We who travail in the geekosphere are very prone to confusing the tools of communications with the content or source of the communication itself. This seems especially the case with online communities. If I have harped on this point before, forgive me, but it’s an important one. Communities are people. You can have a great community running on crappy freeware. Moveon was butt ugly in its early years but was an amazing community. You can have great tools, and no community at all. I can cite several examples…

I think we should all print out and post these useful guidelines on what makes a good community manager.