photo credit: Eddi 07- Free Stock

Most forum software in existence features a word censor. This is a valuable feature that allows you to block certain words, terms, URLs/links and other text content from being posted on your community. The most common ability that you are given is the choice to turn a word into something else.

The best use of this, in my experience, is to simply change any inappropriate terms into an asterisk (“*”). This stops the word from being posted while not hinting at what it is or playing games by changing the word to something else, which I generally view as counterproductive. This was how I used it myself.

photo credit: Horia Varlan

It’s important to be proactive on matters of content theft and copyright infringement. A large part of this is text quoted from other sources. With some exceptions (public domain works, works by the Federal Government, works released under alternative licenses to copyright, and more), you can’t allow your members to post entire text articles that they did not author or hold no rights to, source or no source.

But, that doesn’t mean that they can’t quote some portions that are properly attributed. Fair use is an exception to copyright that, among many other things and without getting too legally technical, allows you to quote excerpts of someone else’s work with proper attribution. Fair use isn’t a law as much as it is a defense.

At last year’s South by Southwest Interactive (see my recap), I gave a solo presentation titled “The Art of Responding to Feedback From Your Community.” The basis of this talk was a blog post made on this site in January of 2009.

The presentation is based around my three steps for responding to feedback. In short, they are: appreciate, acknowledge and consider. Be appreciative that someone contacted you, acknowledge their perspective and what they are saying and then consider it and how applicable it may or may not be.

photo credit: ` TheDreamSky 꿈꾸는 하늘

“Freedom of speech” is a tricky subject. In the United States of America, where I’m from, it’s something that we as citizens take full advantage of. Sometimes, this is awesome – sometimes, it is quite ugly. But, the key is that we have the freedom to be either one of those things and many things in between. Freedom of speech is also highly misunderstood.

Where Problems Arise

The misunderstanding I want to talk about today is one you’ve no doubt experienced, if you’re run a community with guidelines for any measurable portion of time: the members who believe that, by some sort of law, they are allowed to say whatever they want, whenever they want, on your community.

photo credit: Rob Shenk

I was talking to a member the other day, in what was a very serious conversation about that member’s future on the site. Part of that conversation was an attempt on my part to get the member to refocus on what the community is about and not to get out of hand in discussions where people disagree with you.

This veteran member had been challenged many times by a new member. The new member disagreed with a lot of what they said. Instead of taking it as he should have, and setting an example for the new member as an established member, he took it as a battle, as if discussion on our forums was some sort of war. And this carried over into numerous other threads. This was very disappointing to me and my staff.

Now, there are plenty of communities that are basically militant debate clubs. And that’s totally cool. But, that’s not what my communities are. We aim to be a friendly discussion community. Friendly doesn’t mean that everyone agrees. It means that when people disagree, they do so politely, respectfully and thoughtfully, focusing on the points of the discussion and not on attacking the person who made the points.

Even so, sometimes, members get carried away, as we all do. Where disagreeing with someone becomes a petty game or a battle. That’s not what I want. And so I told this member, exactly: “Discussions are not warfare; this is not a battlefield.”

I continued to tell them that this wasn’t about the member, the person who disagreed with them, me or our staff: this was about the community as a whole and what it stands for. And we don’t stand for this. I believe the member got the message and hope that we turned a corner.

photo credit: Torley

“I just banned that guy,” you say to yourself. “For the sixth time.”

In my experience, the vast majority of banned members will stop coming back once their second account is banned, if not for their first. But, once in a while, you get the real special ones. These people are none too pleased with you banning them. Maybe they regret their errors or, perhaps more likely, they just want to wreak havoc. What can you do?

Well, you can report them to their ISP, for one. What else? This question has plagued man and woman since the dawn of online community. Some effective solutions have been offered through technical innovation.

In vBulletin, there is a  well known feature called Tachy Goes to Coventry. My friend Ted Sindzinski tells me that this marks every post a member has made as private, so that only they can see it, and the same is also true for any post they make from that point forward. So, they are able to think that they are actually posting, but no one is actually seeing their posts. Since this would only be applied to accounts created specifically to troll or to get around a ban, this type of Global Ignore function works well.

photo credit:
Caveman 92223 — On the Road Again!

