The Pillar SummitProfessional Community Management

Engagement MasterclassLesson 2: Moderation

Introduction

For most people, community management is often imagined solely through the lens of moderation. There is some truth to this. Many community managers spend the majority of their time moderating the community. This means they resolve disputes, punish or remove wayward members and ensure discussions stay on topic.

However, as we will learn in this lesson, this is an overly restrictive and often futile approach to moderation. Moderation is a role that encompasses a far greater number of activities, and is just one element of successful community management.

In this lesson we challenge many of the basic assumptions about moderation. We question its purpose and put forward a better approach to moderating a successful online community.

In the six key concepts included in this lesson, we suggest six distinctive community management strategies and highlight how a community can develop practical online community guidelines. We then put together a simple framework for resolving a dispute between community members and handling wayward members.

Finally, we shift our focus to structuring the community. This includes both dissipating and concentrating activity. We all examine how a community stimulates, responds to discussions and uses moderator powers to steer a community.

Lesson Aims

By the end of this lessons participants should be able to:

1) Understand the broader role of moderation within the field of community management.

2) Decide a community moderation objective and a strategy to suit this objective.

3) Create community guidelines and develop a community constitution that are both widely read and shape interaction within the community.

4) Use moderation powers to concentrate and dissipate activity when appropriate.

5) Stimulate and sustain a high number of discussions within the community.

6) Shift the focus of the community through use of moderation powers.

Background

Neither academics nor practitioners agree upon a single definition of community moderation. Offline, the act of moderating, by definition, is the act of removing the extremes. In practice, moderators usually preside over group discussions of varying nature.

In this presiding role, the moderator might set the agenda for discussion, ensure the discussion stays on topic, invite members to participate and summarize the discussion at its conclusion.

Moderators of online communities perform a more encompassing role. This role, which has existed since the earliest online communities were formed, involves removing content that contravenes the rules, standards or values of the community. The purpose of the moderator is to create an environment in which people can feel comfortable to interact. Traditionally, the founder of the community acted as the moderator.

Yet this is a simplistic definition of a role that encompasses a far broader range of activities. Thus, whilst many of the aspects of the moderator role defined in this lesson may not be associated as a ‘moderator’ as defined in an academic sense, the widespread use of the title within communities means this is the name we shall continue to use here. A more appropriate name, as we shall explore, is a community facilitator.

Facilitation

As we have highlighted, the role of moderator is too restrictive for proper online community development. It neglects many of the key tasks a moderator performs. For the purposes of this online community course, we will combine the traditional role of moderator with that of a related concept, facilitation.

Facilitation is the art of improving communication and/or collaboration between groups. In practice, this refers to removing obstacles that prevent communication, increasing the ease at which people can communicate, and providing the motivation for people to communicate with each other.

Academics hold several similar, but competing, definitions for facilitator. These range from an individual who enables groups to work more effectively (Schwarz, 1994) to those whom create the structure and processes for groups to better communicate (Bens, 2005) and those which support everyone to communicate at their best (Kaner, 2007).

The facilitation of groups is not to be confused with social facilitation, which is a term used to describe how the impact of others affects tasks performed by the individual.

What do online moderators/facilitators do?

The role of online facilitation has been well discussed within an e-learning environment. Collins and Berge (1996) define the online facilitator role within four task-orientated categories. These are:

1) Pedagogical (intellectual:task) – This is solely related to an e-learning environment and means to contribute unique expertise/insight into the group discussion. However, this also has a clear relevance to community managers with unique insight into the brand/organization.

2) Social – Creates a friendly, social environment - This includes promoting human relationships, affirming and recognizing input, providing opportunities to develop a sense of community, maintain the group as a unit and helping members to work together.

3) Managerial (organizational, procedural, administrative) - Sets the agenda for the community and overlooks the managerial tasks. This includes managing the flow and direction of the discussion without participants. Use meta-comments (comments about the discussions themselves) to remedy problems in context, norms, agenda, clarify, irrelevance and information overload.

4) Technical. Ensures participants are comfortable with the technology being used - Ultimate goal is to make the technology transparent.

With the exception for e-learning only related tasks, this is directly useful for understanding the role of moderators within an online community. Moderators create a friendly social environment, ensure a smooth technical experience and manage problems in the discussion.

However, even this description does not fully encompass the role of moderation. The process of paying for an e-learning experience is different from the process of joining an online community. Each involves a different level of cost and commitment. E-learners are likely to be more committed and motivated to participate than community members. The community manager must therefore be have a greater focus on stimulating activity as well as managing it.

Barriers to participation

For a community founded by an organization, there are many reasons why moderation is an essential role. Without a moderator, the community may fall victim to an attack from spammers, be overwhelmed by conflict, be dominated by a small insider group, be legally liable for actions, burn out of activity, or overwhelm members with information (information overload).

Each of these are barriers which would prevent participation within the community. We will cover these in further detail below:

Spammers

Unmoderated communities are likely to fall victim to spammers. These are individuals or ‘bots’ (software scripts which automatically create many accounts on a platform) which post promotional messages to the annoyance of community members.

Unmoderated communities are frequently overrun by spammers. These spammers drown out the voice of genuine participants and sabotage any meaningful conversation. In recent years registration technology, such as asking registrants an obvious question a pre-programmed bot struggles to answer (e.g. What is Michael Jackson’s surname?), or including a code verification graphic bots cannot read, has helped prevent attacks from pre-programmed spammers.

However, few anti-spam processes can prevent genuine people from registering and spamming the community. Yet this requires a far greater effort and thus reduces the benefit to spammers significantly (spammers often only need 1 response amongst millions to earn a profit).

