I just got back from the SAP TechED conference in Vegas last week. One of the main speakers was Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. He spoke about two points that stood out for me.
The usefulness of a point system in fostering community contribution
- He was for the most part against it, arguing that point systems do not lead to valuable contributions; rather they lead to members to "point collect" for the rewards. The counterpoint to that is the SAP Community Network has altered its point system whereby the points earned go towards funding the World Food Program.
Control of Community
- He addressed the anxiety around how much control there should be around communities, given users can abuse their priviledges with SPAM and other inappropriate posts, and "point collecting". His argument is that as long as the community provides accountability (i.e., track who the user is), the benefits of having an open community outweigh having tight controls.
One other issue that came up was whether communities should be seeded with content to start or should they grow organically. One conference attendee was a vociferous proponent for seeding content but an SAP Community Network team member argued against it, calling it "intelligent design". I fall on the side of seeding content because I think it's important to guide the community growth to match the objectives set for the community.
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