Friday 12th March 2010 by Lawrence Clarke

Rituals are personal routines – the time of day I brush my teeth – or more interestingly shared activities – the time of day I sit down and join my family for a meal. In a community sense rituals are universally acknowledged and shared.  These rituals are needed to provide structure, predictability and character to the community to which the individuals feel they belong.

On a daily level such rituals manifest themselves as shared and repeated behaviour. Such behaviours can reinforce the group identity in a way that includes newcomers or they can, consciously or otherwise, have exactly the opposite effect of making newcomers feel excluded and not wanted. The former is a welcoming environment in which, as newly moved in to a neighbourhood, my next-door neighbour pops by to introduce herself and offer directions to the nearest shops. The latter is a cliquey environment in which I am not even acknowledged. Our blog post on What do you do when you join a community? highlights the challenges for newcomers. Online such negative behaviour can take many forms. One classic behaviour is for the established members to criticise the spelling of anyone who posts for the first-time – a sure way of driving newcomers away from their ‘club’.

Such behaviour is reflected in the elaborate social world of the workplace, which has been documented since the early sixteenth century. Invariably based on male bonding, it can take the form of threats and forfeits, banter and repartee and heavy practical jokes. In fact not dissimilar to the treatment that was meted out to me as a new boy at boarding school, but without the beating-ups! What lies behind such a sequence of challenging behaviour is the change in our social roles and status from apprentice to foreman or ‘new squit’ to prefect.

Rites of passage

When rituals are aligned with roles we are describing initiation ceremonies and rites of passage. Rites of passage socialise individuals into new roles. They are universal – starting with a naming ceremony and continuing through to puberty, marriage, elderhood and finally death. Religions have clear formats that define each stage, for example, the Jewish Bar Mitzvah is held for 13-year-old boys to acknowledge, facilitate and celebrate their transition into adulthood. The student gap year might be seen as the secular equivalent. Behind each of these stages there are always the back stories that provide the shared context (see our blog on The importance of story telling).

For the maintenance of the group or community it is essential that an individual becomes socialised at an early age. All groups face similar challenges, namely uniting and integrating their members and providing a stable group structure that can survive the death of individuals. An online community is no different – although you could perhaps substitute ‘death’ for ‘retirement’. Amy Jo Kim’s seminal work ‘Community Building on the Web’ (published in 2000) details the five stages of online community engagement from visitor, novice and regular to leader and elder. Recognising each person’s position in this online life-span early on is clearly critical to informing our behaviour. We therefore welcome visitors, instruct novices, reward regulars, empower leaders and finally honour the elders.

Each stage requires membership and leadership rituals that can provide the appropriate reinforcement. Deciding on the form for these rituals should be an explicit outcome of the developing relationships of the community members, which invariably starts with that encouraging and welcoming message to a first-time poster. It is the nuances behind the responses that ultimately define the viable character of the community and it will be the task of the community manager and the volunteer leaders to ensure that the web of social roles holds the community together.