Providing social scaffolding for effective agent communities

This paper explores the general landscape of virtual communities and reflects upon their relevance to their agent community counterparts. It examines several disparate virtual communities in order to identify common threads and characteristics, which underpin social cohesion. In turn we introduce social realism and reflect on the extent to which, this can form the basis of a social scaffolding for the support of effective agent communities. Thereafter we introduce the concept of agent chameleons and consider how this might influence both agent and group behavior.