photo credit: jo-h

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

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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:
Music News Australia

Thanks to the internet, being a fan of someone means something totally different than it did 50 years ago, 20 years ago, even 10 years ago.

It means access, not just to the person you are a fan of, but to other fans. In general, that’s a beautiful thing. But, inevitably, society is society and bad stuff happens. Fans attack other fans, promote destructive behaviors and engage in a irresponsible manner, even though their intentions may be to support the celebrity they are a fan of. Running fan communities, I have bumped into this.

Here is an idea: Major celebrities could hire a community manager not just to facilitate official community spaces, but also to guide their fans online in best practices as far as how to engage with other fans, how to manage their fan communities and, in general, serve as a useful resource to them.

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photo credit: theHalo

A friend passed along Kurt Opsahl’s blog post on the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)’s blog, “Georgia Court Censorship Order Threatens Message Boards Everywhere.”

Matthew Chan runs a website called ExtortionLetterInfo where he targets “copyright trolls.” The EFF story paints a somewhat noble picture of his actions. When you read the story by Ars Technica, though, you start to get a greater sense of what occurred.

Linda Ellis is a writer and the author of a poem called “The Dash.” Another author published this poem in his book without permission and was contacted by Ellis requesting compensation of $100,000. The author chose to instead pay Chan to bring attention to the situation, hoping public pressure would force Ellis to back down.

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photo credit: chuckychoi

“Don’t Yuck My Yum” is the title of a recent episode of a show with ze frank. On it, Frank talks about moments in his life where he has liked something that was otherwise harmless, only to have people suggest to him that he should stop liking it.

“The yum getting yucked is when you like something harmless – and harmless is the trick here and leads to my confusion – when you like something harmless and someone tells you to stop liking it,” he explains.

I think we’ve all experienced those moments where we like something – a song, a TV show, a movie – and had someone tell us, either with their words or the expression on their face, that they thought the thing we liked was terrible and/or embarrassing. And, certainly, we’ve probably done it to other people.

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Recently, I watched a couple of people argue about what the community manager role should encompass. One was more of a marketing guy and the other had a more community oriented background. Their viewpoints aren’t important, as much as how they chose to express them.

I happened to be subscribed to this particular discussion and as they want back and forth, I noted that both of them were being a bit in your face and disrespectful. Though I agreed with one more than the other, I found myself thinking less of both of them, surprised by the words that they chose.

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I am a big fan of “Saturday Night Live” and, as I thought about it, I realized that the cast of SNL has a lot in common with the members of an online community.

The show is now on it’s 38th season and, according to Wikipedia, the program has had a total of 132 cast members. If you look through the list of cast members, you’ll notice a lot of names that you know, but also many that you don’t.

The changes that occur with the SNL mirror the changes that your online community experiences with membership.

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Two years ago, I answered a question on Quora, “Is the time for forums over?” I’m sure I answered “are forums dead?” type questions like that before.

Here we are, two years later, and what I said then is exactly as true now. I’ve been asked this type of question many, many times and I always give a similar answer. Two years from now, I expect my answer will still be as true as it is now.

I’ve tackled this topic seriously numerous times here at ManagingCommunities.com, talking about how forums evolve and why this question isn’t helpful to your efforts. I’ve talked about platform death and said that there isn’t enough time in the day for me to tell you that forums are not dead.

I’ve also had fun with it, posting an obituary for forums on April Fools’ Day and launching areforumsdead.com. That last link, though certainly facetious, is also helpful. Keep refreshing. You never know. If forums do die, the page will say yes.

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“Because he’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So, we’ll hunt him, because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero. He’s a silent guardian. A watchful protector. A dark knight.”

This statement concludes “The Dark Knight,” the 2008 Batman movie directed by Christopher Nolan. It is uttered by Commissioner James Gordon, portrayed by actor Gary Oldman. I watched the film last night and, as I often do with things that I see and hear, pondered how it might apply to community managers.

When Gordon makes that statement, he’s speaking to his son, who Batman had just saved from Two-Face, the evil alter ego of Harvey Dent, the former district attorney who the public views as Gotham’s “white knight.” After the younger Gordon is saved, Batman and Gordon briefly discuss the fall of Dent and how it means that the Joker – the film’s primary villain – has won because he corrupted and made evil the seemingly incorruptible Dent.

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photo credit: vastateparksstaff

I tend not to look at other online communities as my competitors. I mean, in one sense, they are. We are all competing for someone’s time (community or not). But, in another sense, it doesn’t really matter. Online communities are very different from one another. They are all like their own countries, with their own culture. Different people gravitate toward different ones.

If I looked at other online communities as my competitors, then I help them every day. I helped them when I wrote my book. I help them when I speak at a conference or when I write a blog post here where I offer advice that they can take and use against me. But, I don’t look at it like that. I don’t feel that I am harming myself by being as honest and open as I am about this profession. Though, if you told me that I was, you wouldn’t be the first person to do so.

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