Even the most sophisticated technology has not entirely been able to prevent spammers (bots or human) from entering a community and posting promotional messages. Therefore a community moderator needs to be very aware of this problem and remove such messages quickly when they do appear.

Inappropriate material.

Similar to spamming above, the community might instead become an inhospitable place for a community to develop by the repeated posting of inappropriate material by members which isn’t removed.

This material may include flaming comments (deliberately provocative attacks on individuals), the publishing of off-topic messages to the wrong discussion boards, posting of pornography or illegal software or thinly veiled promotional messages from members related to their own businesses.

Conflict

As we shall later cover, conflict can have a positive impact upon an online community. However, constant conflict will have a negative impact upon the community. Few people wish to visit a community solely to argue. Eventually members will drift in to other communities which are less tolerant of direct conflict and personal attacks on members.

A community moderator is needed to resolve conflicts before they become an obstacle to participating in the community.

Information overload

Information overload is an increasingly important concept both in the halls of academia and amongst street-smart practitioners. A community which becomes too difficult to follow will repel both new and existing members.

Jones et al. (2008) found empirical evidence that information overload constrained interaction. Most notably, they found that 40 participants in an online conversation within 20 minutes was the maximum number which could be sustained.

Jones et al. (2008) also found that as the volume of messages increases, users are:

1) More likely to respond to simpler messages2) More likely to end active participation3) More likely to generate simpler responses as the overloading of mass interaction grows.

A community moderator can help prevent information overload by dissipating activity more broadly into specific interest matters in the community or implementing a tighter moderation policy.

Lack of narrative

An unmoderated community lacks a narrative which members can follow. Similar to information overload above, it becomes difficult to follow the discussions and individuals no longer feel they are experiencing the community in a similar way. For example, it may become difficult for members to know who and what is popular within a community at any given time.

A community moderator must help create that narrative within the community and provide structure to the daily discussions and debates.

Declining activity

A community moderator plays a major role in stimulating and sustaining discussions within a community. A community without a moderator can struggle to sustain a critical mass of activity. Members are reluctant to participate in communities that do not appear active, yet activity cannot increase without their contributions. A dip in activity can become a downward spiral without a moderator to take corrective action.

The modern online community moderator role

All of the above are obstacles which prevent participation in the community. In addition to removing these obstacles, or preventing their creation, the moderator also provides the motivation for members to participate.

This means directly or indirectly stimulating and sustaining activity within the community. This can be done directly (initiating discussions, soliciting opinions to questions, messaging members to invite them to start a discussion) or through more psychological processes (highlighting specific activity, concentrating discussions, shaping motivational community guidelines etc…)

We know, for example, that stronger sense of community leads to increased participation. A community moderator can work to build this sense of community through increasing the level of meaningful interactions, encouraging members to self-disclosure information about themselves, establishing correct group sizes and helping members be friend others in the group.

Finally, the role of the community moderator will also involve both overt and subtle direct via steering principles and the creation of guidelines/principles for discussions.

For the remainder of this lesson, we will fully explore the full scope of the moderator’s role within the community and highlight specific steps the moderator can take to support and further develop their community.

Key Concept 1 – Moderation Strategy

A community manager’s moderation efforts will include both those which are maintenance based, and thus constant throughout the stages of community development, and those which are strategic. It is the latter which are the focus of this key concept.

A community needs a moderation strategy. A moderation strategy should fit with the broader strategy for the online community to further progress the community to the next stage of the community lifecycle.

This moderation strategy must highlight specifically what moderation of the community is designed to achieve. This will usually be expressed in one of the following goals:

1) Increase the number of participating members. The objective of moderation might be to increase the overall number of participating members. This will be useful for both communities that are growing and those which have a significant participation inequality (a tiny number of members providing a majority of the posts).

2) Increase the number of posts. A moderation strategy might be designed to increase the total number of posts in the community. This means more activity from existing members. This can be measured by the total number of posts to a community within a given time frame.

3) Increase the number of discussions. If few members are initiating discussions, a moderation strategy may be focused upon increasing the number of discussions. This will lead to greater levels of participation, sense of ownership and activity overall. The goal is not necessarily to get members responding to discussions, but to get more members initiative discussions.

4) Improve the quality of discussion. This is highly subjective, but is an excellent objective when it fits with the community’s positioning and sense of identity. Increasing or focusing the quality of discussions can attract more members and engage members at a deeper level. This will involve steering the community and tighter moderation policies. This is very common in communities of practice and profession. The rapidly growing StackExchange network is built entirely upon the quality of discussions as a unique positioning tool.

5) Facilitate closer bonds between members. An objective for many community moderators is to develop stronger relationships between members. This increases the overall strength of the community. This follows a relationship pattern, which we will identify below.

6) Focus/Steer the community. A moderator can steer the community to focus on specific topics, goals or people. This is a process we shall better explained in depth in the key concepts.

A moderator should have one or more of these goals as their objective. This objective should be reviewed every 3 to 6 months to measure progress and take actions as necessary.

As we have previously mentioned, many moderators assume a solely reactive approach to community moderation. In this role they remove the posts which violate the rules of the community or are inappropriate for the community’s discussions. However, such a reactive role has does little to benefit the community.

Key Concept 2 – Moderator Guidelines

Traditionally, a moderator creates guidelines establishing what is and isn’t acceptable in the community. These guidelines are restrictive and define what a community member should not do.

The problem with writing restrictive guidelines is few members read them. The members who do take the time and effort to read such guidelines are also the members least likely to violate them.

