Once a community reaches the stable state, where maintenance of the library and maybe a "industry news" outlet is all thats actively needed most of the time; a

Once a community reaches the stable state, where maintenance of the library and maybe a "industry news" outlet is all thats actively needed most of the time; a meta-community for those few people needed to do that can foster long term stability. Often IRC channels in my experience. When those small groups blow up the stable platform fragments and you get pointless project forks (one of which stagnates); and so on. Many of the participants in those groups take them far too seriously and are overzealous about their opinions (thats what led them to make the sacrifices that put them in that group to begin with). There's strong echos in the shapes of the histories of cults, guilds and specialized military units.