Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Second Edition

Chapter 21. evolt.org: An Online Community

The building of online communities has been going on since the Web began. Some have succeeded, but most have failed spectacularly. Yet again and again, the allure of thousands of paying customers happily discussing the benefits of a company’s latest widget makes even the most hardboiled and pragmatic businesspeople throw caution to the wind. Fanning the flames of the online community fire were all sorts of new and intensely marketed community-enabling technologies, such as chat applications, that promised that “if you build it—with our technology, of course—they will come.”

Clearly, online communities require more than cool tools to succeed. Technologies enable people with shared interests to converse and exchange ideas, but it’s up to those people to contribute interesting and relevant information, stay on topic, be patient with each other, and police themselves when things get out of hand. Each online community is unique in who it allows to join, how it welcomes and initiates new members, what types of events and milestones it promotes, and what types of behaviors it honors. So it’s not grandiose to claim that each successful online community truly has its own culture.

Cultures and communities don’t just happen; they require careful nurturing. On the other hand, they wither when overmanaged. A well-designed information architecture can help balance these two extremes, flexibly encouraging freedom of expression while organizing and structuring ...