Ajax for Chat

Learn to build a chat system into your Web application with Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) and PHP. Your customers can talk to you and to each other about the content of the site without having to download or install any special instant-messaging software.

Herrington, Jack D. IBM (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Ajax

Anonymity and Online Community: Identity Matters

While anonymity may allow people to feel more free and disinhibited to discuss otherwise embarrassing or stigmatizing topics, it can also be a community's biggest enemy.

Grohol, John M. List Apart, A (2006). Articles>Web Design>Community Building

Arrows in Our Quiver

On mailing lists, at conferences, in conversations at cocktail hours, I'm starting to see a growing awareness of how our various disciplines form a community of practice.

Olsen, George. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Web Design>Community Building

Community: From Little Things, Big Things Grow

Any community—online or off—must start slowly, and be nurtured. You cannot “just add community.” It must be cared for, and hosted; it takes time and people with great communication skills to set the tone and tend the conversation.

Oates, George. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Community Building

Design for Community: An Interview with Derek M. Powazek

Derek M. Powazek has worked on community features for Netscape, Nike, and Sony, along with creating the community sites, {fray}, Kvetch!, and SF Stories. Christine Perfetti, a consultant at User Interface Engineering, recently talked with Derek about his experience. Here is what he had to say about creating effective online communities.

Perfetti, Christine. User Interface Engineering (2002). Articles>Web Design>Community Building

Designing a Different Kind of Intranet: An Intranet for a UX Team

Most of us who are working as part of a design team in a services company, a product company, or even a design boutique have to live with a generic intranet. In this article, I’ll describe how to leverage your company’s intranet and how to build a community around an intranet for a UX team.

Mallik, Anirban Basu. UXmatters (2008). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Intranets

Handling Negative Feedback on Blogs

Despite blogs’ potential for creating valuable online communities, many communicators are still uneasy with the blog format. Communicators worry about the possibility of readers posting negative comments and feedback on the company blog. Angry customers leaving stories of poor experiences for all to see or employees submitting bitter public complaints are nightmare scenarios for most communicators. So how should we respond to negative feedback on corporate blogs? The process begins with shifting our perspective to see the risks as opportunities.

Drennan, Scott. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Blogging

If You Build It, They'll Come

If you create a community around your Web site, look beyond providing the outer semblances of community: design a site that can potentially work the way each of these very different members of the community wants it to work.

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Geoff-Hart.com (2000). Articles>Web Design>Community Building

Moving a Community to the Web: Creating Hyperviews: Online  

This panel discusses the issues involved in creating Hyperviews: Online, the web-based newsletter for the STC Online Information Special Interest Group (SIG). The panel explores why Hyperviews, the hardcopy newsletter for the Online Information SIG, was moved to the web and the design decisions the editorial staff made to accomplish the move. The panel also discusses what tools and methods they used, what worked and what didn’t, as well as future directions for Hyperviews. The panel includes the Online Information SIG manager, newsletter editor, and newsletter assistant editor. The panel will also encourage feedback and brainstorming from the Online Information SIG community it serves.

Bledsoe, Bill, Karen Mobley and Scott DeLoach. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Web Design>Community Building

Moving Toward Knowledge-Building Communities in Health Information Website Design

In this paper, we describe our work with the Arthritis Source website and our efforts to develop a community of learners in that context. We argue that given proper architectural support, efforts to listen to learners can effectively foster collaboration between the authors of an informational web site and its users and help community building among its users through a dynamic knowledge base.

Turns, Jennifer, Kristina Liu and Tracey S. Wagner. Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (2002). Articles>Web Design>Community Building

Moving Toward Knowledge-Building Communities in Informational Web Site Design    

In this article, we describe how a knowledge-building community perspective can lead to a framework for designing an informational Web site. We illustrate the framework through our work on the Arthritis source, an informational Web site helping users acquire information about arthritis. The resulting framework provides one means of addressing challenges that arise in the design and development of such informational Web sites.

Turns, Jennifer, Tracey Wagner and Kristen Shuyler. Technical Communication Online (2005). Articles>Web Design>Community Building

Putting Our Hot Heads Together

The web is a conversation, but not always a productive one. Web discussions too often degenerate into whines, jabs, sour grapes, and one-upmanship. How can we transform discussion forums and comment sections from shooting ranges into arenas of collaboration?

Wood, Carolyn. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Community Building

Social Media Is Changing Everything

When Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwarz needs to communicate with the world, he doesn’t necessarily call a press conference, issue a press release, or even convene a webinar or videoconference. He blogs. His online diary gives him an unfiltered channel leading to the employees, customers, analysts and resellers who represent the first wave of perception formation regarding important company products and service initiatives. Sun is leading a transformation of the communication profession, as the Web transitions from an information repository to a platform of collaboration and community building.

Gronstedt, Anders. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Social Networking for Business: Measuring the Results

The online world is abuzz with talk about social networking. With companies such as Facebook seemingly constantly in the news, 2007 has been the year that social networking took its first adolescent steps beyond being the sole purview of, well, adolescents, and started to become a tool that is getting noticed in the business world. But with all the hype out there about online social networking, how can organizations begin to better understand the tangible business impact of their forays into this area?

