Don’t punish people for stuff they haven’t done.
This is an excerpt from my essay, Aikido Moves for Online Community Management, written last fall. It may not be relevant to every community situation, but it worked for me. I’d love to hear your version. -sd
Be careful about comment and moderation policies, and make sure they’re addressing real needs rather than pre-emptively striking against imagined ones.
I anticipated that Genderfork would get a lot of hate mail, and I strongly considered turning on the “you have to be pre-approved to leave comments” setting to guard against it. If you’ve ever left a comment only to see a “now waiting for moderation” message, you know what a slap in the face that setting feels like. Fortunately, I decided to wait and see if I really needed it. 70,000+ total visitors later, we still don’t get a single shred of anti-queer hate in our comments. ZERO. NADA. GOOSE EGG. (Okay, well there was that one day, but it was super-isolated, and there was a miscommunication, so I say it doesn’t count.) I now have it set up so that people can even comment anonymously — no name or email address required — because I know they appreciate the option, and they respect the privilege. Still no hate. Magic.
I’m with you on this. Forcing pre-approval has always felt like starting off on the wrong foot somehow.
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An absence of visible trolls in your community does not mean there are no trolls.
Trolls may be reproducing your content elsewhere (such as using tumbleblogs, or the infamous trolling boards) and attacking your users (either through plain cruel comments, or attempting to identify posters) from an online space outside your community.
Of course, pre-approving comments doesn’t prevent that, and DMCA notices against trolling sites reproducing content would require the creator of the content to provide RL identifying information.
But I think does mean that community managers need to be mindful of it and spend time on planning what to do when your communities are attacked, which means threats assessment, contingency plans, and tools to help users whose personal safety and welfare may be endangered if they are outed.
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I agree with that, Whump. Sarah, sounds like you have a mission – talk about developing strategies to handle attacks. :-)
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Agreed! Definitely a big subject, and one I haven’t had to deal with a lot personally, so I want to interview the people who have. Whump, are there Linden community managers you think would be good to speak on this? Denise, who’s dealing with this kind of challenge on your radar?
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