The single biggest reason why members leave a community...and what you can do about it - Michael Norton

Richard say "It's not the conflicts, spam, provocative members, off-topic discussions and technology troubles that will cause members to quit. 

In extreme proportions (notably with spam), members might eventually leave. But in practice, members don’t quit because of singular issues – and certainly not singular events.

Members leave a community because it's no longer very interesting. There aren't any interesting discussions, events, and activities taking place. Members aren't emotionally invested in the success of the community. Members don't care about building friendships with other members. 

You should be very worried, every day, about how interesting your community is before you worry about other issues. You should worry whether:

• You have popular self-disclosure discussions taking place.
• You're effectively promoting these popular discussions in the content, newsletter and e-mails.
• You have exciting events coming up.
• Members are creating content for the community.
• There are interesting opportunities for members to be more involved.
• There is an upcoming goal/achievement/battle/milestone the community is working towards.
• The community is creating enough content about members. Do you talk about what members are doing, what they’re achieving, what discussions are taking place and interview members on a frequent basis (content about people is always the most interesting)?

It's healthy (for the community) if you wake up every morning worrying about whether the community is interesting enough."