Theresa Nielsen Hayden, cofounder of the website Making Light, and community manager of Boing Boing, uses the term sitegeist to define the atmosphere of a website with a vibrant community:

“When you really get a community growing up around [a website], it is so much more than the blog entries themselves or the content itself,” she says. “It’s that gestalt of people talking back and forth to each other, the expectations they have of the website, and the sense they have of it.”

She’s coined the term “site-geist” to describe that environment: “Even people who aren’t really conscious of it will still have it, and they’ll assimilate the implications of even small changes to the site rapidly. They do it without thinking about it. One of the interesting things of moderating a community is being mindful of that.”

(Via Future Changes)

Federal agencies that want to set up a Twitter account or use a wiki to engage with the public often face lengthy delays while ensuring compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act, a 1995 law that requires justification of any activity that involves gathering information from the public, but doesn’t address the unique nature of online collaboration tools created in the last 15 years.

Recently, the Obama Administration issued a memorandum that will reduce paperwork and approval delays associated with using online tools, including Twitter, blogs, and wikis, to engage with the public.

(Via Future Changes)

John Lepp questions social media experts who preach about the importance of engagement, but build such large followings that they either can’t – or won’t – make time to acknowledge and respond to the people who engage with them:

Bottom line: don’t ask for someone – be it a client, customer, donor – anyone – to engage with you and not acknowledge it. Don’t tell someone that these are the rules but you don’t need to play by them. Don’t complain that you are so important to so many people that you can’t do the very things you are constantly telling them to do. Especially when you are the “expert” in this kind of thing.

(Via Future Changes)