Several users are sharing book recommendations on community building. dosch mentions ‘Community Building on the Web’ and ‘The Art of Community Building by Jono Bacon’. alefattorini highly recommends ‘Buzzing Communities’ by Richard Millington. erlend_sh suggests Clay Shirky’s ‘Here Comes Everybody’ and ‘Cognitive Surplus’. purldator recommends ‘Design To Thrive’, ‘Cultivating Communities of Practice’, and ‘Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life’.
Other recommendations include Howard Rheingold’s ‘The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier’ and his articles on hosting good conversations online and building fun online learning communities. PabloC shares another book on the topic with an updated guide.
Some users appreciate the book recommendations but also believe that real practice and online communities can be valuable resources. meglio suggests reading the Discourse use-case blog post series and online communities like FeverBee. Irwin_Binamungu recommends ‘Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards’ by Patrick O’Kee.
Users are also asking for feedback on the usefulness of these books in practice for community building.
I just started reading it and found it very useful on a meta level. Sadly the examples used are grosly outdated as the book is from 2000. (geocities is used as a prima example of how a thriving community works )
Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody” and “Cognitive Surplus” are both great reads (and are best read in that order). They’re primarily about self-forming communities, but that’s really a key ingredient to any community; some are just helped along more than others.
The following two personal suggestions (and favorites) are considered “dry” reading.
That, for someone like me, means “really insightful text requiring tenacity of the subject to digest in a gleeful hyperfocus”.
If you are into community management, these two books are engaging, no matter the diction.
Design To Thrive focuses on creating community culture. Cultivating Communities of Practice may entice intranet communities for corporations and those communities built around a subject with a lot of valuable user-driven information lasting beyond the community itself.
And, while this next suggestion and personal favorite is not a book on the subject of community management, it is highly relevant as a logical tangent.
How to manage yourself among a lot of users and staff.
It focuses on three general options when it comes to someone in your life you feel you can “do without” (air quotes). Choose one.
Attempt to change the someone.
Place the someone out of your life, or at least knock them down the lower digits (ie, away from single digits) on your life’s priority list.
This is a very general summary that only teases by a glimmer to the wealth of personal and highly self-empowering info contained in the book.
Also, how to possibly understand situations involving “problem” users. Replace “you”: People can’t drive your community crazy if your community doesn’t give them the keys.
أنا أؤمن حقًا أن الممارسة الفعلية ستعمل ككتاب جيد: فمن خلال الفعل قبل القراءة حتى، تكتسب معرفة دقيقة لا يمكن وصفها بالكلمات. أحيانًا تعرف ببساطة أنك يجب أن تفعل هذا أو ذاك وسيكون ذلك فعالًا.
ومع ذلك، فأنا من محبي الكتب بشكل كبير وأود أن أشكر الجميع الذين نشروا توصياتهم هنا.
هناك أيضًا مجتمعات عبر الإنترنت حيث يشارك الناس تجاربهم في بناء، حسنًا، مجتمعات عبر الإنترنت (مثل فيفربي). وكذلك فئة Community Building بأكملها هنا في ميتا. لست متأكدًا من السبب، لكن بديهيًا كنت أعتقد دائمًا أن قراءة تجارب وأخطاء أشخاص حقيقيين ستعلمك الكثير، وهي أكثر تنوعًا من قراءة كتب عن المجتمعات عبر الإنترنت. والآن، بما أن هذا الموضوع قديم نسبيًا، وهناك بعض الأشخاص الذين قرأوا كتابًا واحدًا أو أكثر، فإن الشيء الذي أود أن أسألكم عنه هو مشاركة ملاحظاتكم: هل أثبتت الكتب أنها مفيدة عمليًا في عملكم لبناء المجتمعات؟ أطلب شيئًا يُعرف بـ «التحليل اللاحق» بعد إعادة قراءة تلك الكتب.
Other than the technical bits, i think the book will help us newbies learn how to manage our platforms without feeling like our heads are about to burst.
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for Buzzing Communities. 
