parafilm

Hi guys as an academic in knowledge management we cover communities of practice (forums) quite extensively in organisational environments. Not sure if these techniques for seeding this knowledge capture method will be directly transferrable to public arenas such as this one but a great technique we use is ironically barriers:
- Once again this works time and time again in an organisational scope and doesn't seem theoretically relevant for a public forum, however, adding restrictions to who can join the site and who cannot is a quick way of adding members (usually the ones you want too: the active members). Its all about politics; as soon as someone feels left out or in a lower position, they too want to be included and once they're in they feel accomplished and are determined to participate and express their voice.

- The most obvious technique is advertising and positive networking from members. Also the hidden spam messages and advertising of external links outside of this forum is really doing some damage. We find that the 'spamoflage' negates active users from reading and replying in both useless and relevant threads.

Well hope this helps.