1.Online community and community online are not necessarily the same, and similar subtle distinctions are important for designers working on websites with interactive community features (e.g. threaded forums, blogs with comment features, guestbook-style forums or message boards, chat, etc.). Online community has the connotation, or suggests the likely inference, that the users are geographically dispersed and not in physical or face to face (F2F) contact with one another, and use the website as the main mode of interaction. Community online is more vague, as it could encompass the above as well as other types of communities that do take part in F2F contact but also require or desire synchronous or asynchronous communication. Examples of community online could include a college or high school class that has a listserv and forum to continue discussions outside of class hours, or a development team using a blog to keep one another updated as they telecommute during the weekend, but meet in the office through the week.

2.Day (2001), in response to a question from Van Souza, has compiled an informal list attempting to differentiate special interest email groups from virtual communities. In the resulting conversation and collaboration in just such a community setting online, Van notes that in community lists, participants have little difficulty getting a thread going and replying to each other in discussions of four posts or more. In other groups, members seem reluctant to respond to each other, even when provoked. Depending on the hierarchical or preferential connotation associated with community over special interest group, these may be hair-splitting distinctions. The point, however, is that online groups develop distinct cultures and contexts for participation, requiring some degree of specific attention and analysis before making assessments about the design of Web tools for interaction.

3.Any conception of online community or community online is, as Barrett (2001) says, very broad. It can be anything from a small close-knit group of people who email each other about a mutual hobby to a mailing list or Web site with thousands and thousands of users. There are thousands of these communities scattered across the Web, covering far too many topics to even attempt to list. An equally diverse collection of user types emerge in online communities. Barrett, webmaster for the Wesley Clark presidential nomination bid, consultant and webmaster for the John Kerry presidential campaign, and author of the blog Camworld: Thinking Outside the Box, has a very specifically Control-centered model for online community that involve large numbers of geographically dispersed users. He writes Community management is a very difficult thing and absolutely requires a strong leader, list-mom, and watchkeeper who can eject trolls and people who misbehave. Without this person or persons, your community will fail.

4.Trolls are like party crashers; they participate in lists in inflammatory fashion and bait more legitimate users and participants, "trolling," as if fishing, for outbursts. Trolls intend to disrupt useful and productive conversation and discussion by appealing to sensitive topics that will sidetrack conversations. Sysops, Wizards, list-moms, moderators, and Webmasters are among the various types of authority figures or leaders in online communities. Often, though, these people perform a more neutral policing, and take a less subjective role that is not leadership-based but more akin to maintenance. Nelson, Ramsey, and Verner (1960) comment on the role of specialization within organizations and the resulting decline in participation among the general membership, especially regarding group decision-making. They point out that [i]nsofar as the expert is allowed to make the decision, rather than being used as a resource person helping a group make the decision, this of course represents a weakening of the democratic position (p. 255).

5.Lurkers are non-vocal readers of the discussion(s) produced by the community of users. Lurkers would probably be considered nonparticipants as characterized in Community Structure and Change (Nelson, Ramsey, and Verner 1960). Nonparticipants are characterized as problematic with regards to loyalty, apathy, negativity, and dependence. Pickering and King (1995) assert that [l]urkers are no more tied to the network than viewers of broadcast television are tied to the stations they view (p.481). Morris and Ogan (1996) make fewer assertions but ask questions about the role of lurkers, unconvinced that to lurk is to remain passive like a television viewer. I would add that the television analogy is faulty on many levels, as an online community may be more like a specific program than a channel, or more akin to (ironically?) a network distributed across many affiliated channels. The passivity of television viewers is also dubious, particularly those who participate in online communities related to their favorite programs. Paying attention, reading and internalizing the conversations, and an active engagement in a private channel with the more publicly active writers may still "invest" lurkers as members of the community.

