Principles for Online Communities

Joshua Porter has pub­lished slides from a present­a­tion reminding us that there is over a hundred years of research into beha­vi­oural psy­cho­logy waiting to inform the way in which social web applic­a­tions are designed. Through the links, I found Peter Kollock’s 1996 essay, Design Principles for Online Communities, which collects together some key points from work done over the previous twelve years. The first two of the studies it covers predate the web, and at the time the latest appeared, 1994, there wasn’t a lot of the web as we’d recog­nise it today — no Google, for one thing.

Nonetheless, it’s quite aston­ishing the degree to which these prin­ciples might help with what some­times seem like very modern issues: wiki­pedia van­dalism and blog bullying come to mind easily. That’s quite a trite point, of course, but the simple idea that co-​​operation requires sus­tained inter­ac­tion with stable, visible iden­tities (1984) some­times seems to be beyond the archi­tects of some of the biggest products in Web 2.0. The sort of scandals revealed by the launch of the recent Wikiscanner utility, for example, wouldn’t have been a pos­sib­ility if these ideas were built into the design of the system.

Here are the key points. It might be fun to measure your favourite rising star in the Web 2.0 world against these criteria:

• Axelrod’s (1984) require­ments for the pos­sib­ility of cooperation:
  • Arrange that indi­viduals will meet each other again
  • They must be able to recog­nize each other
  • They must have inform­a­tion about how the other has behaved until now

• Ostrom’s (1990) design prin­ciples of suc­cessful communities:
  • Group bound­aries are clearly defined
  • Rules gov­erning the use of col­lective goods are well matched to local needs and conditions
  • Most indi­viduals affected by these rules can par­ti­cipate in modi­fying the rules
  • The right of com­munity members to devise their own rules is respected by external authorities
  • A system for mon­it­oring members’ behavior exists; this mon­it­oring is under­taken by the com­munity members themselves
  • A gradu­ated system of sanc­tions is used
  • Community members have access to low-​​cost conflict res­ol­u­tion mechanisms

• Godwin’s (1994) prin­ciples for making virtual com­munities work:
  • Use software that promotes good discussion
  • Don’t impose a length lim­it­a­tion on postings
  • Front-​​load your system with talk­ative, diverse people
  • Let the users resolve their own disputes
  • Provide insti­tu­tional memory
  • Promote con­tinuity
  • Be host to a par­tic­ular interest group
  • Provide places for children
  • Confront the users with a crisis

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