Online communities nearly always end up being terrible. It’s because of the dynamic and motivations of the creators.

• Most creators need to monetize a community through sponsorships

• You can charge more for sponsorships if you have more members in the community

• More members means more beginners than experts

• Everybody in a community wants to learn from people who are more expert than they are

• But in the drive to increase member numbers, the community becomes populated with beginners who ask beginner questions

• The experts don’t get anything from this, so leave

• This leaves a great soup of beginners begging for help