Finally, someone who seems to understand that community is not the same as "online discussion board".
Joel talks about a "third place" that is important to people (in addition to places 1 and 2: home and work) to relax, share, discuss, whatever.
He goes on to babble a bit about how that might relate to software (he is a programmer, after all), but there are a couple of interesting points in there (like how posting rules may actually be a Bad Thing - hadn't quite thought of that wrt software).
I particularly like how he has thought through the social implications of decisions he made in designing his software. There are real consequences to these decisions, and it's important to foster the sense of community, rather than stomping it into the ground.
http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswithSo.html