Whenever you provide people with the ability to communicate online then community develops. This club is about the development and management of online communities.
"Realizing that communication and information are increasingly dependent on networked digital information, community activists all over the world are developing community computer network systems."
Editorial by Michael Mulquin. Discusses the role of Community Networks in delivering new information and communications technologies to UK residents. Most content is applicable elsewhere as well. [PDF]
The secret to success on the web is to build a community, not just a web site. Here one can find tools and tips to make a web site interactive and, as a result, a place of community.
Provides strategic facilitation, online community development, marketing, and project management services. Includes a listing of online community building and virtual group facilitation/moderation resources.
Associate professor of the University of California, Los Angeles. Includes curriculum vita, course syllabi and recent papers on online communities and markets, which is his current research.
Articles, links and discussions on various programs used to communicate on the internet. Covers messaging, conferencing, discussion forums, telephony, chat and email.
Five PhD students out to study virtual communities, their rise and development, evolution, meaning and its effect to traditional organizations. (Some papers are in Swedish.)
Directory of resources and tools for building online communities. Rich content for analysis of virtual communities. With a list of popular communities and vendors in this field.
The WELL's description of conferencing, why it's the best tool for building community, and how to get starting in a conferencing environment. Links include the WELL Host Manual.
The authors present an analysis of Club Nexus, an online community at Stanford University. Through the site they were able to study a reflection of the real world community structure within the student body. (May, 2003)
Article by Janelle Brown discussing issues on the use of volunteers to manage a site's online community. "The volunteers may feel good about giving their time, but the for-profit online communities are clearly profiting from those volunteers' services." (April 16, 1999)
News Analysis by CNET observing how Disney and Time Warner, by building enhanced entertainment sites, threaten topical online communities. (March 31, 1999)
Usability expert Jakob Nielsen's take on Online Communities: "The Web is not a community: a huge impersonal city is a better metaphor. User-contributed content can be valuable (if edited), but chat rooms should be avoided because of participation inequality." (August 15, 1997)
Early academic paper studying the human interaction within an online community. The author observed antinomy, atomisation, carnival, decentralization, disembodiment, impersonality, intensification and lurking. (April, 1997)
