There is a growing body of literature related to this topic in the business sciences. You might want to take a look at articles that have been written about interactions among members of online communities of practice, as well as how groups form and maintain sustained performance in online environments (i.e., virtual groups, virtual organizations). You might also want to take a look at what Bruce Tuckman has been writing about group formation processes. His stage theory -- forming, storming, norming, and performing -- is transferrable to online group interactions. There is also a lot of valuable information available on group interaction processes in the growing body of change management literature. ***************************** Gail D. Taylor, M.Ed. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Human Resource Education Ph.D. Student Educational Psychology Teaching Assistant "We can't just have mainstream behavior on television in a free society. We have to make sure we see the whole panorama of human behavior." -- Jerry Springer