I’m happy to say that I am now co-hosting a pair of podcasts (when it rains, it pours). First, the Copyright 2.0 Show with my friend Jonathan Bailey of PlagiarismToday, who I recently met in person for the first time at ConvergeSouth. It’s a weekly podcast dedicated to copyright related issues. As a content creator, I have a definite interest in the subject and have had to deal with people infringing upon my rights on many an occasion. As a community administrator, it is definitely a worthwhile listen as these are challenges that we all face.

The show itself is already 83 episodes in and my first episode, number 84, is online now. Ironically, we will now be taking a 2-3 week break, as Jonathan and myself will both have a little away time.

The second is the SitePoint Podcast, where we soft launched episode 1. This one is co-hosted with Brad Williams, Stephan Segraves and Kevin Yank. Out of the bunch, I’m the only non programmer, so I’m the non techical one, mainly just trying to keep it light and adding insight wherever I can. The SitePoint Podcast is in a sort of alpha beta phase, but hopefully, everything that needs to happen (on all ends) will happen, and we’ll keep it going!

Having been a guest on approximately 30 or more podcasts, these two shows represent my second and third forays into podcast hosting, following my old community management themed podcast, The Community Admin Show.

On October 21, I presented at a Social Media Club Louisville meeting via live video. It was actually the first time that I’ve ever done anything like this (I’ve given presentations, but never without actually being at the venue), but I thought it went well. The talk didn’t really have a title… but, I’m going to give it one now. I’ll call it “The Value of Online Forums and How to Approach Them as a Marketer.”

A big thank you to my friend Jason Falls who set it all up and emceed it. He recorded the video and posted it on the Social Media Club Louisville website, so I wanted to share it here. Please let me know what you think.

In honor of Blog Action Day, I’d like to talk about how you can use your online community to help people in a time of crisis. Healthy online communities, big or small, feature people united by some sort of common bond. Most often, it is subject based. But, there are sure to be other things that tie individual members to one another. This grouping of people can be powerful.

After the United States, my country, was attacked on September 11, 2001, I took what I had up on ifroggy.com down and I put another page up, sharing my feelings on the event and asking for people to help how they could. Archive.org has a copy of the page. I posted announcements on my sites and I linked my network bar back to that page.

When the tsunami hit Asia in December of 2004, I posted some similar announcements, such as this one at phpBBHacks.com. When Hurricane Katrina hit the southern United States, I did the same.

What impact did we have? How many dollars did we raise? $2? $5? $100? We didn’t keep track and I have no idea. But, that’s not really the point. The point is trying, the point is raising awareness and the point is that everything counts, regardless of how small.

The power of online community can be immense. But, even if you feel like your small community cannot help anyone, remind yourself that everything counts. You never know the impact that you can have.

I’m using examples of major catastrophes here and monetary donations, mainly. But, obviously, that is not the limit. If a well established and liked member who has greatly contributed to your community faces some sort of devastating hard ship, how can you help them? Not necessarily with money, but with ideas and with personal, genuine sentiment and compassion for them and their situation.

Have your door open to listen to people who have ideas. I get pitched charitable efforts by various people. Sometimes I share them, sometimes I don’t. We all have limitations. I know I do and I know I’d like to be much more charitable than I am. Money wise, anyway. I would like to think I am charitable with my time as I make an effort to help others and to share my knowledge.

Online community is, by and large, about relationship and relationships are what drive us to care and to help others. It’s a powerful thing and it can be used for good. In all sorts of ways. Good in helping people, good in giving people enjoyment, good in helping you to fulfill your dreams and, yes, charitable good, as well.

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.

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.

In managing online communities for the past eight years or so, one of the many, many things I’ve come to realize, accept and understand is the fact that people will hate me. Not all people, not most people – not even a noteworthy number of people. But, assorted people will hate me. That’s the burden of leading a community and being the person “in charge.” You make decisions, you accept blame and you take criticism.

One of the primary responsibilities of community leadership is, essentially, telling people what they cannot do on your community. People don’t like to be told they can’t do something. But, you have to defend your community, you have to deal with violations and manage the atmosphere. You have goals and everything that you do needs to be in pursuit of those goals.

So, you have members who you have to contact regarding a violation. You send them a polite, respectful message making them aware of the violation and asking them to keep it in mind for the future, to prevent further violations. And they don’t like it. Some people deal with this respectfully and some people are literally out of their mind crazy. I’ve been called all sorts of names. It’s fairly normal to have your sexual preference questioned, too. There was even one fellow who described all of my many character flaws and then decided it must be because my parents had sexually abused me. You get used to it. And, of course, the old stand by: I’ve been called Hitler, Stalin and/or Gestapo on any number of occasions. One was just recently.

We had a fellow come in our forums and start a post with the F word in it, with an asterisk (our word censor will not allow it to be posted without an asterisk). As this word is not permitted on my forums, in line with our user guidelines, the post was removed and the member was politely contacted and made aware as to why, to prevent it from happening again.

His response was to go on rant that, personally, was hilarious because of what he said, which was just nuts. I won’t get into that, beyond saying that he compared me to Stalin.

The thing about these Hitler, Stalin, and Gestapo type comments is they are so disrespectful. Those people and/or groups did awful, unspeakable things. Let’s be real: I removed a single post you made from an Internet forum, from my family and work friendly community, that had the F word in it. That’s what I did. As I joked to a friend, “Stalin must not have been such a bad guy if all he did was stop you from saying the F word.” In other words, to invoke the images of those people or groups in such a manner is to show an extreme lack of respect for the people and the families affected by the things that they actually did.

