I, for one, miss the social contract. But then I was a CompuServe sysop by 1990, and ran several types of online discussion groups (including ZDNet/AT&T's InterChange, which nobody else remembers). There was incredible value in the people who owned a stake in the forum's success (particularly anything vendor- or company-related) in choosing moderators who knew how to create a balance between being <a href="http://advice.cio.com/esther_schindler/6_stupid_mistakes_com...">both barkeep and bouncer</a>--not the least of which was a sincere welcome to the community.

Even when I haven't been involved in running an online community, I've always been a participant in several of them. And yes, some women need to feel "safe" before they will come out of lurkerMode. (Obviously I am not in that set, but I expect the woman who wrote the blog post to which I linked does count herself among them.) For instance, I'm a member of two women-in-IT tech groups (a general one and one specifically for web designers/developers, and believe me, you can't shut them up). The whole notion of women-in-IT and its reflection in online communities isn't going to go away just because some guys (and some women, too) say, "But really, you don't need a separate space."

(As you can probably tell, this is a topic very close to my heart.)