What is the sense of belonging in an online community?
Your community is successful when there are users who feel that they belong to it. Sense of belonging can be described as a degree to which a person sees themselves to be connected to their community and satisfied with their role within it. Sense of belonging emerges through constant positive interactions with other members of a community. Sense of belonging can only exist if users respect, trust and care for one another.
Nurturing a sense of belonging among the users is one of the primary goals of community building.
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.