Zhu, H., Kraut, R. E., & Kittur, A. (2014, April). The impact of membership overlap on the survival of online communities. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 281-290). https://doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557213

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Membership overlap in multiple online communities has been shown to have beneficial effects. Zhu et al. studied historical data of 5673 Wikia communities and found that higher levels of membership overlap may increase chances of survival of online communities. 

Membership overlap in online communities

- Zhu et al. show that community survival increases as membership overlap increases
- Their hypothesis that there is a curvilinear relationship between membership overlap and community survival was not confirmed 

Effects of membership overlap in online communities

- Communities with their core (most active) members participating in other communities are less likely to survive compared to communities with fewer core members participating in other communities 

Moderating effects of the roles of shared members across online communities

Zhu et al. examine two types of membership overlap: overlap with mature communities and overlap with young communities.

- Overlapping with mature communities is beneficial to survival
- Overlapping with young communities is harmful to survival
- Young communities tend to benefit from membership overlap while mature communities do not
- Membership overlap is most beneficial when young communities are overlapping with other mature intersecting communities and membership 
- Membership is least beneficial when mature focal communities are sharing members with young intersecting communities


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