To sum up the thread on online community management so far:

* Nazis are nothing to worry about;
* Encyclopedia Dramatica is full of very useful information;
* You should absolutely ban whoever you want for whatever reason you please;
* Admins who do a really terrible job deserve a break;
* It's really important that you make sure you get paid, but make sure you don't give people anything tangible in return.

pls feel free to boost and screencap this toot devoid of its context

There's a big difference between how a new admin might expect managing a community to be like, and what's actually involved, and the gulf between idea and reality is where young Fediverse places in particular end up falling offline due to admin burnout.

The idea is that it's like hosting a party, and you're a social, empathic people-person so that sounds great!

In reality, sometimes, you will have to deliberately hurt someone.

**You will have to deliberately hurt someone.**

On hurting someone, knowing you're being it and doing it on purpose, for one example out of many banning a user who's become unhealthily obsessed with the site and is hurting others: it's tempting to say "You have to be okay with occasionally hurting people," but you don't really have to be okay with it, as long as you get it done.

It doesn't get easier, but every one of these events lets you spot the warning signs sooner so things don't get so bad. That's what pain's for, making you remember.

Oh yikes we got into the dark again, let's balance that out: it's about sixty of my players' birthdays today!

A big online community is a MASSIVE WAVE OF HUMANITY and the connections formed between users are real and lasting and yikes I wouldn't still be doing this if it weren't TOTALLY WORTH IT.

Y'know when you ask how someone's been and they tell you for an hour and then finish with "It's..." and wave their hands around and finally say "a lot." Well, it's a lot, and it's a lot of good too.

I couldn't remember what I'd talked about already so I went back and reread what I wrote in the thread and IT TOOK ME TWENTY SODDING MINUTES

THIS THREAD ONLY STARTED OFF BECAUSE I WAS BEING SNARKY ABOUT A BLOODY SUBREDDIT

Couple weeks ago I was bitching about every videogame making you spend an hour wading through a sewer, what happened

Alright night Fedi, more tomorrow maybe

Online Community Management Thread pt19, user differentiation

This is gonna be one where you see the tech side of things affect the social side of things. Round here I see a lot of folks talking about how you can't solve social problems with technical solutions, that's true to an extent but it does encourage folks to think of the social/technical sides in binary ways. That's not good because they're proper interwoven and changes to one affect the other.

You've gotta let users have avatars, and you've gotta put their names above or to the side of their post in the same font size as what they're saying.

You can even let users colour in their names, either as standard or as an optional feature for donators (to ensure accessibility you can have them pick from a limited palette).

This helps users tell each other apart and visually recognize folks they're starting to know and like, which helps friendships form.

Having your users able to tell each other apart easily, and giving them a way to express their identity outside of their actual posts, leads to a community of people who actually, like, know each other.

It also adds one more thing to moderate, but it's not that tricky. (don't allow animated avatars - trolls upload gifs of a minute of a lovely flower (for your avatar approval screen) and then a few seconds of porn or gore)

To you and me, "community" means people who you know and recognize and talk to. Sites like Reddit and Slashdot, places were users don't really know each other, they have a different idea of what that word means - it's less like interaction and more like, IDK, kinda surfing a wave of emotion.

They tend to be full of lonely young men who remain lonely despite talking to people all day.

Let users differentiate themselves, visually and obviously, in as many ways as you can think of.

Internet Community Management Thread pt32: mod comms

I've been blessed on Improbable Island with a really awesome mod team. Now you'll likely have to set up a mod team at some point and it's good to get mods from all over the world, so that the timezones are staggered and you don't get "Mods are asleep post butts" events. Also so that you get international viewpoints on things - other countries aren't smaller versions of America, they're other countries and they have cultures.

It's important that you and your mods communicate. Have some kind of dedicated comms channel or subforum or something for mod chat.

Any time a mod->member interaction happens, first check the log before doing anything beyond locking or deleting posts.

Actions on content depend on the content and should be viewed as objectively as possible - actions on members take member history into account. If the member's doing something they've been told five times not to do, then you need to escalate.

After doing whatever, log what happened and ping the mods to tell 'em what's up.

If you're not keeping logs of member naughtiness then the same creep will do the same creepy thing five times before the mods figure out he's done it more than once. That's an environment in which creeps, predators and abusers can flourish.

Another reason you and your mods need to keep comms tight: creeps will lie about mods to other mods. They'll do the thing kids do, when their mum says they can't have a biscuit they just go and ask dad instead.

If your mods disagree on something - which they will, see examples of complex and difficult decisions earlier in the thread - don't do it where the members can see. Abusers know where to hammer in wedges.

Also, in the above example, you should've banned Prickles YYYYEEEEEEAAAAAARRRS AGO

If you ever find yourself thinking "Oh, they're doing That Thing again," that's indicative of a Missing Stair (see further reading post earlier) and your frog is frankly overboiled, it's stew at this point

Anyway, put the issue aside and concentrate on the people posting - this is a personality type to be aware of and remove proactively - they'll chase off other members (the new ones especially - they're attracted to ignorance, not to enlighten, but to scorn) and then fight among themselves until the community implodes.

I'll say again: doesn't matter if they're right. The ones who are right can often do the most damage.

Anyway, back on track, different area of online community management. It's important to have an area on your site where you can knock ideas around with casual users, ideas on how to improve the site or the culture or whatever. This area needs to be ephemeral - comments need to disappear after a little while.

Folk are much more inclined to have a natural, casual, low-stakes back-and-forth when it mimics everyday chat, and this is where really good ideas tend to come from.