Books on community building

コミュニティ
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In the post explaining “What do user trust levels do?” @codinghorror references the book ‘Communtiy building on the web’.

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 Sadly the examples used are grosly outdated as the book is from 2000.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 :smiley: )

One nice other book I found myself is

The Art of Community Building by Jono Bacon

So I was wondering which books people like and found useful to learn the art of online community building.

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Create a "community management" category
2020: The Year in Review
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Richard Millington’s “Buzzing Communities” is hugely recommended :slightly_smiling:

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How to quantify the success of your community?
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Highly recommended. Includes plenty of references to go deeper on the topic.

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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.

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@alefattorini mentioned one of my favorite books on the subject; consider this an extra :+1: for Buzzing Communities. @HAWK helps helm the companion community, Feverbee.

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.

  1. Attempt to change the someone.
  2. :dealwithit:
  3. 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.

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Thanks for the book recommendations.

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There’s a single author I always come back to: Howard Rheingold.

His book The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier was published in 1993. Don’t let that stop you from reading it!

He wrote extensively about technology and online communities. I’ll recommend two articles:

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Another interesting book on the topic. It has an updated guide to the approach.

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Not really a book, but the presentation of Joel was pretty nice:

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This presentation references Clay Shirky’s A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy.
@codinghorror used this title to blog about Kuro5hin and the importance of moderation 11 years ago.

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先ほど、Amazonの「オンラインコミュニティ」検索結果を見てみましたが、Metaのこのスレッドを発見し、人々がコミュニティ構築に関する本を読んでいることに気づきました：「顔が逆さま」の絵文字

私は、実践こそが最良の教科書だと信じています。読む前にまず行動することで、言葉では説明できない微妙な知識が身につくのです。時には、直感的に「これとこれをするべきだ」と分かり、それがうまくいくこともあります。

とはいえ、私は本の大ファンですので、ここで推薦してくれた皆様に感謝申し上げます。

また、Discourseのユースケースに関するブログ記事シリーズや、FacebookグループからDiscourseへの移行に関する記事もおすすめです。これらは主にマーケティング資料ですが、記事からは多くの興味深い点やアイデアを得ることができます。

さらに、オンラインコミュニティの構築経験について共有するオンラインコミュニティ（例：FeverBee）も存在します。また、Metaの#community-buildingカテゴリ全体も同様です。なぜか分かりませんが、私は直感的に、実際の人の経験や失敗について読むことは、オンラインコミュニティに関する本を読むよりも多くのことを教え、多様性があると考えていました。さて、このスレッドはだいぶ昔のものですが、一冊以上読んだ方もいらっしゃるでしょう。一つ伺いたいことがあります。コミュニティ構築の実務において、これらの本は役に立ちましたか？いわゆる「事後検証」として、それらの本を読み直した際の感想をお聞かせください。

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Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards by [Patrick O’Kee].

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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