Communities need care and feeding

A long time ago in an office far, far, away I started up the SharePointKicks site. It was a bright idea spurned on by the popularity of DotNetKicks. Community driven content like Digg, etc. but focused on SharePoint. The early days I was submitting a lot of entries (mostly my own) and hunting down the choice ones out there written by you. As with any community site it needed something. A community. One that could contribute and nurture and make it grow.

That really hasn't happened.

SharePointKicks is a great site, or can be. Lately it's been pretty barren of new content and it hasn't shared the popularity of it's sister site DotNetKicks. Sure people still post, but I know there are tons of new SharePoint 2007 blog entries that are gems. That's what the kicks site is there for. Pulling those gems out of the quagmire called the net and letting them bubble up to the surface through your "kick" votes. The more popular something is, the higher up the charts it is and there it stays.

It's sad to see a community wither and fade away like this. I'll admit I haven't spent a lot of time lately seeding it myself as I felt the SharePoint community would pick up on the concept and run with it. That's not happening and I'm not sure why. Maybe I'm wrong in my premise that SharePointKicks was a good idea, or maybe everyone is too busy (like I've been) to contribute.

In any case, SharePointKicks will live as long as it's host keeps it alive. Like I said there are people contributing, but it's a trickle compared to the SharePoint content I read each day. If you can, please keep it in mind to contribute somthing (content people, not money). Either your own blog entries or someone elses. Hopefully with your input the site can continue to grow instead of stagnate which it's been doing for a few months now.

Thanks.

2 Comments

  • Thanks for making me aware of this site. Just added 6 stories and will let others know about the site.

  • Every community needs to gain critical mass in order to be self-sustaining. It took awhile for even Digg to get that. As you know, my vision for SharePointPedia has some overlap in functionality with what SharePointKicks provides today. To gain critical mass, SPP will need to have some original content and be part of a larger community destination such as the SharePoint Community Portal and have good integration with MSDN and TechNet and other content sites such as MVP blogs.

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