Section 21.2. Architecting an Online Community

21.2. Architecting an Online Community

Online communities aren't built upon compulsory participation; to succeed, they must attract members who are already busy doing other things. And sometimes online communities compete with other communities that are doing much the same thing.

evolt.org, for example, is focused on web development. As you might guess, there are many other communities that share the same focus. So the evolt.org folks must be doing something rightin five years' time, they've built four active mailing lists, the largest of which ("thelist") has over 3,000 members. And the evolt.org web site has over 24,000 registered users. These growing numbers are impressive, even more so when you consider evolt.org's budget, which is minute. Volunteers contribute their time and passion, and they've cobbled together a few servers to make this work.

Obviously, passion and today's incredibly cheap and powerful information technologies are a potent combination. But they aren't enough to guarantee success; an environment must be created to tie them together. Someone has to play God, setting up the rules and infrastructure that create an environment that becomes self-sustaining, and where people join in and participate. And that's where information architecture comes in. Information architecture provides much of the structure that ties together the people, passion, content, and technology in one cohesive place.

So how exactly does information architecture figure into evolt.org?