The problem with web communities:

“The top 20 or so users on these sites will direct and set the culture of a site.  People who do not agree with the leaders,  ie their stories don’t make it to the top  will get pissed off and leave the site.   Eventually  you will start to get cliques forming that vote each others stories and take over a category,  much like what is happening at Digg right now.“

A good example of how the power users in a community can quickly become the death of a community. While it is human nature to organise into cliques, their exclusivity they can quickly alienate those on the outside.

How did Markus deal with it?

“In places such as the forums i’ve gone and banned the top 50 users several times as cliques just get to out of control and have no connection to the mainstream anymore.”