Why our communities are successful.
Because of our deep history and involvement with elearning
programs, we come to the world of online communities with a view that:
1. No weblog is an island.
2. Blog networks are the ideal technology for online communities because they enable collective intelligence to emerge.
3. Collective intelligence requires independent thinking, diversity, and decentralized aggregation.
4. Decentralized aggregation can be achieved by:
a. Collecting the diverse knowledge of individual bloggers.
b. Aggregating and filtering through reading and linking:
i. Readers see an aggregated view of all new information in the network.
ii. They independently determine what to read and cite.
iii. The weblog records
these links and citations (through trackback) so that collective
knowledge emerges.
5. The best blogs and blog networks maintain a good balance between
being self-serving (reputation building) and altruistic (sharing). It
is this balance that keeps them lively and interesting.
