One phrase that I hear sometimes from community staff (not really mine, but others) is “we are human.” It’s often used as a means to excuse some sort of inappropriate behavior.

A staff member treats a member disrespectfully in public? We are human.

A staff member takes the bait a member gave them and reacts? We are human.

You remove a post you shouldn’t have removed? We are human.

Why can’t staff members be held to a higher standard than members? We are human.

Sometimes, it’s OK to say this, but a lot of the time, it’s just an excuse and it makes it sound like what happened, had to happen. When I make a mistake or my staff makes an error, yes, we’re human. But, that’s not what I want to say or what I want to hear people say to me. What I want to know is that we’ll work to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

While we’re all human, saying so too much can render personal accountability non existant. Yes, mistakes happen. Yes, accidents happen. But, when you treat it like a neccessity, you do a disservice to your operation.

People have to be accountable for what they do. Am I going to string an otherwise great staff member up the flag pole for saying something off color to a member? No. But, I expect them to understand when I tell them what should have happened and I expect them to acknowledge it, indicating they’ll do what they can to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

When it comes to dealing with public situations, while I’m not completely against invoking “we are human,” it has to be used in rare cases when it really has meaning, to have any effect. If you say it all the time, it just becomes a tired excuse.

Words are important. What you say is important, but how you say it is just as important. The words you use shape how your message is interpreted and how people react to it. I always stress this to the staff at my community. Communication is key. We need to be able to communicate our objections and what we must get across, but we need to try to do so in a manner that is not unnecessarily combative.

For this reason, I’ve been known to study my words on meaningful private messages or conversations with well established members, as well as important announcements and policy changes in general. I’m human, but that’s not an excuse (we’ll cover that in a post in the future). You have to consider what you say.

I believe that a great way to showcase this would be to give you a couple of examples of a private message that you might send to a member who had made a spam post on your forums. Here’s the first one.

Ryan,

I pulled your post below because you were being a jerk. If you’d like to keep posting here, don’t do it again.

“That’s your opinion? OMGLOL. YOU ARE A FOOL!”

Patrick

Here’s another one:

Hello Ryan,

Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com.

Unfortunately, I have had to remove your post quoted below as it violated our User Guidelines as inflammatory.

“That’s your opinion? OMGLOL. YOU ARE A FOOL!”

Generally speaking, an inflammatory comment is one that doesn’t add much to a thread outside of hostility.

Please keep this in mind to prevent further violations in the future.

Thank you for your time and cooperation.

Sincerely,

Patrick
KarateForums.com Administrator

The first private message may not seem too bad. But, there are a few issues that jump out at me immediately. “Being a jerk” is very combative and basically makes the issue personal. “Inflammatory” means a similar sort of action, on their behalf, but it’s easier to swallow and understand.

I don’t know if I’d call it “traditional wisdom.” But, I encounter people who feel that, in order to be a moderator on a community, you must actually be an expert in the subject matter of the community. I find that, in general, the people who hold this belief tend to be people who participate in communities as a member, rather than as an administrator. Two good examples:

To moderate at KarateForums.com, you must be a seasoned martial artist.

To moderate at phpBBHacks.com, you must be a phpBB programming or styling expert.

These types of statements are more often untrue than they are true. The main area where it is true is if you run a support community of some kind and you have a support team that is also your moderation team. Part of the requirements of supporting people is having knowledge that can help – but, at the same time, that doesn’t mean being an expert.

When it comes to moderating a community, the greatest assets are personality and character based. Who they are as a person. Communication is key, patience is key, team skills are key, attention to detail is key. Being an expert? Not key. Generally speaking, my moderators are picked out of the community. They are already there. They already have some level of knowledge or interest in the subject.

I don’t want know-it-alls. I don’t want people who feel their knowledge is supreme and infallible. I don’t want someone who is incapable of admitting they don’t know something and asking for help when that happens. That person is worthless to me.

I remember banning someone from phpBBHacks.com (this has happened more than once) who knew phpBB pretty well. But, they were banned because they were, more or less, jerks. Knowledge is worthless in someone unable to kindly communicate it. Knowledge used to make people feel bad or as a matter of ego isn’t actual knowledge that can be benefited from.

