Public groups are a good place to get to know someone's online personality. But the real work seems to get done on private invite-only groups, which might be o

Public groups are a good place to get to know someone's online personality. But the real work seems to get done on private invite-only groups, which might be on the same, or different, media. For example I'm involved in a community that uses skype groups as a channel. There are public groups, and there are private groups that only bring in people who have proved to be well behaved, and useful (and willing). This mimics real life. We have layers - the get-stuff-done folk have back-channels to keep things moving even if the public space is functioning poorly.