My observation is that a community needs continual input in order to survive. Just like a physical-world community needs energy and resources, a virtual community needs content - information, news, opinions. Some few communities manage to get this input from their members (communities like Slashdot and Digg) but most require someone to be generating these resources on a regular basis. The EdNA Network Forum has been on life support since the moderators stopped moderating. And how many Ning communities have the dead shark problem? The problem is - it is very difficult to generate this input without ownership - which is why, for a community to succeed, it must be owned by its members. Genuinely owned, which (among other things) means it won't be arbitrarily shut down if it no longer meets some purpose.
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