Anyway, in one of these cases, I remember the person saying, something like “Patrick has such and such on his staff and the guy actually had to ask for help for this! See: .” As if asking for help is a weakness and invalidates you from joining my team. The person he was referring to was actually a phpBB expert and a friend of mine who could run circles around that guy and who helped a countless number of people in the phpBB community. A genius. In knowledge and in character. True genius is knowing you don’t know it all and asking for help when it happens.

Asking for help represents willingness to learn, not weakness. And that is a concept that this banned user couldn’t grasp. As such, he was not someone who would ever be able to join my staff.

Just recently, I had someone at KarateForums.com tell me that such and such was not fit to be a staff member because they didn’t know about some seminal martial arts book. He even remarked publicly about it, sarcastically. “Shouldn’t a staff member know about this?” I wasn’t having that. Forget that the staff member in question is a good person who talks to people with respect, contributes to the community and helps to maintain it. He didn’t know about this book, so obviously, it makes no sense for him to be a staff member.

I’ve seen, a number of times, where there is a community where all of the moderators are supposedly experts. But, there is one problem: they don’t know how to be moderators. Moderators need to be kind, helpful people who can work within a team and take direction. They don’t need to be experts. It’s about good people. If they are an expert, cool. If they are not, fine. But, surround yourself with good people.

There are a number of gems and plenty of good thoughts in Kanye West’s inspirational book, “Thank You and You’re Welcome.” I’m going to highlight one of them today, from page 43. “Never Justify Your Behavior With the Wrongs of Others.”

Kanye says, on the next page, that you should never begin any points with “But you.” He also says, “You must learn to fight the impulse of believing: It’s not fair that you can do it and I can’t.”

As community administrators, this is something that we must express to our members, sometimes. When some people are cited for a violation of our user guidelines, they will respond by saying that they saw someone else do it or that someone else was allowed to get away with it. If they can do it, why can’t I?

This logic is broken. But, in communicating this, we have to be delicate, so as to not make the situation worse. Let me give you an example conversation. Here is a message I might receive from a member:

Patrick,

I’ve seen this happening everywhere on this site. I don’t know why I am being treated different from everyone else. Why can they do it and I can’t?! I think I’m being unfairly targeted!

Joe

Despite what I might actually like to tell this person, as far as how much I care for the claim that we are operating with bias and where they could deposit said claim, I must maintain my professionalism and do what I can to keep this moving in a productive direction because that is my responsibility, as the administrator. I might say:

Hello Joe,

Thank you for your message.

Here at SportsForums.net, we have guidelines that outline what types of behavior are allowed and not allowed in our community. These guidelines are fairly and evenly enforced and all members are expected to comply with them. You are not being treated any differently than any other member.

While we are able to read a majority of contributions, we are not able to read all of them. For this reason, we ask for and encourage all members to help us by reporting any potential violations to a member of staff so that they can receive the appropriate attention and can be handled as soon as possible. If you could please direct me to the specific posts where you saw members violating our guidelines in this fashion, that would be great. After reporting a violation, you should forget about it – please don’t respond to it. We appreciate your help.

Regardless of what another member does, each member here is responsible for their own actions and will be held accountable for them. Something isn’t acceptable just because you saw another member do it. It’s important to consider what you post, before you post it, independently of what others have done. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask me.

I appreciate your time and cooperation.

Sincerely,

Patrick

My aim here is to make sure the member understands that “they did it, so I can!” isn’t going to be happening in my community. They’ll be held responsible for their own actions and won’t be allowed to justify them by pointing to others. We want (really want) members to report violations to us so we can get to them right away, so I wanted to be sure to express that, as well.

This idea of responsibility is even more important for staff members, of course. Staff members must always hold themselves to a higher standard than members. When a member attacks them, they can’t respond to that with an attack. Spider-Man 2 has some worthwhile wisdom here:

Harry Osborn: Peter… you killed my father!
Spider-Man: There are bigger things happening here than me and you.

There are bigger things happening here than you and the person you are speaking with. This is something I always try to impress upon my moderators. It’s about you and what you say – not them.

This applies to the administrator, as well. I carefully consider everything that I do and say. I make mistakes, but they are rare because I am careful. Don’t fall into the danger of overthinking – but, don’t let the avoidance of that danger drive you to not think at all. As the administrator, everything you say can have an impact. Make sure your words have the right impact.

