2.0 community
From Banyan Project
The Banyan online community will be brought together through software that provides a welcoming and civil environment for co-op members to come together, to learn from each other and resources Banyan links to, and to organize to take action on issues that matter to them. Discussion groups will provide an online public square for engagement and organizing.
This community will also be petri dish that grows the virus that spreads Banyan and fuels its growth: People who find value in Banyan's journalism will tell their friends about it, and those who enter its 2.0 community will invite their friends to join. The Project thus has a huge incentive to create the most welcoming and easiest-to-use community possible -- a lot of it's reader/users can be expected to be new to Web communities.
The software developers will search for the most up-to-date best practices for high-functioning engaged Web communities -- and strive always to do better. Banyan does not aim to deal with Web sophisticates but with a huge population of regular folks and thus must have 99th-percentile ease of use -- and to be a safe place with rules consistent with the Banyan value proposition of relevance, respect and trustworthiness. Banyan membership will include a covenant of good behavior, with expulsion for repeated offenses; its software will have a system for flagging offensive behavior to make this possible. Every co-op member will have to use their real name in the online community, but can apply to the editors to have her or his name withheld from posts under certain circumstances.
A possible metric for success of the community might be the ratio of comments posted to unique visitors. In August 2009, Huffington Post reported 1.5 million monthly comments and 20 million monthly uniques, a 1/13 ratio. The Edelman PR agency's blog reported that HoffPost's CEO, Eric Hippeau, said "HuffPost is considering some form of social network that allows continuous connection among your public and private conversations. The idea is a network that can be both personal and outward facing. 'We see our community as being in the middle of the site, with content on the outside.'”
If you have ideas and would like to be part of the conversation that advances the community, please email Banyan president Tom Stites.
