Participating
March 20, 2006I have been driving (and been driven by) a number of communities over the past decade.And one thing that continues to amaze me is the effort it takes to get people to participate in any meaningful fashion.
When I ran my BBS, I was constantly trying to make people stop downloading files, and getting them to start messaging in the forums.
Today, with the Internet becoming the world’s biggest BBS, and with countless mailing lists, web forums and other modes of mass communication, I find that just about everyone likes to stay in “lurk” mode - i.e. read-only.
Then, when a community dies for lack of participation, they look for all sorts of reasons.