Because if I don't start, it won't happen.... Here's a huge batch of articles on online community:

• Some community tips for 2007
• The Crunchland Method (Scroll down a bit)
• Design for Community (out of print book)
• Yahoo! Design Patterns: Reputation
• Building an Online Community
• Community: from little things big things grow
• Develop Effective Forum Leadership (check the related articles?)
• Got any stats on lurkers vs contributors?
• Common pitfalls of building social web applications (see also parts II & III)

These come from some folks who have run or are running fairly large online communities, some of which have been going for quite a long time.

The point being that I think OlyBlog as a community could stand to do some learning from these sources. (I almost jumped into the anonymity question but never did get my thoughts together.) After almost 10 years of web communities, there actually is some best practice available. :)

More to come, hopefully. I am notoriously lousy about following up on these sorts of vague big ideas, so no promises.

Some folks may have picked up that I'm leaving the docency in a couple of weeks, and I don't intend without leaving a replacement behind me. And, I'm nominating folks just to get the ball rolling, the discussion going, but I think these folks could do a pretty good job.

Gug. While he's not a front page regular, he's a steady hand in the comment threads and he can be guilted into turning his sharp mind on some local topics on a regular basis.

Epersonae (chad360's better half, aka Elaine). Same as above, not enough front paging, but what does is very good. Would bring a level of, what what do you call it, knowledge of actually running a website. Oh, yeah, we don't actually have much of that right now.

Chad360. While I have to be honest, his stream-oh-chad writing can leave me dragging behind the family blog sometimes, chad takes what we do here very seriously. To the point he buts heads with current docents, but I don't think that's particulary a bad thing.

Thad Curtz. While fairly new to here and someone I almost disagree with at all point, Thad is also steady and seems to have a fair interest in the overall topic of citizen journalism. He's also done lots of front page stuff, but centered on one topic in particular.

That's my core list, but other folks to come to mind include: Katherine and einmaleins.

So, how are we going to do this? I say come up with a list of nominees and vote from there. Whether we need two rounds depends on the size of the list.