art, education and new media

How do you keep something like the Knowledge Loom current, active, alive so it does not read like a dead space?

Maybe it's a cyclic thing. Communities ebb and flow, come together at times, go into hibernation at other times. However, in the case of a resource-oriented professional community, perhaps, if there is no activity it is because the virtual environment is not a good fit? Or the participants do not perceive the value.

But, if the community was to be shut down -- if, for example, someone "pulled the plug" on the Knowledge Loom -- would the lurkers revolt? Would the site monitors find that there is unseen activity or use of the existing content? Possibly.

Having spent a bit more time at Knowledge Loom, I see two significant problems (from a web-designer's POV) with the web-site as it stands now.

1) The interface is too slow. Even with my DSL connection and fast machine it takes forever to load the discussion boards (which fragments a user's thought patterns and renders the format inefficient IMHO). This could be allieviated by upgrading to a newer discussion board engine and/or running it on a faster server.
-- Additionally, the design is too small for most modern machines, although this was probably intentional (to make it work with older lower-resolution monitors). Unfortunately, the design is fixed into this small grid.

2) The site relies on the experts to foster discussion. While good in theory, it doesn't seem like any of them are continuing to participate, so the community has stagnated.

Leaving a virtual community in place longer than it is being used can be problematic when it becomes apparent that no one is maintaining it or people are not visiting it, which keeps it alive and growing. Visitors expect to find "action" on a site or they do not want to become a participant. A healthy virtual community needs regular maintance of content to keep it alive and inviting for participation.

Let's use this site as example. This is just the 4th message in ae-content, but already there are interesting ideas that have already been left out of this thread. It takes a unrealistic amount of interest from participating community members, or careful culling from the sites cartaker, to make sure that all the valued issues stay in play. In this way, the organizational structure of a community site is best managed when individual threads never get too distant from the top and current conversation.

www.dowhile.org/virtual is a portal that archives old events that the studio has sponsored. It is also a place to come find the plugins, applications, and technical info needed to coordinate an event (i.e. Transnational events need a system to keep track of times around the world. This site povides the real-time clocks set for all the time zones). When there is no "realtime" event, the Website closes the portal to become an archive of past events.

Another direction to keep a site active is to have a search tool to bring up any past topic and make it current. KnoweldgeLoom has the right idea, but does not follow through ñ Perhaps the solution is to develop an interface that allows one to keep track of "my favorite threads". The ability to create a personalized topics list from an internal search engine?

When commentary becomes too long, or too distanced from the original posting, it could be time for a new thread. Or any part of the conversation could be pulled out as a new topic while this one continues. MT makes this simple for monitors and/or community members to manage, as do many BBforums. AE-Content could feature this style of dynamic dialog as well as shorter topic-based forums.

What's great about building a site's content with a database is that it never becomes static.

jen posts:--- Another direction to keep a site active is to have a search tool to bring up any past topic and make it current. KnoweldgeLoom has the right idea, but does not follow through ñ Perhaps the solution is to develop an interface that allows one to keep track of "my favorite threads". The ability to create a personalized topics list from an internal search engine? ---

I have added the ability to search these archives by category, and a word search engine is already built into the engine, searching by active posting (most recent comments) is also possible, I'm sure. As we add more content, we'll be able to access it in many ways while we develop the site.

Customized entry points for registered users would be nice, too. MT is built on perl and can be modified. Plugins are also being developed by the MT users communities.