Develop social principles to guide collective problem solving

Our most recent set of distilled principles:

1. Starting communities:

• 1.1. Carve a niche of interest, define scope in terms of topics, members, activities, and purpose
• 1.2. Relate to competing sites, integrate content
• 1.3. Organize content, people, and activities into subspaces, create new ones once there is enough activity
• 1.4. Highlight more active tasks
• 1.5. Inactive tasks should have “expected active times”
• 1.6. Create mechanisms to match people to activities

2. Encouraging contributions through motivation

• 2.1. Make it easy to see and track needed contributions
• 2.2. Ask specific people on tasks of interest to them
• 2.3. Simple tasks with challenging goals are easier to comply with
• 2.4. Specify deadlines for tasks, while leaving people in control
• 2.5. Give frequent feedback specific to the goals (“immersive”)
• 2.6. Requests coming from leaders lead to more contributions
• 2.7. Stress benefits of contribution
• 2.8. Give (small, intangible) rewards tied to performance (not just signing up)
• 2.9. Publicize that others have complied with requests
• 2.10. People are more willing to contribute: 1) when group is small, 2) when committed to the group, 3) when their contributions are unique

3. Encouraging commitment

• 3.1. Cluster members to help them identify with the community
• 3.2. Give subgroups a name and a tagline
• 3.3. Put subgroups in the context of a larger group
• 3.4. Make community goals and purpose explicit
• 3.5. Interdependent tasks increase commitment and reduce conflict
• 3.6. Allow “conditional participation” commitments

4. Dealing with newcomers

• 4.1. Members recruiting colleagues is most effective
• 4.2. Appoint people responsible for immediate friendly interactions
• 4.3. Introducing newcomers to members increases interactions
• 4.4. Entry barriers for newcomers help screen for commitment
• 4.5. When small, acknowledge each new member
• 4.6. Advertise members particularly community leaders, include pictures
• 4.7. Provide concrete incentives to early members
• 4.8. Design common learning experiences for newcomers
• 4.9. Design clear sequence of stages to newcomers
• 4.10. Newcomers go through experiences to learn community rules
• 4.11. Provide sandboxes for newcomers while they are learning
• 4.12. Progressive access controls reduce harm while learning