Exploring Networks of Communities: July 6-24, 2009

I'm also quite interested in the people activities of building communities and the roles and tasks that are required in building a vibrant and self-sustaining community. Also how the roles in the successful community are expanded out to also support the meta-community. During my experiences I have seen a few things work and some that don't. But I believe that having good coverage over the roles and related tasks are important to building community. And within these tasks people do things that keep the community lively. This is a list adapted from a book titled "Building community on the Web".

What do people think? What other roles are required for encouraging meta-community?

Greeter (Welcome Newcomers):

• Greet newcomers upon arrival
• Conduct system tours
• Answer basic questions
• Help people get into conversation, find courses, other activities
• Seek and participate in external and related community events

Host (Facilitate the core activities):

• Stimulate a conversation, keep it on topic, create and prune topics or threads
• Lead players in learning quests and content creation
• Ensure content is correctly categorized and currated
• Answer activity-related questions (eg, how to use chat tools)

Editor (Evaluate content):

• Select high-quality content to highlight
• Suggest improvement
• Encourage use of quality framework
• Develop quality framework
• Mark inappropriate content for possible removal
• Identify contributor merits

Curator (Care for content):

• Select high-quality content to highlight
• Categorize content
• Librarianship duties
• Find and link to related resources
• Mark inappropriate content for possible removal
• Identify contributor merits

Cops (Remove people and/or content that violate the community standards):

• Judge and remove content
• Ban a member from the system for a particular length of time
• Develop community engagement standards
• Enforce standards

Teacher (Teach members to become leaders):

• Develop OER
• Provide mentorship, support student lead OER development
• Help select leader recruits
• Conduct classes and training sessions
• Offer one-to-one tutoring
• Evaluate students (through written exams, interactive sessions, peer evaluations)
• Identify contributor merits

Events Coordinator (Plan and run events):

• Coordinate the time, place and participants in an event
• Coordinate rich media infrastructure
• Develop and promote tagging, feeds, etc.
• Promote the event (calendar, email, web)
• Host or referee the event
• Post transcript or winners, participate in follow-up conversation
• Identify contributor merits

Support (Answer questions about the system):

• Answer technical or social questions
• Request changes or upgrades to the system
• Update frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list

Manager (Support leaders):

• Define and promote working groups
• facilitate work group meetings and discussions
• Identify contributor merits
• Recommend leaders for commendation
• Identify categories and assist curation

Director (Create and maintain the leader program):

• Define roles and responsibilities of leader positions
• Create and update leader documents (application, manual, code of conduct, NDA, weekly report template, etc.)
• Identify, encourage and consumate partnerships
• Make policy changes as needed
• Keep leadership positions staffed

Adapted from "Building Community on the Web" by Amy Jo Kim

Sincerely,

Peter