As a community manager or administrator, the situations we have to deal with are as varied as life itself. For all talk about the online and offline worlds being different, at the end of the day, they have more in common than they do dissimilar. Unfortunately, this is not just the fun, easy parts of life, but also the difficult, challenging ones.

Though it may not be one of the more enjoyable parts of our job, it’s smart and important to ponder what circumstances we may face, even if we haven’t yet faced them. This leads me to what I’d like to talk about today: suicide on our online community, and how we can most effectively help and protect everyone involved. This isn’t about suicide in general, why people think about it, the repercussions of it or anything of that nature - this is strictly about how we should approach it on our communities.

When we think about suicide on an online community or social space, the two recent examples that will probably jump to your head are Abraham K. Biggs’ suicide on Justin.TV and the suicide of Megan Meier, apparently driven by messages exchanged through MySpace.

Before I jump into this subject, I want to be clear that I believe that we are all responsible for our actions as individuals. I don’t think it’s fair to blame Justin.TV, MySpace or any community or social site for the actions of an individual in this sort of case. The nature of communication itself dictates otherwise.

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So, I was taking a look at Hunch, a site created by Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, that claims to be a “decision-making tool that gets smarter the more you use it.” Out of curiosity, I punched in the word “forums” to see what would come up. The first result was “Should I become a forum moderator?”

I answered every question thinking of myself as the worst moderator candidate possible and I got “86% (No): You should probably think longer.” And then I answered it in the way that an ideal moderator might. The result? “95% (Yes): Yes, you should definitely consider becoming a Mod.” If you try to do this, please let me know what you get in the comments.

I think the quiz (and it’s creator) deserves credit for creating a generally accurate portrayal of some of the things that go into being a good forum moderator.

Over at ProBlogger, Darren Rowse was kind enough to allow me to provide a guest post that I titled “Enhance and Grow Your Online Community Through Appreciation.” In the post, I discuss how simple acts of appreciation can have noteworthy impact on the growth of your community. Here’s the closing excerpt:

Appreciation is a powerful thing. It can open doors, start relationships, give people happiness, bring people back and give them confidence. In the interest of cultivating community, please consider how not just appreciating people – but making sure they know you appreciate them – can enhance your community.

Please let me know what you think about the post.

At Blog World & New Media Expo 2008, I was lucky enough to be on a pair of panels, sharing the stage with some great people. My friend Chrispian Burks was kind enough to record the panels for me and, in November, I posted the video from the “Avoiding Disaster: How Not to Use Social Media” panel.

The other panel was called “How to Deal with Trolls, Spammers & Sock Puppets.” Here is the panel description:

You just wrote the greatest blog post you’ve ever written. You researched the subject, spoke with sources, conducted interviews and completed a well thought out, well written article. You hit the post button and your baby is up. Here comes the praise! The first comment you receive? “You’re stupid, you’re ugly and you’re writing sucks.” Whether you call them trolls, haters or griefers, they’re out there, waiting to ruin your day, harm your community and taint your world.

Or maybe the first comment was something like, “Hey, nice article, check out mine!” Just like there are people who’d like to harm you, there are also people who’d like to cheaply benefit from your work and your audience. Spammers can do their own sort of damage.

But, neither of these two groups need harm you, if you know how to deal with them. This panel will give you the knowledge you need to tackle it.

I was invited to join this panel by Rick Calvert, Founder of Blog World Expo & New Media Expo. It also featured John Chow of John Chow dot Com, The Tech Zone and TTZ Media and Jeremy Schoemaker of ShoeMoney and ShoeMoney Media Group.

The panel was a lot of fun and a great experience, being that it was the first panel that I had ever been on. Afterwards, we had a great Q&A. Here’s the entire session:

In addition to Vimeo, the video is also on YouTube (parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8).

CommunityAdmins.com (i.e. the big logo on the top right portion of this page) is a community for people who run communities, but also moderators and users of communities, in general. Anyone interested in online community. But, the focus is certainly on the management aspect.

I thought that I would highlight five recently active, interesting discussions that popped up on the community. If you have any thoughts, please feel free to jump in!

1. Cult Threatends Legal Action Against Forum

An administrator shares the challenges that his or her community is facing, in dealing with a supposed “cult” and it’s threats against negative comments posted on the site.

2. Do You Used Non-Disclosure Agreements for Members of Staff?

In addition to standard staff guidelines, an NDA is also a viable consideration for many administrators.

3. Staff Members Doing Whatever They Want

The thread born out of this post on ManagingCommunities.com has inspired some interesting discussion and real experiences of staff members who have crossed the line.

