Shawn Callahan writes:
I know I’ve mentioned this before, so at the risk of boring people with repetition I will just say that getting ActKM going required us to manufacture conversation (we had a roster of posters) so it looked like something interesting was happening. It was only when we attracted about 100 members that the conversation was self sustaining. We then had a group people wanted to join. [Anecdote: complexity - narrative - knowledge](http://www.anecdote.com.au/ archives/2005/06/the_paradox_of.html)
Interesting to read yet I can’t say I’m at all surprised. With so many conversations screaming for our attention we will naturally fall towards those which we assess are reliable and likely to last for a while. There is probably an assessment of competency along the lines of “these people know what they are talking about and I can see evidence of that”.
Bottom line is that Shawn has a great strategy for making your newsgroup into a community. It can only do that by providing real value rather than popularity.