photo credit: jo-h

There are no lessons to learn from this situation. Thank you.

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photo credit: Ni_Ko

There have been a few times over the years where someone has posted something on one of my communities that was inappropriate and then they will say that someone else posted those comments under their account.

This is a tricky thing because it’s easy to blame your teddy bear for that glass of spilled milk. At the same, I do try to take it as an honest admission if it sounds like one. It all depends on what they did, what they say and how much of a history they have on the community. If it sounds feasible, I am usually inclined to at least give them one chance on it.

Meaning that I’ll accept that explanation this time. But, I will still make a note of it in their documentation and make sure they know that their account is only supposed to be accessed by them. No matter what, the account holder still has responsibility for what is posted under the account.

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As of April 29, “Monetizing Online Forums,” a guide to monetizing online communities the right way, has been downloaded more than 10,000 times.

This is a conservative count that comes from our website and through third parties where the book is distributed. For all of the copies hosted through the website, which make up most of the numbers, we count the downloads in a very conservative way. One IP address can only count as one download of a particular format of a book within a given week.

For example, if you go and download the PDF 1,000 times right now, you’ll only count as one download. If you come back next week and download it 1,000 times again, you’ll count as a second download. If you were to download the PDF, ePub and MOBI versions a thousand times each right now, you would count as 3 downloads. If different people download the book, all from the same IP in the same week, they all count as one. While it’s not quite unique downloaders, it’s not too far off.

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Recently, I was reviewing the vendors that I work with to monetize KarateForums.com. I was looking for something that would better target martial artists and I decided to increase my usage of eBay Partner Network.

This is eBay’s affiliate program, which pays on a cost-per-click basis. How much you earn per click is based on their Quality Click Pricing, which attempts to evaluate the quality of the traffic that you send them. They say that, on average, publishers earn between $0.06 and $0.21 per click, but those sending “high quality, targeted traffic” can earn more than $0.40 per click. So it isn’t like typical affiliate programs where you just earn a percentage of revenue generated. This can be confusing and, perhaps, frustrating. Nonetheless, for niche communities, the eBay Partner Network can be a good program.

You can certainly use it if you have a more generic, general chat type community, but where it really shines is when you are focused on a particular subject matter. That is when one of eBay’s greatest strengths comes to bear: the depth of items that they have available, covering seemingly any possible interest.

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photo credit: Greene Connections

To paraphrase Ryan Leslie, I’ve never had a big board, but they still respect my art.

A “big board,” as referred to in community manager circles, is a community with 500,000 posts or more. I’ve never managed one. That will change, soon, when KarateForums.com passes 500,000 posts. What does that really mean? Honestly, not much. It’s a milestone accomplishment and it means something, but I don’t suddenly know more about community, not because of a few extra posts on the ones that I manage. It’s the journey that has allowed me to collect the knowledge, not where I’m at right now.

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photo credit: mikecogh

Once in a while, a member will contact me and ask me to delete all of their posts on my forums, as well as their account. If you’ve run forums for any measure of time, you’ve probably received a request like this. Recently, Jeremiah Hester asked how I handled these matters, so I thought I’d write about it.

Mass Deleting Posts

One of the things that makes online forums special is the fact that they are shared spaces. This means that when someone contributes, their contribution directly impacts the contributions of others. There are no walls or profiles, no individual areas where you have to opt-in to a specific person (at least, not usually and not in a way that outweighs the shared spaces). There is simply a space that everyone shares.

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It was 10 years ago last month that I began writing what would eventually become “Managing Online Forums.” April 28 will mark 5 years that it has been in publication.

Digging through my emails, the earliest message that I can find mentioning the project is in May of 2004. I had told some friends about it before that, but it was via instant message. I kept the whole project very close to the vest, not even telling my family until I had an offer from a publisher. The email was sent to Jared Smith, Chrispian Burks and Stephan Segraves. It was titled “Book/Long Article.” Note that I had not yet committed to the idea of it being a book and was not sure if I could do it. It included this:

“As you know, I’ve been working when I can on a book/long article on Internet Community Development. It is sitting at 38,888 words right now. I wanted to ask you if you might want to take a look at it, read it, let me know what you think and possibly suggest some new things for me to cover (if you had any). No real rush, just when you can.”

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photo credit: aerodesign.pl

Yesterday, I was on Tech Talk with Craig Peterson, and we discussed online communities and how to approach them as a business (audio).

One of the areas that we touched on was the concern that forums and structured online communities might be more susceptible to people who don’t comment in good faith and simply want to cause harm or destruction for their own amusement or motives. Some would call these people trolls, though I’d say that label doesn’t always fit the bill.

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The social media team for popular video game franchise Call of Duty has been replaced. That’s OK, though, they asked for it.

The Replacer, introduced prior to the release of the first downloadable content pack for “Call of Duty: Black Ops II,” specializes in replacing you in your day to day life, freeing you up to play more Call of Duty. Now that they are releasing their download pack, he’s made a triumphant return. Family commitments, doctor appointments, your day job, whatever – he can step in and do the job.

Sort of.

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photo credit: Mikey Angels

Experienced community managers will have seen this scenario play out so many times: A community member or visitor posts something that you have to remove because it was vulgar, inappropriate, disrespectful, inflammatory or just downright nasty.

Later, they send you a message. Or you see them complaining somewhere – another community, a social profile, etc. They are talking about how you removed their post, but wait, they can’t be, because what they’re saying isn’t actually what happened.

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