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Building online communities

Posted Friday, August 7th, 2009 at 3:37 pm by Lynn (45 posts)

Amy Sample Ward, in a recent Stanford Social Innovation Review blog post, provides the best metaphor for building successful online communities I’ve seen yet — think gardening rather than landscaping.

A gardener only takes out the weeds; a landscaper takes out everything that isn’t part of the design.

A gardener isn’t afraid to mix things around; a landscaper plans and plots and plants.

When a storm hits, a gardener can remain open to planting anew and rejuvenating others; a landscaper may just order more of the same.

When in doubt, a gardener will try more plants or kinds of plants and see which take root; a landscaper may default to less.

I love this! Read the full post on the Stanford Social Innovation Review site.

Categories: Uncategorized. You can follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Building online communities”

Bill Bartmann Says:
September 21st, 2009 at 10:57 am
Cool site, love the info. I do a lot of research online on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I’m glad I found your blog. Thanks, :)

A definite great read.. <a href="http://wiki.hudson-ci.org/display/~bill-bartmann"

-Bill-Bartmann