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102
4: Community andDocumenta
t
on
Te scale of the global community that is going to be able to participate in all sorts of discovery and innovation is something that the world has simply never seen before.—Tomas Friedman, Te World is Flat
Tis chapter explores the idea that a small group o peoplewho have a sense o belonging in an online community may provide content much like a technical writer does. Regardlesso their background, education, or training, more people arebecoming providers o technical inormation on the web. Tegif economy, where altruism motivates contributions morethan monetary gain, is partially responsible or this shif.Chris Anderson, author o
Te Long ail
, also wrote the ar-ticle, “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future o Business” or Wiredmagazine
1
in February o 2008. In the article he describes ataxonomy o “ree” that contains many models including thegif economy. In
Naked Conversations
, bloggers Robert Scobeland Shel Israel state “Altruism turns people on even more than
1 http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/_ree?currentPage=all
103Conversa
t
on and Community
making money.” Combine these altruistic motivations with apublishing system that has a low barrier to entry and you get awhole new way o working and writing.I anyone can be a writer, what communities o writers haveormed, and what have they accomplished? Why would youleverage someone’s sense o community belonging or docu-mentation instead o hiring proessional writers? How do youorm communities online and in the real world?
What is a community?
Community
has many denitions, but an
online community
has specic elements that shape its denition. From a blogentry by Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang comesthis denition: “An online community is: Where a group o people with similar goals or interests connect and exchangeinormation using web tools.”
2
As you might expect rom acommunity researcher, Owyang says that his witter ollowershelped him shape that denition. Howard Rheingold denesa virtual community in his book,
Te Virtual Community
, as“when people carry on public discussions long enough, withsu cient human eeling, to orm webs o personal relation-ships.” Tink o the online communities you belong to. Youknow there are common elements o discussion, agreement,core values, and uniying goals that help you identiy it as acommunity. Relationships are the makeup o communities.Connections with each other establish relationships. Not allrelationships in a community have to be positive—even con-tentious debate can help a community meet its goals as longas the relationships remain respectul and intact afer discus-sions.Although in-person collaboration is an aspect o communi-ties and documentation, much communication happens only online until community members meet at a conerence or anetworking event. Much o the communication that helps you
2 http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/12/28/dening-the-term-community/
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