emergent
Conditions for forming online communities
Nick Lewis posted on his blog 6 conditions that will form an online community. http://www.nicklewis.org/node/956
Some time ago I found an interesting talk about "the starfish and the spider" that makes the case that communities that lack hierarchy will be more resilient.
http://www.beckstrom.com/Main_Page
Online communities are also ecosystems and therefore:
-there are certain sequences of adding species that will lead to a stable system (e.g. bring in the endusers to early and your community crashes because a lack of content)
