Lessons in Community

As Jim has pointed out, the Online Journalism Blog is running a series of Lessons in Community from Community Editors.

So far we have Shane Richmond from The Telegraph:

1. The strongest community is one that belongs to its members
2. Guidance is welcome, control is unwelcome
3. The community has to reflect the values of its members, not its hosts

and from Mark Fothergill at The Guardian:

1. Getting the tools right for the job are ultra-important, both front end and back end
2. Define your role (and more specifically, the role of the moderation team)
3. Deal with user complaints quickly

By some administrative oversight (for which, no doubt, no-one will be fired) I haven't been asked to contribute but (assuming that there's no point in repeating lessons that other people have already suggested) here are my three:

1. A community is only really a community if it builds (or builds on) genuine relationships between the members. Otherwise it is merely interactivity. A corollary of this is that an online community needs to be focused around a common interest, need or passion (or simply "something in common")
2. The most important tool for dealing with problems is your Terms of Use / Ts&Cs. If you are to deal effectively with problems of misbehaviour you need to be able to point to the rule which says the user can't do that. You will still be accused of suppressing free speech/being a Nazi of course, but at least you can justify your actions in removing posts, banning users etc. Spend a lot of time on developing the rules and lay them out in simple language
   
3. Find ways to reward the best or most prolific contributors - this might be through a reputation system, increased rights, or simply highlighting their contributions in some way. Many users are driven to upload their photographs to the Farmers Weekly website in the hope that they will make it into the magazine. It's also true, of course, that one should aim to reward all contributors by ensuring that someone pays attention to them.
   

The HRSpace Photo Poll

PersonnelToday.com and XpertHR recently launched their new community space aimed at HR professionals.

HRSpace is already building very nicely but while they the team are at the CIPD conference in Harrogate they wanted to take the opportunity to draw attention to it through something a bit different.

The result - a "photo poll". They're asking people to jot down the HR priority for the next 12 months on a card and have their photo taken with it.

Simple but effective on so many levels - real people, a smattering of text, easy to do and quite engaging.

View the slideshow of responses so far here.

Wall Street Journal builds walled community

Community 2.0 drew my attention to this article on ComputerWorld about the Wall Street Journal dipping a toe into the web 2.0 waters with a walled community which does the usual stuff - 0rofiles, form groups, add photos, interact with others - but only to paid subscribers.

As the article suggests, there are several reasons why this seems to be a bad idea - when you're playing a numbers game (which community is - the hard part is getting critical mass) you can't really afford to be too picky. Plus you can't invite your friends to join you there unless they too are (or become) subscribers.

On the other hand, the exclusiveness of such an online community does have its merits - keeping out the internet nutters, interacting with your peers in a safe environment.

We have some plans for experimenting on the edges of this approach in a couple of our markets so I'll be interested to know how WSJ's initiative fares.

Comments on articles - desirable bar the undesirables

As Adam reports, we had an interesting exchange yesterday about journalists' discomfort with comments on articles.

Part of this discomfort is almost certainly a reaction to the unfamiliarity of being so exposed to criticism and/or feedback. I am reminded of Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington's first foray into blogging. Because he's Michael Billington and because they could, people laid into him and one can imagine the poor man's confidence being justifiably shaken by the whole thing.

As Adam points out, the problem for national newspapers' online audience is that they are not and can never be communities.

I hope that Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik won't mind me borrowing their famous and beautiful explanation (right) for bad behaviour.

Anyway, I hope that for most of the journalists the shock will pass and they will harden up. I vividly remember the first angry comment I received on a blog of mine and how shaken I was. But what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger (although it sometimes crushes you actually).

Anyway, the point of this post (at last!) is to reflect on what can be done - not only for the sake of the poor journalists but also for the visitor and the brand.

Et voila! Powazek offers 10 Ways Newspapers Can Improve Comments

1. Require Accounts
2. Set and Enforce Rules
3. Employ a Community Manager
4. Sculpt the Input
5. Empower the Community to Help
6. Link Stories to Comments
7. Enable Private Communication
8. Participate …
9. … But Don’t Feed the Trolls
10. Give Up Control

Now, I don't quite agree quite with all of these because I don't think newspaper websites are or can be communities.

But the comments underneath the post give some fantastic additional insights which I utterly agree with. For example

• Do not give any truck to users who are unable to distinguish between "freedom of speech" and the freedom to be an offensive arsehole on someone else's website (I'm paraphrasing with that one)
  

And these recommendations from Robin Hamman:

• a clearly defined purpose for hosting the discussion
• a clearly defined set of rules - and staff or super-users empowered to use them

I think these are key. I really don't think publishers need to do so much hand-wringing about democratising comment. It's not a community; it's a website; it's their website. It may be interactive, it may be a "social medium" by virtue of the interactivity, but it's not a community.

It's your website. Set firm but fair rules about conduct and deal with transgressors of the rules firmly and fairly.