6.Nelson, Ramsey, and Verner (1960) also explore the voluntary nature of membership in large formal organizations. They identify participation as an important gauge of membership in any community, and quote Chapin (1937), who sets forth five-step scale of participation, ranking as follows (from low to high):

1. membership
2. attendance at meetings
3. financial contributions
4. membership on committees
5. leadership positions. (Nelson, et al, p. 251)

Nelson (et al.) qualify and challenge many of the levels of this scale, and qualify the differences between discussion/debate and voting, with special respect for minority opinions. They prioritize and value discussion/debate, claiming that it cannot be replaced by voting, but it may lead to that vote.

7.Schein addresses this same danger in a Control model of organizational management. He mentions that Likerts and others focused on exorcising the notion that human nature was inherently negative or evil and that people were in the long run more productive and creative when treated as adults" (p.230) In "Killing the biggest myth of web design," (sic) Powazek makes a similar appeal, refuting claims that users resist reading online, do not scroll, and do not have time to read Web pages. Powazek is responding to Jakob Nielsen, a usability consultant and partner of Donald Norman. Nielsen's article "Why Web Users Scan Instead of Read" (1997) suggests a "lowest common denominator" model for Web content, hoping to make that content more "user-centered." Schein actually supports Nielsen in some ways by pointing out the high productivity of autocratically managed groups during short periods of work. Nielsen's position, like Donald Norman's, is buying into system-centered model of technology that is, in the words of Robert R. Johnson (1998), so embedded in Western cultural ways of thinking about technology that even the best user-centered approaches can unwittingly fall victim to the system-centered ideology (p. 29).

8.Dilger (2000) identifies this embedded way of thinking as the "Ideology of Ease." Dilger identifies an uncritical turn toward a culturally constructed desire for dumbing down or oversimplifying interfaces in ways that break and destroy the metaphors inherent to graphical user interfaces (GUI). He offers the caveat that ease is one of a system of complex and not necessarily integrated ideologies which, operating collectively, make up a coherent system of values and ultimately asserts that an uncritical drive toward ease is arguably the most influential force in desktop computing today.

9.Ultimately, ease of use, or usability in general, is actually less important than the degree to which the experience for the users (as both individuals and as a community) is meaningful. The content or the outcome the user seeks is vital; users will fight a difficult interface if they need the information within, or if that interface provides a service they require. Of course limits to user patience exist. On the other hand, quick and efficient access to undesired content or features is not actual value for the user. Pind (Graphic Design for Human Interfaces) critiques poor graphic design of interfaces in a call for more sophisticated visual rhetoric in conjunction with aesthetic. Day (1997) makes a similar assertion as to this need. Pind points to the information design work of Edward Tufte as a potential source for solutions to this need. Pind asserts both the power and difficulty of visual rhetoric when he says,

Good information design can communicate complex concepts and relationships much more effectively than words alone could ever do. The combination of well-crafted words and equally well-crafted graphics is so much more powerful than words, as Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is a living (yet printed on dead trees) testament to. But good information design is hard. Not only do you have to be skilled in aesthetics, you also have to understand the subject matter in depth, and have the ability to visualize your understanding in a way that others will understand. (Graphic Design for Human Interfaces)

10.Powazek recommends that the way to get readers to read (and I am extrapolating "the way to get them to participate in online community") is to provide not easy content but quality content. Pind identifies the need for both robust visual rhetoric and a source for models of same. Powazek refutes Nielsen's "Web surfers scan, not read" by demanding better content for them to read. Rather than blaming the interface, Powazek (like Meloni (2001) in her refutation of Nielsen's criticism of Macromedia Flash) blames the content providers and encourages Web writers thusly,

advise clients to treat every piece of content as the beginning of a conversation with the community. When you look at content that way, it makes sense to raise the bar a bit. After all, if I've learned one lesson in web community, it's this: The tone you set in your content will be echoed back by the community, amplified louder with each comment. (Killing the biggest myth of web design (sic), emphasis orig.)