You teach what you accept: As true in parenting as it is in online community management
15th February 2010, 12:00 pm by Simon Phillips
- Image by Audra B via Flickr
As Mumsnet celebrates it’s 10th anniversary an article in yesterday’s Sunday Times titled: The bullies hiding behind Mumsnet’s skirts discussed how some members of the Mumsnet community have become “spiteful and cliquey” along with obscene language that now “peppers the website”.
As any parent knows (I certainly do to my cost) that if a parent allows one perhaps questionable aspect of their child’s behaviour to be acceptable that particular behaviour is soon learnt by that child’s sibling(s). This could not be truer when translated to online communities.
An established support community whether run as a not-for-profit or as in Mumsnet case on a commercial basis play a vital role in bringing together isolated people seeking answers to questions. With the wisdom of crowds phenomenon, communities help individuals with the most complex problems and in the process create a valuable asset for the organisation running the community.
Online communities’ need experienced community management from the start if their community is to grow into a vibrant, healthy and nurturing environment. By following a pre-agreed launch and community growth strategy the tone and etiquette of the resulting community activity also reflects the overall culture of the organisation hosting it.
This isn’t just about moderation. In fact moderation is rarely necessary where an effective community manager runs the community. They can recognise the patterns of behavior indicating potential problems in the future. These patterns are largely predictable in the path they take so that path can be shifted or influenced.
In the absence of proactive online community management, two less desirable outcomes are most likely:
- No one will come and because of that no one else wants to come.
- The community starts well but then is taken over by a few members selfishly for their own ends. Which if left unchecked can be extremely damaging for the organisation behind the community.
Perhaps some rocky teenage years lie ahead for Mumsnet?
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Rachel Happe:
This is a pretty simple but profound (and for some people hard to understand) point. People get the relationships that they tolerate. It works in one-to-one relationships and in communities. One of the things we try to instill in the community managers with whom we work is that if you do everything for your members, they will not do for themselves. Community leaders will not emerge and eventually the culture of the community will become a hub-spoke co-dependent environment of learned helplessness. Also very similar to parenting.
The most important tools in the community manager toolbox are having firm boundary conditions (articulating what is not acceptable and being firm/consistent about it) and knowing how to encourage and support the behaviors you do want without doing things for others out of expediency. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
15 February 2010, 2:05 pmSue:
What confuses many, is that as Community Manager’s we rarely manage, but instead lead. We set the tone that we ask others to follow.
15 February 2010, 2:46 pmMike Rowland:
Hi Simon,
Gotta disagree with the statement: “In fact moderation is rarely necessary where an effective community manager runs the community.”
This is a myth that just isn’t true for public facing communities, especially large communities. In the more than ten years that I’ve been in this industry, this remains one of the more pervasive myths that continues to be retold as truth. Part of being a community manager is being a moderator in order to establish the community norms with your members. This is a continuouse function of a competent manager. Nowhere is this more important than at the early stages of your community.
At the early maturity stage of a public community, the community manager must moderate in order to establish the community norms of behavior. That means removing offensive content or language or attacks. It also requires that the community manager contact the members whos content he/she has removed/edited. Otherwise the wrong example is set and the behavioral expectations are going to be harder to realize. If you don’t step in early, the bullies and soapboxers will dominate and reinforce the behavior that you don’t want to see (or that your client doesn’t want to see). Once that happens, your growth in realized value will slow as members join more to fight or spam or advertise rather than to contribute to a meaningful goal.
As the community matures, the need for behavioral moderation remains. Why? Because members don’t want to self-police and if they do, they often go after people they disagree with rather than true violations of the community norms or ToS.
Granted, we may be biased as we offer moderation and management services to our clients. But our experience does show that it is up to the community manager to continue to help the community establish and modify its norms. To say that this requirement doesn’t contain moderation is incorrect.
We covered this topic at the OCUE09 and blogged our notes (presentation available on our site) at http://impactinteractions.com/best-practices/community-myth-busting-ocue2009-presentation-notes/196
Regards,
15 February 2010, 3:20 pmMike Rowland
Impact Interactions
Raising Good Communities:
[...] management to parenting. Connie Bensen made the analogy and recently Simon Phillips wrote a post You Teach What You Accept that got at a similar behavior modeling aspect of community management. It’s a very apt [...]
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