Explorative vs Progressive Engagement

[JoelR]

Explorative Engagement: Members discuss a topic for the sake of conversation.

Progressive Engagement: Members work towards a specific goal.  

Which kind of community are you?  How does this influence what your end goals are?  Hint: most communities would benefit from designing for #2.  

Inspired by David Spinks

[Maria]

A lot of people use communities to explore, they are general users who use communities to learn and share. There are very few users who are actually progressive, while as an admin you might have a certain goal, most users do not have any kind of goal for using the community. They will be on the community as long as they find something interesting while exploring.