long Live Mega-Collaboration - http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9708b.html Usability expert Jakob Nielsen's take on Online Communities: "The Web is not a community: a huge impersonal city is a better metaphor. User-contributed content can be valuable (if edited), but chat rooms should be avoided because of participation inequality." |
 CNet.com: Will Media Giants Bulldoze Communities? - http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-223726.html News Analysis by CNET observing how Disney and Time Warner, by building enhanced entertainment sites, threaten topical online communities. |
 Communitybuilding.com - http://communitybuilding.com/ The secret to success on the web is to build a community, not just a web site. Here one can find tools and tips to make a web site interactive and, as a result, a place of community. |
 CornerWays: Community Development, Training, and Moderationn - http://www.cornerways.com Online community development company that provides online community building, consulting and design services worldwide. |
 Building Community: Online Resources - http://bcn.boulder.co.us/community/resources/center.html Has papers, presentations, stories, indexs, and surveys. |
 CommunityAnswers.com - http://communityanswers.com/ Questions and answers and advice for online community builders, users, moderators, managers, and owners. |
 Benton Foundation: Community Building - http://www.benton.org/publibrary/toolkits/community.html Detailed articles, tools, and resources about community building. Topics range from software recommendations to profiles of successful communities. |
 Peter Kollock - http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/ Associate professor of the University of California, Los Angeles. Includes curriculum vita, course syllabi and recent papers on online communities and markets, which is his current research. |
 Design Principles for Online Communities - http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/design.htm Academic paper by sociologist Peter Kollock, drawing upon community design principles by Axelrod (1984), Ostrom (1990), Godwin (1994). |
 How To Kill Community Networks - http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/tno/january-1996.html#schuler By Doug Schuler. Essay describing three common means for the downfall of community networks. |
 Community Networking Movement - http://www.scn.org/ip/commnet/ "Realizing that communication and information are increasingly dependent on networked digital information, community activists all over the world are developing community computer network systems." |
 Membership Agreements - http://www.ivanhoffman.com/membership.html Article by lawyer Ivan Hoffman discussing membership agreements and resolving issues that arise from them. Applicable only to U.S. Law. |
 The Admin Zone Forums - http://www.theadminzone.com Online resource for administrators of bulletin board communities. All topics dealing with running and setting up a forum community are discussed. |
 Suite101.com: Communication in Cyberspace - http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/9189 Articles, links and discussions on various programs used to communicate on the internet. Covers messaging, conferencing, discussion forums, telephony, chat and email. |
 First Monday - A Social Network Caught in the Web - http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_6/adamic/ The authors present an analysis of Club Nexus, an online community at Stanford University. Through the site they were able to study a reflection of the real world community structure within the student body. |
 First Monday - Phantom authority, self–selective recruitment and retention of members in virtual communities: The case of Wikipedia - http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/ciffolilli/ Peer-reviewed journal article by Andrea Ciffolilli. |
 Building an Online Community: Just Add Water - http://www.digital-web.com/articles/building_an_online_community/ The dos-and-don'ts of building a website community by Matt Haughey, the creator of MetaFilter. |
 VirtualCommunities Start4all - http://www.start4all.com/?A=page&subject=virtualcommunities Directory of resources and tools for building online communities. Rich content for analysis of virtual communities. With a list of popular communities and vendors in this field. |
 Xgencia - Best Practice in Online Communities - http://www.xgencia.com UK online community specialists providing planning, RFP and ROI analysis services. Requires Flash. |
 Full Circle Associates - http://www.fullcirc.com/ Provides strategic facilitation, online community development, marketing, and project management services. Includes a listing of online community building and virtual group facilitation/moderation resources. |
 Cyberspace Innkeeping: Building Online Community - http://www.cervisa.com/innkeeping Essay by former Wells conferencing manager John Coate explaining what happens in an online social environment. |
 The Virtual Communities (VirCom) Project - http://www.informatik.umu.se/nlrg/vircom.html Five PhD students out to study virtual communities, their rise and development, evolution, meaning and its effect to traditional organizations. (Some papers are in Swedish.) |
 Fragmented by Technologies: A Community in Cyberspace - http://www.helsinki.fi/science/optek/1997/n1/davis.txt Early academic paper studying the human interaction within an online community. The author observed antinomy, atomisation, carnival, decentralization, disembodiment, impersonality, intensification and lurking. |
 NTT Social Communication Laboratory - http://www.kecl.ntt.co.jp/csl/ Aims to develop a social information infrastructure and create a new lifestyle for interpersonal communication via the Internet. |
 Community Networks: Putting People First - http://www.iscommunications.co.uk/media/PeopleFirst.pdf Editorial by Michael Mulquin. Discusses the role of Community Networks in delivering new information and communications technologies to UK residents. Most content is applicable elsewhere as well. |