photo credit: huskyte77

It was 10 years ago today that Heidi, known on KarateForums.com as ninjanurse, joined my staff on KarateForums.com. In honor of this occasion, I wanted to share with you the announcement that I posted on the community to mark this occasion and let that speak for itself. One note: a Sensei is what we call a moderator. Here is the announcement:

Hello,

Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com.

It was on this day 10 years ago that Heidi joined the staff of KarateForums.com. 8 years, 1 month and 2 days of this she has spent as a Sensei. To put this in perspective, KarateForums.com itself has been online for 12 years, 3 weeks and 6 days.

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photo credit: Phillip Pessar

An escalation policy for your moderators outlines what situations need special handling and what should occur when they are identified. For an example, see the BBC’s policy.

The idea is that some things simply transcend normal, everyday issues. Suicide threats, grooming of children, etc. When they are identified what should happen? That’s what an escalation policy is. What action should a moderator take?

That action might simply be referring it to someone else in your organization who is more specifically trained for these issues. It might mean referring it to the administrator or community manager. Or it might mean sending relevant details to an outside party, such as the police. This will vary by your community, country, the size of the organization and what your lawyers tell you to do (if you have lawyers).

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photo credit: Johnny Jet

I don’t allow anyone to treat my staff members in a disrespectful manner. I will accept slightly more abuse when it is directed at me, then I will when it is directed at my staff. This is part of building a tight knit, loyal team.

But I think it is worthwhile to separate what it means to treat people with respect, as opposed to liking someone, agreeing with them or actually respecting them.

Those three things, you have no control over and it is important to remember that. People decide whether to like, agree or respect someone on their own. You can influence that, but it is not your choice. What you can ensure is that members treat your staff in a respectful way, especially when they are on your community.

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Last week, United Kingdom-based entertainment retailer HMV, currently in administration, announced a round of firings to staff. One of the people being fired was Poppy Rose Cleere, who has taken responsibility for a series of tweets sent from the brand’s Twitter profile as the firings were being announced. Check out stories by NME and the London Evening Standard if this is the first you’ve heard of it.

She posted a series of tweets that were either snarky or offered her personal criticisms of the company. In an ironic twist, one of the tweets criticized the company for allowing an intern to set up the Twitter account, an action which she called “unpaid, technically illegal.” According to her sister, though, Ms. Cleere offered to work for free for the company in order to stay on board, apparently unconcerned with the legal ramifications that might have.

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Recently, a series of events occurred that indicated to me that I could no longer trust a member of my staff. No matter how careful you are in selecting people, this will happen because people change and people are imperfect.

Most of my staff members tend to be popular within the community. That’s not why they get selected, they get selected because I believe that they are good people and they care about the community. That leads to popularity (at least it does on my sites) and this member was no exception.

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photo credit: Grand Canyon NPS

I really enjoy having a tight knit team of moderators who are loyal to me, the community and one another. I’d go so far as to say that it is one of my favorite parts of community management.

Many of the challenges that we face as community managers are those we face in private. They aren’t for our members to know about and be concerned with. I’m talking about the day to day stuff that you do behind the scenes that keeps your community healthy and on track. The stuff that your moderators know about.

You’ll make decisions that are unpopular, but it is always good to know that your staff has your back. They understand what you are doing, why you are doing it and they support you. That’s important.

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photo credit: anitakhart

When a mistake is made, or when something is not handled in an optimal manner, you are presented with a great opportunity for everyone to get better.

It’s not that I seek, encourage or enjoy mistakes. But, I also don’t think that it’s the end of the world if a violation is missed or if a post was removed when it shouldn’t have been. It’s not ideal, but it happens. To pretend that it doesn’t is to delude yourself. You want to correct it and you want to follow up with the affected members to ensure everyone is on the same page and, if appropriate, apologize for the error.

But, that aside, you then want to try to limit similar types of errors in the future and a great way to do that is to treat it as a lesson. I like to do this in the member documentation area, right alongside where the initial action was documented.

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Strong communication skills are essential for a great community manager. And a subset of that skill is explanation. Your proficiency in explanation helps to determine how successful you are as a community manager and how effectively you spend your time.

If you can’t explain why you removed a post, you may confuse or anger a member or have to spend more time talking about the issue. If you can’t explain the new features that you are launching, adoption of those features will suffer. If you can’t explain the responsibilities of your staff members, they will not grasp their roles quickly and you will have to spend more time training them.

My friend Lee LeFever of Common Craft just released a new book, “The Art of Explanation: Making Your Ideas, Products, and Services Easier to Understand.” In it, he defines an explanation as:

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The more that I read Adrian Chen’s story about Violentacrez, who the writer labeled  “the biggest troll on the web,” the more angry I became.

Not anger in the sense of uncontrolled emotion, but anger as someone who has managed online communities for a long time and helped, in whatever small way, to establish this field as a profession. Most of that anger was not directed at the troll, but at Reddit. If you prefer, you can substitute disappointment for anger – they both work.

Let me be clear. Michael Brutsch, the troll in question, disgusts me. I don’t have any compassion for him. I would have fired him myself if he worked for me. His actions are deplorable, his explanations are ridiculous. He is responsible for his actions.

This story is not an attack on anonymity because he wasn’t anonymous. The moment he told other Reddit members who he was, that anonymity vanished. He trusted people who turned on him and gave him up. Chen just put the pieces together – the pieces that Brutsch shared with others.

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photo credit: Svadilfari

Regardless of the software that you use to run your community, it is likely that one of the features that it offers is private messaging. This enables community members to exchange messages privately, between themselves, without posting them in your public areas.

This feature can be used in a bad way and should probably be disabled on some communities. But, even if they are disabled for members in general, it is usually a great idea to keep them enabled for staff communications, especially for private conversations between staff and members.

When you contact a member about a site related matter or a guideline violation, you want to make sure three things happen: the message is received, the message is opened and that it is opened by the account holder. When it comes to ticking these three boxes, private messaging easily beats email.

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