Our Online Community Building Principles:
1. Our online community should have well-defined purposes (goals that can be voiced simply).
2. Our online community should empower people to participate in the Universe Spirit community.
3. Our online community should have experts at inception and drawn from the community to help contribute and guide our online center in its early stage of growth.
4. Our online community should control online hierarchies, commentary and sanctions. Like any non-internet community, members want to feel that their "vote" means something. Internal website voting and reviews and commentary should have a real-time effect on what is occurring in the website. Simply put, "popularity" and "value" should play a role (within the confines of the rules of the website) in defining what content is seen. Subject to the defined boundaries of the larger goals of Integrative Spirituality.
5. Our online community should be empowered to support themselves.
6. Our online community should be able to develop "status" according to the value of their contributions to the website. i.e. If Adam's contributions are seen as "valuable" to the community then Adam should get a rating based on said value. (This is not a simple outcome of frequency of actions. But rather the value placed on the actions by the community.)
7. Our online community should have newsletters and "quote of the day" RSS feed 'push" type utilities that keep people "connected" to our center and its goals even when they are not physically on the website.
8. Our online community should have "stickiness". i.e. If someone visits our center, do they feel compelled to come back again? Our content should always have something fresh and new. People return because they feel that there is a "cause" that the website deals with (and that they want to be involved in), or they feel like they "belong" in that community.
9. Our online community should be encouraged to generate a significant part of our content. Especially their own personal content, so that they can feel personally empowered. See #10
10. Our online community should archive everything. This is so that a website has a sense of history. And people feel like their contributions are respected and preserved.