Sorry for the delay in posting this, but I just wanted to say that I will not be going on Blog World Expo Radio today. I’m going to be on at some point, but not today. Sorry for the confusion.

The AP’s Anick Jesdanun writes today on the topic of online communities and how they enforce their guidelines/terms of service. She talks about different issues, including how these matters are handled, documented and resolved. I read the article with interest, as someone who manages online communities and someone who is a big believer in having goals in your community and actively aspiring to them, in everything that you do.

The article is aimed squarely at community managers and is just a bit too slanted against us. It’s very, very easy to talk about “censorship” or the “big guy picking on the little guy” and get a reaction from a majority of people who view it, against the person doing the “censoring” or against the perceived “big guy,” who could just be an individual community manager running his site as a hobby or small business. Anyone can do that. Too many people are predisposed against these things. However, that doesn’t mean that the community manager or managers have done anything wrong. A good chunk of this article amounts to: “corporation decides fate of individual behind closed doors.” That’s a great, dark picture, sure to attract some outrage. Of course, it’s not that simple.

The moment that anyone – namely, the government – tells me that I have to allow people to say whatever they want on my communities, or that I have to allow people to say whatever the government says they can say, that’s the moment I stop managing online forums and communities. You can throw my book away (that may be a little dramatic – it still has value, fear not! :)). I’ll go get a “normal” job or do something else because that won’t be a livable situation. The minute I am forced by law to allow lunatics to run roughshod on my communities, is the minute I stop doing this.

But, the good news is, I don’t see that happening. I mean, it could happen, in a doomsday scenario, but realistically, I see it as unlikely. So, this is all hypothetical.

Online communities are, almost all of the time, privately owned. It is for the people who own the website to say what happens on that site, within the scope of the law. If you want to allow people to say the F word, you’re choice. But, if you want to allow people to infringe on the rights of others, that’s not your choice. This is, in general, a good thing. Could be better, will never be perfect, but could be much, much worse.

One concern the article raises is that when a community enforces it’s guidelines and a member disputes it, those disputes are handled behind closed doors. This is said like it’s a bad thing. It’s not. It’s professionalism. This isn’t the court system, this is a privately owned community. People forget that people in “authority” (from the major corporation to the small community administrator) are held to higher standards than your average Joe.

Example: if average Joe says, “Company X is evil,” no one cares. But, if Company X says “Joe is evil,” then they are out of line. “Did they have to say that?” “It’s unprofessional.” “No one likes to see people air their dirty laundry.” People who make decisions are held to different standards. Airing dirty laundry is usually a bad idea; it usually creates more trouble and it is, above all else, not the most professional way of going about your business.

The article speaks of Flickr enforcing an “unwritten ban.” The bottom line is that you to have guidelines or terms of service written out, as comprehensive and clearly as you can. But, vagueness has it’s place and is necessary to ensure accurate wording and proper coverage. You want to be specific, but the danger of being too specific is in the people who want to read what you have as your policies and then think that, if your guidelines don’t cover it, it must be OK. People searching for loopholes, in other words. Again, this is holding corporations and managers to a much higher standard than everyone else. Why must we think of every single bad thing that someone could do on our communities? That’s not fair.

The staff promotion process on KarateForums.com goes a little like this:

I start a thread and ask for nominations and feedback. I try not to get too involved in this for at least a few days, with the exception of answering questions and responding to suggestions that absolutely will not be happening. I want to allow my staff members to post their thoughts without me interfering. After this period, I will throw some names out myself if I have some I am considering that have not already been mentioned.

I then encourage my staff members to provide their thoughts on each person – good or bad. I just want them to be honest and I stress this. My staff members know to allow each other to their opinion. My staff members know never to critique one another and know that they can always contact me if they have any issues, because that is the culture I’ve created.

They also know that if they do critique one another, they will be hearing from me. Anyone who harshly criticizes the dissenting opinion or says anything to them that could in any way be construed as nasty, would be harshly dealt with. The reason being that that sort of thing hurts the process and scares people from talking and from being honest. I don’t think it’s ever happened. Or, at least, not in a very long time.

My staff members all tend to be very friendly with one another. I’ve created a friendly, helpful, respectful culture through my own actions, through our staff guidelines which are followed to a T (and I make sure of it) and through the people that I bring on board, which match the culture. It’s all about maintaining that great environment.

