[Air-l] Community "Critical Mass"?

[Andy Roberts]

On 21/12/06, Jeremy Hunsinger <jhuns at vt.edu> wrote:
> I've been interested in this question in the passed and I came to the
> conclusion that it is an ecological question and can't be determined
> outside of the specific circumstances of the individual community.
> There are IRC communities with 5 members that are self-sustaining,
> and there are communities of 100000 that have faded away, like six
> degrees.  I suspect you will get a variety of other responses though.

Whilst it's undoubtedly true that there isn't going to be any magic
number which points to critical mass for different communities, that
shouldn't put you off from holding the concept of critical mass to be
an extremely useful one, and finding ways to research the subject in
different ecologies.

The value lies in finding ways to detect when critical mass is not
quite obtained, or just starting to dip below if on the way down,
because these are the circumstaces under which an intervention is most
useful. Mathematics won't help, and hindsight always makes the
situation much clearer.

-- 
Andy Roberts

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/