Online communities offer their members various benefits, such as information access, social and emotional support, and entertainment. Despite the important role that founders play in shaping communities, prior research has focused primarily on what drives users to participate and contribute; the motivations and goals of founders remain underexplored. To uncover how and why online communities get started, we present findings from a survey of 951 recent founders of Reddit communities. We find that topical interest is the most common motivation for community creation, followed by motivations to exchange information, connect with others, and self-promote. Founders have heterogeneous goals for their nascent communities, but they tend to privilege community quality and engagement over sheer growth. These differences in founders' early attitudes towards their communities help predict not only the community-building actions that they pursue, but also the ability of their communities to attract visitors, contributors, and subscribers over the first 28 days. We end with a discussion of the implications for researchers, designers, and founders of online communities.

翻译：在线社区为其成员提供多种益处，例如信息获取、社交与情感支持以及娱乐。尽管创始人在塑造社区过程中发挥着重要作用，但先前研究主要聚焦于驱动用户参与和贡献的因素；创始人的动机与目标仍然探索不足。为了揭示在线社区如何及为何被创建，我们针对951位Reddit社区的新晋创始人开展了一项调查。研究发现，主题兴趣是创建社区最常见的动机，其次是信息交换、社交联系与自我推广的动机。创始人对初创社区抱有异质性目标，但他们普遍倾向于优先考虑社区质量与用户参与度，而非单纯追求规模增长。创始人早期对社区态度的差异，不仅能预测其后续采取的社区建设行动，还能预示其社区在最初28天内吸引访客、贡献者与订阅者的能力。最后，我们探讨了该研究对在线社区研究人员、设计者与创始人的启示。