In many communities, guidelines remain a referral document for the community moderator to cite when disciplining a wayward member. This wastes an excellent opportunity to create guidelines that inform members about the platform and help members to make their first steps in to the community.

Therefore, instead of writing guidelines as a restrictive measure that explains what members cannot do, guidelines should be written as a positive measure detailing what members should do in the community.

The traditional community guidelines can be divided into two separate documents. One created by the community and one developed by the community moderator. These two documents are the community constitution and the community welcome guide.

Welcome Guide

The welcome guide is a document which explains the culture of the community and helps members to get started. This should be specific in what members can do, but it should not appear, nor read, as a rules document.This welcome guide should include:

1) How to get started. This should cover what is the new and popular in the community that week. This should list specific activities members can participate in immediately. This should be specific about what members might like to say and how to say it (i.e. avoid making errors of etiquette). Refer to the previous lesson for more information on this.

2) Community culture. This should detail the culture of the community. This might mention any inside community jokes, basic etiquette, rituals and a list of the most common topics. It is also prudent to advise members what not to do when they make a contribution. What tone of voice, words, topics and language should they avoid using?

3) Community history. The welcome guide should also include a summary of the community’s history (linked to after the summary) explaining the evolution of the community. This should read as an interesting guide to the biggest conversation, key moments and controversial issues.

Community Constitution

The online community constitution is a collection of principles established by the community defining the community’s purpose and basic conduct. Unlike the welcome guide that is specific in its activities, the constitution should remain a broad set of guiding principles for the community.

A constitution should not established by the organization at the initial launch of the community, but should be a process the community is engaged in shortly after critical mass of activity has been achieved.

The community manager sets this process by contacting founding members and volunteers for their thoughts on the constitution. Together, these few members craft a draft set of principles for the community. This should be a short document which define the following:

1) Purpose of the community. Why does the community exist? What benefit does it provide to members? Is the purpose to exchange information? Give each other a support group? Share emotions/feelings? Make friends with likeminded people?

2) Personality of the community. What is the personality of the community? Loving? Jovial? Serious? Intelligent? Sarcastic? Let the community members identify what they believe the personality of the community is. The moderator should be willing to solicit other decisions.

3) Beliefs of the community. What does the community believe in? Do they believe that information should be free? That certain products should be banned? What films should be better? That humour is the best medicine? What are the core, sacred, beliefs of the community?

4) Community governance. How is the community run? What rights/powers/protections do members have? How do members gain more power? What can the community manager do or not do? It is important to define the role of the community manager in enforcing admin powers.

Developing this constitution is a collaborative exercise. The community moderator must engage members and proactively seek their input (if not entrusting the entire process to volunteers). The purpose is to provide members with an opportunity to develop a greater sense of ownership over the community.

This constitution should be a document which is revised at biannual periods during the lifetime of the community. This allows newcomers to contribute to the constitution and encourages members to again visit the platform.Once these draft set of principles have been obtained, it should be put before the remaining members of the community for their input. Input should be

proactively solicited at this stage. The greater number of members who participate in this process, the greater number of people will support the community and feel they have a sense of ownership over the very essence of the community. This will lead to increased participation and evangelism for the platform.

Numerous studies have found groups are more likely to obey rules they themselves have established than those imposed upon them by authorities.

Key Concept 3 – Resolving Conflicts & Antagonistic Members

Resolving conflicts and calming antagonistic members can be a time-consuming process. Many community moderators spend the majority of their time resolving disputes between members and complaints against members.

However, few community moderators excel at resolving conflicts, notably conflicts between groups, and many hesitate in removing members.Community moderators therefore need a clear process to resolve conflicts, and handle antagonistic members.

The benefits of conflicts

Conflict in a community is not necessarily going to hurt the community. Conflict is often assumed to be a greater threat than it merits. Many conflicts between members help develop the community, highlight issues people are passionate about and increase the sense of community between members.

Scott Peck (1990) identified four stages of community:

1) Pseudo-community. This is the first phase where members are keen to get along. Members are usually extremely polite here and keen to establish a pleasant social order.

2) Chaos. Conflict begins taking place between members. Members feel comfortable enough to assert themselves.

3) Emptiness. The community lacks a social order after a large number of fights.

4) True community. Members have established strong relationships and express themselves honestly and genuinely. Members have developed a process for dealing and handling conflicts.

Conflict is an essential stage of community progression. Whilst Peck’s work has critics, almost all literature relating to stages of group development will refer to a period of conflict in which members express themselves and establish a sense of order based upon an enhanced understanding of each other.

It is therefore important to allow conflict to happen within the community. Passionate debates are important to the community. Even if members are overly assertive in their approach to arguing their belief, the community moderator should not step in by default.

Debates are engaging for members. Members are likely to participate more frequently if they are involved in a heated debate about issues they are passionate about. This is in contrary to popular belief that members will leave

the community as a result of disputes. There is no evidence to support this belief and plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Members are far more likely to leave because the community is boring, i.e. there is little to emotionally engage them. This is common in communities in which there is no friction between members or heavy-handed moderation of such conflicts. For example, if members are engaged in a heated debate about the greatest footballer of all time – a moderator should not lock the thread from further discussions.

When should the community moderator be involved?

A conflict only requires resolution when it becomes an obstacle to participation. This obstacle can become apparent in two forms. The first is when the conflict turns personal. Members may be assertive and direct in expressing their view on the topic, but personal attacks cross the line. E.g. “You’re wrong!” is perfectly fine “You’re a retard if you believe that” crosses the line and provokes a personal argument which has no place in the community and offers no benefit to the community.