Here is what I’ve found to be true, though. If no one was saying these things to me or about me, if no one was making these comments and attacking me, I must not be doing my job to the best of my ability. Either that or my communities are private and for a select group of people, not large enough yet or not moderated in any meaningful way (i.e., anything that isn’t blatant spam is allowed). Real, hands on community management requires the ruffling of feathers. Not on purpose, not intentionally – but naturally. It’s just a fact of life. With the exceptions above (and probably a few others), if no one hates you, you aren’t doing everything you can.

(Note, I’m not saying that this is the only way I know I’m doing my job, that I want people to say these things or that it makes me happy. None of these things is true. It’s awful that these things are said. But, it’s a natural by product, unfortunately. So, we have to embrace it for what it is).

In doing press for the book, one question that I’ve been asked on multiple occasions is “I have a blog. Why do I need forums?” or some derivative like “Why would I want a forum instead of a blog?” or “How are forums different from blogs?”

This may come as a surprise, but blogs and forums are quite similar. As Jeff so eloquently pointed out, they both share a number of common elements. For example:

• Blog post titles are forum thread titles.
• The author of a post is the thread starter.
• The date the post was made is the date the thread was started.
• Blog categories are individual forums.
• The content of the blog post is the content of the first post in the thread.
• Blog comments are thread replies.

And there are others, as well.

The thing I usually say is that they share a lot in common, but the biggest difference is in the fact that, with virtually all blogs, a person or team of people controls what is posted on the blog as a new entry. In other words, to use forums/community lingo, they control what new topics are posted.

On forums, generally, anyone who registers for an account can start a new thread of their own in the appropriate area. They can bring up topics to discussion. While people go off topic in blog comments, the same as they do in forum posts, it’s not the same as creating a new topic – a new thread of discussion.

Blogs and forums can both be highly beneficial – individually and together. A blog can complement a forum and a forum can complement a blog. And, let’s not forget, most of the biggest, most widely read blogs are communities that have developed around the blog. ProBlogger is as good an example of this as any. Darren’s blog is a community. It doesn’t need forums to be one. Blogs are communities, if that’s what you want them to be.

Forums tend to allow for more free, transitive discussion. If you want to encourage community to grow and members not just to talk with the people behind the site, but for a community to develop on a member to member basis, forums are great for that. If you are looking more for a relationship where you or a team of people are sharing ideas, posting articles and, in simple terms, managing a content site where you want people to interact, blogs are great for that.

At the end of the day, it comes down to what you want in a site and what you hope to get out of it.

In light of a recent post on CommunityAdmins.com by Rocket 442, I thought that I would share, update and expand a post that I made on my personal blog last November that discussed spamming forums as a marketing strategy.

There are companies out there who essentially sell a service that is “pay to spam”. In search of a more attractive name, some label it “social media outreach” or “advertising.” Whatever it’s called, I think it’s bad business, it’s disrespectful and it’s a problem for community administrators.

Basically, what you have here is a group of individuals who aim to create what I try to prevent on my communities. We get this sort of stuff with frequency and it’s always shut down right away. If someone joins and their first post (or one of their first posts) contains a somewhat suspicious link, the post is removed and they are contacted, making them aware of our user guidelines.

If they start off with more than one post that does this, their posts are removed and they are most likely banned. New users are not given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to these matters. Once someone is established in our community, they will be given more leeway, however it is not appropriate to create threads or posts to bring attention to something that you are affiliated with and this is something we actively watch for.

Spamming is not a strategy that respectable individuals employ. If you want to post your website on a community, you check their guidelines to make sure that it’s allowed. If you are unsure, even in the slightest, you ask a staff member and then proceed as they outline – and only as they outline. If a particular website is a persistent offender on my network, they might find their link banned from the network as a whole. That is, their link is not allowed to be posted on any of my communities in any instance.

Some of these people create multiple accounts in order to make their spam discussions appear more active. Regardless of what the guidelines say (unless they specifically permit it, which is… suffice to say, highly unlikely), covertly creating multiple accounts to boost up your discussion or talk amongst yourself is universally looked at as uncool.

Really, it’s embarrassing behavior that no respectable organization will want to be associated with because if it should come to light, they’ll be roasted and lose major amounts of credibility. Once you are labeled a spammer, it is very challenging to shake such a rep. If “avoiding detection” is part of the pitch, that’s a good indication that something is not right.

Personally, I don’t want to be associated with anyone who finds this sort of practice acceptable. There is always a group of people who don’t care how they get something, they just want it. And there can be serious consequences for that. It’s good for us to know that people like this exist so that we can know what we’re up against.

For me, it’s about creating something of quality and doing it the right way, through hard work and dedication and through respecting others’ space – in other words, having a semblance of ethical values to adhere to. Communities that you do not own are not yours to advertise to. If you think “this is business” and there are no ethics, that’s just not true and, to me, that’s a terrible way to think. You always have a choice. You don’t have to do unethical things.

Consider that if you are a client of a company with this philosophy – if they are not above manufacturing false interest in your company, why would they be above manufacturing views, favorites, replies, comments and whatever other metrics you are tracking, in order to meet their quotas to fulfill their contracts and make you feel like you’ve really received your money’s worth?

Funny to consider that the company you are paying to do this could actually extort you because they are one of the people who could out you for this behavior through a “leak.”

Be careful. These sorts of strategies are just all around bad, for everyone, except for maybe the company being paid to do it.

I love when people spam and say something like “I’m not trying to steal any one’s traffic.” I love it even more when they are spamming something that is either exactly what we do or similar to what we do. For example, spamming a sports community on SportsForums.net.

“I’m not trying to steal your traffic.” Well, that’s funny, because that is exactly what you are doing!