I just sent a very frank, but polite message to a member who contacted me, mentioning a piece of spam that was posted on the forums, but using it to say that even with spammers like this, I have time free to bother good members who are trying to help (not his exact words, but close enough) by removing their posts that violate our guidelines and contacting them and how he and some other members are tired of it. It was a condescending message.

Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this, and it won’t be the last. But, it did get me thinking of the member/staff dynamic and how it is sometimes compared, by me and others, to a customer service relationship. This is true in some ways, but it is not the complete story. Community members are sort of like customers… they are your visitors, your clientele, the people who partake in the community that you are cultivating.

But, whereas the goal of customer service is most often to please, community management is a different game. We want people to be happy, yes, but not at the cost of violating community guidelines, standards or norms because those things are a part of the foundation of the community and what you’re all about. Sometimes, when interacting with a member, you must be direct and frank, in a polite and respectful way.

You have to tell them that what they just said was wrong, that this is the problem, that you must do this and that there could be consequences if you don’t. It’s about being honest and setting realistic expectations. Not challenging them to push them, but letting them know that they exist.

As a community manager or administrator, the situations we have to deal with are as varied as life itself. For all talk about the online and offline worlds being different, at the end of the day, they have more in common than they do dissimilar. Unfortunately, this is not just the fun, easy parts of life, but also the difficult, challenging ones.

Though it may not be one of the more enjoyable parts of our job, it’s smart and important to ponder what circumstances we may face, even if we haven’t yet faced them. This leads me to what I’d like to talk about today: suicide on our online community, and how we can most effectively help and protect everyone involved. This isn’t about suicide in general, why people think about it, the repercussions of it or anything of that nature – this is strictly about how we should approach it on our communities.

When we think about suicide on an online community or social space, the two recent examples that will probably jump to your head are Abraham K. Biggs’ suicide on Justin.TV and the suicide of Megan Meier, apparently driven by messages exchanged through MySpace.

Before I jump into this subject, I want to be clear that I believe that we are all responsible for our actions as individuals. I don’t think it’s fair to blame Justin.TV, MySpace or any community or social site for the actions of an individual in this sort of case. The nature of communication itself dictates otherwise.

Your community should have it’s own mission. Why do you exist? Who are you? Who are you for? What do you want to be? Those are the things you and your community should be focused on.

Unfortunately, what can happen sometimes is that your community is used to talk about another community in a negative way. “I was banned from this forum. They suck! The administrator is a lunatic!” Sound familiar?

Generally speaking, I believe that your community should be about your community – not about cross forum politics. If someone has an issue with how someone else runs their site, they can take it up with that person. Either way, how someone else runs their site shouldn’t really be a topic of discussion on your site, which should be focused on it’s own identity.

Please be careful not to lose that. At the end of the day, you want people who are at your community to be at your community – not people who are there to bash someone else’s. Even if it’s someone you don’t like – even if you feel they deserve it. There may be exceptions, but try to take the high road and not let your community become consumed by it.

Stay focused and keep it moving.

We want people to be happy and we want to help people however we can. But, in doing so, you have to be careful not to set up unrealistic expectations. When a member expresses an expectation that is unrealistic, you need to be sure to set them straight. Respectfully, kindly, but honestly nonetheless.

Moderation is often an area where unreasonable expectations can manifest. So, let’s use that as an example and talk about statements like this:

“Why are there porn links on this site?!”
“Hello, where are the moderators?”
“Can someone PLEASE look at this thread?”

Following through with this example, what you want to try to do (and not everyone will be receptive) is to turn them into people who will report supposed violations to you and/or your staff through the means that you designate.

Your members have to understand that, just as they are allowed to post and have it instantly appear on your site, so can anyone else. Spammers and other unsavory types enter your community in the very same way that legitimate members do. If there was some back door to close that would shut out all spammers forever, we would have closed that door long, long ago.

