Coloured Slide
Creative Commons License photo credit: mikecogh

If you manage an active community, like I do, violations to your guidelines can be a dime a dozen.

Most of them are probably fairly simple – your garden variety spam, duplicate posting and what not.

Mix that in with some copyright infringement and some culture setting guidelines, like those to do with disrespectful comments and vulgarities, and you have a majority of what you have to deal with on a regular basis.

In the sea of violations, it can be easy to think “what does it matter if I let this one slide?” Some common scenarios where this may occur:

  • This person is a veteran member and they have contributed so much. Why don’t I just let this one slide?
  • This person is brand new and I don’t want to scare them away!
  • There have been so many replies to what this person said and removing it would damage those replies.
  • This person has been trying so hard to turn their participation around – I don’t want to discourage them.

These are reasonable enough thoughts and legitimate concerns to have.

But, one of the vital elements of well executed community management is consistency. A violation is a violation and they should all be handled in a similar manner.

There is the matter of legal and ethical culpability, depending on the type of violation, for letting things happen that you know or suspect to be illegal or unethical. But, those aren’t usually the types of violations you might think of allowing to slide. It’s the other types.

In those cases, it is about expectations. What expectations are you setting? Are they reasonable or unreasonable? The content that you remove – or don’t remove – is one of the factors that creates the expectations that your members have for what is OK or is not OK (for better or for worse).

So, if you leave something alone, when it is in fact a violation, you are setting an improper expectation, one of that you will not be able to meet in the future, when you properly apply your guidelines outside of this exception that you have decided to make.

There is certainly room for some discretion, though. Take the four scenarios I laid out above.

  • This person is a veteran member and they have contributed so much. Why don’t I just let this one slide?
    Veteran members have greater influence and responsibility on your community. This is not to be taken lightly. They should be setting a good example for other members to follow. A veteran member that cares about the community will understand this.
  • This person is brand new and I don’t want to scare them away!
    In your message to them, you can welcome them to the community and try to make them feel welcome – while also telling them about the violation in question. You don’t want to scare them away, but you also don’t want to start building a relationship on false pretenses only to have them think that something is OK, and do it again, when it really isn’t.
  • There have been so many replies to what this person said and removing it would damage those replies.
    I limit the replies that I remove to just those that speak directly to the post that was removed, reference it or would otherwise not make sense without it. This means that, often times, some (or all) posts made after the removed post are left. When I have to remove a bunch, it hurts me, but it is a good and logical way to handle it.
  • This person has been trying so hard to turn their participation around – I don’t want to discourage them.
    You can tell them in the message that you appreciate the strides they have been making lately.

In summary, part of creating a good experience for your members is to create a consistent experience for them. One where, as much as possible, you are clear about what is OK and what isn’t OK. If you make strange or confusing exceptions, you threaten that experience.