Community Straddlers

The readings for this week are concerned with online community membership. Some focuses are why people join communities and how can contribution levels increase. I came across a 1993 blog passage from the Blog of Collective Intellegence that focuses on an interesting concept; community straddlers. Community straddlers are said to participate in many and various online communities. Research is concerned with people not being consistently active within their communities; some of these people might be community straddlers. Straddlers are said to benefit online communities because they understand the culture of each community they belong to. They are claimed to be “connectors” for ethnic and professional cultures within communities. If such people really are beneficial to online communities, more research should be done on the benefits associated with straddlers and how to attract them. Maybe some forms of inconsistent activity in online communities are not so bad after all.