In the SIG on communities of practice at KnowledgeBoard I asked whether there are people who have experience in the decommissioning of old community forums. The question whether communities that have faded away because of lack of meaning (purpose) or decreased interest from its community members should be closed is very relevant to the community itself and the people that support it from a higher level. In general, my feeling is that
- Communities should be open for long period of time after the activity has decreased, allowing renewed energy to come in to the community and revive the rhythm.
- If the meaning of the community is no longer relevant, the community should be closed for posting (contributing) but remain open to a larger constellation of communities or networks, if relevant. This will allow searching through the community forum and putting past conversations in context, and allowing old threads to be referred to in other community forums.
- When the community forum is being decommissioned, a process should be in place on how best to approach this; will there be a general notification to all the participants explaining the reason for the decomissioning? Will there be a wind-down session or telephpone call? Will the coordinator or someone else from the core team summarize the achievements of the community and / or summarize some of the good threads and discussions inside the community? This will allow some community gems to be created for future reference.
If the community forms part of a larger constellation of communities and networks, it could be interesting to track the particpants and see how they 'spread' across other communities. If the relationships of the participants are known, ONA or SNA can even help to map that. Hopefully some good discussions will come out the KB thread - especially since the proper decommissioning of a community (forum) is as important as the launch of it.
This happened at 7:41:43 AM or
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