Thread: I’m irritated and annoyed! But also grateful.

Originally Posted by Bmad

BeBerlin I hate to say this to a senior member of this board.. but tough.

That is certainly one way of looking at what I said. Here is another:

1. Asking questions is good. It is what keeps a board alive.
2. Asking challenging questions is even better, because people love a challenge (we would not be here otherwise, would we, what with the ready availability of Mach 42s).
3. Asking a question that has been asked before can be a good thing, namely when it helps the more experienced members change their answer so that it becomes better to understand, or when it encourages the people in charge of the knowledge base to dis-ambiguise an article.
4. Barging into a social community of any type with unmanaged expectations, mutating into experts literally over night, then telling the senior members of said community that they have been doing things the wrong way all along, then pouting when being told off - now, that may not be the smartest thing to do.

I am not saying 4. is happening already. It would simply surprise me if it did not. In the meantime, here are some articles I found interesting with respect to some of the social dynamics of online communities:

• The Art of Community
• A Life Cycle Model of Virtual Communities
• Users' Influence on the Success of Online Communities
• Shedding Light on Lurkers in Online Communities
  
• An Empirical Study of Critical Mass and Online Community Survival
  

Regards,
Robin