Learning From The (Dungeon) Masters

Isaac Newton said he had "seen a little further" by standing on the shoulders of giants - the scientists who came before him.

Most of us using the Internet today are standing on the shoulders of giant geeks - the early adopters who were building communities ten years ago.

Although their audiences were different, as they were not running newspapers and dealt mostly with other early adopters, I think it makes sense to look at the lessons they learned rather than starting from scratch.

For example, these are some of the points Richard Bartle, co-author of the first MUD, makes in a chapter on promoting communities in his book Designing Virtual Worlds.

The more people communicate, the more they will develop relationships. The more relationships that develop, the stronger the community becomes.

Members of communities act and interact in community space. If they own some of that community space, it can help them feel like they're a permanent part of that community.

Some things are generally good for communities and some things are generally bad . . . the main [bad] ones to watch out for are xenophobia, prejudice and oppression.

Bartle is talking about MUDs but I think his points apply to any community space, such as newspaper presences on the internet if we want to create communities around them. This (and I know I am doing things backwards) is what inspired my earlier post about the importance of letting people create identities, to communicate with each other and to add content.

In general, I think we need to look beyond "what other newspapers/media organisations are doing" when considering what we ought to be doing.

                   

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