Over at ProBlogger, Darren Rowse was kind enough to allow me to provide a guest post that I titled “Enhance and Grow Your Online Community Through Appreciation.” In the post, I discuss how simple acts of appreciation can have noteworthy impact on the growth of your community. Here’s the closing excerpt:

Appreciation is a powerful thing. It can open doors, start relationships, give people happiness, bring people back and give them confidence. In the interest of cultivating community, please consider how not just appreciating people – but making sure they know you appreciate them – can enhance your community.

Please let me know what you think about the post.

At Blog World & New Media Expo 2008, I was lucky enough to be on a pair of panels, sharing the stage with some great people. My friend Chrispian Burks was kind enough to record the panels for me and, in November, I posted the video from the “Avoiding Disaster: How Not to Use Social Media” panel.

The other panel was called “How to Deal with Trolls, Spammers & Sock Puppets.” Here is the panel description:

You just wrote the greatest blog post you’ve ever written. You researched the subject, spoke with sources, conducted interviews and completed a well thought out, well written article. You hit the post button and your baby is up. Here comes the praise! The first comment you receive? “You’re stupid, you’re ugly and you’re writing sucks.” Whether you call them trolls, haters or griefers, they’re out there, waiting to ruin your day, harm your community and taint your world.

Or maybe the first comment was something like, “Hey, nice article, check out mine!” Just like there are people who’d like to harm you, there are also people who’d like to cheaply benefit from your work and your audience. Spammers can do their own sort of damage.

But, neither of these two groups need harm you, if you know how to deal with them. This panel will give you the knowledge you need to tackle it.

I was invited to join this panel by Rick Calvert, Founder of Blog World Expo & New Media Expo. It also featured John Chow of John Chow dot Com, The Tech Zone and TTZ Media and Jeremy Schoemaker of ShoeMoney and ShoeMoney Media Group.

The panel was a lot of fun and a great experience, being that it was the first panel that I had ever been on. Afterwards, we had a great Q&A. Here’s the entire session:

In addition to Vimeo, the video is also on YouTube (parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8).

I’ve got this creepy guy e-mailing me every day or other day. Some days, he’s more condescending than others, but there is always this creepy, demeaning tone to them. Often times, he just asks “What’s up?” He calls me “Patty.” He’s been at it for weeks now, or longer. He’s very stalkerish.

The first time this happens, it can be fairly jarring. But, the truth is, I’ve seen it enough where it doesn’t even register with me. I stopped responding to him a long, long time ago. I think I only responded to the first e-mail, confirming he was banned, then he sent some long, disrespectful, crazy rant e-mail about how stupid I was. I’ve documented every single one of his e-mails in our private staff member documentation area, but that’s the only action I take.

When you hold a position of authority where you make decisions about someone’s ability to participate in something, this is just a part of life, unfortunately. So, how do you deal with it?

First, know when to stop responding. When we ban someone, we ban someone. We give people chances, often times many chances. When it’s time to ban, it’s time for them to go. I respond to every message from a member who is not banned, but once someone is banned, I only respond when there is a valid reason for doing so. I don’t repeat myself, I don’t argue with them. Usually this is confirming that, yes, they are banned and, no, it isn’t going to be lifted.

Once in a while, someone who is banned will apologize in a manner that allows me to consider unbanning them. But, that’s pretty rare. Once I have confirmed that they are banned, and that it is not going to be lifted, approximately four different things can generally happen.

1. I don’t hear from them again.

2. They accept it.

3. They let me know how stupid I am and then I don’t hear from them again.

4. They let me know how stupid I am and they continue to e-mail me over an extended period, usually with random insults or annoying statements.

1 and 3 are much, much more prevalent than 4. But, 4 happens (as does 2). And, once you tell them what is going on and they don’t have any legitimate questions, it’s time to stop responding. You only have so much time in the day and you can’t waste it.

I returned from South by Southwest Interactive (recap coming soon – suffice to say, it was great, and my talk went well, too!) and, eventually, proceeded to visit my communities and process my usual responsibilities and tasks. When I came to SportsForums.net, I found that a post had been removed that featured a link to the website of a weekly print newspaper.

