| This is the unfortunate entropy of any online community. I've seen it in the community I managed as well. First you have the founder(s) of the community and the early adopters. These people all are like minded, and all appreciate the mission or goal of the community. They contribute great things which makes it an awesome place to hang out all the time. The next group of people who come in hear about how cool this small community is. They for the most part have the right idea but sometimes they are too enthusiastic and want to contribute right away instead of building cred slowly. This causes them to do things that doesn't quite fit with the original intent of the community. This annoys some early members and they leave. The next wave are people the enthusiastic 2nd wave people bring in through evangelizing the community. Unfortunately the 2nd wave choose to highlight not the mission of the community but the benefits of it. This 3rd wave group are often in it for self gain and promotion rather than to be contributing members of the community. The original mission of the founder(s) is lost in the shuffle as the number of people who "get it" are quickly being outnumbered by those who are new and "don't get it". More of the early community members, people who made the original community so great, leave leaving the 2nd generation as the elder members. The remaining original members get into confrontational debates about what the community is supposed to be with the newer members. After that, the community continues to degrade, eventually most of the original community resort to just lurking instead of engaging with the community which is now pretty much filled with self promotion and self serving. The community from the outside looking in appears to be the same on the surface but is a shell of its former greatness and actually quite sad for the original members and the founder(s). The sad thing is there are people who come in the new waves that do get it, and have appreciation for the original mission and purpose of the founder, but they are always outnumbered by the others. |