I am honored and thrilled to introduce you to Tarrant Figlio, a long-time community manager equipped with a huge arsenal of wisdom and experience. Tarrant has also been serving as a key contributor at our very own Culture Conductor, editing many posts and managing a big chunk of the publishing process around here. I asked her to speak to some of the things that matter most in her community work, and her answers were juicy, juicy, juicy. Ready to dive in? Read on…
~Sarah Dopp
Confessions of a Reformed Control Freak
Tarrant Figlio
In the beginning, I thought managing community meant controlling the conversation. I had a hard line and while defensible, it had its ridiculous moments. (“NO! Don’t talk baby names here on the trimester board! We have a board for that!”)
I learned along the way:
Lead with light reins.
Encourage members.
Listen, listen, listen.
Teach members how to be a part of the community.
Teach members to take ownership of the community. The most valuable asset in online communities are the members who lead conversations, take new members under their wing, point to site content, and invest themselves in building the community.
Lead by example.
I take a laid-back approach to community policing. Yes, I enforce guidelines; however, I refuse to pull posts that might lead to a violation.
Community management boils down to how to help your community grow. Communities grow when you treat members as adults, not errant children.
When looking for a new place to live, you don’t want to move into that neighborhood with a cop on every corner and cameras watching everything. The same thing happens online. Even the rule abiding don’t flourish in a community when “big brother” seems to slam a mighty fist at the slightest hint of infraction.
I think many managers either think that their job starts and ends with reading and deleting posts, or starts and ends with the paperwork side of things. It doesn’t; those things indeed have their place (or in the case of paperwork and meetings, their inevitability). In managing a community, though, consider yourself the host of the party, the professional party organizer — not a ranch hand herding sheep.
“But what about trolls?” I hear you ask.
My advice for “trolls” starts and ends with “Don’t feed the Trolls.” No, wait it doesn’t.
My advice: stop actively seeking out and suspecting trolls. Welcome an alternative point of view. Ask questions about it. Ask how the member came to that conclusion. If a member comes with a point of view eerily similar to another person’s point of view, don’t make your first stop crosschecking IP addresses and registration information.
In the past decade, I have come across very few true trolls. That wasn’t true when I first started working in online community. I know trolls still exist and plague some communities and that’s where “Don’t feed the trolls” comes in. If you don’t lose your cool and you have taught your community the proper response to true “troll” behavior, the trolls find reward elsewhere.
I talk a lot in my communities. I ask questions. I answer questions. I connect members with other members who can answer their questions or empathize with them.
I know the moods of my communities, the players and which way the wind blows. By participating in those conversations, I can steer a conversation before it turns bad in many instances. If I pull more than an isolated post, I post to the board reminding all the members how and why they should stop before they flame or continue to flame.
I do it in a way that isn’t casual and doesn’t call out the members in public. It also isn’t “A NOTE FROM ABOVE” where the members haven’t ever seen the mightiness that holds the power to pull a post. They know me. I remind them of the rules. I make it clear that while I know why they reacted like they did and I empathize, I want them to find a different way to react and stay in the bounds of a healthy discussion.
In order to manage a community, you need to know the community. Listen to them, talk with them, be a part of the community. Even on big sites with a community handling every topic under the sun, you can connect on some level with the smaller parts of that community. If you can’t, then you miss serving your community well.
In her past life, Tarrant managed communities on AOL, iVillage, and WebMD. Whether referred to as "board goddess" or "community whisperer", Tarrant has a passion for message boards, forums, groups, blogging, Twitter, Facebook, and nurturing online communities.
Last week, like every week, I watched Glee on Hulu, but this episode was different. In this episode, the tough character of Coach Bieste moved from a stone-faced background role to a heart-achingly vulnerable main spotlight, and her performance got me. I was stunned by it. I spent the next two hours researching the actor, Dot Jones, and her fascinating and varied career. (15-time world arm wrestling champion? For reals?) I dug through everything about her that appeared on YouTube. I didn’t stop until 1 AM when I found her on Facebook, hesitantly clicked the “Add as Friend” button, and included a personal note to express exactly how much her performance moved me, and why, and THANK YOU.
