We have multiple layers of governance in place. The Community manager is the first line of governance, most of the time I can resolve any issues myself. Not looking forward to those kinds of problem on any more. Sense I left my old community to NetApp I have not had to ban one person.

True, it is an internal implementation. I tend to focus primarily on internal implementations for my clients and my company. I have a few thoughts on some of your questions though. Again these are for internal implementations...

Policy Setting - Went with the "Use Your Head" policy. There was some early discussion about stating which system (Doc Management, Intranet, Wiki) folks should use for various purposes. We scoffed stating that policy should not be a veiled attempt at tool bigotry. The usage matrix ended up being made but adherence is limited. Offer compelling tools and users will gravitate toward the ones they find easiest to use. Oh...and make sure you have a good search engine :)

Functional Group Turf Wars - We are a professional services firm. I think turf wars are SOP. We encourage them to happen in the open so that the wisdom of the crowds can determine who is right and who is greedy. More often than not, one side is not willing to do battle in the clear. The other side de facto wins. 

Multi-level governance model:

-- 0th level: Terms of Usage posted with some very simple "guidelines" (not policy, not rules, etc.)

-- 1st level: community managers and/or helpful individuals

-- 2nd level: corporate platform managers

-- 3rd level: exec sponsor (me)

-- 4th level: ad-hoc committee of exec VPs (IT, HR, etc.) if we encounter something that requires some serious discussion

Levels 0 through 2 are open and transparent, e.g. anyone can comment and/or contribute.

Since Sept 07, we've only had a small handful of issues that haven't been solved at levels 0 through 2 -- very minor, just growing pains.

We have an E-governance Board.  They consist of representatives from major stakeholder organizations (agencies).  Most of them work in their organization's communications department.  They make the high level decisions and provide guidance to the Clearspace implementation and the external facing website.

I'm the E-government manager who serves as staff to that committee along with my staff.

Each Agency has a high level space and Community Manager and sub community managers.  We push down as much control as the Clearspace product will allow us to so they can support their space locally.

We have a support space that my group monitors to help the Community Managers and regular collaborators.

We have created a policy (ver. 1.0) around use for those who participate.

Steve,

Here is the short version...if you want longer version let me know:

Program owner (me in this case)

Legal (partners with program owner on any risk issues)

Uber-community manager (oversight and information brokering)

Community managers (we have several for each channel community)

Director Web (senior resource for guidance and advice)

Tech strategist (owns technical issues related to governance)

Jive (consultation and best practices, when needed)

GEO partners (one rep from each geography acting as partner for community global issues)

This core team can address most strategic issues as they arise. As the program owner I schedule regular meetings and define escalation process.

Hope this helps a bit. This is a very short version in that we are a very large organization with many "channel communities" (all private--locked) and each requirement some level of customization.

Our channel communities have been operating globally for about a year, focused on about 200k resellers around the world.

Cheers,

Scott