  In this paper, we apply social network analytic methods to unveil the
structural dynamics of a popular open source goal oriented IRC community,
Ubuntu. The primary objective is to track the development of this ever growing
community over time using a social network lens and examine the dynamically
changing participation patterns of people. Specifically, our research seeks out
to investigate answers to the following question: How can the communication
dynamics help us in delineating important substructures in the IRC network?
This gives an insight into how open source learning communities function
internally and what drives the exhibited IRC behavior. By application of a
consistent set of social network metrics, we discern factors that affect
people's embeddedness in the overall IRC network, their structural influence
and importance as discussion initiators or responders. Deciphering these
informal connections are crucial for the development of novel strategies to
improve communication and foster collaboration between people conversing in the
IRC channel, there by stimulating knowledge flow in the network. Our approach
reveals a novel network skeleton, that more closely resembles the behavior of
participants interacting online. We highlight bottlenecks to effective
knowledge dissemination in the IRC, so that focused attention could be provided
to communities with peculiar behavioral patterns. Additionally, we explore
interesting research directions in augmenting the study of communication
dynamics in the IRC.
