Sociologists distinguish three distinct social environments where people operate. The first place is home, where we spend most of our free time. The second place is the workplace, the place where we go to do something. The third place is the place of socialization. In the context of online communities, the first place is the main site, the second place is a site for meta discussions, the third place is a site for off-topic conversations.
Without the second and third places, the growth of the first place is limited.
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Once you get the critical mass of people on the main site, you will need to launch a dedicated space for meta discussions. The main purpose of that space is to assemble a group of volunteers who will care about the community itself.
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If at some point you do not provide opportunities for users to socialize based on their personal interests beyond the topic of the community, then either the users will be unhappy with the community or there will be off-topic conversations on the main site.
All three places can be on the same platform and in the same format (for instance, separate sections on a forum), or on different platforms in different formats (for instance, a wiki for the main site, a chat for socialization, and a forum for meta-discussion). If you use different platforms for the places, do your best to make user accounts on the different platforms linked and have the same user names across the platforms. The places need to be moderated regardless of if they are public or private, most probably, by volunteer moderators.
This is a fragment of a draft of the book “Lessons Learned While Working On Stack Overflow”. Read the full book on kindle or the paperback version.