- Powazek Chapter 11: Killing Your Community ... Nothing Gold Can Stay

Discussion leader/summarizer: [CathyLu]

Key Points/Claims

In this chapter Powazek presents us with a somewhat sad but inevitable fact that online communities do end. There are measures to take to best handle such situations. Before deciding on ending a community, considering to “pass the torch to a new leader” is a good way to allow the community to gain new blood in its leadership and to reenergize the community. However when ending is about the best thing to do, there are good reasons:

• "The site is not meeting your personal needs."

• "The site is not meeting the community’s needs."

• "You’re just not interested anymore and no one else is, either."

• Money

• "No one says communities have to last forever", especially in the case that the need for its existence fades.

Then Powazek lists advice on the dos and don’ts in the ending process as well as whether to archive the contributions of community members on the site or email list. The Glassdog Club example illustrates how a site owner could end a community gracefully by weighing the opinions of its site members with compassion, integrity, honesty, and patience. In addition, some specific design considerations are discussed in terms of how to make the initial announcement, organizing ending conversations, and etc.

Critique

It seems that this chapter presents us a complete diagnosis and prescription on why communities “have to end” and what to do to best overcome such situations. His argument is persuasive but passive in a way because many of the fatal problems he describes can be avoided if more consideration is given at the beginning of building the community. For instance, the site owner can set up the barrier to entry so that s/he could control the community size in order to make discussion more focused and make oneself more available to members. On the other hand, Powazek doesn’t extract the most important reasons on why a community ends from individual cases.

Connections with other readings, ideas, etc.

In connection with the article The Natural Life Cycle of Mailing Lists, it seems that the author of had a different opinion on the effect of chaos due to diverse interests of members and the longevity of a mailing list. In his view, the final stage of a listserv is maturity. At this stage, “a few people quit in a huff; the rest of the participants stay near stage 4, with stage 5 popping up briefly every few weeks; many people wear out their second or third 'delete' key, but the list lives contentedly ever after.” Ending is not necessarily the destination and communities can last indefinitely. His opinion might be idealized but it would be interesting to see some examples of such long-lasting communities and if it is a healthy thing for members to maintain the community even though many people are not contended.

(NoorAliHasan: I used to be a member of a very active Sarah McLachlan email list - FTE∞. This list is no longer run by the original creator, has had several different admins over the years, and has been moved around to a few different servers. I was only a member for about three years but the list has been around since 1994. The interesting thing about this list is that very little Sarah McLachlan discussion actually happens - especially when she's not touring or isn't working on new material. In fact, the list was still very active during a 6 year period when McLachlan took a break between albums. During the few years I was on the list, I saw A LOT of flame wars, some of which ended with someone or a few people leaving the list in outrage! The funny thing is that a lot of these people (especially if they had been on the list for a while) would usually come back after a few months. I don't see this list going away anytime soon. Being that there have been several list marriages, I think there will always be somebody with a vested interest to keep it going for a while.)

Another reading, Butler2001 suggests a more in-depth explanation on the sustainability issue revolving online communities. He argues that balancing resource (community size and community activity) is the fundamental problem for sustaining online social structures. I personally feet that this resource model touched a deeper factor when considering the deterioration or death of online communities. All the examples given by Powazek on online community surviving and ending stories (in both Chapter 8 and Chapter 11) essentially reflect this core issue of size, activity, and resource availability. Despite offering descriptive examples, Powazek does not lead the discussion to a deeper level on the reasons why communities do not sustain. Instead, he focuses his explanation based on individual interest change, financial situation, and other superficial factors.

Comments

The question of ending a community seems closely related to the subgroup development Kim describes. In both cases, some (or all) of the members feel that the community is not providing what they want. In the endgame, this dissatisfaction leads to closing the site—perhaps with some members reforming at a new location. In subgroup formation, though, members may end their involvement with the larger site, but still use it as point of entry for their subgroup. This obviously won't work if there isn't enough interest to continue site maintenance, but in some instances, spinning off subgroups may extend a community's life.
Then again, I'm sure there are plenty of communities on the Web that wouldn't even be missed by their members, so knowing how to end one gracefully is certainly valuable.

LindaYu: Communities that have archives or require other forms of maintenance rarely die in my experience. Other members of the community are generally willing to pick up the responsibilities and carry on, or there are subgroups that can perform approximately the same functon. Small Yahoo mailing lists, possibly because maintainers were not particularly diigent, have a tendency to fade away, or be completely drowned in spam. That can be a problem in larger groups as well, but it seems to happen more often in small groups.