Overview:

Topics related to starting and growing online communities and user-driven web sites

Topics Covered:

- Topics related to building web communities by encouraging interaction with visitors, particularly discussion forums, bulletin boards, social networks, review sites, interactive blogs, wikis, etc.

- Discussion of issues related to moderating and administering these site tools, e.g., moderation issues, spam prevention, handling difficult users, etc.

- Discussion of how to encourage growth in members and usage of these types of sites, including offsite promotion, incentives, etc.

- The interaction between community building tools and search engines.

Topics Not Covered:

- Discussion of forum issues specific to WebmasterWorld. (These belong in the Community Forum; WebmasterWorld moderation issues should be discussed by StickyMail or e-mail.)

- Promotion of specific software solutions.

- Requests for reviews of specific sites.

- Links to specific forum, blog, wiki, or other sites. (Please do NOT post such links!)

- Solicitation for moderators or "post exchange" arrangements.

- Actual socializing or networking; this forum is to discuss social networking, not engage in it.

- Detailed, software-specific technical questions that would be better discussed in the support forum for that software.