Thinking about becoming an online moderator? Are you ready for parenthood?

There are all kinds of excellent resources out there about community moderation, but the absolute best practice is effective parenting. Both kids and community members need to know where their limits are in terms of their behaviour. Rules make us feel safe. As much as we like to think all we want is freedom the limitless unknown doesn’t bring out the best in most people.

The role of a moderator is not to spend their time hunting down every instance of bad behaviour. Just like the role of a good parent isn’t to monitor their children 24/7. The best way to teach is to lead by example. When a person is micro-managed they learn that they aren’t perceived to be capable of making good decisions. Consequently a person who is suppressed from forming their own better judgement hasn’t any.

Modelling is by far the best way to lead a community. Instead of focusing all the moderation time on tracking down rule-breakers look for the best examples of community participation. Spend your time reinforcing these members and rewarding their contributions. The more you push forward good behaviour the less reward there is for members to abuse the community. Just like teaching a toddler not to throw a fit community members need to learn the right way to voice their frustrations.

Time-outs are effective. The time to intervene is when negative behaviour affects you personally. Only when a child’s problem becomes a parent’s problem should they get involved. Members need to learn how to manage issues on their own and shouldn’t be encouraged to report abuse instead of speaking up for themselves. If a child hits another child it’s important for a parent not to take on the anger or emotion of the victim. Instead hitting should be discussed and use leading questions to allow the child to reach their own decisions about how to react. By reacting on behalf of the child a parent is taking the child’s ability to think for themselves away from them. No one learns from lectures or emotional reactions. We all learn best when able to form our own opinions through supportive guidance.

We guide and lead as moderators. We’re not a Gestapo or private police force. Raising responsible kids who are considerate and thoughtful isn’t hard when parents get out of the way and let kids learn from their mistakes. Swooping in to rescue members doesn’t teach them how to take care of themselves and moderators waste too much time solving other people’s problems. Managing an online community is extremely rewarding – just like being a parent, but the value isn’t from how strictly you enforce the rules. The value is from enabling empowered individuals with common values to work together to solve problems for themselves.

Your Community Manager is an Artist: Let’s Celebrate CMAD

January 24^th, was Community Management Appreciation Day (otherwise known as CMAD). It’s a new role in many companies and there isn’t lots of information out there about best practice, etc. Many companies hide their online community team for fear of disgruntled customers pulling a Travis Bickle. (I’ve never heard of anything like that happening, but it seems to be a common ‘security’ measure.) So it’s really important to celebrate these vital individuals who are commonly unseen.

An interesting thing about being a community manager, or a moderator, is that every company views this role in their own unique way. A community manager might be a part of the marketing or PR team at one company and a part of the customer service team at another. Jeremiah Owyang has created a great post about the corporate view of a community manager.

In truth, the community manager is neither marketing nor customer service. The community manager is something entirely unique from traditional departments. I believe that the community manager is a storyteller and an artist. A storyteller who understands how to lead groups of people down a common thought. An artist who inspires people to participate and share their own content.

If the community manager is to sit in any particular department it should be within an innovation team. Thought leadership is very important because too often the tools cripple an online community to reach greater heights. It’s sometimes hard to see the dollars and cents behind registered users the tools provided are minimal and horrible to use. Businesses are thinking, “now that I have an email address I can push products and potentially sell something”- wrong. This assumes that you know what the registered user wants, but in actuality; the registered user is a guide to brand longevity.

For a community to work there has to be a purpose for it, i.e. cultivating trust (sharing personal information), collaborating on editorial content, creating a tool, designing products, brainstorming ways to improve software, sell something, etc. The community manager’s job is to spot the top contributors and give them support. To build new chapters of the story which inspires members to flesh out details and develop the plot.

When regular users get bored of the same old conversation things turn negative quite fast. Regular members need another layer of engagement. Too often the loudest and most negative members end up sucking all of the energy and inspiration out the community. The focus gets lost in the reports of bad behaviour, spam and negative feedback. The individuals who are contributing to the story are the heart of the community.

Community management is about setting up a plot for fans to role play. Once the rules are outlined participation becomes a game. As an example, one of the first forums I managed was for a short lived Canadian TV series called Falcon Beach. Fans of the show loved to chat in the forum, but there needed to be a subtext–otherwise; the discussions quickly inflamed into arguments about who knew the most about the show and its stars. I decided to create a section for fan fiction; which gave the die-hard members a project that other members could rate and comment. Following my analogy I gave the fans a new chapter to write on their own. Although we don’t know what the story will be about we know the rules of creating the story. This made the fans feel like their participation was leading them to uncovering the unspoken thoughts of the show’s characters and helped the writers see their characters through the eyes of the audience.

Communities need a purpose- this is why Wikipedia is such a success. There has to be a common link beyond the initial motivation to participate; as well as, recognition for quality contributions. Otherwise, the vibe of the community turns feral and you’ll have a Lord of the Flies scenario on your hands. With the example of Falcon Beach it was very important to use the ideas from fan fiction and explore ways to involve the fans into the storyline of the show.

A community is a story that is never really finished; the real-time version of The Never Ending Story. This is why marketing or public relations cannot “own” an online community- you can’t influence it with promotions. Essentially, the community guidelines are the prelude to the story. The purpose of the community must be clear and sandboxes need to exist to house members who don’t expand the plot. The intention has to be very clear and the community manager becomes a gardener attending to the weeds and beautiful flowers. The result is a story that has a pulse and its own unique purpose.