At 2 AM, I received an email: “Dot Jones confirmed you as a friend on Facebook.”
I was elated to get that little gesture of attention and acceptance, but even more pleased to know that she probably — like, really, in all likelihood — actually read my letter. And appreciated it.
The next day, I went to the beach with my friend, Will, and recapped the story. He told me of a similar experience recently. A song at the end an album had moved him in a shocking and probably life-changing way, and he sought out the artist (on Facebook, too!) to tell him so, and why, and THANK YOU. He still hasn’t heard back, but that wasn’t the point. Will knows what I know because we’ve both gotten them: those letters matter.
Back in September, I assisted Will in coordinating the Gender Spectrum Kids Camp. Together (and with the help of a bunch of other volunteers), we organized a fun, supportive weekend for kids ages 4-11 while their parents attended a conference downstairs. I knew Will had been too tied up with registration and scheduling to ever really play with the kids, so that night at the beach, I asked him what the most satisfying part of that experience had been for him.
Photo by Jay Ryness
He thought for a moment and said it was when a kid played dead on the floor at the end of the day. One child had had so much fun — and was so unwilling to leave — that she went as completely limp for as long as she could stand it to stop her parents from taking her home. That moment of 8-year-old melodrama put everything into perspective for Will, and he knew he’d made an impact.
Later that night, I lamented that we don’t get the same kind of feedback from Internet community organizing. Everything is photos and text. There are no hugs. There are no facial expressions. There is no kid on the floor. And then Will reminded me of the letters.
“I just wanted to say that I love this site. I check it every single day. It brightens my mood and gives me the support, advice, and empathy that I can’t get in the world I live in.”
I get letters like that, and comments, and little notes — sometimes directed at me and sometimes directed at my projects — every single day. And you know what? Sometimes I’m so distracted with the details that I flat-out forget they are there. But as soon as I remember to listen, those letters become my kid on the floor. They tell me I’m on the right track. They are the loudest, most sincere, most compelling feedback my teams and I can possibly get to keep building and organizing and putting ourselves out there.
Whoever you are reading this, whatever your role is in your communities, I have two pleas for you:
1) Listen for the letters where you might not be hearing them, and look for your kid on the floor. Somewhere, in some form, you’re probably getting positive feedback about the impact you have on the world. Focus on it, absorb it, and let it fill you up. Let it guide you.
2) Go write those letters. Go be the kid on the floor for the person who is changing your world. Go. Do it. Now. Play dead if you have to. Just make sure they know what you mean.
A little over a month ago, Meitar “maymay” Moscovitz and I gave a collaborative talk about “free culture” online communities, and how corporations can find them and benefit from them without hurting them.
We presented this at Forum One Network’s “Online Community Unconference” in Mountain View, CA. The whole session (which is also available) was about 50 minutes. Above is a 17-minute abridged version, boiled down to our main points:
What (and “who”) is free culture? (“We follow our passions.” “We find value in things other than money.” “We’re the ones who edit Wikipedia.” “We give our ideas away for free.” “We don’t let our jobs interfere with our work.” “We are the market makers. We’re creating the trends before they are capitalized on.” And so on.)
When trying to promote to a community, go to the community itself, rather than to the community manager.
When trying to sell to a community, don’t start with what your selling. Start with what you know about the community and why your product matters to them.
Rather than poaching a free culture community manager, support that manager where they need it, and invite them to advise you.
Rather than try to absorb or adopt a free culture community, set up your shop next door and be a good neighbor.
You don’t need to be a long-time member of the community to engage with it. But you do need to be familiar enough with the community to engage with it respectfully, in accordance with its customs, values, and norms.
The point is not that we’re free. The point is that wehave a culture, and it’s our own.
(The sound is a little crackly — sorry; I blame the outdated version of iMovie I was using. If it’s bugging you, go view the full talk instead.)
I’m intrigued by the relationship between corporate and free culture and want to dig up more examples. Open source software is the most obvious one. Threadless also seems like an interesting case study. Any other juicy ones come to mind?
The same day we launched this site, I was also a guest on the weekly Internet webcast, Tummelvision. Take a good look at these cuties, cuz I’m gonna be talking about them again around here:
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