Bob Hooker's Golden Rules of Making SharePoint Community Work

What follows are a set of "rules" I have generated over years of working with SharePoint, more years on the Internet, and research. The goals of these rules are to create sites that provide collaboration while reducing opportunities for conflict, flames, and turf building.

First I present a set of inescapable truths:

The Inescapable Truths

1. People trust people they have worked with before
2. On any network there is a value of being first
3. Discussion forums almost always explode in to flames
4. Wikis, no matter how advanced, always look unfinished
5. When you start setting down rules you have already lost
6. The Internet presents as many risks for bad behavior as opportunities for good
   

Accepting these truths leads to these rules

The Golden Rules

1. Provide collaboration in WSS project teams sites.
2. Provide access only to members with a shared folder or blog to communicate to the greater community.
   
3. Company wide information should almost always be controlled by Web Content Management available in MOSS 2007 and not WSS.
   
4. Open discussions and chatsshould only be allowed on project sites by project members.
5. Establish a shared understanding of proper SharePoint practice. Net guides can only be of so much value. For example it is very bad form on the net to flame someone for spelling mistakes, in a business it is probably necessary to point them out.
6. Do not let managers and the works in the same forums.
7. Make sure you bloggers understand a shared set of rules, to not "hot dog", blogging is a duty and right.
8. Avoid Wikis unless you team is highly experienced and skills, and then try to avoid wikis all the same.