When you have created such a culture that is cohesive like this, if any individual member of staff – even 1 – expresses serious doubts about a person, it is worth consideration and it is worth allowing it to impact the decision. Meaning, if someone is suggested, and 9 people say good things or have no thoughts, but 1 person raises what appear to be serious and viable objections, I most likely will not bring that person on board.

Concerns are what is most important here. The intention of these threads is not to be a yes-a-thon. By this point, you have some people in mind that you are seriously considering – you aren’t so much looking for validation as you are running them through a background check to ensure they come up clean. You are looking for a reason not to bring them on board. You are ensuring that they are right for you and your staff.

It’s so important to create an environment where staff members can feel free to say that someone has this issue or that issue. This is why I make these threads sort of open ended. When I ask for nominations, I simply ask my staff to put people out there if they feel there is anyone worthy. There is no mimimum and no maximum. I never work to staff-to-member ratios and I never operate under the thought that “we have too many” or “we don’t have enough”. We want good people. Period. If they are there, we will invite them. If they are not, we will live.

So, these staff threads are open ended. People can participate if they want or not participate if they have nothing to add. I don’t ask my staff yes or no questions – I don’t ask them to decide whether or not so and so should join the staff because it’s not about that. I don’t believe your staff should decide who gets promoted (at least, not to their level). They should be able to suggest, they should have input, but as far as making the decision independent of anyone else… I don’t think that’s necessary. It’s not something to vote on, it’s not a popularity contest and majority does not rule. It’s all about finding concerns or potential problems.

Anyway, after I listen to the thoughts of all staff members that wish to participate, I make the final decisions and send out invitations. And we have a new staff members.

But, the point of this post is that, when you are looking at new staff members, you are looking for, as much as anything else, a reason not to bring them on. Staff feedback is really important at this stage. You want them to be honest and to share concerns with you. You want to promote the right people and the way to do that is to pass them through your staff and give any concerns they bring up the appropriate attention.

Don’t flippantly dismiss their concerns. This is a topic for another day, but have high standards, look for the best people in all aspects. Don’t excuse people for rude/harsh/blunt behavior just because they have knowledge. Staff members are the example to aspire to for your members and should have that level of quality in all facets and that includes their personality. You do not want to promote people with bad personality traits thinking they can improve or we can change them. You already want them to be on point. They already need to be a great example for members to follow, or they shouldn’t be considered.

My friend Jake posted the video below, which is an interview (for the Online Community Research Network) with Joe Cothrel from Lithium and Jay Bryant from LiveWorld. Both had good points, but I thought that Cothrel made some very great and strong observations and ones that I certainly share. Check it out below.

In a recent interview I did on Forum One’s LIVE Interviews Online, Dave Witzel submitted the question, “Are moderators born or made? Do you do much training for moderation?”

Born… or made. I’d like to think they can be made through training and experience. At the same time, there are personality traits that are not ideal for someone in a leadership or managerial role. Some people simply prefer being a participant, rather than being someone given a responsibility for watching that participation. The same way that some people are happy with a normal 9-5 job, rather than being a manager or a supervisor. They are happy with their life as it is and there’s nothing wrong with that.

There are also people that don’t deal well with upseting people or having people be angry at them. That’s just not a trait that will work for a moderator. I don’t want to upset anyone. I don’t want anyone to be angry at me. But, I realize that what I want in that area doesn’t matter. Included in the responsibilities of managing a community is removing content and telling people they can’t do things. If you are the one that has to tell people no, you are also the one that people will direct their angst at, if they don’t like being limited. A staff member must be able to handle this and not get upset by it.

Training wise, my system was pretty well outlined in the SitePoint article I wrote recently. 

What do you think? Are moderators born or made?

I wrote an article for SitePoint that they just published. It’s called Develop Effective Forum Leadership. Please give it a read and tell me what you think. It closes with:

I’ve used this system in my own communities, and I’ve had success with it. Pick good people, give them what they need to succeed, and monitor them, assisting as appropriate.

As I said earlier, staff members play a vital role in the success of a community. You can’t do it all, and you shouldn’t. You need a good team so that you can step back, take the lead, and focus on other aspects of the community. You can’t be there all the time. I always say that you know that you have a good staff when you can go away for a while and not worry about your community — well, not too much, anyway!