DIIA Blog

Many start blogs and social networking sites, but few build vibrant, self-sustaining communities. This panel explores some of the most successful ventures that grew independently and continue to grow today. Lessons learned, plans for the future will be discussed along with some best practices for those who seek to develop true communities.

BlogHer started as an online conference in 2005. Began as a community, grown to largest online women’s blogging community. Fark didn’t notice they even had a community for a long time. Preferred personal communication. Grew organically. Reddit.com sprang from having a community without an outlet.

How do you balance your own vision of the community with the community’s vision? Inevitably, you have to make the calls and take the lead. There is both a philosophical and practical aspect.

Is it a good idea? Is it something people want? Perspective. Beware the tyranny of well-organized dissent. Reddit lets users have the tools and develop their own communities. BlogHer is similar. Writers can have their own page. You have to listen to your readers.

Forums are a great feature to take the community’s pulse. Can give you a good idea of what your audience actually thinks. Makes the enterprise transparent.

How does the community view itself? BlogHer has fairly restricted community guidelines so that they will feel safe to have civil discourse. Very well self-policed. Most sites have a moderation team.

Reddit installed a wiki page to aggregate rules for the community. Communities regulate themselves.

What do you do with problematic comments? Delete? Lock out? Discuss with infractor? BlogHer won’t allow troll comments. Ars Technica doesn’t delete or modify content unless it’s spam. Not a 1st amendment issue, because it’s not public property.

Currently 5,000 folks are banned from Fark. Ars Technica approaches from a legal aspect. Cardinal and compulsory rules in moderating. When rules are broken, institute a 1-week ban, and try to rehabilitate them. Then will ban for 1 month. When banned members conform to the rules, they can rejoin the community.

BlogHer saw incredibly heated debate during the election, but remained civil. Tried to remain neutral, and encouraged conversations. Pumas = Clinton supporters. Made a coordinated effort to take over the site, and BlogHer was able to stop it from disrupting.

What big mistakes have you seen in other communities? What should you not do?

BlogHer: Tell rather than ask, don’t let community know when change is coming. Don’t involve the community in decisions.

Fark: If you listen to community too much, at least 20% of readers will freak. Can’t let that segment disrupt the site. Will usually get used to it in a couple of weeks. Reddit: the silent majority won’t tell you what they are feeling. You may need to survey this group to find out how they are doing.

Ars Technica is big on surveys–helps quantify things, and shares with the audience when the site is wrong, or doing well. They give away little stuff with the survey to encourage participation. Grew from 3 to 26 forums. Added as they were needed. Don’t add until your community becomes engaged enough to warrant opening new ones–don’t want them to miss out on the greater content. Difficult not to let your ego get the best of you. Must be able to take criticism, however harsh or unrealistic. Do not be vindictive–sends a bad message to the rest of your audience.

What do you look for in a community manager? A new job in the field. Patience and level-headedness. Someone who can remain as neutral as possible and handle a lot of people yelling at each other with grace. Not just the comments, have to vet the bloggers to weed out spam.

How do you mount a conference? BlogHer–easy–it’s community-driven. Add new features to give your community more tools to communicate. Find ways to let people follow the conversations they want to. The best kind of communities feel small. Make it easy for the 5 people who are interested in one topic to communicate easily. If they’re passionate, bring them in. Give them tasks or roles that they can reflect on their profile. Talk personally with the passionate members. Hire them as you grow.