The second is when the conflict spreads into other areas of the community or overwhelms other discussions on the platform. If the same conflict keeps arising, unprompted in a variety of threads, topics, groups or categories, the community manager must step in and resolve the issue between members.

Causes of conflicts

There are several competing theories for causes of interpersonal conflict. Amongst the more popular is that put forward by Barki et al. (2001) which separates the causes conflicts into five distinct categories.

1) Individual characteristics. Conflicts caused by individual attributes which are prone to antagonising the other. For example, an extremely laid back person working on a project with someone with a high attention to detail.

2) Team characteristics. Conflicts caused by attributes of one team against the attributes of another. This is relevant when the online communities attract segments that may conflict. For example, those with strong beliefs for and against religion, political groups, or methods of undertaking activities.

3) Project characteristics. These are conflicts caused by a task at hand. Projects with a tight deadline or that force some individuals to work in a manner they are unaccustomed to is likely to provoke a conflict between individuals.

4) Organizational characteristics. In organizations conflicts may be caused when the organization role has overlapping areas of responsibility, where there is competition between individuals for senior positions.

5) Environmental characteristics. These are conflicts caused by the environment. Barki et al. based this upon in-person environments, such as shortages of resources, adverse conditions etc. In communities this may be relevant to the need for attention.

Loss of status

Most causes of online conflicts are very similar. Members are concerned about losing status before other members. As all discussions in a community are public, a disagreement can quickly provoke a defensive reaction that begins a downward conflict spiral. A member feels the need to protect their status in the community.

The two members enter in a perceived zero sum game where for one to maintain their status the other has to lose. However, neither will ever feel defeated and, unlike in real world scenarios where one will eventually back down, online members will continue debating indefinitely. Selecting a strategy to resolve the conflict

Blake and Mouton (1964) present five styles for resolving interpersonal conflicts. These are:

1) Problem-solving2) Smoothing3) Forcing4) Withdrawal5) Sharing

This framework was later adapted by Thomas and Kilmann (1976) (and popularly cited in Wikipedia) into five simple strategies for addressing conflict. These are:

1) Accommodation. Persuading one party to cave in to the other’s demands. This may be achieved by persuading one member to take the high road or exchanging the need to have the last word with a mention in an upcoming news post (or other form of recognition).

2) Avoidance. Persuading one or both sides to leave the conflict behind without a defined resolution. This may also achieve by distracting members or otherwise preoccupying the members.

3) Collaboration. This is where both sides are persuaded to work together to find a resolution.

4) Compromise. Reach an agreement that fits with the needs of both parties. This is difficult, but the idea resolution when achieved.

5) Competition. Asserting one viewpoint at the expense of the other. This deliberately rejects the view of one participant in the conflict to satisfy the other. This might be relevant in a conflict between a newcomer and a regular.

Resolving a conflict

Once a member has sparked a conflict that turns personal (or dominates discussions outside of the topic), it is important for the community manager to intervene to achieve a resolution.

The community manager must determine which conflict resolution technique to use. Not all of these strategies are created equal. Accommodation and compromise are the most common, with collaboration and competition the least common conflict resolution strategies. Avoidance may only serve as a temporary solution if there are simmering tensions that are not resolved.

To resolve a conflict, the community manager should directly interact with all members concerned by e-mail or personal message (not by public discussion). The community manager should explain that the conflict is harming the community and it needs to end. One channel is to use an e-mail with a cc’ to all concerned and see if they can chat between themselves and resolve the issue.

The community moderator may then create an e-mail outlining the issue and suggesting options the participants may agree on. Each can then reply with their own concerns until they have found a resolution.

Rig the game against the participants

One approach to force the issue is to suspend both members from participating in the community until they have resolved the conflict between themselves. This uses basic game theory to rig the game against the two participants.

The purpose of this is to create a force against further conflict and supporting . Members who cannot participate in a community until they have resolved differences have a force compelling them to resolve their conflict beyond simple gestures for the sake of the community.

Key Concept 4 – Concentrating And Dissipating Activity

A community needs to appear highly active without overwhelming members. This requires the moderator to maintain a careful community-balancing act of concentrating and dissipating activity.

This role is further complicated by the irritation members will feel if the platform changes too frequently. Members prefer familiarity in their surroundings. A community that changes its structure too frequently will upset members.

The challenge is to balance activity without changing the structure more frequently than necessary.

The activity principle

Once a significant level of activity has been achieved within one area of the community (section of the site, group or forum category), it should be roughly sustained within that level. If the level of activity begins a slow decline, it may need to be combined with other areas of the community. If the level of activity continues to rise, it may need to be split into two categories to avoid information overload.

Concentrating Activity

Many online communities fall victim to having activity spread thinly across too many categories/groups etc…. This causes several problems. First, the community platform feels empty. This emptiness dissuades potential contributors from making a post in the belief less people will read and respond to their contribution.

This sense of emptiness will also impact the sense of community that members feel with one another. As the community feels empty, it will appear less successful and members will be less inclined to assume the community’s group identity. Members of a genuine community are participating as a contribution to the group’s future success. It is essential that the community feels successful. Activity begets further activity, inactivity begets further inactivity.

Second, members will be confused about where to post. The more options there are, the more difficult it is for members to understand where they should post a category. The member has to make a tougher decision. In an advanced community, this is less of a problem. In a community with a low level of activity, it can severely reduce the number of posts.

Third, posts are less likely to receive a response. Members would have to spend a greater amount of time browsing through mostly inactive active categories to find the posts to respond to. This decreases the likelihood of members bumping into to each other in their digital discussions.

Slow expansionAt the launch of the community, the number of areas in which posts can be made should be restricted to a mere few, perhaps just one. Only once the community has expanded and information overload is a likely issue should the community moderator dissipate this activity.

An excellent example of this is the East Dulwich case study. At the launch of the community, there were relatively few categories for members to participate in. As the community grew, so did the number of categories to accommodate what members in the community were doing.

Compare the two images below.

This was the East Dulwich community at its launch. The number of categories was heavily restricted to focus activity within key areas.

As the community grew, so did the number of activities within the community.

Remove and reduce quiet/inactive areas

A community moderator should remove quiet areas of the community or combined them, where possible, into related groups. If there are barely active groups for members from Romania, Lithuania, Russia and Czech Republic in the community, they may be either removed or combined to form a more active Eastern Europe group.

But what if within this group there is a very active group of members from Poland? Should they also be combined into the Eastern Europe group?

The answer is no. Do not infringe upon a highly active group (or category). It may be perceived as an attack on their group identity. Members are free to join the Eastern Europe group if they like, but it’s a decision they can make without interference. The majority will prefer to retain their own group identity.

Review the example of FireArms talk below. FireArms talk created sub-communities for every state in the USA regardless of popularity. Therefore, states with a high level of members such as Texas are listed alphabetically below states such as Rhode Island, Maine, and Hawaii.

In this example, it would be prudent to create sub-communities when there is a clear demand for such a category. Other states could have been included in a North-East category (if necessary). Meanwhile, Texas itself may need further sub-categories due to its overwhelming popularity.

For some organizations, this will appear disorganized and, as such, few branded communities embrace this approach. However, this is to the detriment of these branded communities. The quest for neat categories is at odds with the natural evolution of group identity. Do not be inclined to neatly categorize members at the expense of their own group identities. Let these group identities flourish in whatever form they occur.

This approach is also appropriate (and easier) for categories of discussion within the community. Inactive or low-active categories should either be combined with others or removed entirely. Recent discussions should be manually transferred to another category.

Dissipation of activity

As we highlighted previously, information overload is a significant problem for online communities. A community that is too busy can be off-putting to members. The number of active members will gradually decline to the select few who have the time to keep participating.

The community manager should therefore spend time measuring the level of activity and dissipating activity across new areas of the community when it becomes overwhelming. There are several approaches the community manager can use to dissipate activity.

A common mistake is to launch a community with a predetermined number of categories. The problem with this approach is activity is dissipated too broadly across a community. The lack of concentrated activity means few discussions get a large number of replies and the community appears empty.

It is difficult to predetermine which topics will merit their own category. Some organizations create categories which fit with their products/services/other communities, this is a mistake. It creates a feeling that the community is about the brand than about the audience.

The better approach to developing a community is to begin with a small number of categories, perhaps just one, and add more categories as the community grows. These categories should be introduced when there is a clear demand for such discussions.

Identifying friendship groups.

Another approach to develop a community is to identify friendship groups which are forming within the community and create places for them to talk. These may be open or private. They should be given a unique name relevant to these members. The most successful communities are filled with forums and groups not with names such as “General Chat” “Advice” “Classifieds” but “The London Shoreditch gang” or “The 3am insomniacs club” and “Mike and Joe’s freeze-flower forum”.

These names may make little sense to outsiders but create a strong sense of community amongst insiders. If members understand the name, it’s because they are a member of the community. This increases the sense of identity and bonds between members. These members are more likely to feel ownership over an area of the community.

By embracing a bottom up approach to dissipation, the community manager can be sure that areas of the site will be popular with members and maintain a consistent level of social density throughout the community.

Identify popular topics

A related approach is to create a new category for popular topics within the community. These topics can be identified either through their popularity, the frequency with which they are discussion, or their relevance to community members.

The community moderator should carefully watch which topics within a community gain the biggest response. For example, there might be a frequent stream of people asking novice questions about the topic. The community moderator might therefore create a separate place within the community specifically where newcomers can feel comfortable asking these questions and members can go to answer them.

Another example might be the controversial issues we identified in the audience analysis. These issues are likely to consume a lot of discussion within a general thread, so the community moderator might create a unique category for each of these issues.

Identify experts and influencers

A final method of dissipating activity throughout a community is to identify experts and influencers within the community and create sections which they can run. These people have the authority to bring others with them. They can

set the agenda for discussions, moderate discussions and enjoy the responsibility which comes with having direct control over an area of the community.

These experts and influencers can be identified either via the quality of their contributions, the quantity of their contributions or the response to their contributions from others. If the community platform embraces online reputation systems, such influencers can be quickly identified and embraced within the community.

Promoting the new group

Once a new category/group for this group of people, experts or topic has been created, the moderator should promote via the daily news story and with an e-mail to members of the community to participate. They should, where possible, also transfer existing discussions on the topic to this forum category.

New groups take a period of time to get going, the community manager must take care to ensure the community reaches the critical mass stage of the community development process prior to developing new groups.

Key Concept 5 – Stimulating Discussions and Building Relationships

The community moderator is responsible for stimulate and sustaining interactions between members. This also involves proactively creating discussions, ensuring discussions receive a reply and cajoling members to participate.

Forging friendships

People spend more time interacting with their friends than strangers. If community members are friends (real friends, not connections), they frequent visit the community to interact and satisfy their social needs. Successful communities develop many close groups of friends.

The community manager must encourage members to befriend eachother through a process of interactions, self-disclosure, and shared experience. To achieve this, we need to know how friendships develop and the community moderator’s potential role in this development.

