Can Community Members Police Themselves?

The criticism question or fear is always the 1,000 pound gorilla in the room when discussing communities with new clients and prospects. The idea of someone bashing your product or brand in public is still a very uncomfortable idea for many executives. Unfortunately, too many of our competitors whether they are consultants or software companies, answer that the criticism will be answered by members, so don’t worry about it so much. But that is entirely the wrong answer.

In our nine years experience in working with online communities and social networks, we’ve developed the slide below to help organizations understand the stages of the community lifecycle from a moderation/facilitation/member contributions standpoint:

 

The trouble with most community advice being given today is that it assumes that most communities are starting at the higher end of the Middle Maturity level or in some cases at the High Maturity level. In our experience, this has never been the case. All communities launch at the Low Maturity level. It is up to the organization offering the community to understand the needs of the community and get involved early to help the community mature. If you sit back, the community will never get to the High Maturity level shown above.Regarding criticism in the community, our experiences vary. But in short, if you rely on your community members to police themselves and respond to criticism you will be disappointed.

In nine years of working with over 40 online communities and social networks, we’ve seen very few communities that had reached the stage of maturity where they could police themselves. Here is what we’ve learned about this from surveying multiple communities about the idea of members policing the site:

• The majority of members in most communities will not report violations. Sure a couple of your top members might, but members believe it is the hosting company’s responsibility to keep the community clean and working.
• The overwhelming reason why members won’t report issues is the fear of being labelled a ‘tattletale’ or company employee or company shill by other members ruining their credibility online.
• While members have an affinity for your brand, they don’t have a responsibility to defend your brand and many will wait to see how you respond as an organization before jumping on board to support.
• Members in B2C communities actually enjoy a good flame war from time to time. They want to see the community management in action to reassure them that the organization cares about the conduct within the community and that the management is aware of the member needs. Because of this, in many B2C communities, members will not step up to prevent or stop a flame war, but rather actively participate in it. This is especially true of your most devoted members.

One example we have where a member stood up against a trolling competitor in a B2B community was with a large technology community back in 2002. In this case, a competitor trashed the product being looked at by a member of the community. Our moderation process was to leave the criticism up and respond after 2 business days. Within a day, we saw a member respond with a long comparision of the products mentioned which clearly showed the benefits of our client’s products over the competition’s. But this was a single instance out of many… and in a community that was already moving towards High Maturity, not in a new community.

In the B2C communities that we are moderating, we see that roughly 85% of all violations of the terms of service are found by our moderation team. Even worse, 50% of the violations reported by members are not violations but rather cases where they disagree with the member’s point of view (so we restore the content). When members of the community criticize the organization, they ridicule members who support the organization. After several of these discussions, members stop coming to the aid of the organization.

So what should you do? You must leave the criticism up if it’s valid and respond. Just don’t expect your members to do it for you. Part of running a community is getting into the mix and interacting with members…. too many companies are being told by consultants to sit back and let the members dictate the community’s operation. That’s just poor advice. Process and moderation/facilitation are very necessary in any community. Letting members dictate everything ends up in chaos which does not result in achieving any significant objectives for the organization offering the community.

Want to learn more about moderating and facilitating in your online community? Visit our web site to download our free presentations and contact us with your questions.

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