At the end of March, I joined the Online Community Research Network from Forum One Networks. From their site:

The Online Community Research Network (OCRN) is a collaborative effort of online community professionals to better understand the principal challenges of building and managing online communities.

A number of people I already know and respect are in the network already. They provide some interesting data and I look forward to getting more familar with it.

Below, please find the video for Father MC’s 1990 single “Treat Them Like They Want to be Treated,” featuring R&B group Jodeci and a young Sean “Diddy” Combs dancing. The chorus goes: “treat them like they want to be treated… you should treat them right.”

As community managers or administrators or, to break it down further, webmasters and content creators, it’s always important to respect your fellow administrators and creators and treat them with the same respect that you would like to receive.

Do you want people to take posts and articles from your site? Then don’t take theirs. Establish solid quoting practices that limit excerpts, link to sources and encourage content creator benefits.

Do you want people to hotlink images to your server? Then don’t allow your users to randomly hotlink images to servers where they don’t appear to have permission to link.

Do you want people to use their community as a complaint department for yours? Then don’t allow your community to become a complaint department for how other random communities are run.

Do you want people to respect the guidelines on your community? Then respect the guidelines of communities that you participate in.

But, let’s be clear: it’s not just about treating them like you want to be treated. It’s about treating them like they want to be treated. If you allow people to post random links to their own website, don’t expect me to allow you to do so on mine. If you allow people to drop four letter words on your community, don’t expect that you’ll be allowed to do so on mine.

Understand that the rules change when the domain changes. Check the policies of the site you’re entering and check the social norms before you jump in.

In short… treat them like they want to be treated. You should treat them right.

April Fools’ Day is always a fun time for me and that is reflected on the iFroggy Network and my communities, where I collaborate with my staff and others to brainstorm ways to have fun with our visitors on April 1. Here’s what we did this year:

On KarateForums.com, all logged in members were granted admin panel access, via a link in the header. The link took them to this page, encouraging them to prank others by talking about their new found admin access.

On phpBBHacks.com, we announced that phpBB 2 support was coming to an end on the site. But, this is not the case.

At PhotoshopForums.com, we announced plans to support only Photoshop CS4. Basically, if you asked a question on the community, it would have to relate to Photoshop CS4 and no prior versions. If you created a graphic or example and posted it on the forums, it would have to have been created with CS4. That’s not something we are going to do.

Finally, on Bad Boy Blog, we did a couple of jokes. When I was coming up with ideas, I had been thinking of fun story ideas that I could write about. One of them was “Exclusive: Sources: Jordan McCoy Joins Boyz N Da Hood, Replacing Gorilla Zoe.”

For those who don’t know, Jordan McCoy and Boyz N Da Hood are both acts signed to Bad Boy Records. McCoy is a 17 year old pop/rock singer who is also a member of Dream, which is a pop girl group. Boyz N Da Hood is a southern, hard core rap group consisting of rappers Big Gee (signed to Bad Boy as a solo artist, as well), Big Duke and Gorilla Zoe (also signed to Bad Boy). Jody Breeze is another member, but his status is up in the air and it sounds like he’s out.

So, really, what I was going for here was some Onion style humor. Something that is rather obviously absurd, but written in a serious, believable manner. Jordan and her manager, Debbie Hammond, are friends of Bad Boy Blog, so I decided to see if we could make it bigger by involving them.

We didn’t have a lot of time, but we pulled something together. First, I posted my report late on March 31. Then, in the afternoon on April 1, her MySpace layout was updated to include “The Newest Member of Boyz N Da Hood!” in the header (see it here). She blogged about it on MySpace and jordanmccoy.com and tweeted about it. I then wrote a post, announcing her confirmation of my report.

So, we collaborated to pull off a pretty good joke and gave her fans a laugh. After I announced it was a prank, she did the same and her MySpace layout was reverted to it’s normal form.

The other joke we did at Bad Boy Blog was to supposedly post a new single from Diddy. While it sounded believable, anyone who clicked the audio player link in the post was taken to a page announcing the prank.

Another April Fools’ Day in the books!

Question for the Comments: Did you pull any pranks or jokes this year? If so, what did you do?

I’ve got this creepy guy e-mailing me every day or other day. Some days, he’s more condescending than others, but there is always this creepy, demeaning tone to them. Often times, he just asks “What’s up?” He calls me “Patty.” He’s been at it for weeks now, or longer. He’s very stalkerish.

The first time this happens, it can be fairly jarring. But, the truth is, I’ve seen it enough where it doesn’t even register with me. I stopped responding to him a long, long time ago. I think I only responded to the first e-mail, confirming he was banned, then he sent some long, disrespectful, crazy rant e-mail about how stupid I was. I’ve documented every single one of his e-mails in our private staff member documentation area, but that’s the only action I take.

When you hold a position of authority where you make decisions about someone’s ability to participate in something, this is just a part of life, unfortunately. So, how do you deal with it?

First, know when to stop responding. When we ban someone, we ban someone. We give people chances, often times many chances. When it’s time to ban, it’s time for them to go. I respond to every message from a member who is not banned, but once someone is banned, I only respond when there is a valid reason for doing so. I don’t repeat myself, I don’t argue with them. Usually this is confirming that, yes, they are banned and, no, it isn’t going to be lifted.