Friendship development follows a common pattern. Initially members will meet and begin safe discussions to look for an area of commonality. If they find this common interest, they will discuss it for a period of time.

Over a series of discussions, they will begin to talk about other topics and disclosure an increasing amount of information about themselves. This is a reciprocal process which builds trust between members. This disclosure will begin in relatively safe areas, such as likes and dislikes, and steadily progress to more personal issues.

A community moderator must facilitate this self-disclosure of information. By revealing more about ourselves through our personal information, our emotions, our thoughts/feelings, our history etc.. and learning more about others we feel a strong sense of connection with them. In addition, the more we reveal the more we emotionally invest in the community.

Increasing self-disclosure

Online, self-disclosure is revealed in a many to many situation. Members will gradually reveal more and more about themselves to both the community as a whole and to individual members. The community moderator needs to help stimulate this self-disclosure by asking and encouraging questions will encourage members to reveal their thoughts, emotions and experiences.

Each act of self-disclosure by a member is an investment in the future success of the community. Over time, this steady, ongoing, process will build strong relationships between members and a highly active core group of members.

Initiating discussions

The community moderator will initiate most of the discussions in the early stages of the community. As the community grows, the community will initiate an increasing number of these discussions.

Until the community has reached the advantage stages of the maturity phase of the community lifecycle, the community manager will continue to initiate discussions.

To understand the discussions the moderator should initiate, we first need to understand what types of discussions are most popular and why people interact.

Members will broadly communicate for one of three reasons:

1) Convey information. People interact to exchange information with one another. This is the rarest of the three interactions and often misidentified as the most valuable by organizations aiming to develop a community.

2) Bond with others. This refers to all conversations which lack purpose, but increase the sense of kinship between members. This includes the chitchat between friends which leads to greater familiarity between people This is most common for newcomers to a community and existing members.

When two individuals meet they will commonly interact through safe topics and try to identify a common interest. Through such bonding discussions, members will increasingly disclosure information about themselves and gradually trust, and be trusted, by other community members.

3) Status-jockeying. Similar to bonding, people interact to defend or increase their status. This is common amongst existing members. This isn’t necessarily bad, having an established pecking order is good for community structure.

Many communities focus on conveying information. This is a mistake. Conveying information is the weakest and least common type of interaction. Information does not develop a sense of community amongst members and does not significantly increase participation.

The communities with the highest levels of activity are those which are based around bonding and status-jockeying discussions. The solution for many community managers looking to increase participation in the community is to increase the number of these discussions.

These discussions ask for opinions from members and encourage members to share their experiences. These discussions can feature either open to. closed questions.

Bonding Status Jockeying

Conveying Information

An open question lets members provide an answer of a length and type of their choosing e.g. “What do you think about ….?”. A closed question invites members to answer something specific in the community. For example, “do you prefer {x} over {y}?”

Examples of possible bonding/status discussions

Common popular discussions in online communities include:

1) What is your favourite ………. ? This question asks members to list their favourite experiences, objects, people etc…concerning the community’s topic. It’s open and allows for every individual to participate.

2) What is your average day like? People love to talk about themselves. We also like to compare our lives to the lives of others. A question along these lines will usually provoke a number of responses.

3) What do you think about ………? People are keen to express their views on relevant issues, however they are less likely to ask for the opinions of others. The community manager can initiate a discussion which asks members to express their opinion on a topical issue and summarize responses they receive.

4) What advice would you give to for someone who….? Asking for advice is a popular approach to increasing participation. People like to share what they know. This is a status-jockeying discussion. This also provides a useful vault of information for members to discover.

5) Can anyone recommend…..? Like the advice discussion above, this encourages status-jockeying as members compete to provide their best recommendations.

6) What is the worst thing that has ever happened to you whilst ….. ? Discussions which ask members to recount a memorable personal experience are excellent for bonding the community. By sharing this information members are more likely to like each other. These discussions are also interesting for others to read.

7) Can anyone fix …… ? Here the community manager or the initiator of the discussion presents a difficult problem and asks members to submit their solutions. This is a status-jockeying discussion in which members try to solve the challenge better than others for increased status in the community.

8) What is the best/worst …………….. ? This is another common post calling for people’s opinions on a topic. This may be a sub-category topic within the community’s overall scheme. These often refer to equipment, experiences, companies or products.

9) Who do you most admire…. ? These popular discussions can invite members to identify the individuals within the community’s sector whom they most admire. This is useful not only for increasing participation within a community, but also for identifying individuals to interview in the community and calling for questions for such interviews.

10) Is {x} really better than {y}? The community moderator can identify a controversial issue and use it to spark discussion in the community. This should be a discussion members will have a split opinion on. This can later be summarized into a content topic within the community.

11) If you weren’t ……….., would you ………….. ? The community moderator can stimulate a discussion by creating a hypothetical situation member and asking members how they would react to the situation.

12) Who/What are your top 5 …………… ? Ranking is addictive. The community moderator may initiate a discussion asking members to rank their top 5 anything. This may lead to an overall ranking for that subject within the community.

13) How would you handle {topical issue}? If your members in charge, how would they handle a topical issue in your sector?

14) What …… do you use? This discussion is relevant in almost all online communities. People can compare the benefits of the products/services/equipment which they use. This can also be included as a profile question.

15) Does anyone know how to ………….. ? Does anyone know provokes interest, the how to can be broad or specific. People are likely to participate.

16) Has anyone tried…………….. ? This, again, is a broad question letting the community moderator stimulate a discussion on the topic of their choosing. This is both a bonding and status-jockeying discussion.

