Community Rules - Why & How?

Some prudent advice on building community from HiveMinds:

1) Community green thumb - a community has to be grown wild and organically or it will fail. Control comes with time and growth.

2) Bearing fruit - the success of a community and its size may vary. The effort may not give expected results but the work still pays off in knowledge and experience.

3) Letting go - community members will change and accept different roles and participate in different manners. Being user friendly and being willing to allow change to happen is most important.

4) Leaders and Lurkers - leadership can come from the most unlikely place. Always be ready to give responsibilty, respect and credit to all. Even a lurker can rise to a leadership role if the environment is right. Badges are needed and wanted. Offering them will get you volunteers and make leaders of those.

5) Involvement is investment - being constanlty vigil and involved is a key investment in building a group or groups. Groups and clusters formed during regular visits to get new information are the key to a community.

6) Reality is the best reason - Groups and networks based on real life meets and events are the best and easiest to work with

7) 6 Parameters & Reasons for Community Associations to Form.

Doing it right

1. Make sure you have a good reason for wanting a community
2. Decide on how many interests you have and if a community can be built around them. You may find that just one community does not fill the pupose and plan on building several.
3. Critical to starting up is deciding if the membership is going to be Public or Private.
4. Who are they? The ones that will participate. Why should they participate? Is it ten that care or ten thousand?
5. Start planning for expansion and control from the start. They may not be needed but always go for the worst case scenario and have a solution for it.
6. Sometimes things will go in a direction that you had not planned on. Make sure the plan is fast and flexible so you can adapt.
7. Wild and organic is how you want to grow the community but you need to set rules and bounderies from the start so that members know what they are gettin involved with.
8. Where will the members come from? It is important to decide on the source of members and how you will reach them.
9. A plan of action for getting administrators, moderators and other volunteers should be made. You should know how you will set their roles and them credit and feedback to keep them satisfied. You should also know how you will make their standing in the community visible to the other members.
10. Documentation and information that a volunteer will need along with how to train them should be planned and created.
11. Find some seedlings. People who can help you seed the community and test your ability to train and inform volunteers.
12. PPP. Plant your seeds, Publicize the community and Participate regulary.
13. Keep it light and good natured. You are out to make friends and social connections do things based on this. It never hurts to laugh a little.