Communities have for some time been all the craze; everyone wants to build a community, whether it’s around an idea, a hobby, a company or some theme. Even many blogs are – or want to be – based on the idea of a virtual community. Beginning the process is always difficult; very few people are willing to spend time talking to mostly themselves in an empty forum. So it should be a source of joy when you get a place up and running.
But soon after that point is reached, things often fall apart. I’ve witnessed several communities (which have had a great start) splitting or getting destroyed purely because of personal arguments. Administrator(s) who become arrogant from the success end up destroying the place (hint to these egomaniacs: it’s the people who make a place, virtual or not, valuable and unique, not the “owner” of the place). Sites collapsing under their own weight when the founders realize it actually costs money to run a popular community. Countless discussion forums becoming useless when the signal-to-noise ratio takes a nose-dive. And so on.
Getting caught in the middle of witnessing the destruction of a previously successful online community is a somewhat surreal thing. Being an outside observer, it’s all too easy to see how childish the arguments are. First sign of irrevocable trouble is often a wave of fed-up people leaving. Then comes public fighting. And then another wave leaves. When all is said and done, what’s left might be a community, but one that often bears little resemblence to the original place.
The sad thing is that there aren’t many places that manage to keep together a large group of active participants conversing in a civilized manner for what could be considered a long time. Instead, most can be characterized as shooting stars.
