As regards participation, I would say this however, the obvious definition of participation is comments/postings but for me at least, this only tells half the story. There are some groups that I am member where I don’t or rarely comment but at the same time that doesn’t mean I aint listening to much of what is going on. Some of the group managers in my opinion are too narrow in their definition of what participation is. In Ireland in particular, there are a great number of people who are a member of online groups but predominately in a “lurker” type fashion. This is true of blogs and all social media.