12 Variables for understanding Online Communities; a review for MUGH
I found this article very intuitive and wanted to do a review on our MUGH (Microsoft User Group, Hyderabad) practices as well. I'll try to support our practices for MUGH in these 12 variables perspective.
1. Personal Need for Community.
I personally believe that there must be a personal need to join a community. Joining a community with a personal need kills the interest and the communities mission. MUGH was evolved from a group of people who are interested in thier personal needs of gaining and sharing of .NET knowledge. But what we have observed is, there are few members who are driven towards a wrong community by some reasons. There the community got the weak bricks. So we decided to cut off that community from the .NET Group and created a new special interest group called SQLCON.
2. Availability of Information.
Information plays a vital role in an online community. When it comes to a technology community, this goes beyond everyone's expectations. In MUGH we (core team) trying at our best to make the community more active towards information exchange by conducting seminars, Bird of feather discussions, weblogs, community blogging etc...
3. Community as Social Destination.
An online community more dependent on the management ,the members and thier technical capabilities. Community as a social destination may be a key factor in MUGH case.
4. Rigor of Discussion.
The validity of messages is totally depends on the problems put forth by users and the members expertise. MUGH has around 6 Microsoft MVPs and 6+ Microsoft India Community Stars around them to help in such situation. By this practice, MUGH will ensure the rigor of discussion always on high level.
5. Tolerance for Argument.
MUGH Follows a mid-level tolerance as a part of it's disciplinary norms. This will be monitored by the core team to adjust the community's tolearance of argument accordingly.
6. Acceptance.
A high acceptancy level makes the community little bit indiscipline. There must be a clear voice telling that “Guys you must be like this to contribute here“ for any of the technology communities. MUGH follows a low acceptancy model to prevent unwanted and non-related members to spoil the mission of the group.
7. Duration.
A very valid factor for an online tech-community to measure the potential of it. MUGH has been started 1.5 years ago and still growing stronger day by day.
8. Facilitation.
We are a midway community in this particular continum. We have a core team (MVPS + Community Stars) to monitor and help the members to help and mentor, but with a low degree of facilitation.
9. Entry Barriers.
I agree, most of the entry barriers are from the culture and language driven factors. An entry barrier is required when you are supposed to constrain particular level of members from your community. MUGH is a volunteer community where anybody can enter easily, with a single point of barrier. i.e. Having Microsoft Product Knowledge.
10. Anonymity.
Being a local community MUGH adopts low-anonymity model. MUGH tries to build close relationships with members to get them on to the stage. Indeed, sometimes the anonymity will get disadvantages of missing goodies from the community :)
11. Locality.
The more you localize your community, the more the community get the advantage. Microsoft User Group, Hyderabad is 100% a localized and targeted for hyderabad's microsoft product users.
12. Focus.
Having high focus with in community makes it stronger in the implementation of the mission statement. If the community needs and getting fork on focus points, that community must be divided in to multiple communities. We got a fork in focus point in MUGH for .NET and SQL, so we have divided these communities apart, to get maximum advantages from both of the communities independenly.