Kim, Amy Jo. Community Building on the Web, Chapter Nine: Subgroups
AnonymousCoward, discussion lead. (PaulResnick: thanks for stepping up to take this unclaimed one...)

Key Points/ Claims

Kim asserts that a healthy large-scale community will be composed of many smaller subgroups, where members can gather with only a few good friends. This is a rather long chapter, so what I present here is just an outline to generate discussion.

Why Subgroups? Kim begins by discussing why subgroups form in online (and other) communities and why this is important to community organizers
Maintaining intimacy, Managing Growth
Welcome to the Neighborhood
Join the Club: people form their strongest, most enduring relationships in small, focused groups
Your Subgroup Program
Timing is Everything
A Mixed Blessing

Setting the Stage: Kim then proceeds to describe the way in which subgroups tend to organically arise from within the community, some of the purposes they can serve, and some of their needs
Meeting Virtual Neighbors
The Local Hangout
Scheduled Events
Provide Leadership Opportunities
Hosting a Gathering Place
Organizing a Committee
Running a Business
Cultivate Emerging Subgroups
Every Group Needs a Clubhouse
Member Freedom vs. Quality Control
Optional Becomes Official

Developing Your Official Program: Kim then spends the bulk of the chapter in describing how a community should go about encouraging and supporting the formation and development of subgroups
Leverage Your Existing Program
You Are What You Do
Are You One of Us?
Foster Group-Wide Communications
Provide Tools for Group Leaders
Create Group Management Policies
Manicured Garden or Wild Swamp?
Your Group Directory
Highlighting Groups
Searching the Group Directory
Keep Your Listings Current
Use Events to Highlight Groups
A Group can Focus a Community
Send Staff Members to Special Events
Create a Fertile Environment
Groups with a Purpose
Listen to Your Groups: you can't actually create close-knit groups, but you can provide an environment where purposeful groups can coalesce and flourish
Learn from Your Groups

Finally, Kim concludes with a brainstorming exercise to help developers build a group-friendly organization. It asks us to consider purpose, places, identity, roles, leadership, etiquette, events, rituals, and mechanisms for creating subgroups as each relates to the member experience.

Critique

One important point that shouldn't be lost from Kim's discussion is that, "Often [subgroup] members form such strong internal bonds and tight friendships that, regardless of how carefully you manage your program, they'll become more loyal to the group and the group leader than to your community" (317). The implication is that we should keep some degree of control over subgroups. However, one of the great things about the internet is its low barrier to entry. If I find a group of friends, say, through the CIC website, we can stay at the CIC site for our work or go form another site that more closely aligns with our vision of community informatics. Having two competing sites on the subject isn't a bad thing; having competing factions within the SI-CIC site, however, could be very damaging to the group. Sometimes it's just better to say goodbye to a potentially disruptive group.
However, the general advice on enabling and supporting groups within a community is helpful even if it, like much of what this field presents, could be readily surmised from applying known principles to the new environment. Her frequent reference to online examples (and illustrations!) helps bring this into clear focus, as we can see how other sites have responded to this issue.

PaulResnick: I note that the design suggestions for handling subgroups are essentially the same as for communities as a whole. But there are probably some important differences between how to make things work well on a large scale (big communities) and how to make them work on a small scale (little groups). For example, later in the semester we'll talk about attachments based on bonds and those based on identification with the group/community. I suspect that bond-based attachment will be much more effective in subgroups, identification in larger groups.

Connections with Other Readings

PaulResnick: The Putnam and Feldstein chapter in the additional readings for this week talks about how "cellular churches" are making use of the attachments that form in small groups, combining it with the identification people are able to feel with a large community (a megachurch).

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