Community Answers

Issue 3

Welcome to the third issue of conduit. We truly appreciate your support and look forward to your responses to some of the questions raised in this issue.

Quote for this Issue: Life is too important to be taken seriously. - Oscar Wilde

In this issue of conduit:

1) Featured Question and Answer: "What Makes A Successful Community?"

2) Your Community Answer: "When you launch community, do you set goals to assist in gauging its success?"

3) Community Wire: Instant Messaging Within the Corporate Community.

4) Community Voice: The Top 10 Most Amusing Community Guidelines.

Featured Question and Answer

We received a great question from one of our visitors that was a perfect follow up to last issue's question on gauging community success. This question and answer addresses the issue of what makes a successful community. The question is as follows;

"Where can I get some information on the critical success factors of building a community. The community I am building is a information portal combining several top brands in the Netherlands."

To view CommunityAnswers.com's suggestions, please visit "What Makes A Successful Community?"

~Are you searching for information on a particular topic? Check out our searchable archive of past question and answers.

Your Community Answer

This issue's poll; "When you launch community, do you set goals to assist in gauging its success?" is crying out for your input! We would love to gain some insight on how many of you set goals for your online communities, so please don't be shy in sharing your opinion! Make your vote count!

Community Wire

Instant Messaging Within the Corporate Community

Most recently one of the e-zines ran a story about instant messaging (IM) within the corporate structure and how more companies are using IMs to communicate. Hey, this must be a good thing, right? One would certainly think that better communication between colleagues would be just that...a good thing.

However, according to the authors of the article instant messaging within a corporation could not be considered unreservedly a good thing. It found that employers were spying on employees' conversations and even competitors were finding out ways to tap into IMs for trade secrets, discussions of financing, and other sensitive information.

This obviously raises some questions, which we would like to pose to you...

Since IMing is a very convenient and efficient way to communicate with friends, colleagues and family, have you ever considered that it might be risky for you or your company's privacy?

How would you feel if someone was invading your privacy by reading your IMs?

Do you feel that an employer has the right to read their employees' private discussions? If so, why?

Please share your thoughts with us, as we are interested in knowing what you think!

Community Voice

Top 10 Most Amusing Community Guidelines

10.) Hyperlinks (URLS) to sites that violate our site guidelines or any Hyperlinks (URLS) to sites which we think are better than ours are forbidden.

9.) Off topic postings are welcome. Please post them in our "off topic" folder on the boards. If they don't fit in there, post them on someone else's boards.

8.) Advertising or any form of commercial solicitation is not allowed, unless of course you give us a split of the proceeds. Plain brown envelopes should be sent to....

7.) If you type in ALL CAPS we'll accordingly send you our newsletter and all other correspondence in size 48 font.

6.) Users found harassing other members will either be asked to leave the community, or asked to join our "Special Forces Team" of moderators.

5.) By all means, flood the chat room. We need the insurance money.

4.) User's with screen name like (*|/|+HaVoc+|\|*) will be removed from the system purely because they're so damn tricky to type for the rest of us.

3.) Attempts at any commercial solicitation or other forms of illegal marketing will be referred to the relevant authorities or failing that we'll e-mail your mother.

2.) Participating in community while naked will result in loss of posting rights.

1.) Impersonating another member of the community is not allowed unless you do a better job of being them than they do.

Do you have something that you would like to share? Maybe you have an article you have written or a funny "Top Ten" of your own! Please feel free to submit it here.

CommunityAnswers.com is happy to assist in answering your community related questions, so please do feel free to ask!