4. How Much Can You Make with Forums?

Administrators share the ways they generate money and the expectations that you should have when doing so.

5. Private Communities: How Do They Work?

Finally, a discussion on private communities and who they will work for and won’t work for.

If you have any interest in discussing the management of online communities, I would definitely recommend joining us at CommunityAdmins.com.

In January, I wrote about how not to lock topics. Reader Jeremy wrote this comment:

There is a certain online forum for a photo gallery I use where the Moderators are just plain mean. A good portion of the time when someone asks a question the moderator is the second or third person to respond, and it’s with a snippy comment about searching before you post, and not posting questions that have already been asked/answered. They often go on to lock the thread. Often times when searching for information, I’ll come across these threads long before the ones where the original question was answered!

I’ve even seen people ask questions about that gallery on other websites, just because they were afraid to be scolded by these mean moderators.

The moderators never help by providing links, just rude comments. It’s a shame their product is so good, because their attitude is not…

The emphasis is mine here as this is what I’d like to talk about today. There are a lot of support communities out there. I run two communities that would fit in that vein: the phpBBHacks.com Support Forums and PhotoshopForums.com.

But, back before I had them - before I had phpBBHacks.com, specifically - I noted a tactic I saw all too much. The moderators on some support forums, or the support team, would chastise people for asking questions they deemed repetitive or simple. They’d tell the people they should search, they’d lock their topic - they’d be snide and disrespectful. It bothered me so much that I made it a founding principle at phpBBHacks.com for my Support Team. That policy was, simply, if you are on my staff and someone asks you for a solution, you don’t tell them to search - you link them to what they need. Even if the question has been answered a million times. No exceptions. While I am sure there were slip ups, I am always quick to correct them. I am pretty fanatical about this.

When you are on staff at a support forum, chances are that part of your responsibilities are to actually help people - to support them. If you are telling people to search, you aren’t doing that. I don’t count this as teaching a man to fish - rather than giving him a fish. Teaching people how to search is another discussion for another day. What you exist to do is to give people a solution, not to send them off into the never ending search results.

The reason that they are using your forums is because they really don’t want to search. They want an answer, that’s why they are asking a question. Provide them with that answer, if you can. If you don’t know, don’t tell them to search. If it’s a question that has been asked a million times, write a tutorial and link to it each time. People will ask the same question over and over again - that’s natural. Maybe the more important thing to ask yourself is why - why are they asking this question so much? Can you do something to prevent that? Or help it? But, if you can’t, just write a detailed tutorial and whenever someone asks the question, link them to it and encourage them to ask questions if they have any, after reading it.

The same goes to pointing people to an FAQ in a flippant manner. “Did you read the FAQ?” “Why didn’t you read the FAQ?” “Before you posted, you should have read the FAQ.” Don’t send people to long FAQs, send people to what they need. Give them their answer. That’s your task. It’ll make them happier and you’ll be better off. And people will come back.

Do I allow regular members to suggest that people search? Yes… but, it has to be done respectfully and not in a condescending, “you’re a newbie” way. When it comes to a support community, it’s important that both the question answerers and the question askers receive respect.

Questions for the comments: Do you run a support community? If so, how do you instruct your staff to handle repetitive questions?

Tanner Smith is one of my moderators on the phpBBHacks.com Support Forums. He’s 17 years old and he’s been on my staff since he was 13. Often times, when I discuss community environments and maturity levels with people - age becomes a topic. How someone approaches this topic, how they talk about teenagers, impacts my perception of them as people. I started managing communities in 2000 - when I was 15. I dealt with people who wouldn’t listen to me because I was that age. I will always remember that. And that’s why I will always respect people based upon their actions and their merit - not their age.

Age doesn’t mean a heck of a lot, I’ve found. Some of the biggest idiots I’ve had to deal with have been people in their 20s, 30s, 40s and older. Some of the greatest people I’ve had on my communities have been in their early to mid teens. And vice versa - some of the biggest idiots I’ve had to deal with have been people in their early to mid teens and some of the greatest people I’ve had on my communities have been people in their 20s, 30s, 40s and older. Simply, great people are great people. Age doesn’t make you great.

In other words, when someone comes into my community, my reaction to their age is always “Meh.” It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t tell me what to expect from them. It doesn’t tell me whether or not they’ll respect our guidelines. The phrase, “we’re all adults here” means nothing - absolutely nothing - to me. It doesn’t tell me whether or not they’ll be great contributors. Age doesn’t dictate personality. Too often, too many people fall into this trap, stereotyping a certain age group.

