Selena from Christchurch, NZ writes about how she’s looking to better understand how to build group participation on wikis. Here’s a comment I left on her post that focuses on building awareness and growing participation in phases:

Regarding the small number of people participating in your online communities, this may be partly due to the fact that many others simply don’t know about the communities, haven’t paid attention to earlier announcements you’ve sent, etc.

So, I’d suggest you start by assessing how you’ve let people know that the communities are available. That small group that’s already using the forums may be your key to building the community – are they telling their friends? Have you suggested that they tell their friends/colleagues/classmates and encourage them to use it too?

Just raising awareness of your online community, wiki, etc. is an ongoing task and something that will keep the community growing steadily. Also, keep in mind that a rapid buildup of the community can actually be detrimental to its success, since it creates scaling problems all around – for people supporting the software, training new users, and for the community members themselves.

As the community grows larger, it’s necessary for it to go through a stepped, phased progression where periods of growth are followed by periods where peoples’ roles & places in the community establish themselves based on how those people participate. That’s why it’s ok to push the growth for a bit, then pause a bit so people can get to know each other.