What is the important aspect of creating online communities?

Question

What features do you think can help foster creating an online community.
From my own observation i think what is needed:

1. community involvement
   (let people contribute to the community by giving them control on the community, for example able to vote stuff up/down)
2. low entry barrier
   (for example, stackoverflow allow you to do stuff without even login.. so that people can involve in the community early)

What other things do you thing that I need to do, is there any other important points that I am missing.

I am working on a small, web commnunity and I want to start on the right footing...

Answer 1

Read two books (maybe just one - Here Comes Everybody)

From StackOverflow Podcast 12:

Spolsky: Design for Community, Derek [Pawazek]'s book is one of the only books about, like, how to do UI design such that communities can get created.

Spolsky: Oh, well that's sort of one of the classics. Since we are doing a-- we are designing for community. Now, it's a little bit-- I'm trying to remember why I'm not so excited about-- I'm half-hearted[ly] excited about it. It's a half-good book. I think that it doesn't really cover-- it doesn't really touch on all of the points of how to design for community, and it's a little outdated. But this is a guy that was building web communities and it shares his experiences, so there's a lot to learn from it. Let's put it this way, it's not quite-- you know, Clay Shirky's new book Here Comes Everybody sort of supersedes this a little bit.

Answer 2

If you lean towards reading things only, Clay Shirky's website has several articles that touch on social software. You might start with these:

• A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy
• Social Software and the Politics of Groups
• Communities, Audiences, and Scale

I have also found Joel's own post helpful Building Communities with Software.