Resources

• Computers: Internet: Web Design and Development: Authoring: Webmaster Resources  (391)
• Society: Subcultures: Cyberculture  (133)

About.com: Community Online - Editors' web site picks for fostering an online community and personalizing web sites.

The Admin Zone Forums - Online resource for administrators of bulletin board communities. All topics dealing with running and setting up a forum community are discussed.

Benton Foundation: Community Building - Detailed articles, tools, and resources about community building. Topics range from software recommendations to profiles of successful communities.

Building an Online Community: Just Add Water - The dos-and-don'ts of building a website community by Matt Haughey, the creator of MetaFilter.

Building Community: Online Resources - Has papers, presentations, stories, indexs, and surveys.

Club about Online Communities - Whenever you provide people with the ability to communicate online then community develops. This club is about the development and management of online communities.

Community Networking Movement - "Realizing that communication and information are increasingly dependent on networked digital information, community activists all over the world are developing community computer network systems."

Community Networks: Putting People First - 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. [PDF]

CommunityAnswers.com - Questions and answers and advice for online community builders, users, moderators, managers, and owners.

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 - Online community development company that provides online community building, consulting and design services worldwide.

Cyberspace Innkeeping: Building Online Community - Essay by former Wells conferencing manager John Coate explaining what happens in an online social environment.

Design Principles for Online Communities - Academic paper by sociologist Peter Kollock, drawing upon community design principles by Axelrod (1984), Ostrom (1990), Godwin (1994).

Full Circle Associates - Provides strategic facilitation, online community development, marketing, and project management services. Includes a listing of online community building and virtual group facilitation/moderation resources.

How To Kill Community Networks - By Doug Schuler. Essay describing three common means for the downfall of community networks.

The Mailing List Gurus Page - A resource for finding, participating in, creating, and managing Internet mailing lists, from the authors of The Internet For Dummies

Membership Agreements - Article by lawyer Ivan Hoffman discussing membership agreements and resolving issues that arise from them. Applicable only to U.S. Law.

NTT Social Communication Laboratory - Aims to develop a social information infrastructure and create a new lifestyle for interpersonal communication via the Internet.

Online Community Building Concepts - List of fundamental principles to consider when starting a new community site.

Online Hospitality: Moderator Guidelines and Community-Building Tips - Gail Ann Williams writes about building conversation and community in online environments, adapted from the WELL Host Manuals.

Peter 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.

Suite101.com: Communication in Cyberspace - Articles, links and discussions on various programs used to communicate on the internet. Covers messaging, conferencing, discussion forums, telephony, chat and email.

The Virtual Communities (VirCom) Project - 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.)

VirtualCommunities Start4all - 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.

WELL Conferencing Team - Community Building and Hosts Manual - 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.

Xgencia - Best Practice in Online Communities - UK online community specialists providing planning, RFP and ROI analysis services. Requires Flash.

First Monday - Phantom authority, self–selective recruitment and retention of members in virtual communities: The case of Wikipedia - Peer-reviewed journal article by Andrea Ciffolilli. (December 1, 2003)

First Monday - A Social Network Caught in the Web - 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. (May, 2003)

Salon.com Technology: Must AOL Pay "Community Leaders"? - 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." (April 16, 1999)

Salon.com Technology: Netscape to community: You're evicted - As Netcenter's forums fall casualty to AOL-merger cutbacks, participants mourn. (April 6, 1999)

CNet.com: Will Media Giants Bulldoze Communities? - News Analysis by CNET observing how Disney and Time Warner, by building enhanced entertainment sites, threaten topical online communities. (March 31, 1999)

Community is Dead; Long Live Mega-Collaboration - 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." (August 15, 1997)

Fragmented by Technologies: A Community in Cyberspace - Early academic paper studying the human interaction within an online community. The author observed antinomy, atomisation, carnival, decentralization, disembodiment, impersonality, intensification and lurking. (April, 1997)