17) Is …….. right about ………. ? Take someone’s stance on a topical issue and throw it open to comment by the entire community. This can prove an excellent channel to engage journalists within a community and solicit opinions from members which can be used to create a statement/response from the community.

18) Is it ever ok to ……. ? This is another type of hypothetical asking members about ethics. This will stimulate a high level of debate and self-disclosure from members.

19) What should every newcomer know about ….? This is a fantastic thread for newcomers within the community. It allows members to provide feedback directly to newcomers looking for quality information. These discussions are ideal to be made into permanent sticky threads.

20)Share your pictures/top tips here. Sharing advice and pictures can be an easy win for stimulating activity. Try it. I suspect you will find it easy to gain lots of valuable insights.

Key Concept 6 – Steering the community

The community moderator performs a key role of steering the direction of the community. The moderator has the power to spotlight discussions to which s/he believes should have greater prominence over other discussions.

This can be achieved through several processes. The first is by bumping posts which deserve greater attention in the short term.

• Bumping. Bumping a post is a common expression prevalent in forum-based communities. It means to reinitiate activity in a discussion which has dropped down the list of topics. This is achieved by adding a comment to the discussion, often with the word ‘bump’ in the post. For example “I’m bumping this post back up, I don’t think we quite agreed on this yet”. Any member is able to do this.

• Locking. In most communities, the moderator has the power to lock discussions and prevent any further discussions on these posts. This can be used to prevent discussions from spiralling into personal conflicts, to end discussion on an issue which is causing difficulty to the community or redirect the community’s attention to other matters.

• Unlocking. The community moderator has the power to unlock previously popular posts for new discussions by new members. This can redirect the community’s attention back to popular discussions, stimulate activity and focus the topical issues within the community.

• Sticky threads. Perhaps the most visible element of moderation, the community moderator has the power to give certain threads greater prominence. These might be threads on a topic in which the moderator would like to encourage discussion.

These might be threads which the moderator believes will attract new members or reignite discussion on certain topics. Through the simply act of making a thread ‘sticky’ at the top of the forum page, the community moderator wields a great deal of power and influence over the community.

• Deletion. The community moderator may remove posts which are inappropriate to the community discussion. This should be used as a last resort. It is far more preferable for the member to edit the post or remove it themselves.

• Moving. A moderator can move discussions from one section of the community to another. This gives the moderator the power to create new forum categories and popular them with existing material. This can establish a particular focus on a niche topic or redirect many active members into a place of their own to prevent them from crowding out newcomers.

• Soliciting contributions from other members. The community moderator also has the power to solicit contributions from other members to particular discussions. This raises the prominence of some discussions over others. It engages members in some discussions at the expense of others.

These powers provide the moderator with the ability to subtly steer the direction of the community. If the moderator would like a specific topic to be discuss in greater depth, the moderator can find these discussions and give them greater attention than other discussions. This is a simple nudge to members to participate in these areas.

The moderator therefore should not tell people what to talk about, nor ask them to talk about certain topics. The moderator just simply gives greater prominence to the topics and people who are in line with their expectations.

If there are not any members discussing the topics the community moderator wishes to give greater prominence, this is a clear indication that it is not something the community wants and the moderator should not attempt to force such discussions.

Bonus Concept - Introduce Sense of Community Elements

Engagement is not the sum of actions, it is the psychological feeling of being part of the community. We call this the sense of community (McMillan and Chavis, 1985)

There are four elements here; membership, influence, integration and fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection. We have outlined some tactical steps to increase the level of engagement below:

Membership

Communities need a sense of membership. Members need to be able to identify who is and isn't a member. To have insiders, there need outsiders. Members have to feel a part of an exclusive group of individuals. This entails the following elements, all of which community managers are able to influence:

• Boundaries. Tight boundaries help the feeling of membership. A community for the top physicists in the world will be far stronger than a community for physicists. What skills, knowledge, interests, experiences or assets will be necessary to be accepted as a member? How can this boundary be strengthened? Raising the boundary will limit membership, but increase the sense of community and thus engagement.

• Emotional safety. Invite members to talk about their most difficult issues. Initiate discussions related to the geekiest and most emotional topics. The discussions about whether an XG3265 TransistorWidget is marginally better than a HDF5342 TransistorWidget are perfect. They show people this is the community for them. Likewise, discussions relating to the use and fate of contractors employed to develop the death star, are ideal for Star Wars communities. Make sure the community is the place to discuss the geekiest and emotive topics within the community.

• Personal investment. Communities need member to make four types of contributions to a community. Time, emotions, ego and resources. The community manager needs to create and solicit these investments. Initiate discussions on emotive topics, appeal to the ego of members (challenge them), invite members to participate something that will take time and effort.

• Common symbol systems. Identify the words, images, ideas, signs that have unique meaning to community members, and use them in the community. We can theme weeks based around the community, we can name the community after a symbol (quite literally in Element14’s case) or we can use symbols in our content.

Influence

Members have to feel they can influence the community, and feel the community influences them. A big mistake of branded communities is they don’t offer members enough influence. Members are attracted to communities they feel they can influence. This is efficacy needs at work here. These are a few things we can do to encourage this.

• Opportunities to be involved. Proactively provide members with opportunities to influence the community. Frequently call for opinions. Have a 'be more involved' tab, recruit volunteers, and mention the opinions of members by name in the content articles – let members contribute their own content. Opinions columns, advice pieces, interview each other etc…Seek out skills members have and identify ways members can apply these to the community.