Once in a while, someone who is banned will apologize in a manner that allows me to consider unbanning them. But, that’s pretty rare. Once I have confirmed that they are banned, and that it is not going to be lifted, approximately four different things can generally happen.

1. I don’t hear from them again.

2. They accept it.

3. They let me know how stupid I am and then I don’t hear from them again.

4. They let me know how stupid I am and they continue to e-mail me over an extended period, usually with random insults or annoying statements.

1 and 3 are much, much more prevalent than 4. But, 4 happens (as does 2). And, once you tell them what is going on and they don’t have any legitimate questions, it’s time to stop responding. You only have so much time in the day and you can’t waste it.

I returned from South by Southwest Interactive (recap coming soon – suffice to say, it was great, and my talk went well, too!) and, eventually, proceeded to visit my communities and process my usual responsibilities and tasks. When I came to SportsForums.net, I found that a post had been removed that featured a link to the website of a weekly print newspaper.

The author of the post was one of the paper’s staff writers and she had linked to a sports article she had written that was published on their site (as part of their blogs). We knew it was her because her name was part of her username and the e-mail address provided was her e-mail address on the paper’s domain.

The post was her first, one and only and it was basically your typical self promotion advertisement. A link with a quick description of it. It was an obvious violation of our User Guidelines, where we generally do not allow people to create threads to bring attention to links that they are in some way affiliated with. Pretty typical, open and shut case of spam. Not that big a deal, in and of itself. People make mistakes. The post was removed and she was politely notified by one of my moderators.

Instead of apologizing or simply not responding, however, she decided to send a reply that was troubling on a few levels.

First, she claimed that she did not receive any credit for the article, even though her name was credited as the author who wrote it. She followed this up by calling the moderator “uptight,” and by slamming our community as a whole, saying that her link was “more valuable than 95 percent of random thoughts/opinions that make up the bulk of the forum.” Her link with a 30 odd word description was more valuable than virtually all of our community throughout it’s 8 plus years of existence. Ouch.

There’s nothing wrong with being the best, wanting to be the best and striving for it. However, sometimes I think that people get caught up with the idea that you have to be the best to be worth anything. While that may be the case in some fields, that is most certainly not the case when it comes to online communities.

Online communities are about people and different people have different needs. What someone may not get from one community, perhaps the largest community in the niche, they may be able to get from another, smaller community.

You can be number 2, 3, 4 or… whatever and still be important to the people who utilize you. It’s about knowing your niche and pursuing it. It should be about your goals and ideas and about who you are as a community, not about having the most posts or traffic at any cost because if you have to sell out who you are to get there, it’ll be a hollow “victory.”

Update: Embedded the saved stream below. Warning: it’s rough!

Today, March 14, at 1:30 PM ET, I will be speaking at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) 2009. I will be giving a presentation called “The Art of Responding to Feedback from Your Community.”

For those that were unable to make it to Austin for the conference, I wanted to try to stream the presentation on Ustream. The video stream is embedded below. If you’re free, please check back at or a little before 1:30 PM ET today. The presentation will last for no longer than 20 minutes.

It may not work because we are at the mercy of wifi and bandwidth, but I will try my best. The camera angle may also be awkward. Even if it doesn’t work or isn’t ideal, a friend will be taking video for me of the entire presentation that I will post online at some point, as well.

During the presentation, or after, please feel free to provide feedback on Twitter @patrickokeefe. Thank you for watching!

Broadcasting Live with Ustream.TV

I’ll be attending the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) 2009 conference in Austin, Texas, from March 13 through March 17. So, things will be a little quiet around here at this time. I appreciate your patience.

On Saturday, March 14 at 12:30 PM, I’ll be speaking, giving a presentation called, “The Art of Responding to Feedback From Your Community.” After the presentation, at 12:55 PM, I’ll be doing a book signing for 20 minutes at the SXSW Bookstore. I’ll probably sign whatever stock they have, so if you miss the signing and still would like a signed copy, please stop by the bookstore!

But, even if you can’t make it to my session and would like to meet up, just let me know. Probably the best way, after March 11,  is to send me an @ reply on Twitter. My Twitter name is patrickokeefe. I look forward to seeing you there!

I did some testing today and I am hoping to stream my SXSW Interactive 2009 talk, “The Art of Responding to Feedback from Your Community,” live online via Ustream.tv. The presentation starts at 1:30 PM ET, but I’ll probably try to start the stream a little earlier. You will hopefully be able it on the ManagingCommunities.com Show channel.

Please keep it in mind that it may not be possible. It will depend on the wifi connectivity as well as the available bandwidth. Fingers crossed, we’ll make it happen! Even if I am not able to pull it off, I will still be taking video that will be posted online at some point.

I am thinking that I would like to start an interview series with various community administrators – people who are in the field, working every day and tackling the challenges that we all face.

For these folks, I figure that it would be a good idea to have a basically set list of questions that they will all get asked. Informative, interesting or simply funny – I’d like to hear your thoughts. What should they be asked?