photo credit: Nuria_PC

I touched on this thought very quickly in my article about Popular Science’s decision to turn off comments on their website, but I wanted to take a moment to expand on it a little bit.

What I want you to think about is everything that exists between having open comments on everything you create and having no comments at all anywhere. These are two extremes and most people who have a blog or similar space stick to them, but you can get creative and explore the middle ground between the extremes.

Of course, you have the ability to establish a comment policy and moderate to it, which is generally a great idea. But, in addition to this, here are a few strategies that may work for some, in no particular order:

photo credit: stevendepolo

Last month, California enacted Senate Bill 568 (California Business & Professions Code Section 22581), which is aimed at protecting teenagers online.

According to BBC News, it works by forcing websites to remove content posted by minors who live in the state, when so requested. However, if that content is reposted by others, those posts do not have to be removed. Furthermore, the data does not have to be removed from the website’s servers – only from public view. This law will take effect on January 1, 2015.

It was authored by Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and signed into law by Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr.

“You choose a thankless job, you can’t be upset when nobody thanks you,” Ron Swanson tells Leslie Knope on the season 6 premiere episode of Parks and Recreation.

Knope is a councilwoman in the fictional city of Pawnee, Indiana. A vocal segment of the city’s population is fickle, bringing petty, unimportant problems to Knope, who then fixes them with the passion of someone who enjoys her job. When Swanson says the quote above, Knope is discussing how she is disappointed with the town. Seemingly, no one appreciates what she says. In fact, there is a group trying to recall her from office.

Pointing out that some people do appreciate her, Swanson mentions April Ludgate, who works for Knope in the Parks department. Ludgate nominated Knope for an award, but Knope says that April does that all the time, anyway, as a joke.

photo credit: elbragon

I have this member on KarateForums.com, who has been with us since 2005. That year, he pushed against our guidelines so persistently and badly that I banned him. He didn’t like our guidelines, he didn’t like that we didn’t let him treat people in a certain way. After I banned him, he emailed me and asked me to give him another chance, pledging to do better.

I very rarely unban anyone. I don’t treat bans like a game, I don’t have temporary bans. We’re flexible, we’re reasonable, we try to work with you. When you have been banned, that means you’ve demonstrated a lack of caring and it’s time to go. But in a very small percentage of cases – a fraction of a percent – I will unban someone if they take responsibility and express a genuine desire to participate in good faith and do better. I felt that this member’s message to me was genuine and I unbanned them.

On Tuesday, Popular Science announced that they would not allow reader comments on new articles on their website, except on “select articles that lend themselves to vigorous and intelligent discussion.” They will still welcome reader comments via their Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest profiles, in addition to email, live chats and more.

Suzanne LaBarre, the online content director for the publication, explained that comments “can be bad for science,” and that comments were having a negative effect on the work Popular Science tries to do. Namely, science. Unfortunately, when commenting on areas of interest that require expertise to understand, many (some would say most) comments are made by people who lack the experience needed to qualify them to offer an informed opinion.

photo credit: jeffsmallwood

When a B2B (business-to-business) company starts an online community – like Shopify did with their Ecommerce University – one of the questions they might wrestle with is: how do we get our A players involved? In other words, how can we get our most successful customers into the community?

With Shopify, for example, you have a wide customer base. They power online stores that are just getting started, that have no revenue, and they power online stores that are generating millions of dollars. Why would the million dollar people want to join the community? Why would they want to talk with the people who are new? What value would they receive?

photo credit: maltman23

The End of Kindness: weev and the Cult of the Angry Young Man is a must read by Greg Sandoval over at The Verge. For anyone, really. It is the duty of responsible people to not accept this type of behavior, if they see it, and to discourage anyone they are associated with from engaging in it.

Most community management veterans are probably aware of Kathy Sierra’s story, but it’ll be new for many of you. It’s frightening, but these frightening acts are carried out all the time. Even if it is hard to read about them, it is important to do so.

I believe that well moderated online communities may be the last bastion of hope for people who seek to engage with others online, but to not be subjected to scary, malicious threats. Don’t get me wrong, those threats do come even in those communities, but it is how they are handled that makes the difference. It’s a culture thing. It’s the understanding that it isn’t accepted or encouraged.

photo credit:
Tobias von der Haar

I’m downsizing in my life right now. Personally and professionally. On the personal end, I’m going through all of the things I have accumulated over the years and getting rid of a lot of it.

Last night, I came across some old school papers and stopped at a business management paper I had written when I was 17 (a lot happened when I was 17), talking about providing outstanding service. It included “seven qualities of service,” based on the letters in the word service. Reading it, I thought it fit in well with a lot of what we talk about here. I thought I’d share it with you.

S: Sociable – being genuinely and honestly interested in people and actually paying attention to your customers.

E: Effervescent – being excited about life, about the possibilities you have, about the people you meet and about the things you do.

photo credit: torbakhopper

Is that message spam? Two people can give a different answer about the very same message, depending on various factors. But one factor that doesn’t really matter is whether or not the message was delivered by a bot or through some automated process.

This logic doesn’t pass muster and a simple exercise exposes this. Let’s say that I use a bot to post a message on your community, send you a message on Twitter or send you an email, and you decide that message is spam. If I were to manually send you the exact same message, would you magically decide it wasn’t spam?

photo credit: jurvetson

There is no getting around the fact that when you moderate an online community, you will tell people what they cannot do on the community. People try to sugar coat this, but there’s no point in that. A community where anyone can do anything is a community without aspiration.

But you can also take these moments and use them as an opportunity to help the member to use your community better. This might be best achieved through the use of contact templates, which are private messages that staff members send to a member, explaining why a post has been removed.