When I was younger, I thought that what really made an organization tick were the individuals inside of it, and that good individuals could overcome poor leadership.

I now realize that it takes both good leadership and good members for a group to function well.

It's trivially obvious that no organization can rise above the capabilities of its membership. It's much less obvious how deeply pervasive the effects on a organization of the leader or leaders are. Having seen it in action multiple times, it still does not seem intuitive that a small group of people, even one person, can exert as much influence as they do over groups several order of magnitude larger.

This really came home to me as I was working in my first office job, assisting the IS department on working on the web. The department was split into two large units. One unit was a joy to work with. They listened to us, worked with us, and together, we produced products for them that we were all happy with. They even let us do user testing!

The director of the unit was an engaging woman, friendly and open. She listened, communicated well, and was focussed on getting the job done. And these qualities largely characterized the department.

The other department was a horror to work with. They did not listen to us; if we said something was difficult, or there was a better way, they ascribed ulterior motives to the statements. They saw politics behind every statement. The department was prone to engaging in turf wars. They tried several times to hire outside consultants for some tasks; once because we said something was difficult to impossible, and the person they hired was little too inexperienced to understand why it was difficult or impossible, and once because they thought they could control the consultant better. In both cases, the consultant was not competent... not even close... to the task they were hired for. Of course, the IS department was not consulted before hand.

Need I describe the leadership of that department? It follows from the description of the department.

The leadership of an online community is no different then other forms of leadership, except perhaps that the selection of leaders is a bit more decentralized. Metafilter reflects the personality of Matt Haughey. The community that forms around Scripting News reflects the personality of Dave Winer. The Perl community reflects Larry Wall, the Python community reflects Guido van Rossum. Whatever community you're in almost certainly reflects the personality of a key group of leaders, unless it's very, very small.

This doesn't necessarily mean that everybody in those communities are birds of a feather, just that the influence is real. All kinds of people use Python, but the community reflects Guido's commitment to simplicity and consistency above all else. All kinds of people are in the Userland community, even people that don't like Dave, but the community reflects the commitment to doing, not talking. (Which probably expains some of the frictions... you can't make an omelete without breaking eggs. ;-) )

Look around in your own communities; not just online, but everywhere. You'll see this, if you look hard enough.

A trivial correlary of the preceding comments is that the leaders of the Slashdot community, namely the people who own and run it, influence the Slashdot community. What's interesting about Slashdot is that it is an online community that is also doing some innovative stuff only possible with computers. As usual, computers serve to amplify and enhance already existing trends, and it's worth examining how this is happening. I think you'll be surprised at what's happening behind the seemingly placid exterior at Slashdot, if you're not keeping extremely close track.

Despite external appearences, if the leadship of Slashdot does not change, either through actual personnel changes or a change in the actions of the leaders, Slashdot is in imminent danger of becoming a marginalized site. Without a vibrant and reasonably diverse community, Slashdot has nothing to offer.