Twice today people have asked me if I was grumpy. I replied, “Yes, and if you dont get out of my face, I will punch you.”

Grumpy happens. But in my grumpiness, I got to thinking about community. (Yes, its a bit of a non-sequitur, but Im grumpy. Follow along).

Every Monday morning at Lijit, we have senior management meeting at 9am. A Monday morning meeting at 9am is enough to make most anyone grumpy, but that wasnt it.

Over the weekend, a project that we are working on, went a bit awry. With no one really “owning” the project, there were no real answers, and so the email thread was a bit light in responses.

When the topic was raised, the question was asked “Is it because you dont care?”

Immediately, I bristled. There is not a person at Lijit who doesnt care. In fact, in many ways, we can be accused of caring too much. The issue with the project was that because of the competency level of the management team at Lijit, there is an assumption that projects are being managed appropriately by the right person. Which means, that every once in awhile, a project goes awry.

Every individual at Lijit cares about the success of the company. Everyone one. Its probably the single largest driver of our success.

After the meeting, when my grumpiness reached a record high (mostly because my new medication is making my stomach hurt more than it should) I began to think about caring within communities.

At Lijit, our interview process has become legendary. Our VP of Product Management interviewed with a total of 11 people over 27 hours. The average developer interviews 3-5 people for 8-11 hours.

We care so much as to make it highly difficult to join our community.

And Lijit is just one example. Yay Hooray, a popular(?) forum is invite only. Most companies start in private beta. While partly to test their system, it also has the side effect of building a small, but exclusive, community.

Think about it. With a private beta, the people getting the invite are deemed important enough to join the community by either the owners of the product, or the community itself.

In an open community, like Twitter, other roadblocks are created. An internal nomenclature develops. (After all, if you cared about the community, you would learn our language.) A protocol is born. (Seriously, if you cared about the community, you would do things the way we do them.) An open community starts to build sub-communities where there is the desire of inclusion and the increase of caring.

Caring about a community doesnt only manifest itself in exclusion practices. Expectations grow. Requirements are set.

Techstars is a great example of this. Every year the companies are judged against the companies that preceded them. While that may not sound that daunting, as companies have positive exits and strong funding events, the pressure to improve upon those activities accelerates. It becomes harder and harder to impress. Success becomes the expectation.

So does a sense of caring help or hurt a community?

Communities that are welcoming and dont outline clear goals and rules run the risk of accepting so many people that the community fails. The initial group of community members tend to feel the greatest amount of ownership over the community, with each “ring” of new members caring less and less about the fidelity of the community.

Yet, if early in the process of accepting additional members to the community, there are roadblocks, hurdles or other clear requirements, the differences between the concentric circles tends to blur. While a hierarchy continues to exist based on age of membership, the level of caring and ownership tend to flatten out.

The existence of roadblocks may also go beyond making it difficult to join a community to actually making it less desirable, reducing the number–and depth–of the applicant pool. When attrition outpaces recruitment, communities then start to wither and, potentially, die.

How does a community properly balance its recruitment and attrition? Potentially, through the acceptance of less desirable members that show a strong competence.

Competence is the function of two things: Ability to learn and the ability to apply learning effectively. A less desirable member of a community that is competent holds the intrinsic value of learning the values, needs and requirements of a community and acting on them. In return, the new member of the community feels a strong sense of ownership and truly cares about the community.

Want to grow your community? Set the core members, the founders of the community aside. Find the group in the second concentric circle that are focused on the sustainability of the community. Recruit highly competent people and train them properly. Allow them to have a positive effect on the community at large.

Allow caring to protect the community, but not close off the community in such a way to eliminate any chance for positive growth.

Popularity: 2% [?]