Andy Boyd makes a great point on anonymity and giving in commercial and non-commercial CoPs. While looking around the Lego Robot Kit CoP, he said he was

“amazed at how much effort some people go to to help others (some guy has written an 150 page coding handbook for the kids to improve their structured programming). Gee we never get that amount of effort applied in our work CoPs.

That difference is very apparent with CoPs on the internet and the anonymity of the INTERNET, us intra netters can never hide behind such smoke screens or rely on the huge enthusiasm of such kind hearted people (or as I said before maybe they are Johny No Mates?)

It makes many comparisons between CoPs in business (on Intranets) and Internet communities very limited. Pity many of the consultants and know alls in this field have not spotted this difference.”

Made me wonder. And the more I wondered the more my head hurt. How does one go about getting that sort of Lego-manual fervour in Intranet-based CoPs? Anonymity? Can’t really see that working. Short of making sure that the cost to the employee’s minimised (time/money/getting raised eyebrows from colleagues at lack of social life etc) I’m a bit stumped. And I’m not sure a cup of blackcurrant bracer is going to help.