Currently, combined community/content environments gain increasing importance in different areas of life, ranging from private to educational to corporate contexts. However, since they are still a novel achievement it is not so clear how they should be organised in order to their successful operation. For gaining a deeper insight in what makes such an environment work, the authors systematically analysed two public environments by evaluating user data and an online questionnaire covering the following areas: intensity of content consumption and production, preference of content types, information needs, motivation and trust, and importance of quality criteria. From the results a number of recommendations for providers were derived.