Running Weblogs with Slash

Chapter 8. Managing a Slash Community

The physical and mechanical acts of running a Slash site are easy--the software handles most of the dirty work. Out go the Stories; in come the comments. Barring hardware failure and software glitches, everything will run smoothly until you add users. Perversely enough, the wide ranges of opinion and background that make community sites so attractive also make a diverse userbase occasionally frustrating. People are unpredictable. Without users, though, you might as well trade the server for a soapbox on the corner. Bandwidth is cheaper that way.

If there’s a trick to building a successful site, it’s simply to encourage users to participate in constructive ways. This philosophy underlies every editorial or administrative decision, from the Topics to cover to the Stories to run. It governs how Authors do their jobs and suggests how to treat users. Your site may never grow as large as Slashdot, but if you can encourage good discussion and handle the inevitable growing pains well, you will be successful.

How to Stifle a Community

The easiest way to build a community is to build a site that welcomes new users and rewards user participation. The site provides a service, whether information, entertainment, opinions, or some combination of the three. Visitors who find no special value will not return. Users who find the price—not necessarily financial—too high will leave.

Frequent users will also develop a sense of ownership in the site. They ...