Subject communities are designed to be a very flexible environment for authors. We want them to have the abililty to do almost anything they want to, without forcing every community to be the same as all others. Subject communities are difffernt from workgroups in that content cannot be contained inside the community and no work can be done there. It is solely a place for people to get together and to share and communicate with each other.

Where they are

Communities should exist within a single section of the site. They should not be addable outside of their section. Likewise, the community section of the site should not contain any content. It should only have items that help people communicate, such as forums and discussion boards, and the subject communities themselves.

Creating a Community

A Community should be easy to create. At the same time, however, users should only create communities if there is not already one that serves their purposes. When they are created, a title and description should be specified, so that they begin with some definition. They must be flexible enough, though, that the community can redefine their purpose at a later date.

Deleting a Community

Old communities that no one wants to participate in should be deleted. There is no point having a community that has no members. So, when the last person in the community leaves, the community should be deleted to keep the site clean.

Joining a Community

Communities need to be easy for people to join. Communities can not close themselves off from new members, any one may join. It is up to the person joining to decide whether or not they belong in the community, then existing members. The implementation should encourage people to only join if they fit in with the community, but not scare anyone away.

Editing a Community

In order to keep communities flexible, we do not want to force a workflow on the community. There are no ranks among members of the community, they are all on equal footing. Because of this, any member of the community has the abililty to edit the attributes of the community. We do not anticipate many destructive attacks on communities, but just in case, an "Undo" feature should be present as well

Elements of a Community

• Title - The name of the community, must be set when the community is created
• Description - A description of the communities goals and purpose. It can be set when the community is created, but can be changed later. The description can also contain html tags so that members can personalize the home page of the community.
• Content - The content that the community has created together. Content items can be added by an author when the item is published. Pre-published content may be added on the content panel of the community pages.
• Activities - The activies panel is an area for communities to put whatever they want. It is an element to give them a chance to include anything they couldn't include elsewhere. One purpose is to allow a "To Do" list. But, different communities my use the area for completely different purposes. Html tags will also be allowed here for flexibility.
• Forum - The forums are a place for members of the community to talk and communicate with each other. It can be viewed by anyone, but only community members may post to it. The forum should clearly be an element of the community, because each community has their own unique forum