Everyone is talking about blogs. Blogs are becoming a powerful component in organizations' online community strategies. It seems everybody has a personal blog these days. But companies and non-profits are jumping into the fray. On the March of Dimes website, people with premature babies use blogs to submit their personal stories and receive encouragement and support from other's who have faced similar circumstances. Message boards won't be going away any time soon but organizations will be adopting additional technologies, like blogs, as a way of increasing online collaboration, creating valuable member-generated content, and improving the experience for members.
Wikis may be the next big thing. A wiki is a collaborative tool that allows multiple users to create and edit the same web page. The most popular wiki to date is Wikipedia, a Web-based, free encyclopedia that is written collaboratively by volunteers. During a summit breakout session, the group concluded that in order for a wiki to be successful, the following 5 things should be in place.
- The wiki must have a clear objective that is made known to all participants
- There should be guidelines or "rules of the game" for participating
- Participant's roles should be defined
- There needs to be a forum for disagreements
- There should be a plan for growth
There is a big push to make communities more self-regulated. It seems more and more communities are reducing management staff and transferring some of the responsibilities to community members. Advances in technology by companies like Lithium Technologies are allowing members to report inappropriate content and spam, provide community recommendations and feedback, vote on the most relevant content and welcome and assimilate new members. Communities still need to be actively managed to make them successful, but allowing members to help out lets the community manager(s) focus on more strategic activities and goals.
Community isn't just for adults anymore More and more organizations are offering online communities for kids. Many of these communities mix education with entertainment. Two exceptional sites that were presented at the conference were Numedeon's Whyville, a virtual world geared to 8-15 year old girls and boys, and Star Farm Production's Edgar and Ellen, "outrageous and devious humor for ages 9-12". Both organizations are committed to providing a safe and secure website for children and both adhere to COPPA , which states that no Web site operator can require, as a condition of participation in an activity, that a child under the age of 13 disclose more information than is reasonably necessary for participation in that activity.
You can check out more Online Community news and perspectives in my Online Community Blog .
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Comments: 2
In the Wiki world, collaborative efforts create a single unified product (where there is agreement). The advantage: a single perspective emerges with the "validity" created by sheer numbers contributing (the old saying "This many people can't be wrong..."). The challenges: (1) it doesn't address areas where there are not shared opinions, presenting the diversity of thought accurately (see articles on abortion, Terry Schiavo, or similar) and (2) it makes it hard to reward contributors based on their contribution.
The Gather model is quite different: we allow individuals to express diverse opinions and then have the community identify the best thinkers and best thoughts on a topic. By presenting diversity of opinion, we hope to give broader perspective. We allow our authors to earn credibility through community ratings and readership. Our challenge: bringing sufficient, diverse opinion to the debate to avoid presentation of a biased perspective.
You identified the wiki world's challenge around disputed items (the need to identify disputes). Did they make progress on how to do this? Also, was there discussion of an economic model there?
A lot of organizations are starting to experiment with wikis but they aren't meant to be all things to all people. They work well as internal tools where teams of employees need to collaborate and reach concensus on a final project like a proposal, presentation or white paper. They also work well for projects like Wikipedia that attempt to gather and aggregate knowledge. They don't work so well for discussions or topics that are bound to have multiple view points. Wikis are best for groups trying to reach a common goal - not debate differening viewpoints.
A classic misuse of the wiki format (althought you have to give them props for trying) was the The LA Times Wiki Experiment I wrote about that in my blog but I'll post it on Gather for those who aren't familiar with it.
Tom, I really like what you are doing with the Gather site. I'm eager to see the new functionality as you continue to roll things out.