photo credit: Danny Nicholson

There is a certain train of thought that suggests that as a member becomes well established on your community, that you should give them more rope when it comes to your guidelines and greater flexibility regarding them. In fact, it’s more than a train of thought, it’s a pressure.

As someone becomes more of a presence on your community, garners greater influence and becomes someone that you hopefully like a lot, the relationship can become more complicated than it was at the start, when they were new.

photo credit: 0uT$!d£r

Back in May, I wrote about a highly unfortunate experience that I had at a Diddy/Dirty Money concert at The NorVa, a concert hall in Norfolk, Virginia. A member of the tour’s security team was verbally and physically threatening toward me and a member of the venue’s security only made it worse.

But, the fact that it was an official with the tour underscored, for me, the importance of carefully choosing the people who stand on the front line, dealing directly with your customers. It is no longer acceptable to just be the “muscle” or a button pusher – everyone who interacts with your fans and your customers is an ambassador that can make or break a relationship.

Speaking of listening to feedback from your customers online, storied video game developer and publisher Capcom has done more than just listen – they created an online community, the Devroom, where fans and aspiring game developers can help them develop “Mega Man Legends 3,” the upcoming Nintendo 3DS game, the latest entry in one of the company’s most important franchises.

Not only can community members participate in polls to help decide game features, character designs and more, but they can offer ideas and submit design and visual elements that will actually end up in the game. Not only are they running a community for North America, but they are also running a similar one in Japan.

Capcom’s efforts were spotlighted in the June issue of Nintendo Power by Chris Hoffman, who discussed some of the submissions that were accepted and featured an interview with “Mega Man 3 Legends” producer Tatsuya Kitabayashi, Capcom community manager Joveth Gonzalez (who has since moved over to Zynga) and Devroom community liaison Greg Moore.

photo credit: LifeSupercharger

I’ve come to a realization. I don’t ban people because they deserve it. I ban people because of my own flaws, personality issues or just because I like to toy with people. In other words, they have done nothing wrong.

At least, that’s the impression I get from the messages I receive from banned users or the ones I read where they complain about being banned.

It’s amazing to me how terrible I am at banning people. I really have no clue what I am doing. Even 11 years in, I have no idea.

photo credit: andyarthur

If you run an online community, some people will refer to you as Hitler. Or some derivative. It’s a part of the job and is often a sign that you are doing your job well.

But, you know, not everyone thinks that you’re Hitler, some people do appreciate what you are trying to do. Some people appreciate that you make them aware of the guidelines and what they can and cannot do, some people appreciate the effort that you put in, when it comes to moderation, because they’ve been at communities that didn’t.

phpBBHacks.com, the largest unofficial resource for the phpBB forum software and a website and community that I have managed since day one, will turn 10 years old on April 6.

This is an incredible moment, one that seems absolutely amazing and insane, when considering the passage of time and one that is also emotional and personal to me.

This is a special site and a special community and one that has helped so many people. I could never estimate, but we’re talking hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps even getting over the seven figure mark. I faced tremendous challenges in growing the community, obstacles that the average community will not face, and emerged with the help of others to reach a place I am proud of.

photo credit: kirstyhall

I tell people that numbers don’t matter to me. That sounds like a nice thing to say – quality over quantity and all that. Pretty words. People like to hear it. It’s easy to say, but can I really walk the walk? When it comes time to prove it, do I follow through?

One of the most important and obvious proving grounds for this belief is when you reach the point when you realize that you must ban a long time member, one of your most active posters or one of your top posters all-time.

You’ve given them every opportunity, but they try to walk all over you. They treat the community guidelines as though they are an option. They treat you and your staff disrespectfully. And it becomes apparent: you’re not banning them. They’re banning themselves. And so, you do it and you deal with the fallout.

photo credit: mararie

Chances are that your community has guidelines of some sort and you do your best to read all or a selection (depending on the size of your community) of the posts that are made on your site. The guidelines need to be respected and any post that you are aware of, that fails to do so, receives the appropriate attention from you.

But, even so, sometimes you miss things. It’s only natural and the bigger your community gets, generally speaking, the more likely it is to happen. And, if a member sees a post that has a violation, you probably don’t want them to respond to it and bring more attention to it.

photo credit: the_girl

During the “Building an Irresistible Private Member Community” panel at BlogWorld Expo, I mentioned that one of the biggest challenges that I face, when managing an online community, isn’t spam or some form of hit and run vandalism, but when a veteran member, that you expect better from, does something completely inappropriate.

Those are some of the most personally challenging, stressful situations that I encounter. When someone who has contributed a bunch to your community is veering off the path and you have to correct it. It’s never fun, but that’s why you’re the community manager. Not to have fun, but to do the hard things.

photo credit: tompagenet

One thing that some forum members often assume is that when a post or contribution they made to an online community or forum is removed, it is because someone complained to the staff about it or someone reported it.

Of course, that is often not the case. Especially on my sites, where the vast majority of removed posts were reported by no one. Generally speaking, I have to believe that most content that is removed on proactively managed communities is removed without being reported.

There are good reasons for this. Among them: