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In March, the volunteer moderators of the Change My View subreddit learned that researchers at the University of Zurich had been covertly conducting an experiment on their community members. By injecting AI-generated comments and posts into conversations, the researchers had wanted to measure the persuasiveness of AI.

There was one big problem: They didn't tell community members that they were being experimented on. They didn't tell the community moderators. They didn't tell Reddit's corporate team. Only when they were getting ready to publish, did they disclose their actions.

It then became clear that beyond the lack of consent, they had engaged in other questionable behavior: Their AI-written contributions had spanned multiple accounts, pretending to be a rape victim, a trauma counselor focusing on abuse, a Black man opposed to Black Lives Matter, and more.

Community response was swift: Overwhelmingly, members were unhappy. The moderators insisted the research not be published. Reddit threatened legal action. Initially, the researchers were defiant but eventually, they apologized and pledged not to publish the research.

Change My View volunteer moderator Logan MacGregor joins the show to discuss what went on behind the scenes, plus:

The danger of publishing the research
Reaction to the apology
How AI is going to challenge the idea of trusting an online community

Big Quotes Blame the manipulators, not the members and moderators (1:49): "Manipulation in online communities has existed forever. What's happening with [AI is] the believability, the speed at which people can do it. … The fault always rests with the person who chooses to manipulate the community. It's easy to fool people … and to do something that undermines the trust of something. It's harder to build trust." -Patrick O'Keefe

Why a promise not to publish was important (13:21): "From my perspective, I think the things that we wanted the most [from the researchers were] an apology and a promise not to publish. The second was really important because we were concerned that if this was published in a peer-review journal … if it was elevated to a prominent journal, that our community, which is supposed to be a protected human space, would now become just another sandbox for researchers. We felt very strongly that it should not be published. … Unfortunately, it didn't land well." -Logan MacGregor

When a community leader stands for their community, they often stand for all communities (14:52): "When one community person – a volunteer, a host, a person in this line of work – stands up for their community, they stand up for all communities." -Patrick O'Keefe

Just because bad comments exist online doesn't mean new ones won't cause harm (20:10): "So much of what [the researchers] did to try to prevent harm was to say 'comments like this happen all the time online, we don't think that it's going to cause individual trauma.' We kind of dispute that because some of the comments are [you] pretending to be a trauma counselor and maybe that could actually cause some harm. … I don't think they thought enough about community impact until after the community screamed 'ouch.'" -Logan MacGregor

You can't just blame AI for this (22:52): "One thing that's really special about Change My View is that it's a human space; it's a decidedly human space. … The University of Zurich is a decidedly human space. What I think is so insidious about AI is it's caused people to behave in ways that I don't know we would have, without the stupid thinking machines. Because it's a toxic influence. Unlike the bots that are invading us daily, that we're constantly shutting down. …

"That hurts a little bit more than just dealing with bots, because this wasn't just bots. These are people interacting with other people, and there was a human element there. The researchers are real people. I'm a real person. This happened between real people, and it wasn't just AI." -Logan MacGregor

How did the community respond when the experiment was disclosed? (24:47): "I would say there was this collective outrage [from the community]. … It was a unique and singular violation of the ethos of the sub, and it was especially palpable because there are a lot of researchers and research-affiliated people that are fond of the sub. It seemed like: We protect national parks, and we have national monuments – these protected spaces – and it almost felt on that level. Of all the places to do this, why Change My View?" -Logan MacGregor

Researchers can help online communities in this moment, but not if they can't be trusted (34:13): "One of the things that I worry about when it comes to AI is it's probably going to chip away … at this idea of having protected online spaces, because if in-person conversations are the only way that you can validate that you're not talking to a robot, then this thing that we created called the internet, it's going to cease to have value at all.

"That's the fear, and I have hope that we're going to be able to figure out a way to get past that challenge, but I'm scratching my head as to how we would do that. The true tragedy in this whole piece is that the very people that I think are best equipped to help us navigate that space are now distrusted because of this experiment. We need to heal that, and I don't know how that's going to happen." -Logan MacGregor

About Logan MacGregor Logan MacGregor is a member of the volunteer mod team on r/changemyview. Drawing from a unique blend of experience including social work, administration, program management, project management (including research-based projects), policy, strategic development, and emergency management, Logan is a credentialed Type 3 Planning Section Chief that is planning to complete the Master's program at the Center for Homeland Defense and Security, with a thesis likely focusing on information campaigns.

Related Links * Change My View subreddit, where Logan is a volunteer moderator * Unauthorized Experiment on CMV Involving AI-generated Comments, the announcement made by the moderators revealing the existence of the experiment to the community * Reddit slams 'unethical experiment' that deployed secret AI bots in forum by Vivian Ho for the Washington Post * CMV AI Experiment Update – Apology Received from Researchers, an update posted by the moderators after researchers apologized * Don't Create Fake Accounts on Your Community and Don't Lie to Your Members by Patrick, discussing how Steve Huffman taught students to create fake accounts in their online communities * How MetaFilter's Founder (Successfully) Stepped Away From the Community After 16 Years, the Community Signal episode with the story of Scott Adams impersonating a Scott Adams fan * 'Unethical' AI research on Reddit under fire by Cathleen O'Grady for Science

Transcript * View transcript our website

Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. Thank you for listening.

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When private equity buys online community platforms, who wins? What about if those platforms were built on open source software? Does the company continue to be a good citizen of the open source community that helped build the product?

History has shown us that it is often the community managers and pros who lose. They might not just lose a good platform though, they might lose their job.

Lincoln Russell has an interesting perspective on this topic. He joined Vanilla Forums, an open source community software platform, as a senior developer in 2011, having already used it for a couple of years. He left the company in 2020, then the director of engineering. Lincoln has continued to use the software. Vanilla Forums was subsequently purchased by Higher Logic, a company lacking a meaningful history of open source contributions.

As a matter of disclosure, both Higher Logic and Vanilla Forums are past sponsors of the show.

Lincoln and I also discuss:

How Vanilla Forums’ open source ethos shifted over time
The importance of data migration standards for community software
Is community software best built by small businesses?

Big Quotes Your community software provider must answer this (16:38): “The first question you should ask a [community software] vendor is: How easy is it to leave you? It’s not a fun question to ask, but the answer is crucial to me. It’s a deal-breaker question.” -Patrick O’Keefe

Some community platforms try to lock their customer data into the platform (18:07): “When [a client is] onboarding [to new community software during the] initial year or two, they don’t care about their data export. It’s at the end. That’s a long-term reputational issue about how people talk about their experiences. We saw that with [community software] competitors. We had some trouble with a couple of competitors in trying to get the data from them and spent way more hours than particular customers were worth – just on principle, honestly – getting the data out for them because we were so personally offended. At least I was.” -Lincoln Russell

When you aren’t selling community software to the people who will actually use it (20:37): “In the [community software] sales process, you identify stakeholders – people that are decision makers. A lot of the time they weren’t a community manager. A lot of the time it was a director of technology, it was a CEO, or other positions, and that warps your roadmap. “When those are the people that [the] sales team [is] sitting in front of, day in and day out, and you’re pitching an improved moderation queue, they want this button that does this thing. You’re like, ‘But that’s stupid.’ But it doesn’t matter. If those are the people you’re selling to, [with] their own idea of community that doesn’t actually align with community management because they have internal business goals, and all they want to do are check those boxes.” -Lincoln Russell

Why community professionals should drive community platform choice (22:10): “Although I’d like to believe, ego-wise, that I could make a community out of whatever piece of garbage application you throw in front of me, I know the software can either help me or hurt me, and it’s tough when you’re making dinner with someone else’s ingredients.” -Patrick O’Keefe

Great ideas need great communicators (23:44): “The biggest issue with charting a course is you need a really clear vision, and you also need someone who can articulate that vision a lot, and over and over again, to the right people in the right circumstances. You need an external marketer. All of us in engineering at Vanilla [were] all introverts. None of us were going to conferences and giving talks about our vision for community software. It just wasn’t in us to do that. I think we were poorer off in that we had some really good ideas, and could have shifted the conversation a bit, but we didn’t put our energy there because that was a lot of energy.” -Lincoln Russell

Protecting your culture makes you unique from the big social media platforms (33:43): “I think this idea of being more private and being very selective about what you present to the world, and having an internal culture that is protected from the internet – not promoted to the internet – is the future of these independent community spaces because that’s the space those [bigger] platforms cannot touch.” -Lincoln Russell

Community drives great software projects (37:04): “To build great software, like the great software projects that are going to outlive me, you need a community of people committed to working on them for long periods of time. [You need] to replace those people when they leave, but you have to have a system to keep that going, not just like, [we] got great five minds in a room and they did a thing, and then they cash out at the end. That’s not sustainable.” -Lincoln Russell

About Lincoln Russell Lincoln Russell is the vice president of engineering for uConnect, which builds virtual career centers for colleges and universities to help students get better jobs. Earlier in his career, he spent 8 and a half years at Vanilla Forums, starting as a senior developer in 2011 and leaving in 2020 as the director of engineering.

Related Links * Lincoln’s website * Higher Logic Vanilla, from Higher Logic * uConnect, where Lincoln is vice president of engineering * Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com * WordPress.org, the home of the WordPress open source community * Arlington-Based Higher Logic Acquires Montreal’s Vanilla by Richard Foster for Virginia Business * Nitro Porter, Lincoln’s community platform migration tool * Lincoln’s blog post announcing Nitro Porter * Matt Mecham of Invision Community * Matt Mecham on Community Signal

Transcript * View on our website

Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. Thank you for listening.

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Rebecca Newton is a legend of the online community profession. After 30 years, she has retired. But what does it mean when we retire from this work?

Her career began AOL in 1994, building communities and managing a massive volunteer program. Among her numerous stops, Rebecca found a focus in child safety, leading such efforts for Sulake (the company behind Habbo Hotels and Disney’s Virtual Magic Kingdom), Mind Candy (Moshi Monsters), and most recently SuperAwesome, a provider of tools for safer, responsible digital engagement with young people, who was acquired by Epic Games.

A program manager for community in 1997, a community director in 2001, a chief community officer in 2007: Rebecca has held all of the titles. Along the way, she has paved a path for the community profession, pushing us higher in corporate environments and creating valuable resources for us. Most notably, her 24 year stewardship of the e-mint listserv for community pros, an iconic resource that has helped countless community facilitators.

After such a career, what’s it like to step away from full-time work? What goes through the mind of a retiring community pro? That’s what we’ll discuss, plus:

How do you prepare for retirement, as a community pro?
What will Rebecca miss? What won’t she miss?
The least and most effective pieces of legislation passed during Rebecca’s career

Big Quotes What will Rebecca miss most about being a full-time community pro? (17:32): “I’m going to miss working with people online the most. It’s a different animal than working with people offline, and I did plenty of that before I started in the online world. … Everybody thought they invented remote working. I’ve had remote teams since 1994, so it’s not new. I’m going to really miss that because there’s a special culture in the online world, as you know, that is really hard to describe, or it’s hard for me to describe but is not like the offline world. It’s like being in a special club, in a secret club. That’s how it feels to me.” -Rebecca Newton

What won’t she miss? (23:07): “I won’t miss … people naively thinking they know better than everybody who built the widget. I’ve heard the conversations. ‘Oh, they can’t let go. They don’t know how to let go. They don’t know how to grow. They don’t know how to do this.’ Then I would think, ‘Okay, well, we’ll see who’s not growing in a year, so I’m going to go looking for another job because I know in a year this thing’s not going to exist.'” -Rebecca Newton

The cyclical trend of online community obsession (31:09): “I remember in 2000 when dentists were [asking], ‘Do I need an online community?’ There was a trend of, “Oh, it’s online community,’ because of the success at AOL. I was like, ‘No. You’re a dentist.'” -Rebecca Newton

Overreaction from government officials who aren’t active online (34:21): “I’m not saying anything about how smart [government decision makers] are, about how great their intentions were, or their abilities in the world. [But] if you’re not [active online], if you’re not a heavy user, if you’re not in the kid’s world using it, how can you possibly [make good decisions]? That’s what we see in Great Britain, in the EU. Something happens to one person under 16, they want to have 27 laws about it. Because this thing happened.” -Rebecca Newton

Kids want to collaborate, they want a job (38:40): “That’s the biggest thing I learned about working with kids. The very first thing when they get online or game in an app, whatever it is, [they say] ‘I want a job. Can I have a job? Let’s do this together. Let’s do that together.'” -Rebecca Newton

When legislation goes too far (39:18): “Over-regulation is detrimental. I think all it does is create a whole lot of jobs for people to do a lot of stuff that nobody’s ever going to look at. That’s a really rude thing for me to say, but I believe that.” -Rebecca Newton

About Rebecca Newton Rebecca Newton has spent 30 years in the commercial internet industry. As head of digital trust and community, Rebecca led online community, online safety, moderation, engagement, and customer services efforts at SuperAwesome (of Epic Games) from 2015 to 2023. Prior to joining SuperAwesome, Rebecca worked at Mind Candy as the chief community & safety officer, serving over 140 million registered (young) users.

From 2001 to 2007, she worked at Sulake (the company behind Habbo Hotels) as the global director of community for the world’s largest teen virtual world site, spanning 24 countries. She began her online community career with America Online in 1994, where she wore many hats, and finally landed as the program manager for AOL’s community leader program.

Among her contributions to the discipline of online community, Rebecca co-founded VirComm, the London-based annual conference for online community professionals in 2011, and the e-mint community management listserv. She serves on boards and committees for numerous organizations, including AgeCheq, the Archewell Foundation, and DitchTheLabel.org.

Related Links * Rebecca’s previous appearance on Community Signal * Rebecca’s website * e-mint, a community management listserv that Rebecca has managed since 2000 * AgeCheq, the Archewell Foundation, and DitchTheLabel.org, organizations that Rebecca provides guidance to * eWorld, an Apple service that launched in 1994 and provided a community feature * Michael Acton Smith, who was once Rebecca’s boss * The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, the Communications Decency Act, and Section 230, which were all pieces of legislation passed during Rebecca’s career * Virtual Magic Kingdom, an online game created by Disney and Sulake, where Rebecca led community and safety efforts * Jenna Woodul, potentially the first person with the chief community officer title * Jenna Woodul on Community Signal * MIT’s Scratch community, which is managed by someone that Rebecca has mentored, who was initially a member of one of the communities she was responsible for

Transcript * View transcript on our website

Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. Thank you for listening.

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Online community consultants aren’t unlike consultants for any other area of work. Some are ethical, smart, and talented, and some aren’t. Consultants also don’t often make great guests for the show because they view it as yet another lead generational funnel for them to shout generalities into.

But hopefully an exception is this episode with community consultant Jenny Weigle. On it, we discuss how being humble is often at odds with how many consultants promote themselves, as they place a certain importance on appearing authoritative and revelatory, even if that isn’t actually correct in the context of the history of this work.

Can you even be a community consultant or an online community resource if you haven’t taken a concept pioneered 30 years ago and thrown your logo on it?

We also discuss:

An update on past guest Tim McDonald’s quest for a liver donor
Self-promotion by community consultants
Community professionals do roadshows, but are they ever invited to roadshows by other departments?

Big Quotes

When consultants and resources claim general concepts (3:57): “I’ve seen plenty of [community] consultants and resources pop up over my 25 years and throw a logo on something. The commitment curve, the activity ladder, the mountain of progression… how many different upward-facing shapes can we throw a logo on? I’ve seen a lot of that, and I’ve seen people claim something that has either been claimed decades ago or no one should be laying claim to.” -Patrick O’Keefe

How much of the talk in community work is brand new? (6:01): “There are very few things that happen in our field today that make me pause and say, ‘Wow,’ either to myself or out loud. When I’m putting out my materials and what I’m personally working on, I’m just doing what’s top of mind and mainly it’s influenced by what my clients need at the time.” -Jenny Weigle

The danger AI poses to community creativity (15:19): “[With ChatGPT and similar AI tools,] I’m worried about elements of communities where creativity is usually needed. An easy example is the writing of content, the writing of posts, the writing of conversations, and how those things start. I’m worried about everyone sounding the same. I’m worried about everyone getting the same prompts. I’m worried about everyone rewriting their posts using the same tool that learns on the same data set, and will all move them closer to the same center. Ultimately, that’s the death of community.” -Patrick O’Keefe

Why community pros should read hospitality books (26:05): “There were so many things [that community builders can learn from the hospitality industry]. I was in awe as I turned each page of Danny Meyer’s book because he paid so much attention to wanting to know his customer’s preferences, their likes, dislikes, what was relevant going on in their lives at the moment, what would bring them in the door, and what would keep them from coming. These are all things that community managers are concerned about with their online communities, as well.” -Jenny Weigle

About Jenny Weigle Jenny Weigle has been creating, executing, and reviewing strategies for online communities for more than 10 years. She’s worked with more than 100 brands on various aspects of their community strategy and implementations, including launch, migration, programming, and planning. These brands include, Airbnb, Google, HP, Intuit, Pinterest, REI, Samsung, Sephora, Splunk, Stubhub, and Visa.

When she’s not geeking out on community strategy, Jenny spends time in Los Angeles with her partner, John, and stepdaughter. In her personal life, she is a proud member of a number of communities, including Southern California Gator Club, Spiritual Sisters of Los Angeles (which she founded), Oak Park LA (for CrossFit), Sofar Sounds, and D23: The Official Disney Fan Club.

Related Links * Jenny’s website * Tim McDonald on Community Signal * Good news from Tim! * TimsLiver.com * Jenny’s Substack * The Hospitality Books That Made Me a Better Community Professional by Jenny * Danny Meyer’s book, Setting the Table * TV shows that deal with hospitality and customer service: Hotel Impossible, Bar Rescue, Kitchen Nightmares, and The Profit * The 2-Hour Cocktail Party by Nick Gray * Be Our Guest by The Disney Institute with Theodore Kinni * Jenny’s Community Roadshow template * Jenny on LinkedIn

Transcript * View transcript on our website

Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings

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Bodies aren’t moderated equally on the internet. Content moderation efforts, especially those at large, mainstream platforms, can suffer from policy-based bias that results in moderation centering a cisgender gaze. This reinforcing of heteronormativity can leave some of your most vulnerable community members – and potential community members – feeling alienated, ostracized, and simply unwelcome.

Last year, in her role as CX escalations supervisor at Grindr, Vanity Brown co-authored a whitepaper, Best Practices for Gender-Inclusive Content Moderation. Insightful, with a straight forward approach to making content moderation just a bit better, I found that it was also a validation of good, thoughtful moderation that has been going on for a long time.

Vanity joins the show to talk about these efforts, which are tempered by a realistic acknowledgement of the limitations of this work, and how our need to be in other places (like app stores) can often slow down the progress we’d like to make.

We also discuss:

Why it’s not our job to guess the gender of our members
The state of AI trust and safety tools
ChatGPT, Midjourney, and how much to worry about them

Big Quotes How bodies are moderated differently online (2:16): “We want folks to express themselves and their sexuality joyfully, without judgment. Of course, without any harm. But what does that look like? … There traditionally are [community] guidelines for females and guidelines for males, but the world is changing and folks are becoming more in tune with who they are, and we want to be able to treat them equally and let folks, especially I emphasize our trans users, who are uploading photos … and if they are showing the top, then they’re considered a woman if they have female-presenting breasts versus male. There are just a lot of nuances there that we saw as we were moderating content from a community who is very fluid with their gender expression.” -Vanity Brown

When do kinks create a moderation issue? (6:38): “[Kinks vs. crimes get] sticky when the kink looks like a crime. … Everything is about sex and kinks at Grindr. With this mass of kinky stuff, which of these things are harmful? I often echo that, in my work, I’m always driven … to do no harm. At the end of the day, are we harming someone? … Do we have a responsibility to protect them and keep them safe? As we continue to build trust with the community, we have to realize that folks are adults, too.” -Vanity Brown

Empathy sits at the core of good moderation (14:38): “If you can’t be empathetic for the things you are not … then you’re not really doing good thoughtful community moderation, trust and safety work. … Ultimately, if you want to be truly great at this work, you have to protect the people who aren’t you.” -Patrick O’Keefe

What can community pros learn from dating apps? (24:23): “[Community, moderation, trust, and safety pros] can learn from dating apps on the level of how personal and sensitive dating apps are in the content you’re sending back and forth. Folks using dating apps, a lot of times their heartstrings are attached, and their heartstrings are attached on a dating app, but not necessarily Amazon or shopping at Macy’s. … It’s just important to look at folks with a microscope and treat them with kindness as those in dating apps hopefully are doing when they’re handling their customers.” -Vanity Brown

About Vanity Brown Vanity Brown is the CX escalations supervisor for Grindr, where she has worked in trust and safety for over 2 years, following more than 7 years at eHarmony. Vanity manages an escalations team of specialists devoted to handling the most complex cases that come through Grindr’s support channels.

Related Links * Vanity on LinkedIn * Grindr, where Vanity is CX escalations supervisor * Best Practices for Gender-Inclusive Content Moderation whitepaper, co-authored by Alice Hunsberger, Vanity, and Lily Galib, which I found via Juliet Shen * Grindr’s community guidelines * OpenAI’s efforts to identify AI-generated text, which were only able to identify “likely” AI-written text 26% of the time, a bit more than the approximately 10% I mentioned during the show * Love Light Community, a youth choir founded by Vanity, dedicated to “enriching the lives of youth and families in underserved communities through the transforming power of music and the arts” * Love Light Community on Instagram

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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Safeguarding is a term used in Ireland and the United Kingdom that covers efforts to protect the health, wellbeing, and human rights of people, especially children and those who are otherwise vulnerable.

At Diabetes UK, four people alternate by week as the safeguarding lead, helping to protect those that the charity comes in contact with. One of them is Josh Poncil, the online community and learning manager. Among his responsibilities is Diabetes UK’s online forum.

On this episode, we talk about safeguarding and knowing if you’ve done the right thing at the end of the day, plus:

What is considered “too technical” for the average member to answer in a diabetes community?
How Josh writes for a vulnerable audience
Moderation decisions that could trigger a meltdown

Big Quotes When veteran members go bad (18:39): “[After 25 years in content moderation,] I really believe that the most stressful situation is when an experienced member takes a turn for the worst. … It’s painful because they are an example to other people in the community. Especially new members who see their posts and say, ‘That member has this number of contributions and has been in the community this long. If they [post] that and it’s up still, that’s probably how this community behaves.'” -Patrick O’Keefe

An example of safeguarding in an online community (23:43): “I had someone on the forum saying, ‘I’ve just been diagnosed a couple of weeks ago. I’ve barely eaten.’ That’s like an alarm ringing bells in my head. I’ll take the lead and private message them. … ‘Is everything okay? Could you please contact the helpline or tell us what’s going on?’ “Let’s say they got back to me saying, ‘Yes, I haven’t eaten anything. I don’t feel well. I feel dizzy.’ Then I’ll contact back, ‘Do you need me to call an ambulance?’ Sometimes they’ll go back to me, ‘Yes, here’s my address, my telephone number.’ I’ll ring [the emergency service] 999. I have to be careful what I say at the beginning because of my accent. I’m American, but I live in London. I have to make sure I’m not coming off as a scam. I’m calling from a charity. I have a safeguarding concern.” -Josh Poncil

With safeguarding, you regularly are questioning if you did the right thing (24:53): “I’ve had someone on the forum saying, ‘My mom is in quite a worrying state. She’s scared to go to the hospital. She’s dizzy, she’s not coherent. I’m scared she hasn’t been testing for blood sugars.’ On my end, I’ve contacted the daughter, ‘Please get your mom to [Accident and Emergency]. It sounds like she needs medical attention.’ They’ve got back to me, ‘Thank you for getting in touch, but my mom didn’t make it.’ This affected me, and it hit me quite hard not knowing if I did the right thing. I have to just take a moment of, ‘Did I make the right choice? Is there anything else I could do at this time?'” -Josh Poncil

About Josh Poncil For the last 4 years, Josh Poncil has been the online community and learning manager for Diabetes UK, after a stint at Blood Cancer UK. He went to school for creative writing and journalism, before transitioning to community by way of social media management.

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Josh on LinkedIn * Diabetes UK, where Josh is online community and learning manager * Diabetes UK’s online forum

Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

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Employee resource groups (ERGs) can do a lot to create a greater sense of belonging at your organization. But the folks who volunteer to lead these groups may find themselves in need of help when it comes to utilizing perhaps the greatest tool at their disposal: Your internal employee community platform.

As a community strategist within large organizations, Lori Harrison-Smith has trained employees to help them get the most out of these platforms.

She has also managed two large migrations, both from Jive, and that has led her to have a (in her words) cynical perspective on the resources made available for these migrations, by both companies and the software vendors themselves.

Lori and Patrick discuss:

Doing something for an employee vs. showing them how to do it themselves
How much the ERG leaders she’s worked with have dipped into moderation
The short timeframes given to internal community migrations

Big Quotes What’s really driving an internal community migration deadline (22:59): “When [an internal employee community] migration is happening, [companies are often] trying to save some money while they’re at it, and they’ve got this deadline. It’s usually a contract signature that is driving that deadline. There’s never enough time. It’s like, ‘We need to get off of this because the contract expires in November.’ It’s May when we’re having this conversation because that’s when everybody started looking at the balance sheet.” -Lori Harrison-Smith

Instead of adjustments to their platforms, vendors can push “change management” (31:52): “With the different [internal community] vendors I’ve worked with, I’ve always had great relationships with them. The people have always been great and nice, but there’s just these struggles as a community manager because I’m hearing what the employees are saying. I’m hearing them talk about the pain points they’re experiencing. Then you go back to the vendor, and a lot of it is, ‘Well, change management. You just got to get them used to this new system.'” -Lori Harrison-Smith

The downside of big dollar value community software contracts (33:57): “Maybe [the consolidation in the community software space is] a case for lower-cost platforms and open source solutions that may seem a little harder upfront but ultimately allow you to be a little more nimble internally as opposed to the sunk cost that makes you feel like you’re in a relationship you could never leave because you need to get that money back out of it.” -Patrick O’Keefe

About Lori Harrison-Smith Lori Harrison-Smith’s career began in advertising, where she worked as a copywriter and editor. She found her real passion, though, when she transitioned to a role where she launched and supported an 8,000-strong employee community. Since 2011, Lori has held community roles within large organizations, leading platform updates and migrations, developing content and engagement programs, advocating for user experience, and guiding and supporting employees around communication and knowledge sharing.

She is currently the collaboration network manager at VMware, following community roles at Motorola Solutions and Steelcase.

Related Links * Lori Harrison-Smith on LinkedIn * VMware, where Lori is the collaboration network manager * Employee Resource Groups Create a Sense of Belonging, Foster Engagement by Stephen Miller for SHRM

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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As we celebrate Community Signal’s 7th birthday, Patrick takes questions from Community Signal listeners and supporters in this first ever “Ask Patrick Anything” episode of the show.

Questions include:

If everything had worked with CNN+, what would community look like for the platform?
Would you rather be a working community professional or a community consultant?
Will we ever see community leaders in the C-suite as the norm?

2023 will be Patrick’s 25th year of community work, so this is an opportunity to reflect on that passage of time. A lot has changed and, surprisingly, some things haven’t.

Joining Patrick to ask the questions and dig deeper is previous guest Jared Smith. They also cover:

The early promise of CNN+’s Interview
How community moderation tools have changed over the years
Why community isn’t special when it comes to the C-suite

Big Quotes You have to commit to be successful with D2C products (11:55): “If you build interactive products and kill them after three weeks, it’s hard to prove out anything. It’s hard to build out loyalty. It’s hard to build out a D2C product if you’re not willing to commit.” -Patrick O’Keefe

The magic of the unexpected in media products (13:04): “I think there is something magical that can happen when you take some of the expected nature of television or media, of what we expect is going to happen, and you throw the consumer, the community, the members, the subscribers into that. You give them the freedom to make other things happen.” -Patrick O’Keefe

Operators drive moderator tool development more than platforms (22:24): “[When it comes to moderator tools], it’s often the community of people who need something driving it more so than the platforms themselves.” -Patrick O’Keefe

Developers still focus on the frontend more than the administrative backend (23:35): “It’s a cliché to say that software developers focus on the frontend and the user experience and not so much the admin and moderation experience. That’s a cliché in our business. I think that is largely the case with some exceptions. Those exceptions tend to be people who have run communities themselves or who have a really good foundational understanding of the web from being in it for so long.” -Patrick O’Keefe

If you want to make a difference in moderator tooling, start with the communities that don’t have money (23:58): “I get pitched by developers, and I always tell them that the way to make change in this industry is to make your product available to the people who don’t have anything. The Fortune 500s of the world are always going to have money, and they’re always going to have engineers. They can figure their way around problems and pay for solutions. Most communities, 99.9% of people, don’t have any money. That’s where you make change.” -Patrick O’Keefe

Artificial intelligence isn’t a moderation panacea (24:36): “If you think about it [going back 25 years], forums are not dead and the mod tools are basically the same that we had. Remove user, close thread, things like that, a lot of that stuff. It’s the same. I also don’t think it’s a bad thing. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. One of the things about these AIs is sometimes they get it really, really wrong in really offensive ways. You still need that human element to counter that.” -Jared Smith

Banning Andrew Anglin is not brave, it’s obvious (27:09): “When [Elon Musk decides] to unban Andrew Anglin, who’s arguably the most prominent real nazi on the internet, the founder of The Daily Stormer, the most prominent nazi publication on the internet [that makes Twitter a place I am less likely to engage]. … Andrew Anglin can join any platform I own and he’ll be banned. That’s not a brave thing. That’s not a talking point or like, ‘Wow, that’s amazing.’ It’s obvious. It’s not an amazing thing.” -Patrick O’Keefe

Hyping the chief community officer role isn’t helpful (39:46): “We’ve seen these tweets that are like, ‘Half of the Fortune 500 will have chief community officers in the next 10 years,’ or ‘10% of this or all big companies or all the Fortune 100 or the future of companies will be a chief community officer.’ It’s all hype. It’s all nonsense. For the most part, it’s to encourage hype in our industry. I don’t see it as healthy. I don’t see it as good. I don’t see it as aspirational. I don’t see those people as friends or allies of the work.” -Patrick O’Keefe

Be wary of the hype (41:42): “I don’t trust anyone who says chief community officers are the future of community, that there’s going to be one at every big company. It’s always hype. It’s always because they have some financially-vested interest in community work proliferating in that way or at least sounding like your friend. They want to sound like they’re in your corner or they’re your ally because there is some financial incentive tied to that for them long-term.” -Patrick O’Keefe

About Jared Smith Jared Smith is a manager of software engineering at BoomTown in Charleston, SC, leading engineering teams and encouraging developer career growth, including a ten-year stint working on and eventually leading a team of engineers dedicated to implementing WordPress for real estate agent websites. In addition to BoomTown, Jared runs @chswx (shorthand for Charleston Weather) and the chswx.com blog, where he writes forecasts and disseminates National Weather Service alerts for the Charleston, SC metro area. Over nearly 15 years, @chswx has emerged as a key catalyst in the weather conversation, not only acting as a conduit for sending alerts but also for receiving reports in real-time, improving situational awareness for public, media, and NWS warning forecasters alike.

Related Links * Jared Smith, our guest host * BoomTown, where Jared is manager of software engineering * Charleston Weather (including @chswx on Twitter), a project that Jared runs * Wesley Faulker’s appearance on Community Signal * Wikipedia page for CNN+, the streaming service Patrick helped launch * A clip from the Interview Club interview with Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Dr. Anthony Fauci * Bassey Etim on LinkedIn, who has been on several Community Signal episodes * Mastodon, free, open source decentralized social media platform * Ryan Hall, a weather YouTuber * Brad Williams’ appearance on Community Signal * Invision Community and Discourse, two community software options recommended by Patrick * ChatGPT * Community Signal episode covering Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter * COPPA, Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act * DMCA, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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Elon Musk’s presence has loomed over Twitter since he announced plans to purchase the platform. And for these few weeks that he’s been in charge, many concerns have proven to be justified. Musk laid off 3,700 employees, and then 4,400 contractors. He is firing those who are critical of him. The verification process, perhaps one of Twitter’s most trusted features, has been unraveled. He’s offered severance to those who don’t want to be part of “extremely hardcore” Twitter. Following the results of a Twitter poll, he reinstated the account of Donald Trump, who was suspended from the platform for his role in inciting the January 6th attacks.

So, what happens now? What of the many social movements that manifested on Twitter? While some movements and followings may see new manifestations on other platforms, not everything will be completely recreated. For example, as writer Jason Parham explains, “whatever the destination, Black Twitter will be increasingly difficult to recreate.”

In this episode of Community Signal, Patrick speaks to three experts: Sarah T. Roberts, associate professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA, trust and safety consultant RalphSpencer, and Omar Wasow, assistant professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Political Science and co-founder of BlackPlanet, about the current state and future of Twitter. They dissect the realities facing the platform today including content moderation, loss of institutional knowledge, and uncertainty about Twitter’s infrastructure, but also emphasize the importance of Twitter as a social utility for news and more.

This episode also touches on:

The reality of moderating a platform like Twitter
What platforms actually mean when they say they’re for “free speech”
How Musk tanked the value of verification on Twitter

Corrections During the show, Patrick refers to Sarah T. Roberts' title as "assistant professor." In fact, her title is associate professor.

Big Quotes

On the future of content moderation at Twitter (8:30): “There’s no way possible with the cuts [Musk has] made that he’s going to be able to do any type of content moderation. … [He] isn’t going to have anybody who remotely begins to know to how to do that [legal compliance and related work].” –Ralph Spencer

Sarah T. Roberts’ moderation challenge for Elon Musk (11:21): “I want Elon Musk to spend one day as a frontline production content moderator, and then get back to this [Community Signal] crew about how that went. Let us know what you saw. Share with us how easy it was to stomach that. Were you able to keep up with the expected pace at Twitter? Could you … make good decisions over 90% of the time, over 1,000, 2,000 times a day? Could you do that all the while seeing animals being harmed, kids being beat on, [and] child sexual exploitation material?” –@ubiquity75

Bumper sticker wisdom doesn’t make good policy (15:48): “Everything [Musk has said about free speech] has had the quality of good bumper stickers but is totally divorced from reality, and that doesn’t bode well, obviously.” –@owasow

The responsibility in leading a social media platform (19:43): “One thing that we are seeing in real-time [at Twitter] is what a danger there is in having one individual – especially a very privileged individual who does not live in the same social milieu as almost anyone else in the world – one very privileged individual’s ability to be the arbiter of … these profoundly contested ideological notions of something like free speech which again is continually misapplied in this realm.” –@ubiquity75

Musk’s peddling of conspiracy theories (20:31): “[Musk is] running around tweeting that story about Nancy Pelosi’s husband, the false article about what happened between him and his attacker. What kind of example is that to set? … What it is to me is like this kid who has way too much money, and he found a new toy he wants to play with.” –Ralph Spencer

Leading with humility (21:25): “[If you’re running a site like Twitter,] you have to have a ‘small d’ democratic personality, which is to say you really have to be comfortable with a thousand voices flourishing, a lot of them being critical of you, and that’s not something that you take personally.” –@owasow

There are always limits on speech (23:52): “When you declare that your product, your site, your platform, your service is a free speech zone, there is always going to be a limit on that speech. …[CSAM] is the most extreme example that we can come up with, but that is content moderation. To remove that material, to disallow it, to enforce the law means that there is a limit on speech, and there ought to be in that case. If there’s a limit on speech, it is by definition not a free speech site. Then we have to ask, well, what are the limits, and who do they serve?” –@ubiquity75

“Free speech” platforms are not a thing (25:27): “When I hear people invoke free speech on a for-profit social media site, not only does that not exist today, it never has existed, and it never will exist. Let’s deal with what reality is actually giving us and talk about that instead of these fantasies that actually are pretty much not good for anyone involved.” –@ubiquity75

The social weight and trust that verification brought to interactions on Twitter (32:54): “[Twitter] has outsized social impact, whether it’s in the political arena, whether it’s in social movements, whether it’s in celebrity usage, all of these things have been true. In terms of political movements, the good, bad, the ugly. We saw an insurrection against the United States launched by the President of the United States on Twitter, so it’s not all rosy, but the point is that Twitter had this outsized power and part of that could be attributed … to this verification process that let a lot of high profile folks, prominent individuals, media organizations, other kinds of people in the zeitgeist or in the public eye, engage with a certain sense of security.” –@ubiquity75

How does Twitter sustain its infrastructure amidst the mass layoffs and resignations? (39:20): “We have good reason to fear that the infrastructure is going to get considerably worse over time. [Musk has] fired enough of the people. … In a lot of ways, [Twitter is] like a telephone company. It’s got a lot of boring infrastructure that it has to maintain so that it’s reliable. [Musk has] taken a bunch of these pillars or blocks in the Jenga stack and knocked them out, and it’s a lot more wobbly now.” –@owasow

Musk’s Twitter user experience is not the common one (48:25): “[Musk is] obsessed with bots and spam, but why is that such a compulsion for him? Well, he has 100-plus million followers, and when he looks at his replies, there’s probably a lot of bots and spam there. That’s not where I live because I’m a civilian. His perspective is distorted in a way partly by the investment around him but partly also by just being so way out of proportion to almost any other human on Earth.” –@owasow

About Our Guests Omar Wasow is an assistant professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Political Science. His research focuses on race, politics, and statistical methods. Previously, Omar co-founded BlackPlanet, an early leading social network, and was a regular technology analyst on radio and television. He received a PhD in African American Studies, an MA in government, and an MA in statistics from Harvard University.

Ralph Spencer has been working to make online spaces safer for more than 20 years, starting with his time as a club editorial specialist (message board editor) at Prodigy, and then graduating to America Online. During his time at AOL, he was in charge of all issues involving Child Sexual Abuse Material or CSAM. The evidence that Ralph and the team he worked with in AOL’s legal department compiled contributed to numerous arrests and convictions of individuals for the possession and distribution of CSAM. He currently works as a freelance trust and safety consultant.

Sarah T. Roberts is an associate professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA. She holds a PhD from the iSchool at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her book on commercial content moderation, Behind the Screen, was released in 2019 from the Yale University Press. She served as a consultant, too, and is featured in the award-winning documentary The Cleaners. Dr. Roberts sits on the board of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, was a 2018 Carnegie Fellow, and a 2018 recipient of the EFF Barlow Pioneer Award for her groundbreaking research on content moderation of social media.

Related Links * Elon Musk takes control of Twitter and immediately ousts top executives (via NPR) * Omar Wasow’s website * Omar Wasow on Twitter * BlackPlanet.com, founded by Wasow * Ralph Spencer on LinkedIn * Sarah T. Roberts’ website * Sarah T. Roberts on Twitter * Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media, by Sarah Roberts * Note from Patrick: After 5 years, this is Carol’s final episode as editorial lead on Community Signal. We’ll miss you, Carol! * The Twitter Rules * Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace by Lawrence Lessig * Elon Musk says Twitter will have a ‘content moderation council’ (via The Verge) * Democratic U.S. senators accuse Musk of undermining Twitter, urge FTC probe (via Reuters) * We got Twitter ‘verified’ in minutes posing as a comedian and a senator (via The Washington Post) * How Much Did Twitter’s Verification Chaos Cost Insulin Maker Eli Lilly and Twitter Itself? (via Gizmodo) * Patrick’s (somewhat sarcastic) Twitter thread about the policies he hoped the platform would put in place to address Musk’s conflicts of interest * Saturday Night Live’s content moderation council sketch

Transcript * View on our website

Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

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As Zendesk’s customer base and product offerings have grown, so has its community. The Zendesk community started in 2008, under the support organization, as a space for people to ask and answer questions about using the product. Since then, it has shifted departments multiple times, leading to changes in KPIs and core purpose.

Nicole Saunders, the company’s director of community, joins the show to explain how she has navigated these challenges. Tune in for her approach on thoughtfully managing change and expectations within your community and inside of your organization.

Patrick and Nicole also discuss:

Why the comments are open on Zendesk’s knowledge base articles
You can’t tell people to contact support in Zendesk’s community
Handing some conversations in the community off to other teams

Big Quotes

Going from scrappy to resourced as your community team grows and develops (04:36): “[While community was part of the support organization,] we were functioning very scrappy, very much like a startup team within a larger organization. … Being within [the] integrated marketing organization let us connect to a lot more pieces and parts of the business, which as we built our strategy became increasingly important.” –@NicoleinMadison

Participate in the community you serve (14:20): “I’m always encouraging my team to [step] out of the ticket queue on a regular basis … and just wander around [the community] and try to have that same experience as the end users to make sure we’re not missing anything, make sure that the queue isn’t keeping us in just a transactional space.” –@NicoleinMadison

Why you can’t tell people to contact support in the Zendesk community (24:58): “We were getting a lot of people that were just saying, ‘You should contact support for this,’ and what it was doing was discouraging other users from jumping in and trying to help. A lot of these were questions that people could answer for one another, and … it was short-circuiting the community conversation.” –@NicoleinMadison

The knowledge and value that community can offer (26:17): “You’re going to gain so much more out of talking to somebody [in the community] who has done what you are trying to do, than someone who knows what functionality you should use to try to do it. Even the best support agent in the world probably hasn’t done exactly the thing that you’re trying to do. There’s actually a real benefit to talking to other users.” –@NicoleinMadison

About Nicole Saunders In over 12 years as a community professional, Nicole Saunders‘ experience has ranged from consulting to launching communities for startups to currently leading the community team at Zendesk. She’s built communities across forums, social media, and offline. Her background also includes social media management, event production, communications, and freelance writing.

Passionate about building community both in her work and in life, Nicole engages in several volunteer efforts, including mentoring for the Wisconsin Women’s Network, singing with the Philharmonic Chorus of Madison, and teaching dance fitness classes.

Related Links * Nicole Saunders on LinkedIn * Zendesk community * Zendesk knowledge base * Zendesk’s community code of conduct

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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Recently, community pro Danielle Maveal joined Community Signal to discuss her experiences reporting into the product organization at Burb. In this episode, we’re getting the opposite perspective from product leader Gitesh Gohel.

Gitesh and Patrick worked together at CNN, where community reported into product. And while the product and community that they were building were short lived, they both speak highly of their time working together. Gitesh describes creating a team atmosphere where each individual’s expertise was respected and given room to ladder into organizational goals, giving each person the opportunity to see the impact of their work. Patrick shares how this fostered trust in processes and created great experiences for the community and the brand.

If you’re debating a community role that reports into product, this conversation will give you insight into how that can be productive when the team has a strong foundation.

Patrick and Gitesh also discuss:

Gitesh’s first experience managing community pros as a product leader
Why community pros should be excited about reporting into product
The successes and promise of CNN+’s Interview Club

Big Quotes

Making room for each individual’s expertise within your org (11:35): “One thing which is really important, especially when it comes to collaboration, trusting each other, and being able to lean in on the skill set or experience that everyone brings to the table to accomplish a shared vision, is being able to create space and autonomy for folks to be able to do their jobs. One thing that we did at CNN, specifically working on Interview Club, was create goals which your team had by itself, but also having those goals be integrated into the success of the product itself.” –@giteshg

The background of a product professional (12:54): “Most people don’t train to be a product manager or to have an expertise in product development. … Most of my training came through experience. It was being part of a team who was building a product and being able to play a small role in it, being able to see what really good successful products look like, being able to see what do really healthy relationships look like across cross-functional teams.” –@giteshg

Is product the right org for community? (25:42): “When you make community part of product, [you’re saying] that your users are important, that the relationships that you develop with your users are important and positive, that you want to be able to not have a transactional relationship with your users, but actually one where you proactively engage, where you’re proactively identifying ways in which you have your users connected.” –@giteshg

Why should a community pro be excited about being part of the product org? (26:50): “[When community sits within product], in a way, you’re closest to the decision maker, and I think that’s important. What you are able to do is influence product strategy and how you think about what you build and who you’re building for, and being able to bring the skills and expertise that you have directly into that conversation. [Product is] where you get to do the most fun stuff. It’s where you get to say and explore different ideas that you want to try. It’s a way in which you get the voice of the user closest to the way in which you think about what you end up doing.” –@giteshg

About Gitesh Gohel Gitesh Gohel has 14 years of experience as a product leader solving user problems in the startup, consumer, media, political, and civic tech space for organizations like CNN, Tumblr, Giphy, Facebook, Jumo, and Obama 08. He is currently the VP of product for Narwhal.

Related Links * Gitesh Gohel on LinkedIn * The Pros and Cons of Community Reporting to Product, Danielle Maveal on Community Signal * Brigade * Bassey Etim, who has been on multiple episodes of Community Signal

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If you’re wondering how you can more actively foster safety and belonging for LGBTQ+ folks in your online community, there’s precedent to learn and borrow from. In this episode of Community Signal, we’re joined by Samantha “Venia” Logan, the CEO and founder of Socially Constructed. Venia shares lessons from her decade of experience building community for LGBTQ+ individuals, which started when she began sharing her transition journey on YouTube.

Patrick and Venia discuss tools, policies, and practices that can help build queer friendly spaces over time. For example, how easy is it for someone to edit their profile information within your online community? What specific policies do you have in place to protect LGTBQ+ people? And a big one – how are others in your organization (outside of the community team) contributing to diversity and inclusion?

At this point you might be asking, “how do I measure or communicate progress?” To this we ask, what are community-based outcomes that indicate someone feels safe contributing and like they belong? As Venia explains (15:23): “As a person feels more and more comfortable self-disclosing, they’re going to use more organic language, they’re going to talk a lot more, their rate of inclusion is going to increase, but so will the length of their posts.” Work with your community to figure out which behaviors relate to their sense of inclusion and measure those over time.

Patrick and Venia also discuss:

Making pronouns part of everyday conversations
Twitter’s policies and handling of a recent high-profile deadnaming case
Being intentional about your metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

Big Quotes

Make space for everyone to share their pronouns in everyday conversation (08:48): “Pronouns are not just a segment that you’re going to put on your profile. … At every meeting, [if] you invite people to share their pronouns – cis, trans, doesn’t matter – it essentially says, pervasively speaking, this is a queer-friendly, queer-safe space. … Oftentimes, you want to implement these rules so that you’re not looking for explicit consent, you’re looking for implicit acceptance.” –@SamanthaVenia

Focus on tracking the behaviors that matter most to your community (14:23): “[With metrics], we need to return to a notion of simplicity, where we are recording things that people actually want us to listen to. When people engage in our online communities, they are leaving behind comments, behaviors, artifacts of conversation, and they want us to pay attention to those things, so why are we recording every single move they make in a community and not recording anything about the nature of the comment they left?” –@SamanthaVenia

Perfectly accurate data reporting does not exist, instead, try replicating your results (18:06): “Instead of worrying about gross amounts of accuracy in your data … [measure] it again. The exact same thing that you did, in a second spot, in a second scope, just do it again, and again, and again. Once you repeat the same process and you have four corollary actions that are all telling you the same thing and one that’s different, what is the resolution of your action? It just skyrocketed without you ever having to be accurate. Social science is not about causation, it’s about enough correlation to infer causation.” –@SamanthaVenia

Keep spaces safe by upholding the commitment to exclusivity (20:50): “Don’t expand what’s working for a safe space because keeping an exclusive space is what made that place safe. Instead, go over to the other place, reproduce your success, diversify it. The phrase that I use is ‘Don’t expand, diversify.’ Exclusivity breeds inclusivity.” –@SamanthaVenia

If you’re creating a space for everyone, you’re creating a space for no one (23:56): “When you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one, and you end up having no one because no one feels particularly special, or catered to, or welcome in those spaces.” –@patrickokeefe

Focus on your role of setting precedent, building momentum (24:59): “I will boil down any community management job from architect, coordinator, moderator, facilitator… it doesn’t matter what you do in community. Your job is to set precedent, to do a thing, then build momentum for that thing until the community is doing it on its own.” –@SamanthaVenia

About Samantha “Venia” Logan In 2010, Samantha “Venia” Logan transitioned from male to female and shared her entire 10-year journey on YouTube. Over the next decade, that decision snowballed into an active and healthy career in community management, diversity, education, and measurement in anonymous community health. In 2012, Venia founded RESCQU.NET, a nonprofit organization that simultaneously marketed to an invisible audience and catered to their anonymity. In 2017, she graduated with a degree focused on community management and became a full-stack marketer at DigitalMarketer.

For the past five years, Venia has built quantitative and qualitative data measurement tools for brand communities online. Through SociallyConstructed.Online, she is committed to helping businesses build robust, self-sustainable communities.

Related Links * Samantha “Venia” Logan on LinkedIn * Venia on YouTube * Venia on Twitter * RESCQU.NET * SociallyConstructed.Online * “3 Takeaways From a Decade Building Queer Community” * 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer * Chris Mercer * Twitter’s hateful conduct policy * Socially Constructed’s Discord and YouTube channel

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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     Which team or leader does your community organization report into? And which would you like it to? Community teams can be successful as independent pillars or as part of other verticals, like product, ops, or marketing. In this episode of Community Signal, Danielle Maveal, the CCO (chief community officer) at Burb, shares how community professionals can be successful within a team’s product organization.        All reporting structures have their pros and cons, but product and community share the job of “deeply understand[ing] what the user wants and what their motivations are, and how to get them from point A to point B (2:17).” With a shared mandate, community and product teams that effectively partner can expand each other’s influence and success.

No matter what team you report into, creating a foundation in which all teams have respect for each other’s knowledge, experience, and processes is critical to every team, the business, and the community itself. Tune in to hear how Patrick and Danielle have fostered product relationships at Burb, CNN, Lyft, and more.

Danielle and Patrick also discuss:

The value that community pros can bring to product teams
Learning and leveraging product’s processes
How the OKR (objectives and key results) goal structure can be adapted by community pros

Big Quotes

Community can be very repetitive (7:37): “[Product] structures don’t always work for a community team. Sometimes product teams are very much into launching features … and then feature usage. Community is a lot of repetitive tasks or maintenance. These things are important. It’s hard to fit under almost any team actually because we do have this kind of work where mostly, especially in tech, everyone’s trying to launch something and get awesome feedback on it. That’s not always the case in community.” –@daniellexo

Product and community can partner to expand each org’s influence and success (18:16): “Having community in your product team is an opportunity for product leaders to increase their mandate and increase their influence. It’s not just one way. It’s not just community influencing product. It’s increasing the influence of product within the wider org, too.” –@patrickokeefe

Approaching your product team with community feedback (22:35): “It’s really important to bring problems. Bring as much data as you can, make partners with other teams who are also getting this feedback and data. … Have as much support as you can around this problem. You can even tell stories from the community about this problem, but just don’t barge in with the solution that the community wants because it’s never going to get people on your side. It’s not going to motivate them to want to work on that project.” –@daniellexo

Maintain a bird’s eye view of issues impacting your community (25:14): “Fires are burning. People are fighting. People are upset. … There’s a little community [forming] that’s making this thing look like an emergency, and it’s not always an emergency. [It’s] really important to have partnerships with other teams; data science, research, customer service, and make sure you have a really bird’s eye view of a story before you go to product or engineering, trust and safety, or legal with your requests.” –@daniellexo

Being on the defensive for product enhancements can rob you of creative opportunities (31:38): “When you’re spending a lot of your energy, time, and mind thinking up all [the counterpoints to expected criticisms,] the defensive positions, and backing up everything you say, there’s little room to come to the table with someone and actually dream up something better. Usually, you’re just defending the bare minimum. If you can build that trust, and if you have a team that will trust you and work together to build that trust, you can use that time to be creative. Go leaps forward versus, ‘Ugh, we just need to maintain the status quo, so I need to fight for this one little thing.'” –@daniellexo

Being a community person on a product team can make you better (32:16): “Ultimately, I think that being on a product team can make, with some exceptions, you a better community person, and a broader community person.” –@patrickokeefe

About Danielle Maveal Danielle Maveal is a serial founding team member. She’s been building community at Etsy, Airbnb, and Lyft for 15 years. She’s the chief community officer at Burb, a messaging, automation, and CRM toolset for community builders. Danielle also coaches community professionals and runs multiple support groups for community builders.

Related Links * Danielle Maveal on Twitter * Danielle Maveal on LinkedIn * Burb * Danielle’s past appearance on Community Signal

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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Do you manage an international community? How do you thoughtfully foster community across different continents, languages, and norms? Mercedes Oppon-Kusi, the community manager for Europe for the International Legal Technology Association, is working to do just that for their community of technology pros working at law firms.

With ILTA originating in the U.S., Mercedes shares the differences in behaviors between U.S. and Europe-based community members, and how she has approached expanding the European chapter to include more countries. Her strategy comes back to advice that’s helpful no matter what stage your community is at: Overcome your biases as a community professional. Take time to learn the interests and challenges that impact your community members and scale thoughtfully.

As Mercedes puts it, “[It’s] about building that practical knowledge of the market, and then figuring out where to go first.”

Plus:

How to help community members break through the “I don’t have enough time” barrier
Why U.S. members are more engaged than their European counterparts
In-person events that help members feel bought-in to the ILTA community

Big Quotes

How ILTA community members help each other grow (6:45): “You have the people that have been there and done it, you have people that are looking to branch into it, and you have the people that want to grow in it. That’s what our communities do. They help our members learn how to become better than they are.” –@M4Mercedes

Tech pros at U.S. law firms are more likely to share experiences (7:38): “[With] our membership pool in the U.S., you will not struggle to get a big firm to share. They’re proud of it. They’re like, ‘We’ve done this so well because we’re amazing, and this is how we did it,’ but in the UK, they’re decidedly more reserved. It’s very hard to get the big firms to share about anything. I don’t know what it is, but it does seem like people are nervous because they do not want to be seen as bragging, so it differs according to the geographies. It’s not really by firm size.” –@M4Mercedes

Localizing matters to your community members (19:07): “A lot of our material has the word attorney, which doesn’t exist in the UK. We have solicitors and barristers. … There are little tweaks around the material and our language that we’ve had to do in order to localize what we’re providing to [the UK] region. … It’s a big deal to people.” –@M4Mercedes

Growing the ILTA community and reaching new members (24:25): “The challenge is finding your first [community members] that are going to be your champions. Once you have that, they’re usually a good insight into the networks and what topics exist, and they’re really good at introducing you to other individuals that might have similar interests.” –@M4Mercedes

About Mercedes Oppon-Kusi Mercedes Oppon-Kusi is the community manager for Europe for the International Legal Technology Association, a community for technology pros working at law firms.

Related Links * Mercedes Oppon-Kusi on LinkedIn * International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) * The Chatham House Rule

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WordPress, the popular open source CMS, powers a reported 43%+ of the web, including this site. It is backed by a global community of contributors who volunteer their time in all sorts of ways, from code to documentation to training. But did you know that many of the project’s biggest contributors are sponsored by their employer to provide that time?

As we discussed with Brad Williams of WebDevStudios, the success of WordPress has created an economy around the software, growing and launching many businesses that serve the needs of its users, from personal blogs to major corporations. And one of the way those companies give back is through these sponsorships.

No company is more tied to WordPress than Automattic, the owners of WordPress.com, which was founded by the co-founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg. Hugh Lashbrooke is the head of community education at Automattic, which sponsors him for 40 hours a week, primarily to contribute to WordPress’ training team.

Hugh joins us on this episode to give us an inside look at these sponsorship arrangements and how they influence WordPress team dynamics. Plus:

What happens when a company stops sponsoring an employee to contribute to WordPress?
The flexibility you need to work with volunteers on such a massive project
“Public by default” as a standard of work

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform.

Big Quotes

How sponsored contributors bolstered WordPress’ training team (6:49): “[After COVID struck, the community team] realized that people weren’t getting the training they normally get at events. … It started off as an informal conversation with the existing training team, which wasn’t huge in terms of numbers. … We came together and now, we have this platform called Learn WordPress, which is where all of this content is housed. The idea for Learn WordPress existed in the training team before but because they were a small team … they didn’t have the resources to really get that going like they wanted. When we came on board, and because we are sponsored volunteers and we have more time and access to more resources, we were able to help them do more and now, we’re working alongside them very closely to make the platform better.” –@hlashbrooke

Automattic can’t track the financial impact of contributors they sponsor (21:16): “As WordPress improves, and becomes more popular, that helps Automattic improve profits and revenue. In our division, we don’t track financial ROI at all. We don’t have anything to track in that sense, so we don’t. But our work in the open source project does benefit Automattic financially. … As people get better with WordPress and WordPress becomes more popular, easier to use, and more well-known, Automattic’s business grows.” –@hlashbrooke

COVID led to volunteer drop-off (27:18): “COVID had a big impact on [volunteers dropping off]. The lockdown, everyone being at home, and just the general stress of what’s going on in the world. As we got to mid-to-late 2020, and then going all through 2021 and even now, a big dip in contributors. People weren’t as committed as they were before. People who said they would be committed, they just slowly disappeared. There was just a trend that we saw, and it was very clearly because of the response to everything going on and the world being so stressful.” –@hlashbrooke

Allowing people to weigh-in can slow things down, but increase long-term engagement (35:40): “If you make a decision about how we’re going to lay out the homepage of something, for example, if we say, ‘This is what we do’ and we do it, then people look at it like, ‘Oh, okay.’ If you’ve had 15 people in the community contribute their voice to it and give their input on it, they’ll be more interested, and they might be more interested in contributing further because they’re like, ‘Oh, my voice actually matters, so I want to contribute more.’ Sure, it makes things take longer, but it means they generally stick around for longer because they can see the impact and the effect of their input.” –@hlashbrooke

About Hugh Lashbrooke Hugh Lashbrooke is a long-time community builder, currently serving as head of community education for the WordPress open source project, sponsored by Automattic. He leads a team that is building and managing an education program for the WordPress community.

Related Links * Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform * Hugh’s website * Automattic, where Hugh is head of community education, sponsored to spend 40 hours per week contributing to WordPress * Brad Williams of WebDevStudios on Community Signal * Learn WordPress, an educational resource that Hugh’s team works on * A Dedicated Volunteer Program for the Training Team by Hugh, covering the “faculty program” idea * Exploring WordPress Certifications by Hugh * Hugh on Twitter

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As the former director of community for HuffPost, where he led the management of an active, massive comment section, Tim McDonald has had a unique vantage point to the mass closure of news media comment sections. Patrick and Tim go in depth on that topic on this episode.

Toward the end, Tim shares what he believes will be his greatest community ROI story: He has stage IV colon cancer and is in need of a liver donor and could get a lot closer with your help. Please visit TimsLiver.com for more info.

Plus:

Why Tim believes he doesn’t make a good soccer referee – or content moderator
Keeping track of your community wins – both qualitative and quantitative
Leveraging relationships with influential community members to get your message across, rather than being the face of the community yourself

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform.

Big Quotes

You can’t make everyone happy in moderation (10:56): “I would hate it when there was a close call [as a soccer referee] because I knew in my head what the call was but I knew if I looked at it objectively from one team’s viewpoint and from the other team’s viewpoint, half were going to be happy with me, half were going to be upset with me, and I wanted to make everybody happy. You can’t do that in comment moderation, and you can’t do that being a referee.” –@tamcdonald

Allowing influential members to do the talking (11:34): “I didn’t need to get into the [HuffPost] community and be the face of the community. I could just have relationships with about a dozen of our community members who were very well respected and let them do the talking. But in exchange, I would take phone calls from them at home, at night, on the weekends. I would listen to them, I would understand what they were going through, but I would also be able to convey what, from a company standpoint, we were trying to achieve. When I did that, they started understanding.” –@tamcdonald

If we aren’t going to invest in it, why spend so much effort? (19:08): “My very last day [at HuffPost was] when we pushed the button and [switched to Facebook Comments]. Everybody looked at me like I was crazy, but I just told everybody, ‘I’ve come up with solutions. I’ve come up with options. Nobody wants to pay for this. If we can’t invest in it, and we’re not willing to invest in it, and we’re not going to generate any revenue off of it, why are we supporting it?’ That was the end of it. Obviously, they still had comments. They still do have comments, but it’s nothing to what it was back when I was at HuffPost.” –@tamcdonald

Document your community wins (22:53): “The subscriber growth of The New York Times is often cited … by media folks and executives as an example of the D2C model, but I think people would do well to remember that The New York Times never closed their comments. … People want that success of, ‘Look at all the people they have paying for news,’ but they don’t necessarily want to do that work that is moderating comments for 20 years to build a section that is befitting of The New York Times.” –@patrickokeefe

Document your community wins (30:02): “We say [document your wins], but we don’t necessarily always talk about the process through which we capture that, and so it fails. … If it’s easy and it’s comprehensive, then you’re going to do it. Whereas if it’s manual and it’s slow, not only are you not going to do it, but when you don’t do it, you’re going to not be able to access that information as easily.” –@patrickokeefe

Generous giving is the greatest community ROI (34:16): “When I find [a liver] donor through [the communities] I’ve built up over the years, that is going to be the greatest ROI because I don’t think there’s a price that we can put on our lives, and I don’t think there’s a price that we can put on the amount of giving that that would take from another human being.” –@tamcdonald

About Tim McDonald Tim McDonald is the community account manager for HomeRoom.club. He is the former director of community at HuffPost, founder of My Community Manager, and director of communications for Social Media Club Chicago. Tim works with organizations and individuals who are stuck to get them unstuck. He helps people connect with their voice and stories. He is also a speaker and facilitates workshops.

Recognizing how fear held him back, he has changed his relationship with fear and has used it to get unstuck and end a 17-year marriage, meet his life partner, move to a new city, twice, leave a toxic job, and currently looks at having stage IV metastasized colon cancer as a gift. Tim is in search of a liver donor with surgery planned around September 2022. If you think this could be you, please visit TimsLiver.com for more info.

Related Links * Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform * Tim McDonald on Twitter * Visit TimsLiver.com to help Tim find a liver donor * HomeRoom.club * My Community Manager * Social Media Club * Bassey Etim, many time guest on Community Signal * When You Need Community To Save Your Life: The Story of Tim McDonald, by listener and Patreon supporter Jenny Weigle

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What are the reasons why you would voluntarily end the interview process for a community role? If you give it some thought, you’ll probably come up with some!

Ryan Arsenault and Patrick share real stories from their careers, giving the reasons why they decided against continuing to interview with certain companies, including some you’ve heard of.

This leads to a conversation on the community opportunists, and how Web3 and NFT projects often fit into this category. What does it mean for your career if a rug pull happens on your NFT project? What responsibility do community industry players have in hyping these projects? After they remove the .eth from their handle, who is left holding the bag?

Patrick and Ryan also discuss:

The simple question Patrick asks recruiters to understand if what they are building is a community
Using “community” as a manipulation tactic
Why Web3 hype feels different from Web2 hype

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform.

Big Quotes

A case where Ryan ended the interview for a community role (1:39): “[I have become] more experienced in identifying the red flags that might not set me up for success in [a community] role. … In one interview, the platform was purchased already. No community goals in mind. No strategy. How do you know if the platform is even going to meet your needs if you don’t know what you need the community for yet?” –@RyanArsenault

Does the community talk to each other? (10:48): “I got to talking with the [recruiter for a community role], and I realized something. I said, ‘Let me stop you for a second. These people that are in this community, do they talk to one another?’ She said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Oh okay, I understand. I have to say I don’t think I’m right for this.’ … That’s just a different role from what I do.” –@patrickokeefe

Does buying an NFT make it a community? (12:35): “To me, the concept of buying an NFT, and then you’re part of a Discord community, doesn’t make it a community. A community’s built on trust and moderation.” –@RyanArsenault

Using “community” to keep people from leaving an NFT project (16:51): “When there’s a rug pull … whatever they were thinking they would get out of this NFT project, it’s gone now, or there’s almost no chance. To use the term ‘community’ as a way to try to make people feel better or to ensure they stay bought in with that project and don’t sell … it feels incredibly manipulative. … ‘We’re part of this community, we’re all in this together, hold on for dear life, we’re all going to make it,’ all that stuff. It’s all just social manipulation that’s been going on forever.” –@patrickokeefe

About Ryan Arsenault Ryan Arsenault has been fascinated by the power of community as a member of online forums for two decades. He has managed communities for over 7 years, building strategy and scaling super user and advocacy programs, while establishing trust and lasting relationships. He has worked in pre- and post-IPO companies, and won a 2018 TheCR Connect Award for Best Recognition + Reward Program (for Mimecast community).

Related Links * Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform * Ryan Arsenault on Twitter * Intuit’s TurboTax, where Ryan is a contact community manager * “I worked at Vistaprint – maybe you’ve heard of them?,” via Patrick * Jacob Silverman on Community Signal

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Is speaking one-on-one with your community members part of your community strategy? For Tosin Abari, when building paid professional communities, it’s an integral part. His phone calls with community members provide an opportunity to reset the tone and remind each member of what they can learn, share, and achieve with their fellow community members.

Through this work, Tosin often finds that these one-on-one conversations with community members translate into their first forum post, or later down the line, becoming a community ambassador. What personal touches help you form deeper connections with your community members?

Where’d this strategy come from? Tosin has also worked as a director of player development Vanderbilt University’s football team. He explains how his work building relationships with students and their parents, helping them start off on this new chapter of their lives, prepared him for work in community management.

Patrick and Tosin also discuss:

Tosin’s background in football
Why Tosin started taking phone calls with members without mentioning it to Patrick, his manager at the time
Where we focus our efforts in a world without vanity metrics

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform.

Big Quotes

Helping members see the potential in the community (10:22): “There’s so many people out there that have the same struggles that you do, or maybe something that you’ve conquered, and you have expertise that you can share with someone else. … [Each community member has] an opportunity to make a difference, or have someone else make a difference in their lives. They can make something beautiful happen.” -Tosin Abari

Having phone calls with members (12:35): “Most places I’ve been at, they’re like, ‘No, we don’t have time [for phone calls with members].’ … We have X amount of members, we just got to do what we got to do through email orientation, and they’ll figure it out. That always gnawed at me a little bit, because these people are paying X amount of dollars for a membership, and we want to give them the best experience of their life. … [These one-on-one calls can help] other people feel like they’re not isolated, that they’re in a place that holds space for them.” -Tosin Abari

Giving each member the space to feel heard (18:06): “I don’t know how many times I’ve gotten nasty emails [and] I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is going to be a very contentious call.’ I let them talk [and] by the end of the conversation, they’re like, ‘Thank you for having this call with me. You calmed me down, and I feel so much better.’ It was just because they just wanted to be heard.” -Tosin Abari

Owning your work with your manager (25:50): “Never let [your manager] be surprised by bad news. If there is bad news, [they] should hear it from you first, before anyone else. Don’t let [them] be surprised, because if [they are] surprised, it’s going to make matters worse. … You should be the person who delivers the message.” –@patrickokeefe

About Tosin Abari Tosin Abari (he/him/his) is a former collegiate football administrator turned motivated community manager and social media aficionado. With over 10 years of experience in community management and memberships, as well as front-end and back-end social media management, Tosin is extremely passionate in bringing people together with the goal of fostering authentic community.

Related Links * Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform * Tosin Abari on LinkedIn * Photos of Patrick’s son, Patrick James * Kindred

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Which community leaders helped you grow as a professional? Who in the industry do you study from or reference? On the last episode of Community Signal, our guest Mohamed Mohammed mentioned how his former manager, Joe Pishgar, helped him feel welcome in the industry. “You belong here” were Joe’s encouraging words to Mohamed, and this phrase signifies an ethos that Joe brings to his role as chief community officer for VerticalScope.

Managing an organization of 27 full-time community pros, 30 contracted admins, and over 10,000 volunteer moderators across 1,200 sites, Joe understands the necessity of scale and delegation, but also realizes that delegating is not always as simple as it sounds. “There’s competing thoughts in your head that surround the force of delegating. On the one hand, you don’t have enough time to do it all. The time you spend in operational or in tactical, you’re not spending at the strategic, and no one else is going to spend time at the strategic level.” (13:18) Joe also explains that by delegating and creating space, we give our team members the opportunity to grow and experience community management for themselves.

How have leaders made space for you to grow as a community professional and how can you create that space for others?

Joe and Patrick also discuss:

The difference between having community volunteers and exploiting them
The ebb and flow of hiring booms in the community industry
Unifying strategy in an organization with multiple stakeholders and individual contributors

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform.

Big Quotes

Giving your team the space to grow (03:48): “Give [your team] as much space as possible within the quantity of trust that you can hand them, let them complete those tasks, learn the discipline, and develop in the discipline so that they develop that confidence. It comes with getting it right, having space to get it right, but also making sure that you as supervisor [are] around for when they bump into those really tricky questions.” –@Pishgar

Autonomy will help newer recruits to develop their confidence as community managers (14:45): “If your name, clout, expertise, background, and experience is required for every single decision, you’re in trouble. Then you’ve got a bunch of people who are basically your eyes and ears out there who aren’t really taking things off of your plate as much as they need to be or as much as you need them to. … Sometimes you have to go hands-off, even if it means embracing that fear that it’s not going to get done 100% to your spec.” –@Pishgar

What drives your sense of fulfillment as a community manager? (17:15): “When I know that communities under my wing are growing, that I’m helping to make the world a better place, one individual forum member at a time, because they got an answer to their question, or they felt like they belonged, or there was something that they were shopping for that they got word of mouth on through a post that they found on one of our forums and they were only able to do that because the place was kept civil, that to me is fulfilling. That is my life work.” –@Pishgar

About Joe Pishgar Joe Pishgar joined VerticalScope as its chief community officer in 2020. Joe is an 18+ year veteran of online community management. Prior to joining VerticalScope, he served as vice president Global Communities at Future plc, where he launched communities for PC Gamer, Space.com, Live Science, What Hi-Fi, and more. Previously, he served as director of community for Purch Inc., where he built the communities for Tom’s Hardware, Tom’s Guide, and AnandTech.

Related Links * Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform * Joe Pishgar on Twitter * Joe Pishgar on LinkedIn * Joe Pishgar’s website * VerticalScope * Mohamed Mohammed on Community Signal * Joe King on Community Signal * Joe and Patrick shoutout the following community professionals: Rebecca Newton, Linda Carlson, Sanya Weathers, Valerie Massey, Troy Hewitt, and Gail Ann Williams * Rebecca Newton on Community Signal * Gail Ann Williams on Community Signal

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This conversation with Mohamed Mohammed, a community manager and a PhD student studying deepfakes, is timely. Just last week, a deepfake emerged attempting to spread misinformation that the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, was announcing surrender to Russia’s invasion. In that situation, preparation and rapid response helped minimize the spread of misinformation.

So, what’s your community strategy against deepfakes? Mohamed recommends starting with learning from the information and experts in our field. He also shares an important reminder: As community professionals, while we may want to prevent all harms from happening, we simply can’t. However, we can minimize the harm that’s caused, and we can educate our community members to identify and flag suspicious behaviors. Just as many platforms adjusted their community guidelines and enforcement rubrics to prevent the spread of misinformation, deepfakes represent a new area for us to learn about and help our communities adapt.

Mohamed and Patrick also discuss:

Why science denial is banned in the Space.com community
What good governance on deepfakes might look like
Mohamed’s PhD on deepfakes

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform.

Big Quotes

Ground your moderation in your guidelines (6:13): “There was no way to not iterate our [community] policies when the world shut down because of a global pandemic, when flat Earth or conspiracy theories found their way to the forums. When these things happen, you have to make changes. Otherwise … we look shadowy. We start banning content or removing forum posts simply because we think it’s a bad thing. Even if everyone agrees with us, the perception is so important. The perception that we’re consistent within the scope of our guidelines is massive to being able to, for lack of a better term, keep the peace.” –@MMohammed_Comms

If your community has the same problems as a big social media platform, why should people stick around? (9:24): “If you’re not consistent [in your community moderation,] and if you happen to have the same problems as bigger platforms, then what’s the difference? Why am I investing all of this time as a user into this forum of yours when all of my efforts are being met with inconsistent approaches to keeping the place safe?” –@MMohammed_Comms

Antagonizing people to engage (11:30): “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that [the antagonistic content we discourage as forum managers] is the same thing a brand whose KPI is engagement on Twitter will post just to get engagement and to antagonize someone into giving the rapid-fire answers that get people. Nothing brings engagement on a place and an echo chamber quite like a divisive question. We’re trying to be the opposite.” –@MMohammed_Comms

In the words of Sam Gregory, “Prepare, don’t panic” (40:48): “Don’t get scared about this apocalyptic vision of deep fakes … [just] read as much as you can about them. I know it’s going to sound scary, but the more you understand them, the more you get comfortable with the fact that tools are advancing.” –@MMohammed_Comms

Shoutout to the supportive managers out there (46:01): “Having a [supportive] manager is to me the difference between having this long career that can be fulfilling and rewarding and can help you feel better about yourself versus something where you have to build this foundation all by yourself.” –@MMohammed_Comms

About Mohamed Mohammed Mohamed Mohammed is a community manager at Future Plc, managing forums for brands such as PC Gamer and Space.com. He is also a PhD candidate at the QUEX Institute, researching the platform governance of deepfakes.

Related Links * Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform * Mohamed Mohammed on LinkedIn * Mohamed Mohammed on Twitter * A Zelensky Deepfake Was Quickly Defeated. The Next One Might Not Be, via WIRED * Future PLC * PC Gamer * Space.com * QUEX Institute * Amanda Petersen on Community Signal * Truepic * Communications Decency Act * Sam Gregory of the WITNESS Media Lab * Joe Pishgar

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Online communities are can be essential for people impacted by illness. For those directly affected, their families, and support systems, these communities can provide a much needed place to share experiences, to vent, and to learn about different symptoms, treatments, and the intricacies of navigating the healthcare system. For our guest, Amanda Petersen, Planet Cancer provided such a community as she fought breast cancer in her early twenties.

Amanda has since continued to be an active contributor and moderator in online spaces dedicated to providing a safe and functional community for cancer survivors. In this conversation, she talks about the role that Planet Cancer played in her life in addition to why she felt motivated to start participating in r/breastcancer. The community exists and is functional because of its people –– people like Amanda that help to moderate the space and people that are looking to connect with others and find support in their journeys.

Whether a moderator takes a break or community members sadly pass away or move on, the rules that they have created and the space that they’ve fostered will continue to provide a meaningful community for cancer survivors.

Amanda and Patrick also discuss:

Rules that are representative of the community they serve and protect
The emotional labor of managing a community of care
How Planet Cancer helped Amanda through her own journey with cancer

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform.

Big Quotes

What makes a space for cancer survivors not functional? (12:27): “[After you have been in the] support community space for so long, there are certain things that you start IDing [that indicate] this is no longer a functional space for survivors. People flooding it when they’re concerned about having cancer, while totally legitimate, will drive away your survivors. People asking for donation requests will drive away your survivors. People asking for research requests will drive away your survivors.” –@amandarhiann

The important roles of active moderators in a subreddit (15:46): “Unless the moderators are paying attention, Reddit can be a very unsafe place for many reasons. With strong moderator teams, it can be a safe place of healing.” –@amandarhiann

Why r/breastcancer does not allow pre-diagnosis posts (19:13): “Don’t take advice about your health from someone at a grocery store, [and that also] applies to Reddit. [People] need to go to their doctor, and there are tons of pre-diagnosis resources out there that aren’t going to force people who are actively going through treatment to answer questions they shouldn’t have to answer.” –@amandarhiann

The emotional tax of research requests for cancer survivors (21:04): “[r/breastcancer] is a place for helping people navigate the complexities of breast cancer. It’s not a place to help other people do their jobs better. Sure, if you want to come and read [or] do text analysis on Reddit, go ahead, it’s all public, but don’t harm the people that we’re trying to help, even inadvertently.” –@amandarhiann

About Amanda Petersen Amanda Petersen is the program manager for community operations at MURAL. Prior to working in community, Amanda spent ten years of her career helping people who used challenging behaviors to communicate complex needs. In tandem, she moderated and managed online support communities for young adults with cancer.

Related Links * Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform * Amanda Petersen on Twitter * MURAL Community * r/breastcancer * Planet Cancer * First Descents * American Cancer Society * Young Survival Coalition * Breast Cancer Research Foundation

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As community leaders, we’re responsible for people. The people in our communities and the people that serve them. In this episode, Chris Catania, head of community at Esri, shares how he approaches planning for growth and specialization for his community organization, for his people, and for his own role. Chris is currently hiring for three roles, a community operations manager, a community manager for engagement and content, and a community manager for ArcGIS Ideas. Chris shares the responsibilities and scope for each of these roles, in addition to the challenges and advantages of hiring right now. In addition to the effects of the “great resignation,” as specialization and scope of responsibility within the community industry grows, so does the need to be clear in our job listings, success metrics, and paths to growth.

Chris and Patrick also discuss:

The role specializations and career paths that Chris is charting for his team and himself
Hiring for specializations within community
Communicating your team’s value to other execs (and around the dinner table)

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform.

Big Quotes

Esri’s community team is two sides of the house (1:49): “[Our community team has] a structure where we have two halves. I’ve been using the analogy of a house: Two sides of the house. … An operational side, community ops, and on the other side we have community experience and programs.” –@chriscatania

The current landscape for job applicants and hiring managers (4:31): “There’s a multi-layer effect that’s going on in the job market where you have the Great Resignation going on … [and] then you have this other layer that has emerged over the last five years where you have this proliferation of community jobs.” –@chriscatania

All job candidates have areas where they need help (10:20): “Having been in the community industry for a while, [I’ve been able to] get a good idea of all the different paths that you can take. … [This is] influencing how we are approaching the strategy of the hiring process, and knowing that there’s not one person out there that is going to do everything that we [need a given] role to do.” –@chriscatania

Planning for your team’s growth (24:46): “I started really looking at our new org structure for the community team early last year because I saw the team was growing, … individually and as a team. I saw the community industry starting to advance … people coming into it were really accelerating. I looked at my team, and [said], ‘Okay, I need to think about promotions. I need to think about their path.'” –@chriscatania

Planting the seeds to grow and promote your team (25:33): “As I have meetings with my boss about our team and what our team is doing, I plant seeds with them. ‘Look what this person’s doing.’ Because I’ve seen that work with executives over the years of trying to get buy-in incrementally, just walking in and boom, put down the plan. I like to plant seeds. I like to make a case over time so that when you go for the ask [to grow or promote], it’s like, ‘Yes, you got it.'” –@chriscatania

Giving out skimpy raises will often lose you money (28:41): “I’ve worked at places where I’d have to grind out an $8,000 raise to go with a promotion for someone who’s been there five years. I was like, ‘They need $10,000.’ ‘You can have $8,000.’ That $2,000 in our pocket, it’s worth nothing. That $2,000 in their pocket is worth something, because if we lose that person, the amount of time that I’m going to have to spend training, interviewing, we’re going to lose way more than that, in my time and in our company’s time.” –@patrickokeefe

About Chris Catania For more than 20 years, Chris Catania has developed a versatile array of skills and experiences in strategic communication, community management, customer experience, global business strategy and emerging media production. He is a dedicated community and collaboration leader, who always thinks “people first, technology next,” and uses his passion for emerging community and communication strategies to drive measurable business results and design meaningful experiences for employee and customer audiences. Chris is currently the head of community at Esri.

Related Links * Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform * Chris’ website * Chris on Twitter * Esri community * ArcGIS Ideas * Chris is hiring a community manager, ArcGIS Ideas, a community manager, engagement and content, and a community operations manager * Patrick is hiring community moderators on his team at CNN+

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By now, even if you’re not super well-versed in the terminology of Web3, you’ve probably encountered some of the conversation around its relationship with community. Like with any innovation or change in technology, there can and should be conversations about how Web3 will empower communities. However, we should also ask questions and think about how such change will impact communities, whether they embrace Web3 or not. For example, as Patrick and our guest, staff writer with The New Republic, Jacob Silverman discuss, NFTs may be empowering some artists, but for the DeviantArt community, it’s another way that they’re seeing their art exploited. And even for NFTs that are becoming ubiquitous, like Bored Apes Yacht Club, how much of the conversation or credit is given back to the artists?

This conversation will give you a great primer on Web3 terminology, but perhaps more importantly, it will equip you with questions and examples to understand the true role of community in the current iteration of Web3.

Jacob and Patrick also discuss:

The basics of Web3, including cryptocurrency, NFTs, and DAOs
Reasons why Web3 may not be as egalitarian as it seems
Why celebrity cryptocurrency clubs of today may not have the same permanence as online fan clubs that already exist

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform.

Big Quotes

Misuse of community in Web3 (1:35): “In Web3 … there’s a lot of use of this idea of community, but honestly, I find it’s often disingenuous when it’s coming from say a DAO that controls $300 million dollars worth of cryptocurrency or a crypto startup that has a lot of venture capitalist financing, and it has its own crypto token and an exchange. There’s just this appeal to this idea of community within Web3 that, if it were coming from a more traditional corporate setting, would ring very false to people.” –@SilvermanJacob

Disguising Web3 under the term “community” may get people to look past the risks (4:24): “[The use of ‘community’ in Web3] obscures the idea that these are, first and foremost, financial relationships, that there’s a lot of risk involved, and that the power relations may not be as egalitarian as the word ‘community’ implies.” –@SilvermanJacob

The supposed Bored Ape Yacht Club community (4:58): “[Bored Ape Yacht Club] is a billion-dollar company that employs several dozen people, is very well connected in Hollywood, whose own financial transactions and behaviors deserve some scrutiny. … If you just call it a community, you’re not going to really think about that. You’re not going to think about where are the conflicts of interests, who’s driving these markets, and what kind of power do I have as a member of the supposed community?” –@SilvermanJacob

What protections will Web3 offer for artists? (11:24): “OpenSea, for example, does not seem to be built to support artists and incentivize the small craftsmen type. Instead, OpenSea is meant to attract as many people as possible to mint NFTs, and it has very few guards against copyright theft.” –@SilvermanJacob

The utility of NFTs (45:00): “Maybe the utility of [NFTs] will grow, but right now you’re buying into a very hollow idea of community and connection for the promise of future rewards. Whether those rewards will even be worth it is an open question.” –@SilvermanJacob

The potential impermanence of NFTs (47:32): “There’s going to be some equivalent of link rot with NFTs and with some of these online communities. They’re going to break apart. They’re not going to be necessarily sustainable or haven’t proven themselves sustainable over the long haul, whereas the Dave Matthews Band message board that my college roommate used to post on is probably still around.” –@SilvermanJacob

About Jacob Silverman Jacob Silverman is a staff writer with The New Republic. He’s the author of Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection, and is currently working on a book with Ben McKenzie about crypto and fraud.

Related Links * Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform * Jacob’s website * The New Republic, where Jacob is a staff writer * Jacob Silverman on Twitter * Jacob’s tweet that inspired this episode * Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection * Bored Ape Yacht Club * DeviantArt Protect * DeviantArt Protect: 80,000 NFT Alerts Sent * Here’s How DeviantArt Executives Are Tackling Theft and the Future of NFTs, via Gizmodo * Jacob on CNBC and CNN * Sam Bankman-Fried * CZ Binance * Ross Ulbricht NFT Collection Raises Over $6 Million in Ethereum, Free Ross DAO Wins Auction, via Bitcoin.com * What exactly is the Jodorowsky’s Dune crypto collective trying to make, anyway? via The Verge * Communities, Associations, and DAOs, written by Marjorie Anderson * From a Meme to $47 Million: ConstitutionDAO, Crypto, and the Future of Crowdfunding, via The Verge * Blockchain bridge Wormhole confirms that exploiter stole $320 million worth of crypto assets, via TechCrunch * Which celebrity has the saddest NFT?, via Slate

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Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection

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When was the last time that you trusted your community with the responsibility of collaboration? In this episode of Community Signal, Matt Leacock shares lessons he’s learned while designing popular collaborative board games like Pandemic, Pandemic Legacy, and Forbidden Island.

Matt also discusses how he leans on the board game community for his own games. In the pre-launch stages, he has rallied supporters to pre-order his games and prove demand. In the development stages, he’s openly shared rules documents, inviting feedback from fans. After a game launches, he also discusses the role that players have when it comes to helping one another as questions and loopholes arise.

Having a shared goal –– winning the game –– is perhaps what motivates players to come together at all stages of the game’s development. Knowing that your community members also have a shared purpose or goal, are there ways that you could trust them with collaboration opportunities that could lead to positive outcomes for everyone? That’s winning!

Matt and Patrick also discuss:

Competition within collaborative games
Establishing norms within games and communities
The importance of establishing straightforward nomenclature

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform.

Big Quotes

Trust as an integral part of cooperative game design (6:54): “In a cooperative game, you can guide people along. You’re all working toward the same goal, so you can help each other out as you go along. I think that does help build trust. Having that common goal really helps. The opposite is true with semi-cooperative ones, or even the ones with the hidden traitor. Most of the game is really about social reduction and trying to guess what people’s agendas are.” –@mattleacock

Getting buy-in on community norms outside of the context of guidelines infractions (8:45): “To the extent that people can understand what the norms are before they exhibit the behavior the better. … It’s not just, ‘Here’s the rules. Follow them.’ It’s, ‘Here’s the intent of the community [and] where we want to go, so that’s why we have these rules.'” –@mattleacock

Board game communities step in when players need help (13:43): “I lean on BoardGameGeek pretty heavily because there’s so many rules questions about so many of the games. Some of them are quite simple and very easy to monitor. Especially when the game is released, I want to make sure that no one’s found any loophole or has any big questions. I look at those [communities] pretty carefully after release.” –@mattleacock

Trusting your community with collaboration (18:52): “We put the rules [for Thunderbirds] up online … in Google Doc format and invited people to edit, which was this leap of faith. People would see the text, and they could make suggestions right in the text. I would obviously monitor this stuff and pull out any abusive language. I was really impressed at how just meeting people with good faith, how far that went, and how much buy-in that created.” –@mattleacock

The upsides and potential pitfalls of crowdfunding (20:25): “There are certain advantages of trying to get buy-in [for your board game] from the community, where you’re listening to them and understanding what’s important. If that’s taken too far, then you get perhaps people that feel entitled to tell you exactly what they want and expect it.” –@mattleacock

About Matt Leacock Matt Leacock has been designing board games full-time since 2014. He is best known for his cooperative titles, Pandemic, Pandemic Legacy, and Forbidden Island, and he has designed and developed over two dozen titles for the international market. He is currently working on Daybreak, a game about taking on the climate crisis. His games have won many awards including four nominations for Spiel des Jahres and the Sonderpreis in 2018. In a prior life, he was a user experience designer at Apple, Netscape, AOL, Yahoo, and the chief designer at Sococo.

Related Links * Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform * Matt Leacock’s website * Jonathan Bailey, formerly on Community Signal (three times) * Board Game Arena * BoardGameGeek * Stats on Kickstarter’s categories, including games * Daybreak Overview in 7 Minutes

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What metrics and indicators of success are you, your colleagues, and community excited about for 2022? Whether you’re hoping to better demonstrate the impact of the community on your business’ bottom line, foster safer experiences for your members across the communities they are part of, or want to focus on establishing better boundaries for you and your team, this conversation with Jessica Folsom, lead community manager at ZeniMax Online Studios, may provide some inspiration.

Even without perfect end-to-end campaign attribution, Jessica discusses the impact of being a participant in the Elder Scrolls Online community and how certain attributes may lead to different outcomes for community members and for the overall community. For example, Elder Scrolls Online players may participate in official forums, they may be content creators, they may stream the game, or participate in player-run communities on Discord or Reddit. Jessica and her team have learned that the players that can find their connection to the community retain better and drive investment in the game, too.

With such an expansive group of players, Jessica also has to be prepared to help community members deal with toxic behaviors outside of immediate Elder Scrolls Online spaces. While it can often feel like we can’t do much in these circumstances, Jessica explains how she listens, offers guidance on how to block and report the behavior on these parallel platforms, and in some cases, contact local authorities. Do you have a plan for helping your community members handle toxicity on other platforms?

Jessica and Patrick also discuss:

How Jessica’s team sets success metrics
Helping community managers prevent burnout
Why community members are not your friends

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform.

Big Quotes

How community connection contributes to retention and growth (8:20): “People who are in guilds, for instance, tend to be much more invested overall in [Elder Scrolls Online]. Not only do they tend to spend more but they also contribute more to the community, which is immensely valuable, to community growth and health. … [Content creators] tend to also be very, very valuable, and not only from a monetary perspective but just what they give to the community. They give us our community culture. They’re the backbone of it.” –@JessFolsom

How guilds unlock connection to Elder Scrolls Online (9:40): “Guilds [drive] all of the positive things that we want. Players can be in five different guilds. Usually, if they find at least one, they find that community that they really want to be a part of … this is cliché, but it’s about the people. If you find a group of people that you’re really invested in, you then enjoy the game more, you spend more time, you invest more in the content, [and] you invest more in the monetary side of things as well.” –@JessFolsom

Helping community managers prevent burnout (11:24): “It’s okay to shut things down at the end of your day. Don’t look at the forums, don’t look at email. If somebody needs to get a hold of you for an emergency, they will, but take your time to decompress, live your life, enjoy your hobbies, your family, your free time, and you’ll come back better to do your job the next day.” –@JessFolsom

Helping players deal with toxic behavior in parallel challenges (26:44): “[When our players are getting harassed or being targeted with toxicity in parallel channels], we try to educate players on what they can do and how they can use those tools. How do they block players? How do they use two-factor authentication if their account got hacked? How do they report really awful comments or activity on the various different channels, using the channels’ methods of reporting that they have available to them? Then in extreme cases … we will work with that player to educate them on all the different things that they could do by delaying their stream. For instance, if they’re getting stream sniped, [everything from] putting a delay on their stream to contacting local authorities.” –@JessFolsom

Why there is no official Elder Scrolls Online Discord (26:44): “I know a lot of smaller studios really like Discord but with a community our size, the amount of moderation that we would need, we’ve got a player base of, I think we recently said 12 million or something like that, it’s not realistic to have a Discord community that we run. If we run a community, and it’s an official community, there is an expectation that we are able to maintain a certain level of protection, professionalism, and rules that I don’t think we can.” –@JessFolsom

About Jessica Folsom Jessica Folsom has been working with gaming communities for 16 years and is currently the lead community manager at ZeniMax Online Studios. She has been working with the Elder Scrolls Online community for about nine and a half years. Jessica got her start in the video games industry in 1999 as a customer support representative at Nintendo of America in Washington state, where she is originally from. After about eight years there, she left and spent time at numerous studios, including NCSOFT, Trion, Mythic, EA BioWare, Big Huge Games, and 38 Studios.

Related Links * Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform * Jessica Folsom on Twitter * Jessica Folsom on LinkedIn * ZeniMax Online Studios * The Elder Scrolls Online community

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Do you have a 60-second pitch for your community? In this episode of Community Signal, Colleen Young, community director for Mayo Clinic, raises the challenge of being able to deliver a concise and impactful pitch to other leaders at the nonprofit. “I’m just imagining finding myself in the elevator with this leader by happenstance and being able to finally say something just in two floors that we have. It’s really hard to be able to know what is going to motivate them to be excited about the community. I’m really struggling with that,” explains Young. Many, if not all of us, have been in a situation like this, whether we were helping to onboard a new leader or in an impromptu meeting.

This conversation is a bit longer than 60 seconds, but in it, Colleen delivers a very compelling case for Mayo Clinic Connect. The community’s moderation practices and active participation makes it less of a haven for misinformation. And when misinformation does appear, expert testimonials and active participants within the community help inform and correct. The community also comes together to help people understand their options for care and to manage their symptoms. “Peer support can better health outcomes,” says Young. The community also has a direct impact on Mayo Clinic’s livelihood – as it can be a direct driver of appointment bookings and visits.

So, the next time you’re thinking about how to pitch your community to another colleague, think about the value that it brings to your members and how that value leads to positive outcomes for the business. And as Patrick says, don’t be afraid to ask for more time to advocate for the community and your work!

Colleen and Patrick also discuss:

Why Mayo Clinic Connect measures appointments as a metric
Has medical misinformation actually gotten worse over the last 15 years?
Developing your 60-second community pitch

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform.

Big Quotes

How Mayo Clinic Connect approaches misinformation (3:07): “There’s a lot of misinformation that’s not with malintent. That’s the part [where] I think online communities can do a lot of good, in that sometimes it’s just misunderstandings, and the self-correcting nature of online communities in health is really quite amazing if you have a healthy, active community.” –@colleen_young

Patient connection can improve health outcomes (14:14): “On the patient portal, patients are reporting how they’re managing the side effects of cancer treatment. If they’re severe, they get triaged to a nurse. If they’re moderate-to-mild, they get triaged, as a prescription, to the community because they know through community support that they can help manage those side effects. That is the clinicians really giving a hat tip to the community, knowing that peer support can better health outcomes.” –@colleen_young

On launching a community strictly for research (16:28): “[There have been] researchers really interested in peer support online, so they would create a community in order to study the community. … It was terribly frightening, I have to tell you. They were creating these communities, bringing people together somehow … [and] when the grant was over, pulling the plug. They had managed to connect some people and essentially left them high and dry.” –@colleen_young

About Colleen Young Colleen Young is an online community strategist, recognized for her expertise in building online health communities. Clients include Mayo Clinic, College of Family Physicians Canada, Canadian Virtual Hospice, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health, Hjernerystelsesforeningen Denmark, EURODIS, and more. As community director for Mayo Clinic Connect, a virtual community connecting patients with each other and to Mayo Clinic medical expertise, Colleen believes online connectivity is arguably the most exciting innovation of the patient-led health era. As a tenacious connector of patients, Colleen demonstrates how an active community, strategically managed, can re-imagine health care and improve health outcomes.

Related Links * Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform * Colleen Young on LinkedIn * Mayo Clinic * Mayo Clinic News Network * Mayo Clinic Connect * Medicine 2.0 * Priscilla McClay on Community Signal * Sue Ryder Online Bereavement Support

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Are you able to step away from your community for days at a time? When you return, are your team and the community still running smoothly? If you answered yes to these questions, then congratulations! Whether it’s documentation, systems, or setting proper expectations with your boss and colleagues, those boundaries and structure are crucial, not just for yourself, but for the people around you and the community itself.

Our guest, Allison Able, senior manager of community at Sisense, explains that creating and upholding these boundaries is a constant work in progress. “There’s great power in … being able to step away and have things go okay. That speaks well for you if that’s the community you build, that it doesn’t need you to exist,” explains Patrick.

Having a supportive team goes a long way in setting work-life boundaries, so fittingly, Allison explains what her approach will be to building the community team at Sisense and why their community is currently in beta.

Allison and Patrick also discuss:

Adding the community content manager role to the community team
How to embody healthy boundaries for you and your team
The right order of community programs for Sisense
Community Signal’s sixth anniversary –– thank you listeners, supporters, and guests!

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

Don’t blame the tools (7:52): “Email is only bad if you send bad emails. Notifications are only bad if you send bad notifications.” –@patrickokeefe

Do your community’s emails and notifications have intention and value? (15:09): “Community is a give-and-take relationship in a lot of ways. If I am going to reach out to you [via email], I want to … provide an asset that’s going to enhance your professional life and make your job or your product experience easier.” –@_aable_

Having a dog has helped Allison identify better work boundaries (24:45): “I’m one of those people that adopted a dog in COVID and having a pup who I love and adore, [and] doesn’t go according to your schedule, it has been a great learning experience for me to really shut that computer or walk away [to] spend time with that dog. He has to walk, he has to eat. He has to do all of these things. That’s been helpful [in achieving a healthy work-life balance].” –@_aable_

Setting and embodying healthy work-life boundaries (27:45): “I know there’s an email in my inbox I could probably respond to, but then the next day happens, and did the world end? No, and the community’s still going and thriving. That’s something that I’ve found comfort in.” –@_aable_

About Allison Able A former teacher turned community manager, Allison Able can trace her community-building ways back to high school, where she was the leader of multiple clubs. When she moved into education, it was shocking to her that teachers did not network. In response, Allison recruited a committee of teachers and developed a partnership with a local teaching college to launch the Teacher Leadership Network. TLN is still in existence today and has gathered thousands of local educators at all levels for networking events, webinars, conferences, and more.

When it came time to start a new career chapter, by a stroke of luck, she came across a job posting for a community manager role at Higher Logic, where she successfully built and launched over 25 communities for a variety of association and corporate customers, developed full-scale engagement programs and successfully revitalized several dormant communities. Additionally, she led a team of community managers to scale and grow one of the largest global enterprise communities. Today, she is the senior manager of community at Sisense, where she recently launched Sisense Community beta.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Allison Able on Twitter * Sisense * Sisense Community beta * Alex Witkowski on Community Signal * Higher Logic * Heather McNair

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Earlier this month, blogging pioneer Jason Kottke tweeted that “social media would be a better place to connect with people if the folks building and using these services had spent formative time on and taken inspiration from Flickr and MetaFilter instead of 4chan and Reddit. Gardening vs. waste management.”

That tweet spoke to Patrick who retweeted it, and that retweet elicited a reply from Lydia Fiedler, community manager for Splitcoaststampers, leading to this episode of the podcast.

What do your community members want out of their community? Are you tending a garden that is actively growing toward those goals? Or are you tolerating noise and managing waste that gets in the way? Having a clear sense of what brings the community together helps Lydia Fiedler keep conversations on track, set expectations for community members, and come up with inspiring challenges.

If you’re planning programming for the coming year or just in a creative rut with your own work, this conversation with Patrick and Lydia offers some great inspiration that can help you create great experiences that will bring your members together and enable them reach their own goals.

Lydia and Patrick also discuss:

Operating in the “gray areas” of community management
Features that people clamor for on social media platforms that hosted online communities offer routinely
How challenges align with the Splitcoaststampers community’s goal of becoming better artists and crafters

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

Being comfortable with making judgement calls for your community (5:15): “If you have a community that you’re taking care of, and there’s something that maybe doesn’t exactly violate the letter of one of your guidelines, you have to be able to make the judgment call that you still don’t want it in your community. Then you have to be able to communicate that, ‘I’m a human being, and I make judgment calls. I do it to preserve the culture of this community.'” –@understandblue

Fostering Splitcoaststampers’ spirit of creativity (9:28): “The most important thing that you have is the definition of what you want out of your community. That’s your little seed that you’re going to protect. I’m in a creative industry, and so the cultural little seed that I have to protect with everything in my online communities is people’s ability to feel creative.” –@understandblue

Cultivating a community of gardeners (13:05): “When you have a really good, strong community culture, … the people that love what you’re building, they help you take out the trash. They don’t want it there anymore than you do, and you know you have a good thing going when you have people helping you with the trash.” –@understandblue

About Lydia Fiedler Lydia Fiedler is the community manager of Splitcoaststampers, where she has been for 11 years. Lydia has been creating art for nearly 40 years and creating online content for about 20. Crafting spaces that feel friendly and welcoming is her mission, whether at work teaching online, or engaging in social media. She also spent 20 years in the construction industry as an HR director and marketing director, and has worked in software development and at great startups in the Austin, Texas area, but the art industry has been her home for more than a decade. Lydia lives in Austin with her husband and two feline overlords, Maddie and Splotchy.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Carol Benovic-Bradley, Community Signal’s editorial lead, who has been working on the show for four years now! (added by Patrick) * Understand Blue, Lydia’s website * Splitcoaststampers * Twitter Blue * Jason Kottke’s tweet about “gardening vs. waste management” * Derek Powazek on Community Signal * Heather Champ on Community Signal * Matthew Haughey on Community Signal * Splitcoaststampers gallery * Falliday Fest Challenge Forum * Lydia on YouTube * Lydia on Instagram

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If you threw a random group of people together, united primarily by a shared educational goal that they can accomplish with or without the group, and had two weeks to build a sense of community among them, what would you do?

That’s what Alex Witkowski spends time thinking about. He’s the community lead for Section4, which offers business courses they call sprints. These sprints are typically around two weeks long and then the experience is over – if you want it to be. If you don’t want it to be, you can continue to benefit from and collaborate with the students that took the same course.

Alex oversees a team of four community managers that guides this growing number or cohorts and hopes to bring then together through an upcoming alumni membership program. He also believes that cohort-based communities often exploit community rather than build it. We chat about that, plus:

Alex’s transition from English teacher to community pro and the condescension he felt when making the move
How he determines when a community manager simply has too many cohorts
Why Slack may not be the right tool for their alumni product

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

Checking your assumptions when interviewing job candidates (05:02): “I’m doing a lot of interviewing, I’m doing a lot of hiring, and I’m trying to be hyper cognizant of everything in an interview process [that] is an assumption. … I’ve been trying to be really aware of making assumptions and holding people back from opportunities, just because I’m assuming they won’t be able to make [a specific] change.” –@HeyLifeboat

The Section4 community helps students apply course knowledge in the real world (10:55): “I’m really hoping to build the continuing community around this idea of application. We all have this shared language, we all have these concepts, and I often think about it as the marriage of: We can offer the book smarts, the community is where the street smarts comes in. … We can’t give you every answer for what this looks like in a B2B SaaS context in our two-week course, but we can connect you to people who can engage in discussion with how they’re thinking about applying it to a B2B SaaS context.” –@HeyLifeboat

Section4’s community managers focus on bringing humanness to the community (17:11): “I’ve taken other online courses before, [and] I couldn’t name one person at the company. I’ve never interacted with anyone. I didn’t feel a connection to them. I felt the connection to the course, but [at Section4], I feel like there’s a connection to our ethos, which has been really exciting.” –@HeyLifeboat

Section4’s community managers focus on bringing humanness to the community (31:14): “Oftentimes the self-promoters are some of the loudest, nastiest people that you have in professional groups. They are the ones who respond most offensively when challenged on it. They will attack the community manager, or they will say, ‘Of course, I’m not doing that. This is relevant! You’re going to kill the community! The community’s never been the same since Patrick took over!’ This is all stuff that you have to hear and deal with. Those are some of the worst folks in professional circles, but yet, if you let them do it because it’s easier in the moment to not take their abuse, it is its own insidious thing that infects the space.” –@patrickokeefe

What does community-based learning actually mean? (54:57): “As someone who taught for six years, there’s an art to education, and throwing out a bunch of articles or a handful of videos and then dumping people in the space together and hoping that something happens, that’s not education. I think that’s where the word ‘community,’ to me, feels exploitative. Just because there are other people here doesn't mean it's a community.” –@HeyLifeboat

About Alex Witkowski Alex Witkowski is a former high school English teacher who left the profession when he found out that he could take the best part of his job – nurturing community – and do it full time. Since leaving teaching, he has worked in the non-profit and educational technology space, helping a variety of communities including global volunteers, college students, college professors, and business professionals make valuable connections and memories. He is currently the community lead at Section4, which aims to make MBA-quality education more affordable and accessible through interactive, community-based courses led by the world’s top business professors. In his spare time, he watches countless independent movies, makes themed mixtapes, and walks everywhere.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Alex on Twitter * Section4, the business education provider where Alex is community lead * Prof. Scott Galloway, the founder of Section4 * Patrick’s new job: Community lead at CNN+ * Bassey Etim‘s previous appearances on Community Signal: #4, #123, #145, and #160

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If you work in content moderation or with a team that specializes in content moderation, then you know that the fight against child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is a challenging one. The New York Times reported that in 2018, technology companies reported a record 45 million online photos and videos of child sexual abuse. Ralph Spencer, our guest for this episode, has been working to make online spaces safer and combatting CSAM for more than 20 years, including as a technical investigator at AOL.

Ralph describes how when he first started at AOL, in the mid-’90s, the work of finding and reviewing CSAM was largely manual. His team depended on community reports and all of the content was manually reviewed. Eventually, this manual review led to the creation of AOL’s Image Detection Filtering Process (IDFP), which reduced the need to manually review the actual content of CSAM. Working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), law enforcement, and a coalition of other companies, Ralph shares how he saw his own team’s work evolve, what he considered his own metrics of success when it comes to this work, and the challenges that he sees for today’s platforms.

The tools, vocabulary, and affordances for professionals working to make the internet safer have all improved greatly, but in this episode, Patrick and Ralph discuss the areas that need continued improvement. They discuss Section 230 and what considerations should be made if it were to be amended. Ralph explains that when he worked at AOL, the service surpassed six million users. As of last year, Facebook had 2.8 billion monthly active users. With a user base that large and a monopoly on how many people communicate, what will the future hold for how children, workers, and others that use them are kept safe on such platforms?

Ralph and Patrick also discuss:

Ralph’s history fighting CSAM at AOL, both manually and with detection tools
Apple’s announcement to scan iCloud photos for NCMEC database matches
How Ralph and other professionals dealing with CSAM protect their own health and well-being
Why Facebook is calling for new or revised internet laws to govern its own platform

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

How Ralph fell into trust and safety work (20:23): “[Living in the same apartment building as a little girl who was abused] was a motivational factor [in doing trust and safety work]. I felt it was a situation where, while I did basically all I could in that situation, I [also] didn’t do enough. When this [job] came along … I saw it as an opportunity. If I couldn’t make the situation that I was dealing with in real life correct, then maybe I can do something to make a situation for one of these kids in these [CSAM] pictures a little bit better.” –Ralph Spencer

Coping with having to routinely view CSAM (21:07): “I developed a way of dealing with [having to view CSAM]. I’d leave work and try not to think about it. When we were still doing this as a team … everybody at AOL generally got 45 minutes to an hour for lunch. We’d take two-hour lunches, go out, walk around. We did team days before people really started doing them. We went downtown in DC one day and went to the art gallery. The logic for that was like, you see ugly stuff every day, let’s go look at some stuff that has cultural value or has some beauty to it, and we’ll stop and have lunch at a nice restaurant.” –Ralph Spencer

How organizations work with NCMEC and law enforcement to report CSAM (28:32): “[When our filtering tech] catches something that it sees in the [CSAM] database, it packages a report which includes the image, the email that the image was attached to, and a very small amount of identifying information. The report is then automatically sent to [the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children]. NCMEC looks at it, decides if it’s something that they can run with, and if it is … they send the report to law enforcement in [the correct] jurisdiction.” –Ralph Spencer

When “Ralph caught a fed” (37:37): “We caught the guy who was running the Miami office of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. He was sending [CSAM]. … That one set me back a little bit. … I remember asking the guy who started the team that I was on, who went on to become an expert witness. He worked in the legal department, and his job basically was to go around the country and testify at all the trials explaining how the technology that caught these images worked. I said, ‘I got an email about this guy from ICE down in Florida, was that us?’ He’s like, ‘Yes, that was you.'” –Ralph Spencer

Facebook’s multiple lines of communication offer multiple avenues for content violations (45:08): “Zuckerberg is running around talking about how he’s trying to get the world closer together by communicating and increasing the lines of communication. A lot of these lines just lead to destructive ends.” –Ralph Spencer

About Ralph Spencer Ralph Spencer has been working to make online spaces safer for more than 20 years, starting with his time as a club editorial specialist (message board editor) at Prodigy and then graduating to America Online. He’s wrestled with some of the most challenging material on the internet.

During his time at AOL, Ralph was a terms of service representative, a graphic analyst, and a case investigator before landing his final position as a technical investigator. In that position, he was in charge of dealing with all issues involving child sexual abuse material (CSAM), then referred to as “illegal images” by the company. Ralph oversaw the daily operation of the automated processes used to scan AOL member email for these images and the reporting pf these incidents to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) which, ultimately, sent these reports to the appropriate law enforcement agencies.

The evidence that Ralph, and the team he worked with in AOL’s legal department, compiled contributed to numerous arrests and convictions of individuals for the possession and distribution of CSAM. He currently lives in the Washington, DC area and works as a freelance trust and safety consultant.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Ralph Spencer on LinkedIn * National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) * Andrew Vachss * Apple’s extended protections for children * Derek Powazek on Community Signal * Derek’s thread regarding Apple’s announcement * The Internet Is Overrun With Images of Child Sexual Abuse. What Went Wrong? (the New York Times) * The Facebook Files (the Wall Street Journal) * Jeff Horwitz on Community Signal * Sophie Zhang on Community Signal * The Facebook Whistleblower, Frances Haugen, Says She Wants to Fix the Company, Not Harm It (the Wall Street Journal) * Facebook’s Zuckerberg defends encryption, despite child safety concerns (Reuters) * aol.com by Kara Swisher

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As community practitioners, we often serve communities that we don’t necessarily belong to. But how would you approach designing a community platform, events, and policies for a demographic that you don’t belong to? Alexa Wahr, the COO of Revel, a community for women over 40, says that she and her co-founder build by putting their community first. “We absolutely listen to our members. We don’t try to pretend like we know what exactly our members are going through or what it’s like to be a woman in their life. That doesn’t mean that we can’t help to build the community and build the tools that help them connect.”

In this episode of Community Signal, Alexa shares how the policies that govern the platform, Revel’s approach to safety during the pandemic, and Revel’s acquisition of The Woolfer, are all grounded in putting their members’ needs, safety, and experiences first.

Alexa also discusses how Revel, an in-person events-based community, shifted entirely to virtual events in light of the pandemic. Through this model, Revel members have continued to have meaningful interactions, build friendships, and support one another through COVID-19.

Alexa and Patrick also discuss:

How Revel is encouraging their event hosts to stay safe now that in-person events have resumed
Revel’s plans to introduce paid events into their community
The differences between the Revel and Woolfer communities and how they’re balancing the needs for both

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

Building the Revel community with member needs first (5:10): “We don’t try to pretend like we know what exactly our members are going through or what it’s like to be a woman in their life. That doesn’t mean that we can’t help to build the community and build the tools that help them connect.” –@alexawahr

Virtual events are impactful and here to stay (12:20): “We’ve seen that over [virtual meetings], you can actually form really deep connections. We now have members who have formed really great friendships across the country. Can’t wait to travel to meet one another. … [I’m] happy to say that virtual events are definitely here to stay. We have yet to see what the final balance of in-person versus virtual events will be at scale, but certainly, a large percentage of our events will continue to be virtual.” –@alexawahr

Fostering the events that Revel members want (14:50): “If our members start to perceive that going to a Revel event is being pushed products or services in a sneaky way, they simply won’t come back. We take it very seriously and really err on the side of our members first and our hosts secondary when it comes to violations like that.” –@alexawahr

On the future of Revel (24:40): “[Revel is] a community for women over 40. The community shares that identity and we’re about making connections, finding friendships, supporting one another, and really bringing light to women in midlife and all of the amazing things that they’re doing. That doesn’t mean that women within the community don’t have their own interests, feelings, and identities and allowing every woman over 40 to join Revel, but then find her niche, her group within the community, is also something that we think will be a big part of what Revel is and [we’re] excited to build that out.” –@alexawahr

About Alexa Wahr Alexa Wahr is the co-founder and COO of Revel Gatherings. Previously, Alexa was a senior director in operations at health insurance startup Bright Health. Prior to Bright Health, Alexa worked in strategy and business development for Target and was an healthcare investment banking analyst at Piper Jaffray. Alexa has a BBA from Emory University and a MBA from Harvard Business School.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Alexa Wahr on Twitter * Revel Gatherings * Nina Collins, founder of The Woolfer * Nina Collins on Community Signal: Moving a Community for Women Over 40 From Facebook Groups to a Paid Subscription App and Building Inclusive Communities, Workplaces, and an Inclusive Profession

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How did the pandemic impact your relationships with your healthcare providers? Did telehealth enable you to continue seeing or connecting with your providers to receive the care that you needed?

In this episode of Community Signal, Denzil Coleman, a telehealth coordinator, developing and maintaining digital health interventions at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Center for Telehealth, discusses how the adoption of telehealth interactions and practices during the pandemic may lead to continued and more long-term improvements and efficiencies in our healthcare system.

Denzil explains that telehealth is “anything where healthcare is being impacted by a patient and an actor that are not in the same location. That includes a video, that includes transmissions of information, asynchronous messaging, [and] remote patient monitoring.” Telehealth can create efficiencies for both patients and providers –– giving patients flexibility to see their providers without the burden of travel and with the option to invite more caregivers into these interactions.

Whereas in the past, patients may have received pamphlets with details about in-person support groups or other care options, today there are online communities and support groups and insurance companies themselves even offer telehealth options. With these options come more opportunities for patients to be more engaged in the care that they receive and for providers to thoughtfully care for patients.

Denzil and Patrick also discuss how:

COVID, the shifting landscape of the healthcare profession, and the fact that folks are living longer, healthier lives all impacts the healthcare system
The flexibility of telehealth allows a patient’s support system to become more involved in their care
Creating efficiencies in the healthcare system should not equate to patients receiving less care
Value-based care could resemble a community-like investment in overall care

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

What exactly is telehealth? (2:01): “To put it simply, telehealth is … anything where healthcare is being impacted by a patient and an actor that are not in the same location. That includes a video, that includes transmissions of information, asynchronous messaging, [and] remote patient monitoring.” –@denzilcoleman

How the pandemic is leading to wider adoption of teleheath interactions (4:55): “Even at the Center for Telehealth at MUSC, where I work, we saw a very significant uptick in telehealth interactions of all kinds since the start of the pandemic, just because pretty much every interaction had to take place that way for patient safety. The forced adoption of the time of the emergency is really what prompted it, but we’ll take it because as people are getting more comfortable with these modalities, we’re able to push digital health forward a lot quicker.” –@denzilcoleman

Online communities can help keep patients engaged in their own care (8:10): “A lot of times, you may give an intervention or a plan of care in which the patient is not fully engaged. Having them as part of one of these [online] communities where they feel supported, encouraged to take part and advocate for their own care, and share experiences, it keeps them engaged. It keeps their focus on their health and on getting better.” –@denzilcoleman

Healthcare optimization could lead to online communities (22:51): “[Healthcare optimization means] expanding the reach of what we already do, expanding the reach of providers who are overwhelmed, overworked, and facing a mushrooming population of people who are living longer, healthier lives. Which is great, but at the same time, we are having less and less people graduate from medical school becoming doctors. Of course, those are being supplemented by what we refer to as mid-level providers and a large increase of people becoming physician assistants and nurse practitioners, which is also great, but our providers aren’t matching the rate of individuals surviving. We have to create the efficiencies. We have no choice. We have to use technology to do the best we can, and online communities are part of that.” –@denzilcoleman

Efficiencies in the healthcare ecosystem do not mean a reduction in care (30:05): “Some [existing healthcare practices] aren’t necessary, don’t add value, or may even be wasteful. … Imagine if you’re with a provider, and you’ve had a long-term condition over the past 30 years. The last 15 of them, you saw your provider every three months, no matter what. Now, in 2021, your provider tells you, ‘I’m only going to see you in person maybe one time a year instead of four, but you’re going to come see me in person. I’m going to do an exam, then I’m going to have a little remote monitoring on a monthly basis. Then we’re going to do a three-month video-only checkup. Then we’re going to do something in six months.’ You only come to the clinic and get an exam the one time. It’s not because we don’t want to care for you. It’s because we want to create efficiencies for everyone in the healthcare ecosystem.” –@denzilcoleman

About Denzil Coleman Denzil Coleman has served as a telehealth coordinator, developing and maintaining digital health interventions at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Center for Telehealth since 2017. He holds a Master of Science in Health Information Technology and is completing a Doctor of Education in Educational Practice and Innovation, both from The University of South Carolina. Denzil has worked in healthcare for nearly two decades including stints at Roper Saint Francis and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He also lectures in and facilitates healthcare management and technology education programs in the United States, United Kingdom, and India.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Denzil Coleman on Twitter * MUSC Health Center for Telehealth * The American Telemedicine Association * Alzheimer’s Society * Serena Snoad on Community Signal * Community Signal episode about strategies used by anti-vax influencers * Dr. Kelli Garber and Dr. Ragan Dubose-Morris, who Denzil works with at MUSC * Dr. David Valentine, who Denzil shouted out * Dr. Panos Constantinides, who has mentored Denzil

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In between his three albums, rapper Asher Roth has released several mixtapes, including 2011’s Pabst & Jazz and his The Greenhouse Effect series. The third entry in that series, The Greenhouse Effect Vol. 3, hit streaming services on September 3, 2021.

But there’s something about his latest mixtape that makes it unique from every album, EP, and mixtape he’s released so far: It was a collaboration with his online community of fans and supporters.

As Asher contemplated making music during the COVID-19 pandemic, he came up with an idea: What if The Greenhouse Effect Vol. 3 was “entirely produced by fan/friend/follower submissions?” He set up a Discord, and off they went. He’d post acapellas – audio clips of only his vocals – and community members would produce song submissions, which Asher would review live on Twitch. The project would adopt a narrative story, adding guest verses from the community, too.

With the mixtape out, Asher stops by to talk about the collaborative process behind the release, the tools he used, and the community building lessons he learned along the way. One of the great things about this story is that the creation of this mixtape has helped birth an active online community, which Asher hopes will foster further collaborations between members.

Asher and Patrick also discuss:

How guardrails help encourage sustained creativity
Why Discord?
Now that it has achieved its first big goal, what’s next for the community?

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

Why the RetroHash Discord might put a cap on member count (10:42): “With these [major social media] platforms, they’ve grown so big. They’re almost essentially black holes eating themselves. It’s really hard for you to garner any attention without being extremely controversial. … Getting away from the biggest, best, largest, and fastest, and just concentrating on who’s really paying attention and who cares seems to be working [for the RetroHash Discord]. Keeping it to a volume that is adaptable and able to move with the times is important.” –@asherroth

When you’re starting an online community, it’s easy to get discouraged by the big numbers of other platforms (13:22): “When you look at YouTube views, if that gets sucked up into the right portal, you’re talking about hundreds of millions of views, if not a billion. When you’re comparing your online community to something like that, of course you’re going to be like, ‘This is never going to work.’ … [But] if you think about it in real world numbers, if you’re doing a show, and there are 1,500 people there, that’s a lot of people. … [Conversion and retention rates are the] kinds of things I’m a little bit more interested in than the grand scheme, final tally. Those numbers are being a little bit gamed.” –@asherroth

When you’re starting an online community, it’s easy to get discouraged by the big numbers of other platforms (25:01): “The easiest way to integrate other artists [into the creation of The Greenhouse Effect, Vol. 3] was to give them challenges, give them direction, and give them a role instead of just leaving it open for interpretation because that allowed me to really filter down who did this challenge the best.” –@asherroth

When you’re starting an online community, it’s easy to get discouraged by the big numbers of other platforms (37:33): “[On the RetroHash Discord], I would love to start to focus on specific artists. Artist development has always been something that I’ve been fond of. It’s kind of disappeared. The music industry is pretty vigilant about getting young talent. You have a lot of these kids who are getting into the game at 16, 17, 18, 19 years old. They’re pretty green and naïve to the ways. I’ve always been more than happy to be somebody that says, ‘Look out for this. If you see this, this is what this means,’ etc. [We can use] the Discord to focus on artists and use the producers, tools, and people who are there to help.” –@asherroth

About Asher Roth Asher Roth is a rapper who first achieved mainstream success with his international hit, “I Love College,” and his debut album, 2009’s Asleep in the Bread Aisle. His most recent album, Flowers on the Weekend, was released in 2020. Between his albums, Asher produced a run of critically-acclaimed mixtapes, including 2011’s Pabst & Jazz, and his The Greenhouse Effect series. The latest edition in that series, The Greenhouse Effect Vol. 3, available on September 3, 2021, came together through an online collaboration with fans and supporters during the COVID-19 pandemic. Asher releases projects online under the brand RetroHash.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * RetroHash, Asher’s website * The Greenhouse Effect Vol. 3, Asher’s latest mixtape, created through collaboration with his community of fans and supporters * Asher’s Discord server * Sunflower Philly, “a community-based, nonprofit organization focused on providing access to art, music & sustainable resources through a curated series of events and programs in North Philadelphia,” that Asher is creative director of * Asher on Instagram * Asher on Twitter

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What moderation tactics have you used or seen as a mechanism to curtail the spread of misinformation in communities and on social media platforms? Word detection, link blocking, and digital stickers promoting legitimate information sources may immediately come to mind.

But what would happen if you ran your moderation tools against URLs shared in link-in-bio services used in your community? Or what if you learned that folks on your platform were using specific codewords to circumvent word detection? Or posting screenshots of misinformation rather than using plain-text? People are getting creative with how they share all types of information online, misinformation included. Are our moderation strategies keeping up?

In this discussion, Patrick chats with Joseph Schafer, an undergraduate student of Computer Science and Ethics at the University of Washington and Rachel Moran, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. They discuss their research and how anti-vaccine advocates are circumventing content moderation efforts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and large social networks. Some of their findings might surprise you! For example, specific folk theories have emerged that define how some believe social platforms and algorithms work to moderate their content and conversations. And whether these theories are true or not, the strategies forming around them do seem to help people keep questionable content up long enough for researchers to come across it.

So, where do we start? How can we detect misinformation if people are using codewords like pizza or Moana to get around our tools and teams? There may not be precise solutions here just yet, but Rachel and Joseph both offer ideas to help us down the right path, which starts with deciding that the engagement that brews around misinformation is not safe for the long-term health of your community.

Among our topics:

Why Linktree needs community guidelines and how link-in-bio sites have become a vector for misinformation
The folk theories that are informing how we perceive and operate around social media algorithms
Adapting your moderation strategies to better find misinformation

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

Using lexical variation to circumvent moderation filters (2:45): “They found this big group of people who were using ‘dancing’ or other kinds of verbs to mean getting the vaccine. Complete replacement of the word [vaccine]. You wouldn’t know that that meant vaccination unless you were a member of that community and had the institutional knowledge that comes with being a member. We see [lexical variation] on a spectrum.” –@rachelemoran

Emojis, code words, and symbols can form the insider language of a community (3:08): “We see ‘v@ccine’ where the A is an @ sign or people using the vaccine emoji rather than using the word at all. They believe that if they put that instead of spelling out vaccine, … they’ll avoid being caught up in the algorithmic moderation that happens on platforms.” –@rachelemoran

Misinformation finds a hiding place in link-in-bios (5:05): “There’s a variety of ways that you can … get around [link blocks]. One might be, for example, using a screenshot of an article or something that is vaccine misinformation, rather than putting in the text of the misinformation directly. … There’s also various websites like URL shorteners or URL compilers, or even just a Word document … that is filled with links to sites that maybe these major platforms are moderating and blocking.” –@joey__schafer

Using vaccination promotion tools to promote anti-vaccine content (10:56): “[On Instagram stories, you can use] that little sticker that says, ‘Let’s get vaccinated.’ Then Instagram collates those of your friends that have [used that] sticker … and it goes at the top of your [stories section]. … [We’re seeing people] put a sticker over the top of that sticker or they are like, ‘Let’s not get vaccinated.'” –@rachelemoran

The engagement surrounding misinformation isn’t good for the long-term health of your community or your business (32:06): “Part of the problem with misinformation is that it’s really engaging. When you’re making money off of engagement, there’s only so far you’re going to go to take down misinformation without going too far into your bottom line. … I feel like there is a tide-turning moment happening where the bigger platforms are realizing that misinformation is a vulnerability that degrades the product that can have economic disadvantages.” –@rachelemoran

About Joseph Schafer and Rachel Moran Joseph Schafer is a fourth-year undergraduate student at the University of Washington, studying Computer Science and Ethics. He has also worked as a research assistant for the university’s Center for an Informed Public since January of 2020, studying various forms of online misinformation and disinformation. Joseph hopes to pursue graduate school in information science, in order to understand how misinformation takes advantage of recently developed socio-technical systems, like social media, to influence our society.

Rachel Moran is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. Moran received her doctoral degree from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Her research explores the role of trust in digital information environments and is particularly concerned with how trust is implicated in the spread of mis- and dis-information. Her research has been published in academic journals and been covered by the New York Times, Vox, Vice, and others. She was also an affiliate fellow at George Washington University’s Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics and UNC Chapel Hills’ Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Joseph Schafer on Twitter * Joseph Schafer’s website * Rachel Moran on Twitter * University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public * Content moderation avoidance strategies, via The Virality Project * Anti-vaccine groups changing into ‘dance parties’ on Facebook to avoid detection, via NBC News * Linktree’s community guidelines * First I “like” it, then I hide it: Folk Theories of Social Feeds * Dr. Jennifer Beckett on Community Signal * A top spreader of coronavirus misinformation says he will delete his posts after 48 hours, via the New York Times * Election Integrity Partnership, which Joseph and Rachel both worked on * Jay Rosen on Community Signal

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When was the last time you mandated that your community, moderation, trust, and safety colleagues schedule time for out of queue activities? When was the last time you led by example and took a break or participated in other wellness activities before you felt burnout? What was the last tool your product team built to help foster resiliency for your moderators?

While we can’t mitigate all burnout, in this episode, Patrick and our guest, Adelin Cai, discuss how employee resiliency programs and policies can help you create an all-around safer environment for your colleagues and teams. Tools like well-defined queues and changing the presentation of harmful content are also potential product solutions that can foster resiliency from a workflow perspective.

With experience in policy, trust, and safety leadership for Pinterest, Twitter, and Google, Adelin also shares her approach for thinking about the metrics that matter. Spoiler: Metrics that revolve around quantity, like number of cases closed, or even quality, like CSAT, may not always equate to success or reflect the health of your community. Adelin also discusses working collaboratively with product and engineering teams to ensure that there’s transparency about what is being built and launched and what community behaviors or metrics should be monitored to indicate performance and to influence the further direction of the product.

Among our other topics:

The baseline for an employee resilience program
What an ideal work relationship with product and engineering looks like
How to reallocate resources and budget to prioritize essential moderation, trust, and safety work

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

All content moderation can contribute to stress (02:54): “[For the] folks reviewing content, are there little interventions that could take place to eliminate the strain or the stress that people are going through as they’re looking at content? We think about this usually in the context of the worst of the worst content, the most violent content, but there are many little things in the course of doing trust and safety work that could accumulate, and stress is cumulative.” –@adelin

Product improvements that can foster resiliency for moderation teams (10:55): “It could be as simple as having different queues for different types of content that people are going to look at and then rotating people through the different queues. … If you have someone looking at really, really horrible child sexual exploitation content all day, that’s not a healthy place for them to be in. They should be able to rotate out to a different queue.” –@adelin

Building relationships could lead to building better tools (38:01): “Make friends with your product team; make friends with the engineers because that just opens the door to having a conversation about how difficult it is when X, Y, and Z doesn’t work right. I’ve also [asked engineers to] shadow this team for ten minutes and [then they] see how inefficient the product tooling is.” –@adelin

About Adelin Cai Adelin Cai is an online content policy and tech operations expert who’s spent the last decade working with and leading teams responsible for product policies and their enforcement.

As Pinterest’s former head of policy, Adelin led the team that developed the company’s principles and core values around content moderation, covering a range of issues from hateful speech to medical (mis)information to dank memes. Prior to Pinterest, she ran Twitter’s Legal Ads Policy team, guiding policy and operations for Twitter’s self-serve and international advertising products.

Adelin Cai is also a co-founder of the Trust & Safety Professional Association (TSPA) and the affiliated Trust & Safety Foundation (TSF). She currently serves as TSPA’s board chair.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Adelin Cai on LinkedIn * Adelin Cai on Twitter * Sidequest * Trust & Safety Professional Association * Trust & Safety Foundation * Patrick and Adelin discuss the following Sidequest guides: + Employee resilience program recommendations + Building a Trust and Safety mindset + Policy development and launch checklist * Wikimedia health metrics * Sin Eaters

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May 21st, 2021 marked 20 years since the launch of KarateForums.com. In this episode of Community Signal, Patrick speaks with five forum members that have been on KarateForums.com for nearly 65 years, collectively. Together, they discuss what keeps them coming back to the community as members, moderators, and martial artists.

While each member brings different experiences and background to the community, Bob, Brian, Danielle, Devin, and Noah all cite the quality of the interactions that they’ve had in the community and how it has brought out their skills as community members, teachers, and students of the martial arts. Those interactions helped these folks launch their own martial arts schools, grow as martial artists, and pay it forward to hundreds of thousands of other folks seeking out knowledge.

Whether you’re listening to this episode with 20 years of community management experience or you’re working on approaching that milestone, a few things emerge as truths from this episode –– that it’s not the size of a community that matters, but the level of care that you find there. That community members can go from the verge of being banned to becoming model community members, if given the chance. That communities thrive when they help their members achieve their goals and pay it forward to others. Whether this is your first year as a community manager or your twentieth, we hope that you find these lessons and stories helpful. And here’s to another 20 years of KarateForums.com!

They also discuss:

The benefits of your members joining other communities
How KarateForums.com helped each guest find confidence, friends, and more
Why Devin describes KarateForums.com as charitable

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

Martial arts instructors have been shaped by KarateForums.com (07:06): “If we talk about my martial arts career, [KarateForums.com] really shaped … how I approach teaching other people. I obviously went to university; after that, I got a job. KarateForums.com has probably been with me for all of my life-defining moments.” -Danielle Williams

How Danielle’s needs as a community member have evolved since she first joined the community (08:09): “[When I] initially [joined KarateForums.com], I probably would have been talking about techniques, or training methods, or thinking about it as an individual. Now, I come back and a lot of my conversations are, as an instructor, how can I do this? How can I change this? How can I help my own students?” -Danielle Williams

Why Danielle continues to be a moderator after so many years (12:46): “If you get benefits from something, then you need to give back. I’ve been able to take so much from [KarateForums.com]. The experience of others and just having that sounding board, a community to come back to, and just have a chat. I’d classify a lot of the members of KarateForums.com … as friends now. I’ve taken a lot, so for me, it’s really important to be able to give back and help chaperone the community forwards.” -Danielle Williams

What makes KarateForums.com feel like home (17:50): “KarateForums.com is the melting pot for both martial artists and non-martial artists alike, to get together, as a cohesive whole, to discuss a plethora of topics in a safe, fun, and informative atmosphere. … There’s a unique and unbreakable camaraderie that I’ve found that makes KarateForums.com a place that we call home.” -Robert “Bob” Mitcham

Different perspectives on KarateForums.com bring value to all members (33:48): “Being able to talk with so many people with different perspectives in a positive, constructive manner just added to what I could take back to my classes, or when I go read another book, and think about it from my perspective or a perspective that somebody posted on a thread.” -Brian Walker

When an online community stops you from regressing in your martial art (41:58): “[After moving to area where I didn’t have a dojo, KarateForums.com allowed me to] stay connected, so that when I did go back to a place where I had a dojo, it wasn’t starting from scratch. I felt like I had that continuity the entire time I was away. It also gave me things to work on, on my own. Something that I thought was interesting was I actually made progress. When I went back to my dojo, I actually went up a rank rather than regressing, which most people would expect to do after two years away. … It was unexpected.” -Devin Van Curen

Quality of interactions goes a long way for any community (43:28): “The moderators are very invested in [KarateForums.com]. The standards are much higher for interaction, for being charitable, for staying on topic. That really changes the quality of the interactions, even though it might not be as active as the larger forums on the larger websites, the quality is much higher.” -Devin Van Curen

It can take time to appreciate how a community is moderated (51:00): “[That I became a moderator] is actually an interesting twist because when I first joined [KarateForums.com], my initial thought was, ‘Oh man, this is really strictly moderated,’ in comparison to all the other forums that were basically a free-for-all. At first, I actually felt a little stifled. …

Over the first couple of years that I was there, it became apparent to me that it was the one forum that I had found that, while it may not be the busiest – there’s not constant activity flooding threads with posts – the conversations that were there didn’t devolve into nonsense all the time. It stayed on topic. It stayed respectful and beneficial. Whereas a lot of the other communities that I was a part of, somebody would post what was a legitimate question, somebody would answer with some snide remark, and then you’d get three pages of responses just building off of the snide remark.” –@nmlegel

Giving back as a moderator and community member (52:10): “I really value the level of moderation [on KarateForums.com] and so when the opportunity was presented for me to join the moderation team, I thought that was a good opportunity for me to give back in a sense of helping to preserve that … general feeling that if you start a conversation or join a conversation there, that you will be able to engage in a conversation that is respectful and on-topic, and not just a free-for-all.” –@nmlegel

About Our Guests For this episode, we’re joined by five members of KarateForums.com. In order of appearance, this includes:

Danielle Williams, a KarateForums.com member for over 14 years. If you’re ever in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, visit Danielle’s school, Nuneaton Taekwon-Do.

Robert “Bob” Mitcham, a martial artist for more than 50 years, who has been a member of KarateForums.com for over 13 years. In support of Bob and those fighting cancer, please support Cancer Treatment Centers of America.

Brian Walker, who has more posts on KarateForums.com than any other contributor and has been a member for over 15 years.

Devin Van Curen, a member of KarateForums.com for 12 years.

Noah Legel, who has been a member of KarateForums.com for over a decade. Visit Noah’s Karate Obsession and find it on Facebook and Instagram.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * KarateForums.com * Nuneaton Taekwon-Do, Danielle’s martial arts school * Cancer Treatment Centers of America * Podcamp Topeka, where Brian and Patrick met in-person * Waza Wednesday, featuring Noah * Karate Obession, Noah’s website

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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For this episode of Community Signal, we’re joined by community professionals Jenn Hudnet, Lana Lee, and Phoebe Venkat. They candidly share stories about the impact of racism and stereotypes against Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders in their own lives, in the workplace, and in the communities they manage.

Jenn, Lana, and Phoebe each had stories to share about their families, the circumstances that brought them to the United States, the racism and discrimination they faced, and the shared generational trauma they’re working through together. “We have to look forward. We’ve got to acknowledge some of the wrongs that happened to our parents, relatives, and friends in the past. It’s very difficult to do. We’re doing it, but it definitely takes a community of community to get that done,” shared Phoebe (7:47).

There’s also a discussion around the work that companies and colleagues must do to maintain safe workplaces and communities. “Your intention might not always be to hurt or harm someone or to make fun of someone, but the impact is still there. Being able to understand the impact that our words and actions have on others is important [as well as] being able to acknowledge the impact that it might have on somebody. I think microaggressions are something that I’ve even had to learn to recognize because I’ve just internalized them and accepted them over the years of being here,” said Jenn (21:12).

And there’s an important reminder in this episode to see your colleagues and community members as individuals. Individuals that might have a bad day, that might make mistakes, or that might be comforted just by your presence. “Sometimes we hear stories of people. [Maybe] they posted a really good picture one day and then the next day they’re feeling down. … As a community manager, [it’s really important to] take time to read and understand where people are coming from,” explains Lana (49:46).

We’re thankful to Jenn, Lana, and Phoebe for sharing with us. May this conversation lead to safer communities, neighborhoods, workplaces, and personal boundaries.

Lana, Jenn, Patrick, and Phoebe also discuss:

The model minority myth and the harm it causes
Recognizing emotional labor and setting boundaries
There are no growth hacks when it comes to helping your community members feel safe

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

Moving forward through generational trauma (8:03): “It’s interesting for us as the children because it’s very painful to come to terms with [the trauma that] our parents have experienced and even to help them understand. There’s so much that they’ve just accepted as part of life, racism, and pain that they just endure because they are so strong based on the past that they’ve endured. Part of that is also embracing that pain and helping them to embrace it and moving forward with them.” –@jenntothechen

The ripple effects of the model minority myth (12:51): “If we’re treated better because we’re Asians or Pacific Islanders, we’re seen as the ‘teacher’s pet.’ Of course, it does definitely have advantages, but do you want advantages that come at the expense of other people’s suffering?” -@pheebkat

Your presence can mean a lot to someone going through difficult times (14:26): “It’s important for people to know that [you’re there for them], even though they may not need you at the time. You give someone a gift of presence, just being around them, knowing that someone’s there to support them.” –@lanalyzer314

Breaking the model minority myth (18:06): “With the model minority myth, a lot of us have just been taught to embrace that culture of silence, of not rocking the boat or causing any conflict. I think one thing that I’ve come to terms with is that it is okay to speak up. Obviously, to do it in a respectful way, to be mindful of a different perspective, but to not be afraid to speak up when you notice something that bothers you, when you notice underrepresentation of a certain culture, and to embrace that. Being able to do that actually really empowers you as a person and also builds community as you bring more light to different issues that people might not be considering.” –@jenntothechen

Think of the impact of your actions, not just your intentions (21:13): “Your intention might not always be to hurt or harm someone or to make fun of someone, but the impact is still there. Being able to understand the impact that our words and actions have on others is important [as well as] being able to acknowledge the impact that it might have on somebody.” –@jenntothechen

Recognizing the emotion labor that we carry (28:18): “The [definition of emotional labor that] I’ve adopted is the labor [that’s] not on your job description. You get hired to be a community manager or accountant or whatever you are, and then you end up taking care of the community around you, your colleagues, making sure they’re okay, [and] volunteering at affinity group events.” –@pheebkat

Prioritizing ourselves matters just as much as prioritizing our communities (32:16): “I struggle with where I want to take on more and do more and constantly think about what my community members need, but I know that if I don’t take care of myself first, I’m not going to be able to do that.” –@lanalyzer314

To build a safe community, start small (44:58): “When you’re building online communities, sometimes it’s harder to get to the heart of others. You’re building a community at scale, you’re trying to make sure that things can work for many, but in terms of making sure people feel safe – feel heard – some of that work does need to be one-to-one or with a small group.” –@pheebkat

About Our Guests Jenn Hudnet is a community manager at Salesforce. Jenn has joined us on Community Signal twice in the past, once in 2018 and once in 2017. She has previously held roles at Lithium Technologies, Google, Procore Technologies, and Intuit.

Lana Lee is a senior community manager and strategist at Zuora. She graduated from UC Berkeley in civil engineering and then went to USC, where she got a music degree in oboe performance and Masters in civil engineering. After 15 years as a civil and structural engineer and a career as a web developer, Lana transitioned to community management. Lana was also our guest for the most listened to episode of Community Signal in 2018. Visit her blog, Tales of a Community Manager or her Netflixionados, Primers and Hulu-ites meetup group for more from Lana.

Phoebe Venkat is a director of community for TripActions. She has more than 10 years of experience in community strategy and building. Her expertise also includes communications, marketing, leadership, and operations in several industries. Phoebe’s greatest inspiration is her mother, Hanna, who taught her the value of connection and belonging.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * The long history of racism against Asian Americans in the U.S., via PBS News Hour * The Subtle Asian Traits group * What Is the Model Minority Myth?, via Learning for Justice * The Complex History—and Ongoing Realities—of the “Model Minority” Stereotype, via Goop * Asian Americans: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver * LinkedIn to pay its ERG leaders, via Axios * How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie * 6 Charts That Dismantle The Trope Of Asian Americans As A Model Minority, via NPR * Key facts about Asian Americans, a diverse and growing population, via Pew Research Center

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Crisis Text Line offers free, 24/7 support via text message to anyone facing a mental health crisis. Some organizations partner with Crisis Text Line to develop co-branded text lines for their community, but starting today, you can make Crisis Text Line part of your policy and response strategy if anyone in your community or on your team shares or shows signs that they’re experiencing a mental health crisis.

The other part of your response strategy leverages a skill that you likely practice everyday –– empathy. Becka Ross, the chief program officer at Crisis Text Line, reminds us that “anybody can be empathetic. When somebody is expressing or showing signs of mental illness, it’s not the expectation that somebody steps up into a role of a psychotherapist or a doctor or any other mental health professional, but all humans can be empathetic to one another.”

Crisis Text Line is powered by a team of 39,000 volunteers. Their community, training, and volunteer opportunities call on people from all walks of life to work together to help those facing mental health dilemmas. In our discussion with Becka, you’ll learn not only how the team supports one another through community, but also how you can do the same for your own community members and the people you care about.

Becka and Patrick discuss:

How Crisis Text Line partners with organizations and offers itself as a resource to anyone in need
Forming a mental health crisis policy for your community
Using machine learning to respond quickest to those most at risk

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

An example of how Crisis Text Line partners with other organizations (03:12): “The state of Ohio’s mental health and addiction services [have] a keyword that they share with their residents [who text it] to our crisis line, linked with our trained crisis counselors, who support the residents in crisis. We provide the state of Ohio with anonymized and aggregated trends about how their constituents are using our service, which, in turn, can help them to create better policies, more services, and support in specific areas.” –Becka Ross

Establish a mental health crisis policy to support your team and community (08:29): “It’s a great idea to have a [mental health crisis] policy in place before you need it so that you can have something to fall back on. It can be alarming or even scary to hear somebody else say they want to hurt themselves or somebody else. Having a policy that’s written before you’re in that situation can be helpful in ensuring that you can offer support in a meaningful way.” –Becka Ross

Reacting with empathy makes a difference (09:30): “Anybody can be empathetic. When somebody is expressing or showing signs of mental illness, it’s not the expectation that somebody steps up into a role of a psychotherapist or a doctor or any other mental health professional, but all humans can be empathetic to one another.” –Becka Ross

Reacting with empathy makes a difference (09:30): “One of the bravest things you could do as a human is reach out to somebody who you feel like is struggling and just ask if they’re okay.” –Becka Ross

How Crisis Text Line reaches those at the most risk within 24 seconds (19:30): “We have a machine learning algorithm that triages our incoming conversations based on risk. We are able to respond to the highest-need texters the quickest. On average, [we get to them] within 24 seconds.” –Becka Ross

Boundaries on the Crisis Text Line team and how the team members support one another (20:50): “We’re not therapists. We’re not doing clinical long-term work. We’re short-term, helping somebody get to a calm state, and then offering resources. Our supervisors are there for … in-the-moment support if it’s needed. If things escalate [or] if we hear about abuse or any other high-risk situation, then our staff intervene and really support volunteers so they’re not alone.” –Becka Ross

About Becka Ross Becka Ross is a licensed clinical social worker with over 15 years experience in mental health, working in direct practice as a psychotherapist, managing a residential program for young men transitioning to adulthood, providing teletherapy in a medical setting and currently the chief program officer at Crisis Text Line; free, 24/7 crisis support through a text based service. Becka is a passionate advocate for access to quality mental health and suicide prevention.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Becka Ross on LinkedIn * Crisis Text Line * The Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services Crisis Text Line partnership * LivingWorks Start Suicide Prevention training * The Jason Foundation

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Last month, Sophie Zhang, a former data scientist at Facebook, went public as a whistleblower drawing attention to how the company delayed action against or outright ignored manipulation of it’s platform by autocratic leaders and global governments to the detriment of the people of those countries.

All work, including community management, requires trade-offs, areas of focus, and prioritization. Our teams and resources allow us to increase our areas of focus and more consistently foster the interactions that our communities exist for. But for an organization with the staff and resources of Facebook, you’d expect the trade-offs to be few and far between, and the areas of focus to be vast – covering the areas of the platform prone to abuse just as much as areas that foster healthy interactions.

But for Facebook, Sophie describes how, at least internally, those lines between healthy interactions and “inauthentic interactions” surfaced potential conflicts of interest, slowness to take action, and a tendency to focus on some countries more than others.

When we’re prioritizing what to work on or how to foster our communities, we may reference company values or internal OKRs. But for community professionals, there’s also the question of how does this preserve the safety of the community and those in it? How is Facebook scaling to protect the political safety of its members? Or perhaps a better question is, does it even think it has the responsibility to do so? As Sophie says, “it’s important to remember that, at the end of the day, Facebook is a company. Its goal is to make money. It’s not focused on saving the world or fixing the product. I think it’s important to be cynically realistic about the matter.”

Sophie and Patrick discuss:

Manipulation so brazen that the government actors didn’t even bother to hide it
The real-world implications that “inauthentic behavior” on Facebook has had for Azerbaijan, Honduras, India, and other countries
How Facebook differentiates and actions inauthentic profiles and pages

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

The unbelievable size of the Azerbaijan government’s fake comment operation (13:33): “I’m going to give you a number that was very shocking. This Azerbaijan [Facebook manipulation] network, it comprised 3% of all comments by [Facebook Pages] on other pages through the entire world. … Azerbaijan is, of course, a tiny country. Somewhere at Facebook, I’m sure there was a team whose [goal] was to make page activity go up, and they were congratulating themselves on the comment numbers.” –@szhang_ds

Repetitive content can be totally normal (16:41): “It can be suspicious if everyone is saying the same thing at the same time, but there can also be completely legitimate reasons. … For instance, … Facebook [once] blocked [people saying] ‘Happy Thanksgiving.’ Because, ‘Oh my God, everyone’s saying ‘Happy Thanksgiving,’ there has to be something weird going on.’ … At a company the size of Facebook, most enforcement is automated.” –@szhang_ds

Facebook isn’t altruistic in nature (20:15): “It’s important to remember that, at the end of the day, Facebook is a company. Its goal is to make money. It’s not focused on saving the world or fixing the product.” –@szhang_ds

Facebook’s actions are driven by outside pressure (21:04): “Most of Facebook’s investigations on coordinated, inauthentic behavior come in response to outside reports. What I mean by that is NGOs doing investigations, news organizations giving reports, opposition groups complaining, etc. When there is an outside figure that’s feeding this to Facebook, that’s someone outside the company who can put pressure on Facebook, who can say, ‘If you’re not going to do anything about this, we’re going to the New York Times and tell them you don’t care about our country. What do you think about that?’ Then suddenly, Facebook will decide to get their act together.” –@szhang_ds

How Facebook ignored a network of accounts tied a member of parliament (25:16): “In India, when I found a network of fake accounts that were supporting a political figure, we had gotten sign off to take it down, but suddenly, we realized the account was directly tied to and likely run by that political figure. This was a member of the Indian Parliament; he or someone close to him was happily running several dozen fake accounts to support himself. After that, suddenly everything stopped because I asked repeatedly for a decision, even if they said, ‘No.’ … The result was always silence. …

“When this keeps going on, when you’re already in a conversation with them and you’re talking about A and they ignore you when you bring up B, then it’s very clear that something is going on. They still have plausible deniability that maybe everyone just didn’t hear. I was very upset about this case. To me, it made no sense that the politician [being] tied to a network of fake accounts was reason to stop. It was more reason to take action. If he complained, what was he going to do? Complain to the press, ‘Hey, Facebook took down my fake accounts?'” –@szhang_ds

Facebook’s half-hearted efforts in Azerbaijan and Honduras (28:47): “In Honduras and Azerbaijan [after Facebook took action against manipulation], they came back immediately and did it again, and Facebook didn’t stop them. It’s still going down in Azerbaijan. The analogy I’m going to use is that, suppose the punishment for robbing a bank is that you have your bank robbery tools confiscated, and there’s a press release, ‘This person robbed the bank, they shouldn’t do it.’ Someone robs a bank, because the tool was confiscated, they use the money to buy more bank robbery tools and rob the bank again. This seems like an absurd example, but it’s what’s going on at Facebook.” –@szhang_ds

Autocratic leaders don’t care about Facebook’s press releases (29:20): “The idea of publicizing [abuse of Facebook through press releases] is to embarrass people. The president of Honduras sent soldiers into the streets to shoot civilian protesters in 2019, after the police went on strike and refused. Basically, his brother was sentenced to jail by American courts for helping his brother smuggle drugs and take bribes from El Chapo. This is a man who’s incapable of embarrassment. In Azerbaijan, in 2013, they accidentally released election results the day before the actual election, true story, which was shocking. Compared to that, what’s [a press release] going to do to them?” –@szhang_ds

Facebook’s statements skirt around the actual issue (37:16): “Suppose your spouse asks you, ‘Did you do the dishes last night?’ You respond by saying, ‘I always prioritize doing the dishes. I work hard on doing the dishes every time so that we can have clean dishes. Food left on dishes is disgusting.’ That might all be true but you did not actually answer the question, which is, ‘Did you do the dishes last night?’ That’s the typical response that Facebook gives, and if you look at the [Guardian] article, that’s essentially what they’re doing. Because they’re not denying what I’m saying. They can’t deny what I’m saying because they know I’m telling the truth.” –@szhang_ds

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Sophie Zhang on Twitter * How Facebook let fake engagement distort global politics: a whistleblower’s account (via The Guardian) * “I Have Blood on My Hands”: A Whistleblower Says Facebook Ignored Global Political Manipulation (via Buzzfeed) * Facebook planned to remove fake accounts in India – until it realized a BJP politician was involved (via The Guardian) * Sophie’s Reddit AMA

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If you were designing a curriculum to teach undergrads about community management, what would you cover? Georgina Donahue’s approach in designing such a curriculum for a course at the University of Massachusetts was grounded not only in her experience as a community professional but also in her understanding that as a professor, she was instructing a community of students getting ready to enter the workforce. “Think about the experience of … an undergraduate right now. … How do you really use that course to make your students ready for the workforce and appealing to a hiring manager?”

Similar to designing a curriculum, think of the different strengths that your colleagues bring to your community team and efforts. What are the career trajectories that speak to their strengths, interests, and your community’s needs? Patrick and Georgina discuss two potential roles, community data analyst and community platform architect, that we may start to see more as community teams scale. While community professionals are often tasked with wearing many hats (and can excel while doing so), as our profession matures, the opportunities ahead will offer continued growth, potential for specialization, and more focused roles to serve our communities and community teams.

Georgina and Patrick discuss:

The curriculum of Georgina’s community management course at UMass Lowell
Community paths outside of management for community pros
Why you get lifetime access to the Pragmatic Alumni Community after taking a course at Pragmatic Institute
Why you’re doing yourself a disservice if you label community as an underdog

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Corrections During the show, at the 5:35 mark, Patrick asks a question predicated on the Pragmatic Institute moving from charging an annual fee to charging a one-time fee. After release, Georgina clarified that the fee was no longer being charged at the time of recording. Membership in the community is simply bundled with courses.

Big Quotes

Designing a community management curriculum for undergrads (01:18): “Think about the experience of what it’s like to be an undergraduate right now. Think about being a senior in college. … How do you help them compete against the oxymoron of this is your first job, it’s entry-level, but we also expect you to have X number of years of experience? How do you use that course to make your students ready for the workforce and appealing to a hiring manager?” –Georgina Donahue

The importance of community during the pandemic (06:50): “We made the decision [to drop our membership fee, and bundle community with the cost of our courses because] not only were people more in need of a space to be with their cohort, their fellow alumni, more than ever, but this was not the time to charge people for it. [The pandemic] was the time to really have their back, create a lifetime relationship, and make sure that we were creating the largest access possible and establishing a culture of trust, support, and dynamic lifetime learning.” –Georgina Donahue

Where do community underdog narratives come from? (14:31): “I do think narratives [about community being the underdog] sometimes come from people who want to profit from us as community pros. Some resources that sell services to us have a vested interest in being holders of the answers.” –@patrickokeefe

Don’t sell yourself short by telling everyone that you’re an “underdog” (18:09): “If you’ve got the opportunity to be the expert voice on community in an organization [where] they don’t really know that much about it, and you’re the one that gets to pave that new path, why would you poison your own well by telling a single soul that community’s an underdog? Or that community is often misunderstood or undervalued? Tell your own self-fulfilling prophecy and really, really lean hard on the strategic value at a leadership level.” –Georgina Donahue

The person leading the community team doesn’t need to be the one responsible for community tech (26:24): “Frankly, I don’t want the person that is leading my community team to be the same person that is like, ‘I just completely overhauled and structured our community platform.’ Those are two different spaces, and if we don’t find a way to support the hands-on individual contributor expertise, we’re really going to lose out because we’re going to disincentivize anyone from developing that deep knowledge.” –Georgina Donahue

What could a community business analyst do? (28:33): “I see a community business analyst as somebody that would be able to look at a bird’s-eye view [of the community] and be able to prioritize and say, what is serving us today? What could we remove off the [team’s] plate? What is the biggest add?” –Georgina Donahue

About Georgina Donahue

| Georgina Donahue is a strategic community leader with a knack for using community to amplify organizational objectives, an aptitude for internal evangelism, and a passion for deep community member engagement. She currently runs the Pragmatic Alumni Community a community of practice for product managers at Pragmatic Institute and spends a lot of time thinking about how businesses can deliver human authenticity to their customers online. |

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Georgina Donahue on LinkedIn * Pragmatic Institute * The Pragmatic Alumni Community * UserOnboard * Samuel Hulick on Community Signal * Samuel’s Super Mario graphic * Chris Brogan on Community Signal

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Lee Felsenstein’s work in tech and social organizing led to the creation of the Community Memory project, the first publicly available social media system and public computerized bulletin board system. Mr. Felsenstein was also a founding member of the Homebrew Computer Club, and he helped develop the personal computer.

