The unnatural lingo of the online world
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As online professionals, like any profession, we have a set of words and terms relating to our job. We talk about moderation and trolls and forums.
We talk about features and modules and fields. But unlike many other professions, we also expect the lay people using all those things to recognise what they mean.
We use a very unnatural language, and I’m concerned that it puts up false barriers between users and the platforms they’re engaging with.
Why do we use these funny, clunky words?I think it’s two-fold. The first adopters of online communities were tech-enthusiasts, of course. They were – and I use this term fondly – geeks. And as a geek I can attest that geek-language is not Joe Bloggs’ language. But the early lingo got stuck, and when the Joe and Joanna Bloggs’ of the world started to find their way to email discussion lists, instant messenger, and ultimately online communities, the lingo was set.
Early community managers tended to be the person that had been their longest or showed most interest (again, likely to be a geek), and naturally, the lingo would remain and be dished out top-down. Let’s start with ‘community manager’.
On our recent blog, What does a community manager do? I included a word cloud of all the one-word suggestions we’d had in answer to that question.Not one of them was ‘manage’.
So are we really community managers? Am I really Head of Community Management? Do we manage communities, or do we do something else? By far the most popular words were ‘facilitate’, ‘enables’ and ‘connects’.
None of those are really anything like management.
What would be a better job title? What do we really do?
Community Connector?
Community Enabler?
Communication Facilitator?
All rather ugly… what do you think?And then we have ‘Trolls’, as @SueOnTheWeb suggests. Yes, offline we have insults of course, but these don’t normally become professional parlance. I’m sure the police don’t have handbooks about dealing with ‘crims’, even if they say far worse than that in the locker room.
Trolling apparently dates back to early 90s Usenet group, alt.folklore.urban, but its meaning has been adapted and is standard community/moderation speak. It doesn’t – and shouldn’t – mean anything to a happy community member though, perhaps time to give up the geek-speak?
Moderation, of course, is the backbone of a healthy community. Whether it’s reactive-moderation, post-moderation or simply a culture of self-censorship amongst users, such as with many mature email communities, it’s vital.
But does the word ‘moderation’ really mean anything to most people? When we write our disclaimers and use the word, does it mean what we think it does to community users or is it just another word to gloss over?
Do we not need something a bit better, a bit more ‘human’?
Of course we have the abbreviations, the ROTFLMAOs and the LOLs and the IYKWIMs… and that’s fine, that’s a snowball that’s melted across all social media and even seeped into emails and txtspk so that non-community connected people (like my mother-in-law and mum) will use it.
And for many people that’s part of the fun of using social platforms. But it can also be very exclusive to people new to the experience. We probably can’t do anything to prevent the spread, in fact, embracing it is part of the community management experience at many communities, but if we run abbreviation-heavy communities, the least we can do is slap up a dictionary, like iVillage do on their message boards.
So again, what’s missing? What lingo remains solely to divide people? What should be replaced with more human words and what can community managers do to ensure language-use doesn’t create unhealthy cliques?
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Matt Rhodes:
The language we use in the online profession is a great example of argot. A secret language used so that people in the profession can talk to each other (the original argot was probably between groups of thieves in 17th Century France: les argotiers).
There are very clear and sensible reasons that argot develops. Either:
1) There is a clear need (often as a requirement for group survival) to develop an excluding language. This was very clearly the purpose for the argotiers. They didn’t want outsiders to know what they were doing
2) The group has a need to express concepts that are unique to them and are not necessarily (initially at least) needed to be used with people not in the group
For many professions I think it is much more the latter than the former. They need to talk about concepts and ideas with each other that are unique to that profession and don’t need to be shared externally. This is where argot comes into play.
Of course the real trick is not to let this internal language be used externally – especially not when another word might do here where you often worry less about being precise. That’s where too many professions fall down. And where too much jargon is used.
So a simple rule: in your group use a level of language that lets you express what you need to express in the detail needed; externally make sure you are clear (but precise)in what you say.
Lanaguage is a beautiful thing.
23 December 2009, 12:40 pmCatherine:
Some great points here, Holly.
The whole thing reminds me of the language of music. You can listen and appreciate what’s on the surface or you can get down into the nuts and bolts of it, pulling it to pieces and getting extra-technical.
What’s important is that it’s down to the individual and that they can enjoy it either way.
I tend to think that the language of online communities is relatively accessible and that if people want to get involved with it, they’ll find a way.
23 December 2009, 12:46 pmSue John:
A great post Holly. I’ve often think CM’s speak a different language. I have to try and and remember not use certain terms to newbies to our community as they often don’t know what they mean.
Sue
(BTW – A merry Christmas to you and all the Fresh Networks team)
23 December 2009, 12:55 pmAndrea:
I agree that the language we use can be alienating for some users. When I managed a parenting community, some of the new members had basic usability issues, often caused by lingo and abbreviations that they didn’t understand. I was asked many times what a ‘PM’ (private message) was. Perhaps another word to be included in the role description for Community Managers should be “awareness.” Understanding who your users are and their levels of technical ability can be crucial to their ability to participate fully in the community.
23 December 2009, 12:58 pmHolly Seddon:
Thank you Catherine, I think you make a good parallel with music, not knowing your bass clef from your elbow doesn’t stop you enjoying listening to music, although it may feel exclusive when musicians talk in terminology…
23 December 2009, 8:27 pmHolly Seddon:
Thank you, Sue! And a very merry Christmas and happy New Year to you too!
Holly
23 December 2009, 8:27 pmHolly Seddon:
Andrea, you’re spot on. When some people struggle with the very basics, an abbreviation too many could be all it takes to put them off completely. Interestingly, I used to run a parenting community too, and ‘PM’ was often queried.
Holly
23 December 2009, 8:29 pmJ. Fo:
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28 August 2010, 12:38 am