The author of the post was one of the paper’s staff writers and she had linked to a sports article she had written that was published on their site (as part of their blogs). We knew it was her because her name was part of her username and the e-mail address provided was her e-mail address on the paper’s domain.

The post was her first, one and only and it was basically your typical self promotion advertisement. A link with a quick description of it. It was an obvious violation of our User Guidelines, where we generally do not allow people to create threads to bring attention to links that they are in some way affiliated with. Pretty typical, open and shut case of spam. Not that big a deal, in and of itself. People make mistakes. The post was removed and she was politely notified by one of my moderators.

Instead of apologizing or simply not responding, however, she decided to send a reply that was troubling on a few levels.

First, she claimed that she did not receive any credit for the article, even though her name was credited as the author who wrote it. She followed this up by calling the moderator “uptight,” and by slamming our community as a whole, saying that her link was “more valuable than 95 percent of random thoughts/opinions that make up the bulk of the forum.” Her link with a 30 odd word description was more valuable than virtually all of our community throughout it’s 8 plus years of existence. Ouch.

CommunityAdmins.com (i.e. the big logo on the top right portion of this page) is a community for people who run communities, but also moderators and users of communities, in general. Anyone interested in online community. But, the focus is certainly on the management aspect.

I thought that I would highlight five recently active, interesting discussions that popped up on the community. If you have any thoughts, please feel free to jump in!

1. Cult Threatends Legal Action Against Forum

An administrator shares the challenges that his or her community is facing, in dealing with a supposed “cult” and it’s threats against negative comments posted on the site.

2. Do You Used Non-Disclosure Agreements for Members of Staff?

In addition to standard staff guidelines, an NDA is also a viable consideration for many administrators.

3. Staff Members Doing Whatever They Want

The thread born out of this post on ManagingCommunities.com has inspired some interesting discussion and real experiences of staff members who have crossed the line.

4. How Much Can You Make with Forums?

Administrators share the ways they generate money and the expectations that you should have when doing so.

5. Private Communities: How Do They Work?

Finally, a discussion on private communities and who they will work for and won’t work for.

If you have any interest in discussing the management of online communities, I would definitely recommend joining us at CommunityAdmins.com.

Tracy O’Connor of I Hate My Message Board spoke on Twitter of a situation she was dealing with on her community, where she was trying to determine whether or not she should act on something that had been done within her community. This inspired me to talk about how I personally deal with this sort of issue.

At this stage, most issues tend to be cut and dry on my communities. I’ve been at this for a while and can usually spot when something is appropriate or it isn’t. Something is either inappropriate or it’s not. Something is either a violation of our guidelines or it’s not. If it’s not, then it carries on. If it is, it is dealt with.

But, then, once in a while, there are issues where I am not sure, and I have to think about it. Sometimes, I’ll bring it up in my staff forums so that I can get their feedback in considering the issue. In both of these cases, I find it helpful to ask myself and them two questions. With these two questions steering feedback and steering the thought process, the answer usually will become clear. These are the two questions:

1. “If this were to happen everyday, would that be good?”

It’s not this one instance of the issue that is such a big deal, necessarily. It is the idea that this thing, if allowed, will continue again because people will have the belief that it is acceptable. Is that something we want? It can be easy to dismiss something that has happened once, but it won’t be easy to dismiss something that could happen all the time. Think of it in that way.

2. “We want to be inviting to people of all viewpoints. We want someone who disagrees with this person to be able to join our site, explain his or her perspective and not feel intimidated. Does this encourage or discourage that?”

Many times, with one of these question issues, it is how someone has chosen to approach an issue that they disagree with. Most of the time, we’d want to have an environment where someone that would disagree with them would feel comfortable becoming a part of our community and joining the discussion. If someone is impeding this, that’s not consistent with our overall goals.

When you’re dealing with complex issues, it can help to simplify and to come back to your core. What are you all about?