Recently, on the e-mint discussion list, a member was asking for some suggestions for a list of 10 ways to kill your online community, with some humor. Taking approximately 10-15 minutes, I came up with a quick, fun, spur of the moment list and I thought I’d share it with you!

1. Don’t have any guidelines! We’re all adults – and cursing is fun! Weeeeeeeeee…

2. Since we’re all adults, it’s not like you actually need to visit your site much. A few times a month should be good.

3. Create an open group that anyone can join called “Moderators” and let anyone who wants to join in and move, edit or delete whatever they want. They’re here to help!

4. As the administrator, when you post, try to set the worst example possible. Since humans all strive to be better than one another, this will force your members to be awesome!

photo credit: mikeporcenaluk

I had a conversation with a member on one of my communities the other day. I had sent him a notification to let him know he had violated the guidelines and his reply was fine, he was apologetic, but he said that he didn’t like being “told off.” And that just didn’t sit real well with me. I felt like he may have been looking at me like this little guy to the right.

OK, so, what’s the big deal? Well, maybe it means something, maybe it doesn’t. But, my contact templates – my messages are members – are written in a way where we don’t want them to be looked at as being “told off,” nor is that our intention, at any point. We are aiming to inform and to help, generally speaking, with these notifications. We tell people what was removed, why and, as such, how to avoid it in the future. I never want anyone to think of these messages as them being “told off.”

I could have let it go, but I seized on it and told the member that I wasn’t telling him off and not to take it that way – simply put, we’re all friendly here and we are mainly trying to help and if he has any further questions, to please let me know.

Will it have any impact? Who knows. But, on a scale of noting the language that members use and kindly correcting any negative and improper perceptions, I believe it does have an impact, I believe it demonstrates that you care and that there is  a human connection.

So, the next time that a member mischaracterizes something that you’ve done, step up and let them know what the actual intention was. You never know, you might make a connection with that person.

As a recent Facebook status update, I wrote:

Always love when a banned member says “you know I can just keep signing up, so stop banning me.” Never.

My friend Chris posted a reply to that update:

I love how they think it’s a game and they’ll “win” if they keep trying. Nothing screams loser more than trying to win at being a troll. lol.

And it’s true. I mean, we all have people like this, that seem like they are competing with the world for the title of biggest idiot ever. If you haven’t yet, just give it some time. I’ve had people, like the one mentioned above, tell me that they can come back if they want and there is nothing I can do about it.

I remember one person telling me that they knew how to take me down and I knew how to take them down (???), so why don’t I just let them back in and we can avoid all that. Really? My response: no response. I’ll close the site down before I let anyone like that on it. I documented the message for me and my staff and that was that. Good luck in crazyville.

If you know me, you know I like to keep private business private. I don’t like to air dirty laundry. When someone violates our guidelines, it’s removed completely and we contact them privately and ban them privately, if appropriate. We try hard to keep details internal, even if it means that people believe some lie a banned member told them. This is my policy and I am happy (and proud) to say we are great at sticking to it.

But, that doesn’t mean that exceptions won’t be made. It doesn’t mean that you can push me around, lie to me, trick my users, try to intimidate me on Twitter and take advantage of countless forums, blogs and social spaces and get away with it. At some point, eventually, you can go too far. And when that happens, as much as I don’t enjoy it, I will tell people about what you are doing because there is a consequence and there are repercussions for unethical behavior.

This is what happened with Sports Legends Challenge. They have engaged in despicable activities and deceived people in their marketing efforts. The funny thing is that there are a few details left out of that post, too, that make it even worse.

Make no mistake that my intention is to shed light on this, but I was also careful to keep the discussion productive, to the best of my ability and resisted name calling and things that would serve to derail the post’s true purpose, which is to expose these activities. I hope that it is taken as a learning experience.

It’s a good read, I believe, for community managers because it’ll help you to see how far some people can go and what you need to look out for, if you haven’t already experienced it. Good luck.