Online Communities: Commerce, Community Action, and the Virtual University

Summary
Online communities: Understanding them, building them, making them work.

• A comprehensive guide to online communities-how they develop and how they impact e-commerce, culture, politics, and education
• Why some online communities thrive—and others fail
• Contributors include Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation

Whether you're an online community developer, marketer, political activist, or academic, you depend on online communities. In this book, leading community-builders in e-commerce, non-profit, open source, and higher education share their insights on crucial issues such as: How are online communities organized? How do they change? What do their participants expect from them? What makes them work? And how can you make yours work better? Coverage includes:

• Leading models and key lessons for organizers of online communities.
• Corporate-sponsored online communities: social impacts and success factors
• Building alliances between diverse online communities
• Uses of online communities worldwide: the U.S., Great Britain, Mexico, France, Italy, Bosnia, South Africa, Brazil, Nicaragua, and elsewhere
• Distance learning: the promise and the reality
• Richard Stallman on how online communities can democratize universities
• Randy Connolly on why online communities may actually decrease social cohesion

Chris Werry and Miranda Mowbray bring together an extraordinary range of perspectives—and deliver unprecedented insight into the phenomenon and future of online communities. Whether you're a public policymaker or a system administrator, a distance learning professional or an e-commerce executive, you'll find this book interesting and useful.

摘要
網上社群：了解它們、建立它們、使它們運作。
這本書是一本關於網上社群的全面指南，介紹了它們的發展方式以及對電子商務、文化、政治和教育的影響。為什麼有些網上社群蓬勃發展，而其他一些則失敗了？本書的貢獻者包括自由軟件基金會的創始人Richard Stallman。
無論您是網上社群開發者、營銷人員、政治活動家還是學者，您都依賴於網上社群。在這本書中，電子商務、非營利組織、開源和高等教育領域的領先社群建設者分享了他們對關鍵問題的見解，例如：網上社群是如何組織的？它們如何變化？參與者對它們有什麼期望？是什麼使它們運作？您如何使您的社群更好地運作？本書涵蓋的內容包括：
- 網上社群組織者的領先模型和關鍵教訓。
- 企業贊助的網上社群：社會影響和成功因素。
- 在不同網上社群之間建立聯盟。
- 全球網上社群的應用：美國、英國、墨西哥、法國、意大利、波斯尼亞、南非、巴西、尼加拉瓜等地。
- 遠程學習：承諾與現實。
- Richard Stallman談論網上社群如何使大學民主化。
- Randy Connolly談論網上社群可能實際上減少社會凝聚力的原因。
Chris Werry和Miranda Mowbray匯集了一系列非凡的觀點，並提供了對網上社群現象和未來的前所未有的洞察。無論您是公共政策制定者還是系統管理員，遠程學習專業人士還是電子商務高管，您都會發現這本書有趣且有用。