So, do you do the partner thing in community building?

Does Brett have any 'partners' or is he lord of the domain?

[Webwork]

I don't know. I kinda think one marriage in life is enough for any one soul, and if it wasn't for the kids I wonder - would I work this hard? Maybe. Maybe it's love. Maybe there's something to having a life mate. But it does have its moments.

I'm thinking out loud here: If you have an idea, a plan, a set of principals, a guiding vision for community building - do you share it? What level of partnership/participation do you extend and to whom?

Why would anyone join in?

Has anyone tried building a community with founding partners and failed? (The partner approach, that is, failed, which may also spell death for the community.)What were the consequences?

Should one have a community buidling prenuptial? You get the domain name, I get the forum database?

Is an online community really a democracy or a benevolent monarchy? Should we talk democracy but perform as a benign monarch?

I'm leaning towards benevolent monarch.

[Widey]

Definately the benevolent monarchy.

We've had a few fantastic members over the years who eat/sleep/drink about the site.

We've also two of those who've decided they dont love us any more, or feel they should go off and run their own community.

The twice it's happened It's not been pleasant. I can only imagine how much worse it could have been had I not owned the domain/software/server etc.

At the same time if you try to run a dictatorship, you will soon be a community of 1.

PS I'm not stalking your postings webwork, this forum has just been too long coming so I feel a year or two of pent-up posting starting to flow out.

[Webwork]

Stalking?

Fella, can I hire you to continue stalking me with your insights and answers? I was the one worrying that initiating several threads at once might be a problem.

Stalk on!

[ScottM]

I feel a year or two of pent-up posting starting to flow out.

Yep...feel the same.

Onto the question:

Nope. Tried a psuedo-partnership and it went down after the first/last email. To be fair, it was my first, so that is in no way a statistic. Basically I trained a competitor...