The Gini coefficient is a nice way to summarize the overall participation in the online community. However, I would caution you to draw conclusions about egalitarianism/elitism based on just the number itself. In my work, I have seen extremely high Gini numbers (very few people contributing most of the messages to the list) - and it may not be neccessarily "bad." Two things to consider: - what is your underlying theory about this group and how they operate. one may think that equal participation is a "good" thing. but the group may have been structured to provide "expert" help and thus you would see high GINI numbers. so you need to really think about what the group is for - interview some key and peripheral members and then build a theory about GINI. - there are also practicalities to consider. a low GINI number in a list serv may mean that there is just a ton of noise. imagine being on a list where every one wanted to chime in and give their $0.02. it would get pretty noisy, pretty fast. and maybe not very effective. since all of us are on this list - it may be fun to figure out our Gini number!!! list admins? K -- =============================================== Karim R. Lakhani MIT Sloan School of Management & The Boston Consulting Group, Strategy Practice Initiative e-mail: karim.lakhani@sloan.mit.edu | lakhani.karim@bcg.com voice: 617-851-1224 fax: 617-344-0403 http://spoudaiospaizen.net/ http://opensource.mit.edu | http://freesoftware.mit.edu http://userinnovation.mit.edu