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.

Online Community Management Thread pt 22: what time is it

People on your site, if they're friendly and like each other and the community's big enough for this to happen, would like to set up events. Things like cocktail hours, group watches of silly movies, that kind of thing. You're a savvy admin and you know these make good bonding experiences so you want to encourage them.

Put a clock on your site!

It doesn't have to be a big obtrusive fancy clock that looks bad, you can put a little one in the footer. It doesn't have to take up any extra resources, you can just echo the current timestamp as YY-MM-DD HH : MM : SS UTC.

The UTC part is important. That means everyone sees the same clock, set to the same time, and that's the point.

The clock is there to remind people that they're all on different timezones, and give them a common reference point by which they can plan their events.

Anyway people will still tend to plan events around their local timezone, unless you tell them that that's what the clock's for, it's to help cut down on people turning up an hour early or late because they were thinking of a different timezone.

Don't make "use the clock" an actual capital-R Rule of the site, that's a bit heavy-handed. Just talk a little bit in the FAQ about how it helps people, and folk will use it.

I make these announcements on my site 'cause folks do a lot of events (and maybe they do so many events because we've got the coordinating-times-worldwide thing sorted out and agreed upon as a community).

Other time-related suggestions you can make to your community:
* Be wary of planning events to start at midnight because people often get the date wrong (this is why ppl say "one minute past midnight")
* Try to get used to 24-hour time
* Check smoke alarm batteries at DST start/end

In similar spirit, remind your American users that if they want to be understood online they should use the metric system and the YYYY-MM-DD date format.

Again, don't make this a capital-R Rule with Consequences Should It Be Broken, just phrase it in the FAQ to be clear that people will have an easier time understanding and interacting and helping if they don't have to convert back-and-forth between units.

I have a whole section in my Code of Conduct about common misunderstandings that arise from having different timezones, measurements, date formats etc, and it's right upfront that these were suggestions and hints and not enforced rules - nonetheless, people very quickly decided that everyone being on the same page was a good and useful thing.

Don't expect people to find this information in other places online. Put it on your site, and tailor it to your users.