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 ineq...

Provides strategic facilitation, online community development, marketing, and project management services. Includes a listing of online community building and virtual group facilitation/moderation resources.

Online resource for administrators of bulletin board communities. All topics dealing with running and setting up a forum community are discussed.

Early academic paper studying the human interaction within an online community. The author observed antinomy, atomisation, carnival, decentralization, disembodiment, impersonality, intensification and lurking.

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.

Gail Ann Williams writes about building conversation and community in online environments, adapted from the WELL Host Manuals.

Article by lawyer Ivan Hoffman discussing membership agreements and resolving issues that arise from them. Applicable only to U.S. Law.

As Netcenter's forums fall casualty to AOL-merger cutbacks, participants mourn.

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."

By Doug Schuler. Essay describing three common means for the downfall of community networks.