How Internet communities function
EssaysThis is a collection of essays that explain why online communities end up the way they do, how they succeed and fail, and how to create and manage one. I think they are all interesting, though I don't agree with everything they say.
- The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat. Chip Morningstar, F. Randall Farmer. 1990. See also: the Habitat links collected on Douglas Crockford's Electric Communities page.
- A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy. Clay Shirky. 2003.
- Building Communities with Software. Joel Spolsky. 2003.
- Five Geek Social Fallacies. Michael Suileabhain-Wilson. 2003.
- Why is [an anonymous BBS] better than regular forum software?. Shii. 2004.
- The chat room/forum problem. Robert Scoble. 2009.
- Outer Circle: Saving forums from themselves with shared hierarchical white lists. Alan Crowe. 2009.
- Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism. Eliezer Yudkowsky. 2009.
- Meta is Murder. Jeff Atwood. 2009.
- What I've learned from Hacker News. Paul Graham. 2009.
- The Evaporative Cooling Effect. Xianhang Zhang. 2010.
- The moderator problem: How Reddit and related news sites decline. Jake Seliger. 2015.
- The Asshole Filter. Siderea. 2015.
- Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution. David Chapman. 2015.
- Internet communities: Otters vs. Possums. Aella. 2017.