[thelist] community

[Peter Van Dijck]

Since we're going to do a few major content driven, community sites, what 
makes a community work?
Some examples:
http://www.remarq.com/ and http://deja.com/ are basically discussion boards.
Sites like http://www.epinions.com/ take that concept to a new level and 
use ratings to get people to submit really well thought out reviews, 
instead of just drab.
There are other sites where users actually drive the content and contribute 
the articles, like:
http://slashdot.com/
I am subscribed to lots of mailing lists, and they all seem to have their 
own personality.
So what online communities do you like / dislike, and what makes one 
work??? Are there any studies on this?

thanks people
Peter