Community Management Wiki

Anti-patterns are damaging or counter-productive practices or patterns of behaviour that are sometimes seen in communities. Many anti-patterns are born from the best of intentions. In fact, for every anti-pattern, there is often a polar opposite anti-pattern that can result from going to the other extreme (for example: Cookie Licking vs Warnock's Dilemma).

Josh Berkus gave a talk to the 2010 linux.conf.au conference entitled "How to destroy your community" in which he described a number of anti-patterns relating to corporate involvement in Free / Open Source Software projects.

Dave Neary (who has been collecting these anti-patterns here) gave a talk at the MeeGo Conference entitled "Community Anti-patterns" where he listed anti-patterns and possible cures/treatments for them.

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