Anyway, the main reason I am writing this post today is because I wanted to highlight a post that Tanner wrote on his personal blog. Not just because he titled it, “Why I like Patrick O’Keefe’s way of managing forums…,” either. Heh. But, in the post, he talks about his experience watching me manage the community and describes what he likes about it, in three sections: it’s organized, it’s professional and it’s good for users. I think it’s a great read. I didn’t know anything about the post until it was already up. But, having read it, it clicks. This is what it’s all about. Thanks Tanner.

We all have an idea of what we would like our moderators to do and how we want them to act. In deciding these things, we are also able to figure out how we don’t want them to act. Sometimes, we realize this by seeing other moderators behaving badly. With this in mind, here are 10 moderator behaviors that I would never want to see from my moderators.

1. Condescending Thread Locking

I think you should avoiding locking topics in general. If a post is bad, it’s removed. Not closed. You don’t close threads and leave problem posts in public as that sends the wrong message. But, there is a time and place for locking threads. And when that is done, it should be done gracefully.

Locking topics shouldn’t be an act of provocation. It’s not a statement as to your dominance of  the forum. That should be conveyed. Posting something like “Locked.” just sends a totally wrong message. It’s unprofessional, condescending and crass.

2. Moderation Individuality

Individuality in people is a great thing. We’re all different and those differences are what makes life either difficult or awesome. If we were all the same, it’d be boring.

Moderation individuality is when a moderator decides that policies that have been set for moderators can be circumvented and that the moderator is free to make decisions against them and do what they want. It could be deciding not to document something, deciding something isn’t a violation when it clearly is, or something else. Whatever it is, it causes a lack of consistency in decisions, leading to confusion from members and staff alike. If done knowingly, it’s insubordination.

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Locked topics have a purpose on most communities. I try to avoid them, except in specific circumstances, but they have a place and they are a tool in a moderator’s arsenal. What I want to discuss today isn’t the locking of topics in itself, but what one says when they lock a topic.

When you lock a topic, you should have a legitimate reason that you can politely convey, in a final reply to the thread. For example:

Hey guys,

We actually have another discussion on this very same subject that was recently active, so I am going to go ahead and close this one and redirect you over to that one.

http://www.communityadmins.com/how-many-mods-do-you-have-vt30.html

Thanks,

Patrick

Unfortunately, sometimes people don’t take the time to politely explain. Often times, these folks include a sentence like “Locked.” or “Lockey lockey.” in their post. This is ugly and lazy. Closing threads should be done with grace. Not with condescending and flippant remarks or statements that basically say “I’m a moderator, I can close this thread - I just did. Too bad.” The lock thread option isn’t a toy, it should be used for specific reasons and not as a flight of fancy.

If you run a community, make sure that you define when you want your moderators to use the close thread functionality and how they should do so.

Closing Question: Without citing specific names, websites or links, what is the worst example of moderator gone mad topic locking that you have ever seen?

Individuality, on a personal level, is a good thing. We’re all different. We like different things. That’s great. That’s what life is all about and a big part of what makes it interesting and worthwhile.

However, when it comes to being a community staff member and enforcing the guidelines of a community, individuality is a bad thing. Your community staff should move as a unit. The guidelines should be enforced as consistently as possible.

In short, this is why things like contact templates and staff member guidelines exist. They exist to ensure consistency and to keep everything running smoothly.

This is why moderator individuality is a bad thing. I’m not talking stuff like one staff member signing messages “Regards,” and another signing them “Thanks,”. I’m talking about things like moderators deciding not to follow the staff guidelines or not practicing them in the right way.

I have seen a staff member, at a community that was not my own, operate in direct opposition to the staff member guidelines because he decided he wanted to do so. He decided that his way was better. This is completely unacceptable.

I’ve had a staff member who went behind my back to get “between” a member and me before I saw his post, which had violated our User Guidelines. The staff member acted as if there were sides and he was on the member’s side - not mine. Suffice to say, I unleashed upon this staff member and he resigned shortly thereafter. That’s a post for another day.

But, most mistakes aren’t that serious. The point is, when you see an error in judgment or something that is not in line with your expectations, step in and correct it, no matter how small. Do not allow incorrect practices to fester. Be polite, be productive and nice about it - but make sure that it is understood.

Your staff guidelines or manual shouldn’t be a suggestion - they should be a requirement. Moderators can be themselves, but it is also important for them to realize that they are a part of a team and that their moderators duties should be as consistent as possible from person to person.