Many online communities suffer from a lack of contributions by community members. Researchers from the University of Indiana have tested ways to encourage participation in online communities.
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue4/ling.html
They found individuals contributed when they were reminded of their uniqueness and when they were given specific and challenging goals.
Were they correct?
Quite an interesting article, with some thought-provoking hypotheses which might help increase contributions to blogs like this!
Fiona