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,
Mike Rowland
Impact Interactions