Features
Part of Internet communities: a clear guide with practical examples
What to know about internet communities platforms, and why it matters
Internet communities take a small number of shapes, and this compares them by threading, persistence, discoverability, moderation tools and ownership.
Ask what platform a community is on and you will get a brand name, which tells you almost nothing. Ask what shape its container has and you learn how the community talks, what it keeps, who can find it and who can end it. The shapes are few, they have been stable for decades under changing brands, and each one pushes the community inside it in a particular direction whether the members notice or not.
This page describes the shapes rather than the brands, and what each one decides on the community's behalf.
What to take away
- The container decides threading, persistence, discoverability, moderation tools and ownership. These five properties matter more than anything a brand adds.
- Every shape trades one property for another. There is no container that keeps a record, supports live presence, is findable by outsiders and is owned by its members.
- A community that moves containers changes character, and the change is predictable from the two shapes involved.
The five properties
Threading. Whether a reply is attached to what it replies to, so that a conversation can be followed years later, or whether messages arrive in a single stream where the connection between them is in the reader's memory.
Persistence. Whether what was said remains, findable, after the day it was said. This decides whether the community accumulates a record, and the record is most of what the internet culture archives page describes as surviving from any community at all.
Discoverability. Whether an outsider can find the community, and whether they can read it before joining. High discoverability brings growth and the wave that the internet communities page describes; low discoverability keeps the norms intact and the population small.
Moderation tools. What the people enforcing the norms can actually do: remove, mute, restrict, slow, require approval, or nothing. A community's enforcement is bounded by its container's tools.
Ownership. Who can end it. A container run by the members ends when the members choose. A container rented from a host ends when the host chooses, and the host's interests are its own.
The shapes
| Shape | Threading | Persistence | Discoverability | Moderation tools | Ownership |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Threaded forum | Strong | Strong; everything is findable | High if public | Usually full | Often the members', if self-hosted |
| Live chat | None or weak | Weak; scrollback is not an archive | Low; you must be present | Varies; often role-based | Usually the host's |
| Mailing list | Moderate, by subject and quoting | Strong; every member holds a copy | Low unless archived publicly | Limited; approve, remove | The members', in practice |
| Group inside a feed service | Weak | Weak; the feed buries it | High; the host recommends it | Whatever the host provides | The host's, entirely |
| Wiki | None; it is not a conversation | Strong, with history | High | Edit control, protection | Often the members' |
| Comment section | Weak | Moderate; tied to the article | High but incidental | Limited | The publisher's |
| Invite-only server | Weak to moderate, by channel | Weak to moderate | Very low | Usually full | The host's, with a member-run appearance |
No row is strong in every column, and that is the point. A community chooses, usually without knowing it is choosing, which properties it will have by which shape it moves into.
What each shape does to the people in it
A threaded forum rewards careful writing and patience, produces a record, and gets slower and more formal as it ages. Its members become writers.
Online chat rewards presence and wit, produces nothing that can be found later, and creates the strongest bonds and the weakest institutions. Its members become friends, and its history is lost. The early social networks page describes the resulting hole in the record.
A mailing list rewards contribution over presence, keeps a complete record in every member's hands, and is nearly impossible for a host to kill, since the record is already distributed. Its members become archivists whether they meant to or not.
A group inside a feed service borrows reach from the host and pays for it with control. The host decides what members see, in what order, and whether the group exists next year. Its members become an audience, which is a different thing from a community and is easily mistaken for one.
A wiki is not a conversation but a shared document, and the community around it is organized by the document's needs: disputes are about what the page should say, and the history of the page is the history of the argument. Its members become editors, with all that implies about who has the last word.
An invite-only server recovers the small, unfindable, norms-by-example condition of the early web at the cost of any record and any way in. Its members become a circle, and the circle ends when the host does.
Moving between shapes
Communities move, and the move is where the shape's influence becomes visible. A forum community that moves to chat gains liveliness and loses its record within weeks; the long threads that defined it stop being written because there is nowhere to write them. A chat community that moves to a forum finds the forum cold and empty, because presence, which was the whole experience, is gone. A list that moves into a feed group discovers that its most careful contributors stop posting, because the feed buries anything long.
The standing that members had in the old shape does not transfer either. A forum's most respected writer is nobody in a chat room, and the person who was always present in chat has no record on a forum to point to. The reasons are those set out under online status and identity: status is issued by the container and is denominated in whatever that container counts.
Choosing, when you get to
- Decide which of the five properties the community cannot do without, and which it can. Most communities need at most three.
- Weigh ownership heavily. Every other property can be changed by moving; ownership determines whether you will be allowed to.
- If a record matters, choose a shape whose record members can copy. A record held only by the host is a record held until the host loses interest.
- If norms matter more than growth, choose low discoverability and accept that the community will stay small. If growth matters, choose high discoverability and prepare for the wave.
- Expect the shape to change the community. It will, and knowing which way in advance is the only preparation available.
Common questions
Is there a best shape?
There is a best shape for a given community's priorities, and no shape that is best for all of them. The table is the answer; the brand is not.
Why do communities keep moving to shapes that are worse for them?
Because the move is usually made for reach or convenience, both of which are in the discoverability column, and the costs are in the persistence and ownership columns, which are not felt until later.
Does the brand matter at all?
It matters for who owns the container and what tools they provide, which are two of the five properties. For the other three, the shape decides, and brands come and go under the same shapes.
