{"id":1006,"date":"2009-11-21T17:30:27","date_gmt":"2009-11-22T00:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sarahdopp.com\/blog\/?p=1006"},"modified":"2009-12-06T12:35:58","modified_gmt":"2009-12-06T19:35:58","slug":"whats-an-online-community-and-when-do-they-need-a-manager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/2009\/whats-an-online-community-and-when-do-they-need-a-manager\/","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s an Online Community and When Does It Need a Manager?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"juiz-outdated-message jodpm-top\">Heads up, this content is 16 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.<\/div><p>I tried to give a talk called &#8220;<strong>Aikido Moves for Online Community Management<\/strong>&#8221; at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.digidave.org\/2009\/09\/public-media-collaborative-event-social-media-for-social-action-and-east-bay-blogger-camp.html\">Social Media for Social Change<\/a> in Oakland a few weeks ago, but it didn&#8217;t quite go as planned.\u00a0 About fifteen minutes into me babbling tips and techniques to a room full of people who looked at me like I was speaking German, someone finally asked the question no one else would:<\/p>\n<p><a name=\"community\"><\/a><strong>&#8220;What&#8217;s an online community?&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There were nods and exhales all around.<\/p>\n<p>Woops. Ok. Let&#8217;s start over.<\/p>\n<p>A <em>community<\/em> is a group of people who recognize that they have something in common.\u00a0 An <em>online community<\/em> is what they get when they interact with each other on the Internet.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike <em>blogs<\/em> which have a mostly-standardized format, <em>online communities<\/em> show up in lots of different structures.\u00a0 These include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Forums and message boards<\/li>\n<li>Chat rooms<\/li>\n<li>Email discussion groups<\/li>\n<li>Blog posts<\/li>\n<li>Blog comments<\/li>\n<li>Wikis<\/li>\n<li>Community areas (groups, fan pages) within a big social networking site<\/li>\n<li>Community-specific social networking sites<\/li>\n<li>Any number of custom-feature websites, widgets, applications that let people<em> do stuff<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Interactions happening <em>anywhere on the Internet<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Really, if you think online communities usually come in formulaic cookie-cutter websites, please go read that list again a few times. What we&#8217;re talking about here is <em>how people want to interact<\/em> &#8212; not how we think they should.<\/p>\n<p>There are three other quirky things about online communities that I want to make absolutely clear:<\/p>\n<p><strong>1) The levels of commitment people have to them vary wildly.<\/strong> More often than we want to admit, it&#8217;s just a fleeting interest, and <em>that&#8217;s okay<\/em>. (Example: If I have a question about my HP printer and go digging through Internet forums for answers, I become part of the <em>HP consumer support community<\/em> for about an hour. And then I don&#8217;t care anymore.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>2) The levels of interaction people get into <em>also<\/em> vary wildly.<\/strong> See the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.90-9-1.com\/\">90-9-1 Principle<\/a>: in any online community, about 90% of the people involved are just there to read (and please don&#8217;t demean this group as &#8220;lurkers&#8221; &#8212; think of how many websites you visit that you don&#8217;t say a word on!).\u00a0 9% will respond to or improve the content that&#8217;s already there.\u00a0 And 1% will generate new content from scratch.\u00a0 Yes, this is an \u00fcber-simplification and will vary by structure, but I can tell you from my own experience that it&#8217;s accurate enough.<em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>3) The uniting factor for a community can be pretty much anything. <\/strong> Pick any combination of people, places, things, identities, experiences, and ideas. If people have it in common, there&#8217;s a potential community there. This isn&#8217;t to say that every topic is worth putting energy into, but please: if you have a limiting idea in your head about what people actually care about, now&#8217;s a good time to ditch it.<\/p>\n<p><a name=\"manager\"><\/a>Now this leads us to the next question: <strong>&#8220;When does an online community need a manager?&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Not always. But sometimes.<\/p>\n<p>If you or your organization <strong>created the space that the community is using to interact<\/strong>, and if it&#8217;s <strong>important to you that the community maintains a certain level of focus or respect<\/strong>, then you probably need a manager.<\/p>\n<p>A manager is someone who smooths out the edges, advocates for what&#8217;s most important, encourages participation, and helps people get what they need.\u00a0 <em>They are not dictators.<\/em> If a manager&#8217;s unchecked goal and approach is to <em>control<\/em> a community, the community will find a way to mutiny.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, I want to offer you a set of techniques I&#8217;ve picked up in my experience managing the communities at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewrit.org\">The Writ<\/a> (an online writing workshop that had 2,000+ members; no longer open) and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.genderfork.com\">Genderfork<\/a> (a volunteer-run community expression blog with 10,000+ readers).\u00a0 I call them <strong>Aikido Moves for Online Community Management<\/strong>.\u00a0 They&#8217;re ways to keep the peace and stay on track without being a jerk.<\/p>\n<p>And now that you&#8217;ve read this intro material, I&#8217;ll post them soon.<\/p>\n<p>Love,<br \/>\nSarah<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Heads up, this content is 16 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.I tried to give a talk called &#8220;Aikido Moves for Online Community Management&#8221; at Social Media for Social Change in Oakland a few weeks ago, but it didn&#8217;t quite go as planned.\u00a0 About fifteen minutes into me babbling tips and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,206],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures","category-aikido-moves"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1006"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1103,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions\/1103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}