I am obsessed with constitutional patterns in networked groups, from Plato and CommuniTree to Slashdot and Kuro5hin. Recently Marc Hedlund put me onto a great paper on "hotubbing" as a model for community management. Hottubbing is the term the NOEND mailing list uses for its slash-and-burn policy -- the phrase is derived form a communal hottub, protected behind a key-coded lock. Anyone who knew the key was free to use the hottub at any time, and was also free to give out the key to others. Then, when things got too rowdy or crowded, the owner would simply change the key, give it to only a couple of trusted friends, and pattern would start all over. NOEND adapted this model by periodically dumping their entire subscriber list, and creating a new login which only a few people knew, causing the list membership to contract in the same way, and for the same reasons.