Carfi, Christopher. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Social Networks And Group Formation: Theoretical Concepts to Leverage

Understanding the formation, evolution and utilization of online social networks becomes important. While the Internet contributes to the information overload, it also provides useful tools to effectively manage ones social networks and through them gain access to the right pieces of information.

Singh, Shiv. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Social Web Application Design

Luke has made some great slides about Social Web Application Design, saying some very sensible things very well. I particularly like the 'System' diagram that shows how, when thinking about a simple photo, how it can be connected to other entities and related, aggregated and re-presented.

Smith, Tom. Other Blog, The (2006). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>User Centered Design

Types of Social Media Measurement

Social media measurement sounds like an inherently good idea. Management likes numbers, and if we can measure it, we can manage it. So, all this new online activity should be easier to understand, once we measure it. There's only one problem: What does social media measurement mean? Like social media itself, it is an evolving term with multiple definitions based on the needs of different constituencies.

Gilliatt, Nathan. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Understanding "Micro Media": Subscribing to RSS Feeds

For the last 19 years, Keith Moore has hosted a conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, called "How Colleges and Universities Can Obtain National (and Regional) Publicity." In a sign of the times, this year's conference included a session in which we focused not on getting into the major mass media, but on the capabilities of the machines that sit on our desktops. In short, we looked at the evolving world of so-called "micro media," tools that are enabling us to create new online communities in ways never before possible.

Forbush, Dan. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>RSS

Using the Internet as a Tool for Public Service: Creating a Community History Web Site    

Creating a community history Web site is a way for technical communication practitioners, students, and teachers to improve their expertise while performing a valuable public service. Developers of this kind of Web site combine personal interest in the history and culture of their chosen communities with professional interest in a wide range of skills: for example, online research, Web site design, creation of artwork, photography, graphics editing, collaboration, professional/technical writing, as well as site publication and promotion. Technical communicators working on community history Web sites enjoy creative freedom that makes these projects especially engaging and fun. While learning about subjects of particular interest and improving professional skills, developers gain the satisfaction of trying to help communities increase civic pride and heritage tourism. Also, the technical communication profession benefits when its members demonstrate good citizenship to employers, other constituencies, and the public.

Henson, Darold Leigh. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2005). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>History

Using Web 2.0 Architecture for a More Flexible Enterprise

Web 2.0 repositories can help you create a flexible software architecture, which can easily be plugged into Web 2.0 communities and extranets. Creating a fluid system that also works in accordance with requirements for modifiability, performance, security, scalability, and reusability can be challenging. In this article, learn techniques to help ensure your Enterprise Web 2.0 architecture meets your quality requirements.

Morris, Stephen B. IBM (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building

Web 2.0: The Medium is the Message, But What's the Result?

Let's face it: These are tough times to be a professional communicator. Our audiences have taken the reins of what is indisputably the dominating mass communication medium of our era: the Internet. Web 2.0, characterized by social media applications for peer-to-peer collaboration such as YouTube, MySpace and Wikipedia is challenging all of our basic assumptions as communication practitioners. The astonishing rise of social networking structures and content is in effect challenging the very existence of the traditional corporate communication function.

Kealey, Caroline. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Web Two-Point Uh-Oh  

The problem with many Web 2.0 applications is the assumption that the community's motives are good, or at least neutral. Perlin's column explores how one of the drawbacks of Web 2.0--potential loss of control over information--has manifested itself.

Perlin, Neil E. Intercom (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Content Management

Rethinking the Fragmentation of the Cyberpublic: From Consensus to Contestation    

Recently there has been some debate between deliberative democrats about whether the internet is leading to the fragmentation of communication into `like-minded' groups.This article is concerned with what is held in common by both sides of the debate: a public sphere model that aims for all-inclusive, consensus seeking rational deliberation that eliminates inter-group 'polarizing' politics. It argues that this understanding of deliberative democracy fails to adequately consider the asymmetries of power through which deliberation and consensus are achieved, the inter-subjective basis of meaning, the centrality of respect for difference in democracy, and the democratic role of `like-minded' deliberative groups. The deliberative public sphere must be rethought to account more fully for these four aspects. The article draws on post-Marxist discourse theory and reconceptualizes the public sphere as a space constituted through discursive contestation.Taking this radicalized norm, it considers what research is needed to understand the democratic implications of the formation of 'like-minded' groups online.

Dahlberg, Lincoln. New Media and Society (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Theory

An Exploration of Concepts of Community Through a Case Study of UK University Web Production    

The paper explores the interrelation and differences between the concepts of occupational community, community of practice, online community and social network. It uses as a case study illustration the domain of UK university web site production and specifically a listserv for those involved in it. Different latent occupational communities are explored, and the potential for the listserv to help realize these as an active sense of community is considered. The listserv is not (for most participants) a tight knit community of practice, indeed it fails many criteria for an online community. It is perhaps best conceived as a loose knit network of practice, valued for information, implicit support and for the maintenance of weak ties. Through the analysis the case for using strict definitions of the theoretical concepts is made.

Cox, Andrew M. Journal of Information Science (2008). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Academic

The Dilemma of Comments

Abuse has made me seriously consider – several times – disabling comments. I’m ambivalent about it. On the one hand it would make writing and publishing much easier. Write something, proofread it, publish.

Johansson, Roger. 456 Berea Street (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Interaction Design