When users control the conversation, there is an interesting tendency for the elevation of users as experts based on contribution. If there is one thing I've learned about the Drupal community over the years, and in my years working around and in Open Source communities for years before that, it's this: contribution and presence are the basis of community capital; or, in short: contribution is social capital.

When you contribute, you get "reputation points", and if you could model it, you could assign these a value for different members of the community (anyone looking for a thesis?), and actually see how presence and contribution affects overall reputation. If these communities function on this foundation, it cleanly and easily explains why "experts" are users who have contributed the highest recognized value. However, it does not cleanly explain, because contributions need to be visible in order to "count" towards a users reputation. There is a definite need for PR and community connections in order to gain acceptance: who accepts your contributions is as important as making them.

This is the mechanism that leads to the most connected community members actually being the most "expert" of the community members. "Expertise" has shifted to community members who contribute, and is no longer automatic based on credentials.

This has important implications for business seeking to engage in new business models that involve online community. Individual effort on behalf of companies is the new trend: companies need to have "facetime" with the community in order to develop their reputations.