Preface for the Third Edition - Read

168 B. Concepts and Theories
keeper of organizational ties: maintains links with other organizational units, in
particular the official hierarchy,
care-taker: cultivates social relationships,
system administrator: is responsible for hardware, software and security of the
community server,
account administrator: administrates accounts, privileges and authentication of
the members of the community,
architect: starts social relationships, develops social networks and optimizes the
community structure considering the feedback.
Although these roles might be assigned to a number of members, it is likely that
a small core group of approximately two to six members who initiated the community
take on all of these roles so that each of the members of the core group is
responsible for a number of roles. There are also several roles responsible for the
management of the community which are distinguished in analogy to the roles
defined for the management of business processes (Neumann et al. 2000, 275ff,
Schoen 2000, 117ff):
Community/network owner. A community owner is a senior manager or even a
member of the board of directors who is responsible for the communities. As communities
per definition are not (directly) goal-oriented collectives of people, the
role of the community owner is to sponsor the community, provide budgets and
support for time, travel and technologies (e.g., storage capacity for community
homespaces) and promote the community topic (also Raab et al. 2000, 244).
Community/network manager. This is regularly a role that is attributed to the
originator of a community, sometimes split to a small group of people who initiated
the community. This person or this core group is responsible for the functioning of
the community, has the “last word” in the set up of policies and norms, e.g., about
participation in the community, its organization, about themes and topics, the discussion
style etc. Sometimes the community manager is supported by one or more
community assistant(s) who e.g., answer questions about the community, its topics
or the ICT used to support the community. A community manager coordinates the
activities in a community, however, he or she is not responsible for all types of
leadership that are necessary in a community, such as networking, facilitation, documentation,
retention of expertise, learning, inquiry, management of boundaries or
organizational ties 303 .
Community/network moderator. A moderator supports discussions in communities,
e.g., provides summaries about threads of discussions, links and organizes
contributions or encourages contributions from experts outside the community.
Often, community moderators are responsible for many communities so that they
303. See Wenger 2000, 220; see also the community roles distinguished above.