On 21/12/06, Jeremy Hunsinger <jhuns@vt.edu> wrote:
I've been interested in this question in the passed and I came to the conclusion that it is an ecological question and can't be determined outside of the specific circumstances of the individual community. There are IRC communities with 5 members that are self-sustaining, and there are communities of 100000 that have faded away, like six degrees. I suspect you will get a variety of other responses though.
Whilst it's undoubtedly true that there isn't going to be any magic number which points to critical mass for different communities, that shouldn't put you off from holding the concept of critical mass to be an extremely useful one, and finding ways to research the subject in different ecologies. The value lies in finding ways to detect when critical mass is not quite obtained, or just starting to dip below if on the way down, because these are the circumstaces under which an intervention is most useful. Mathematics won't help, and hindsight always makes the situation much clearer. -- Andy Roberts http://distributedresearch.net/blog/