• Feature contributions. Prominently feature the contributions of members on the community platform. If a member makes a great contribution, mention it in a news article and encourage members to respond.

• Write about members. Use content to write about what members are doing. Talk about their milestones. It might be a work achievement, a topic-related success or even a lifestyle success. If a member is getting married or has a child, congratulate them.

Integration and fulfillment of needsWhat needs does the community satisfy? If the community manager is relying on information needs, the community wont achieve its potential. There are three key elements to this:

• Status of being a member. Being an accepted member should be a status symbol that members can embrace. We need to raise the profile of the community outside of the platform. Make sure it gets featured in relevant media. Set goals for the community to achieve, and achieve them. The more we raise the profile of the community, the more members want to join.

• Competence. We need to attract and retain talented and knowledgeable members. People want to be in a community with the best and brightest. We need to attract them (appeal to their ego – weekly columns, interviews etc…) and keep them engaged in the community. We need to ensure the community is the best fountain of knowledge for the topic in our industry.

• Shared values. We need to attract members which share the same values. The closer these values, the stronger the community. Write these values down, literally, write them down and then seek out members that have these values. If we attract members which don’t

share the same values, we’re crippling the sense of community. We need to be proactive in looking for these members, not reactive. Identify sub-groups online and invite them to join.

Shared emotional connectionDeveloping a shared emotional connection is perhaps the hardest and most important element of the four listed here. It comprises of several elements:

• Regular contact. Members need to regularly interact with each other. The more members interact, the more they are prone to like each other. We need to drive and sustain a high level of interactions. This means we need to proactively do things that drive these interactions. Events, activities, challenges, universal discussions etc…

• Quality of interaction. The interactions have to be meaningful. Exchanging information is fine, but limited. Introducing and highlighting (via sticky threads etc…) bonding-related discussions will improve the quality to discussions.

• Experiences. Ensure the community has plenty of experiences. An experience doesn’t have to be an event (although events are the easiest experiences). It can be a number of events along a similar theme. It can be something very good or bad that is happening, it can be a campaign that members are fighting for. It’s not too important what the experience is, so long as the community is having regular shared experiences.

• Shared history. Ensure the community has an epic and explicit history. Write it down. Talk about the major events and activities that have taken place within the community. Make sure all newcomers understand the community they're joining.

Discussions

• What can you do with members that keep spamming/antagonizing the community?

• Should a moderation policy be strict or flexible?

• How do you sustain active conversations?

Recommended Reading

Coghlan, M. (2001) eModeration – Managing a New Language, Net*orking 2001 Conference – From Virtual to Reality

Michael uses very practical examples to guide moderation in key areas and suggests further areas of research. Whilst some of this material is a little dated, much can still be applied. A high focus is on the interpersonal relationships developed with community members.

Collins, M. and Berge, Z. (1996) Facilitation Interaction in Computer Mediated Online Courses, FSU/AECT Distance Education Conference, Tallahasee FL. June.

Dholakia, U.M., Bagozzi, R.P. and Pearo, L.K. (2004) A social influence model of consumer participation in network- and small-group-based virtual communities, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Vol 21. Pp. 241 - 263

Lampe, C. and Resnick, P. (2004) Slash(dot) and Burn: Distributed Moderation in a Large Online Space, ACM Computer Human Interaction Conference, 2004

A fascinating argument for distributed moderation in which a great deal of power is handed to community members. These members then highlight what they feel needs to be removed in the community. This is a good idea. However, it may fall victim to groupthink, bullying and peer pressure. Online community moderation will still be required to prevent this (and perform other essential roles).

Williams, G.A. (1997) Online Moderator Guidelines and Community-Building Tips, Adapted from The Well Host Manual by John Hoag. An essential read on moderation from one of the most successful online communities of all time.

Berge, Z.L. (1995) The Role of the Online Instructor/Facilitator, Education Today, Vol 35.

An early exploration of online facilitation within a teaching context. There are plenty of sound recommendations here for the three roles highlighted by Berge.

Jones, Q., Moldovan, Mihai., Raban, D., and Butler, B. (2008) Empirical evidence of information overload constraining chat channel community interactions, Proceedings of the 2008 ACM conference on computer supported cooperated network?

Jones, Q. Ravid, G. and Rafaeli, S. (2004) Information Overload and the Message Dynamics of Online Interactions Spaces: A Theoretical Model and Empirical Exploration, Information Systems Research, Vol 15. No. 2. Pp. 194 – 210.

Lazar, J. Dr. and Preece, J. Dr. (2002) Social Considerations in Online Communities: Usability, Sociability, and Success Factors, Cognition in the Digital World.

Owen, J.E., Bantum, E.O’C., Golant, M. (2008) Bnefits and challenges experienced by professional facilitators of online support groups for cancer survivors, Psycho-Oncology.

An excellent study in facilitation of online groups within a health context. Whilst the context will distort the ability to generalize from these results, there is still plenty of provoking material here in the tasks undertaken by online facilitators and the obstacles they face.

Preece, J. (2004) Etiquette Online: From nice to necessary, Communications of the ACM.

Souza, C.S.d., and Preece, J. (2004) A framework for analyzing and understanding online communities, Interacting with Computers, Vol 16. Pp. 579 – 610.

Wertz, C. and Ruyter, K.d., (200x) Beyond the Call of Duty: Why Customers Contribute to Firm-hosted Commercial Online Communities, Organizational Studies, Vol 28, No 3. Pp. 347 – 376.

Williams, R.L. and Cothrel, J. (2000) Four Smart Ways To Run Online Communities, Sloan Management Review, Summer, 2000