So, what was the first publicly accessible computerized bulletin board like? Mr. Felsenstein was less concerned with metrics around volume and recalls more specifically the diversity of interactions that happened through Community Memory. “We found somebody who did some typewriter graphics on it, [using] the teletype to laboriously draw a picture of a sailboat. That was not anticipated. We found all manner of people asking questions and giving answers to questions.” (Go to 7:07 in the discussion to hear more.)

Mr. Felsentein also describes in great detail how he helped onboard people to Community Memory. Psychedelic posters, a cardboard box covering, and a person that stood near the terminal at all times who served as a promoter, tech support, and a bodyguard all helped people walking by Community Memory in its first home, a record store, use a virtual bulletin board for the first time.

There are many takeaways from this episode of Community Signal, but let’s start with one –– Community Memory’s approach to onboarding and tech education helped many take their first steps with computers and with virtual message boards. How can we carry this example forward, when for a lot of us, access to the internet comes by way of our mobile devises. Mr. Felsenstein is thinking about this and other community builders should, too.

Mr. Felsenstein and Patrick also discuss:

The Free Speech Movement of the ’60s
The origin and story of Community Memory
Lee’s involvement with The WELL

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

How would people react to a computer popping up in their record store in 1973? (5:25): “I thought we would have to [physically] defend the [Community Memory] machine. How dare you bring a computer into our record store? I like to say that we opened the door to cyberspace and determined that it was hospitable territory. Of course, it took more to open the door than just a greeting.” –@lfelsenstein

Who were the Community Memory early adopters? (6:27): “We saw a much broader diversity of uses [on Community Memory] than we had anticipated. We thought that there would be three categories: Jobs, cars, and housing. The first thing that happened, as far as I can tell, is that the traffic from the musicians’ paper bulletin board moved over to the machine. … The musicians were making their living from this and so they were very quick to recognize a better technology for what they needed.” –@lfelsenstein

The first question seeded on Community Memory (8:05): “We seeded the [Community Memory] system with a question, ‘Where could you get good bagels in the Bay area?’ … We got three answers; two of which were the expected lists of places where you could get bagels. The third was the kicker. That one said, if you call the following phone number and ask for the following name, an ex-bagel maker will teach you how to make bagels. This was validation of the concept of a learning exchange.” –@lfelsenstein

The tragedy of the commons (13:53): “Those who talk about the tragedy of the commons are blowing hot air, as far as I’m concerned, because they’re talking about a commons without regulation. Well, that’s a tragedy waiting to happen. Then they say any concept of commons is therefore illegitimate because it will obviously turn into a tragedy and fail. Well, no, the commons in which you do not have regulation will [fail]. We’ve seen a lot of this happen on online applications.” –@lfelsenstein

Moderation as a practice (19:32): “Having no gatekeepers [in a digital space] is a bad idea. We pretty much are all seeing what that results in. You have to work out how to involve the consent of the user in the gatekeeping process. You can’t just say, ‘Here is the gatekeeper.'” –@lfelsenstein

Facebook and the papyrus scroll method (34:11): “I think Facebook is a regression. I have to keep tearing myself away from it because it’s designed and built to feed the addiction of novelty. We need a lot more than novelty in organizing human society or software advancement.” –@lfelsenstein

About Lee Felsenstein Lee Felsenstein has been both a witness and active participant in numerous historically significant moments for social justice and technology. In addition to his work on Community Memory, he was one of the original members of the Homebrew Computer Club, designed the first mass-produced portable computer, the Osborne 1, as well as numerous other examples of pioneering computing technology, and advising in the creation of The WELL, one of the most popular examples of an early online community.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Lee Felsenstein’s website * Lee Felsenstein’s Patreon * Lee Felsenstein on Wikipedia * Community Memory * Community Memory overviews and promotional material * Resource One: Technology for the People newsletter * Artists and Hackers: Community Memory and the Computing Counterculture * Community Memory: Precedents in Social Media and Movements * Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, by Steven Levy * The Homebrew Computer Club * The WELL * Deschooling Society, by Ivan Illich * Free Speech Movement Archive * Gail Ann Williams on Community Signal * Howard Rheingold on Community Signal * The Virtual Community, by Howard Rheingold * Big Sky Telegraph

Transcript * View transcript on our website

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution

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The Zombies game mode within the popular Call of Duty video game franchise has created a massive community of fans and players who not only play and connect with the developers, but with each other as they try to discover every aspect of each piece of content released for the game.

In two versions of the game, they are even able to create their own content that can be played and shared online with other players. This ability to co-create and remix is the focus of this episode, as it leads to the game being more valuable to all parties, from the game publisher that owns the franchise to the player who plays alone.

But you don’t need to be a fan of Call of Duty: Zombies or even video games in general to take community learnings from this conversation.

MrRoflWaffles is a YouTuber and streamer that has grown his channel to over 1.7 million subscribers and 400 million views. His audience comes to his channel to partake in all things Call of Duty: Zombies –– whether it’s the latest news from Activision or deep dives on Easter eggs. In talking with Patrick, MrRoflWaffles explains how mod tools, which allow you to create new content for the game, and Easter eggs keep Zombies fresh, interesting, and challenging to both expert players and folks that are new to the game.

He also shares his “hungry player theory” –– a theory that even as game studios release more content for their games, players are always hungry for more. And while it’s not possible for game studios to constantly release new content, mod tools put the power of game creation directly in the hands of the community.

What tools and tailored experiences can you offer to your community members?

MrRoflWaffles and Patrick discuss:

Extending the play life of your game and your community by giving your members tools to create
The importance of communicating through game dev challenges
How mod tools can alleviate pressure from game studios and developers

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

How mod tools have created an endless Zombies experience (10:52): “I’m very close with a number of developers that have made [Zombies] maps or contributed to making maps over the years. Some of the things they have been able to create are so unbelievably unique. It means that a player today can think they know the bounds of what’s possible in Zombies and then they can dip into the customs community a bit and their minds will be totally blown because it doesn’t even feel like [Call of Duty] anymore.” –@MrRoflWaffles

A game with custom content never gets stale (16:33): “As a [content] creator, [the mods community] fills a gap in a really powerful way that just makes my life easier because things are more dynamic and more fresh. They don’t get so stale so quickly with [the ability to create] customs.” –@MrRoflWaffles

Custom content provides breathing room for game studios and a creative outlet for community members (19:32): “Games take a long time to develop and updates take time to develop. The devs cannot keep pace with the appetite of the people playing the games these days. They just cannot do it. Having an extra pool of [custom content] to dip into at any time is incredible from a creator perspective and from a fan perspective, too.” –@MrRoflWaffles

Custom maps provides an experience for every level of Zombie player (26:17): “Treyarch is making [the official Call of Duty: Zombies] maps for everyone. Whereas the custom map maker, they can decide [to] target the top 1% of players, the most hardcore Easter egg experience possible, and then deliver, [which means] that community is spoken to and has the experience they want. Or, they could make them with no Easter eggs if they see fit. Then the more casual fans can jump in as well.” –@MrRoflWaffles

“Hungry player theory” and gamers’ needs for more content (30:13): “[Explaining the hungry player theory]: I think people just get hungrier and hungrier and each new map satisfies them less and less and less. Even though in the exact moment of its release, it’s great, you end up with something that then just makes people want more and more and more and more and it spirals out of control a little bit.” –@MrRoflWaffles

Open communication is imperative for any community (36:11): “[As a game developer], making sure that you stay involved in the conversation and bring the community with you as you fix [bugs and problems], and you’re honest about things when they don’t go so well is, in my opinion, a really big asset for any team that is trying to make a game or build any kind of community with any kind of product.” –@MrRoflWaffles

About MrRoflWaffles MrRoflWaffles, Milo, is a YouTuber and streamer based out of London, UK. He started his current YouTube channel in 2009, while in secondary school, and today has over 1.7 million subscribers and over 400 million lifetime views. MrRoflWaffles is very interested in the wider workings of the creator economy, game development, digital culture, and the intersection of all of the above.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * MrRoflWaffles on Twitter * MrRoflWaffles on YouTube * MrRoflWaffles YouTube playlist explaining the Zombies storyline * Treyarch, the creators of the Zombies game mode * NoahJ456 on YouTube * This Zombies Mode Was Designed to Fail…

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In addition to practicing community management as a profession, many of the listeners, guests, and even members of the team behind Community Signal, manage communities part-time. These might be communities that align with our personal passions or hobbies or communities that exist specifically to help ourselves and others grow. That is exactly the mission of Muslamic Makers. Co-founded by Arfah Farooq, who joins us for this episode, Muslamic Makers is a community of Muslim changemakers who work in the tech industry.

This April marks the fifth birthday of Muslamic Makers and Arfah discusses how the community has grown during that time and how she sees it growing into the future. Muslamic Makers takes pride in offering thoughtful programming that is largely free to its community, and Arfah shares how she and her team are thoughtfully working to keep it that way. Tech companies want access to diverse communities when it comes to hiring and in exchange for sponsorship opportunities, the Muslamic Makers community offers them just that. Arfah also discusses the importance of documenting the processes that keep the community running, so that the community can continue running, whether she’s managing the day-to-day or not. It’s always refreshing to hear that the practices that keep our “professional” communities healthy and well-managed are the same practices that we should try applying to our own personal communities, too.

Arfah and Patrick also discuss:

Keeping a community independent, self-sustaining, and affordable to its members
Adapting and enforcing your community’s Code of Conduct as you grow
How the pandemic has helped the Muslamic Makers community grow beyond its roots in London

This episode is the first that we’ve released since the devastating shooting that left eight people in Atlanta dead, including six Asian women. Their names were Daoyou Feng, Hyun Jung Grant, Soon Chung Park, Suncha Kim, Yong Ae Yue, and Xiaojie Tan. The other two people who were killed were Delaina Ashley Yaun and Paul Andre Michels. One man, Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, was seriously injured. As a team, we’ve reflected on how our work in communities matters when it comes to stopping hate. As Patrick says in this episode, “when we educate ourselves about what anti-Asian hatred looks like and we take action against it, we are part of the solution.”

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

Growing Muslamic Makers into a self-sustaining community: “Where I think self-sustainability [for Muslamic Makers] comes from is sponsorships with tech companies because tech companies want access to diverse talent. They want to advertise to a diverse pool.” –@Arf_22

Our communities are bigger than our individual selves: “[When asking for money to sustain a community], speak from the heart, and let people know your intentions are right and you are just thinking about this community existing beyond yourself. [Muslamic Makers] is part of my legacy, but at the same time, especially in Islam as well, it’s the whole thing of, if I die tomorrow, this thing is going to carry on. It’s going to keep bringing goodness in the world.” –@Arf_22

How the pandemic helped the Muslamic Makers community grow beyond London: “Because we the founders were in London … [Muslamic Makers was] very London-centric. … The beauty of actually being forced online [because of the pandemic], in a sense, has meant that all our events are online, which has meant that we’ve had people dialing in from the other side of the world. That global community has definitely grown a lot.” –@Arf_22

About Arfah Farooq Arfah Farooq is a lifelong community builder, from shaping the regeneration of East London after the 2012 Olympics to building resilience in young people as a youth trustee for a charity.

She accidentally co-founded a startup called Discoverables after an initial Design Council grant in 2012. This catapulted her into technology, which led her to co-found Muslamic Makers, a community for Muslims who upscale and pioneer tech in 2016. Arfah is a 2017 fellow of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and has been awarded a prestigious fellowship exploring Muslim women in technology in the USA, UAE, and Pakistan, where she vlogged her travels and brought back her expertise to help businesses.

For her day job, Arfah works in government where she managed an internal community of 1,500-plus product and delivery managers across the UK government and now leads the No.10 Innovation Fellowship program. She is also an Angel investor in startups as part of the Aida Ventures Angels program to invest in underrepresented talent.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Arfah Farooq’s website * Arfah on Twitter * Discoverables * Muslamic Makers * No.10 Innovation Fellowship program * Aida Ventures Angels program * Celebrating five years of Muslamic Makers * Creative Mornings * Muslamic Makers 2016-2021 Impact Report * Faisa Mohamed, co-founder of Somalis in Tech, joined us on Community Signal

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The field of community management is buzzing. We have more tools available to us than ever before and an abundance of communities and resources to connect us with fellow professionals who know our work and want to share knowledge. But what goes into creating inclusive, diverse, and truly open and welcoming spaces for community professionals? Who is given a platform to share knowledge?

In this conversation with Faisa Mohamed, co-founder of Somalis in Tech, we broach this topic and how Faisa and her team approached launching Somali Women in Tech. On paper, the approach may sound simple –– Faisa made sure that that the Somalis in Tech team was onboard with the mission and purpose of Somali Women in Tech. “If you ask the other team members what Somali Women in Tech is, including the male members who are not in this group, they’re going to know exactly what it is and can tell you exactly what it is because they are fully aware of it.” (Head to 25:06 to pick up at this part of the conversation.) But in practice, we’ve seen that’s not a priority for all communities. In the case of Somali Women in Tech, Faisa provides an example of how building community with diversity, equity, and inclusion as important values from day one leads to more successful communities, both from an internal and external perspective.

So –– how are you creating space and opportunity for others in the community industry? To what standards do you hold the communities that you build and that you’re part of? We’re always interested in hearing from you, so if there’s something you’ve tried or learned from recently, let us know.

Faisa and Patrick also discuss:

Reading between the lines of community job descriptions
Gatekeeping in the community management industry
Being “intentional” in inclusion efforts

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

How inclusive and open are communities for community pros? (14:36): “With each [community professional] group and clique, you’re going to hear more buzzwords, and you’re going to hear more excluding language. People are going to plug into resources and share resources more privately as you become more within communities. [But that’s] just not how I came to be in this profession. I came into this profession through exposure to communities, people wanting to help you and that natural curiosity.” –@faisatweets

When your story isn’t told (22:48): “As a woman of many intersections, being a Black Muslim, child of immigrants, eldest daughter … navigating communities with these intersections, you often see the gaps of which your experience has not been acknowledged or thought about. Actually, this has been something I’ve faced mostly in women communities. Communities with the focus for women have often been one type of narrative. I feel, too many times, my story has not been told.” –@faisatweets

Getting internal stakeholders on the same page about building diverse communities (25:06): “I often find projects with an aim of inclusivity or diversity are personal or side projects that don’t get a lot of visibility. I can’t be the only one championing this. It has to be the entire team. If you ask the other team members, what Somali Women in Tech is, including the male members who are not in this group, they’re going to know exactly what it is and can tell you exactly what it is because they are fully aware of it.” –@faisatweets

Community is not a cure-all (39:40): “During the Black Lives Matter protests … I’m really paraphrasing here but [a prominent white man in the community industry] effectively said community is going to be the solution to discrimination such as racism. I actually just responded to him and said, ‘It’s also the thing that’s currently perpetuating it.’ It’s part of the problem, because community [is] effectively groups. The most extreme example is the KKK meets up every week. That’s a community. There are absolutely extreme right-wing versions of communities that exist. Just because we don’t acknowledge them or may not see them in our everyday lives, they are still communities. We have to understand the power that community has –– good or bad.” –@faisatweets

About Faisa Mohamed Faisa Mohamed (she/her) is a community consultant, builder, nurturer, and manager with an interest in product. Faisa previously worked at Bumble and Peanut and is now a contractor at Facebook working on their developer community program, Developer Circles. Faisa is also the co-founder of Somalis in Tech, a community organization increasing the visibility and representation of Somali talent in the tech industry.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Faisa Mohamed on LinkedIn * Faisa on Twitter * Somalis in Tech * Facebook Developer Circles * Marjorie Anderson of Community by Association

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What would happen if you woke up tomorrow and couldn’t share any news articles on Facebook? How would that impact the communities that you manage or the way you share information with family and friends? What if this ban included information provided by emergency services agencies for things like natural disasters, wildfires, and domestic violence? This situation is not a hypothetical one for Australian users of Facebook. Just last week, after Facebook failed to make an agreement to pay Australian news organizations for linking to their content, the company issued a ban that prevents sharing Australian or international news content on the platform.

In this episode, Patrick talks to Dr. Jennifer Beckett, a lecturer in media and communications at the University of Melbourne, about the immediate ramifications that this has had and what it might mean for communities on Facebook moving forward.

Dr. Beckett’s work also has a focus in the mental health of digital workers, given the prevalence of moderation-related work, no matter what the job title. As our field expands, Dr. Beckett points to the need for visibility and protection for the people who do this work.

Dr. Beckett and Patrick discuss:

The well-being of content moderators and what some organizations are doing to protect their well-being
The legal environment for community builders in Australia
The need for better communication about the “toxicity” of communities

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

Facebook has issued a broad ban of news and essential information for its Australian users (4:53): “Facebook has used a really broad definition of what news is. They’ve blocked our Bureau of Meteorology, several emergency services, [and] Queensland Fire & Safety. … That’s problematic because there’s actually floods happening in Queensland at the moment. They’re using the platform to get really vital and immediate emergency information out. The domestic violence government support pages, they’ve all gone down. It’s really, really problematic.” –@JenniferBeckett

How Facebook’s ban of news in Australia may encourage misinformation and disinformation (6:42): “[This ban is] going to allow for a lot of non-news organizations to spread a lot of disinformation and misinformation because there’ll be nothing to curb that misinformation or disinformation in a community. If I’m running a community and somebody starts spouting QAnon conspiracy theories in my group, I’ve actually got no ability to now post fact-based, fact-checked news articles that debunk those conspiracy theories.” –@JenniferBeckett

Healthy communities can still be toxic to others (11:38): “The thing that makes [groups like the Proud Boys] so dangerous is, internally, they’re super healthy. They’re not toxic to their own members. They’re toxic to everyone else.” –@JenniferBeckett

Moderation isn’t about perfection (24:23): “Moderation is an effort that requires a lot of care, thought, and time. Even when you do your best, you’re not perfection.” –@patrickokeefe

When your job responsibilities undermine your personal identity (42:05): “Have you ever had to moderate content [or leave up content] that goes against your sense of self-identity and safety? I’m thinking about people of color and First Nations people, anybody in a minority group who’s doing this job, who suddenly has to remain professional while people are actually questioning their right to exist in many cases. Living in this constant state of cognitive dissonance can actually have physical ramifications, as well.” –@JenniferBeckett

About Dr. Jennifer Beckett Dr. Jennifer Beckett is a lecturer in Media and Communications at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She researches online governance and the mental health of digital workers and teaches a Masters level subject in community management. Before heading back to academia, she worked as an online and social media producer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Dr. Jennifer Beckett on Twitter * Dr. Beckett’s University of Melbourne profile * The Australian Broadcasting Corporation * Facebook will block Australian users and publishers from sharing news links in response to new bill (via The Verge) * The Betoota Advocate, a satirical site that was blocked as part of Facebook’s ban on news * Venessa Paech on Community Signal * Australian Community Managers * Community Signal Episode About Section 230 * A Community Management Perspective on the Violentacrez/Reddit Troll Story, an article about Reddit’s past, by Patrick * Australia’s Criminal Code Amendment (Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material) Act * Sarah Roberts, UCLA * Arlie Russell Hochschild * Quiip launches industry-first resilience training in response to overwork and burnout * Dr. Beckett acknowledges that her research is done on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation

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What are the topics of discussion that you would expect to come across in a weather community? Storms, climate change, and forecast accuracy are part of the conversation.

As a community strategist at Weather Underground, Michelle Schlachta also encountered stories of people that experienced traumatic weather-related events and sought the community out for education and healing. Those are connections and healing that you can’t build through Google results or a weather forecast app. Patrick and Michelle discuss how Weather Underground provided a platform for weather experts through its blogging community and how new members with questions and less expertise about weather were welcomed into the community.

In addition to sharing her experiences at Weather Underground, Splunk, and YouTube –– Michelle discusses something that a lot of us can probably relate to right now –– the isolation of working from home during the pandemic. There are no quick solutions for that but she does offer a reminder that “we’re all going through it together.” If you’d like to share how you’re coping with the isolation of the pandemic, please leave us a comment or write to us.

Michelle and Patrick discuss:

How veteran members help enforce community guidelines and conversation norms
Communicating change to our communities
Sensitivity around dramatic weather events that can lead to the loss of life

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

The Weather Underground community offers an opportunity to heal through education (8:45): “If you’ve had a traumatic weather-based event happen in your life, maybe learning as much as you possibly can about weather or that particular storm that you witnessed and experienced, it might make you feel like you have more of a sense of control over it and over healing from that traumatic event.” –Michelle Schlachta

Community results over Google results (16:21): “New users [joined Weather Underground] because they wanted to learn from experts. They wanted to learn information they couldn’t really learn by Googling and searching on the internet. They wanted to have and observe conversation about weather so that they can learn, too, and who better are you going to learn from but an expert? We had all the top weather expert conversationalists on our site.” –Michelle Schlachta

Dealing with climate science denial (17:33): “[When it came to climate change denial at Weather Underground], some of the developers and meteorologists came together to figure out how do we set the stage for other people? Therefore, we could point to that information on the company stance so that when people were trolling or we weren’t sure if they were trolling, we could be like, ‘Look, this is what we think climate change is and climate denial. You know what side we’re on. Depending on which side you’re on, you’re either welcome or not.'” –Michelle Schlachta

Communicating change to communities (21:54): “Part of my job was helping the community understand that the people [at YouTube], behind building these products they were using, really did care about [them], they did care what they wanted, and they did want to give them what they wanted while still fulfilling business needs. That’s a pretty delicate, difficult balance.” –Michelle Schlachta

About Michelle Schlachta Michelle Schlachta is the community content manager for Splunk, and has previously worked in community at IBM, Weather Underground, The Weather Company, and Google, YouTube, and CNET.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Michelle Schlachta on LinkedIn * Splunk * Weather Underground * The YouTube Partner Program * How Content ID works on YouTube * An Update On Our View Counts * Why You Need to Find a Work Crew * The Splunk blog

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If you have ever used Google to look up a restaurant you wanted to eat at or to research before visiting someplace new to you, you’ve probably depended on information contributed by a Local Guide. Traci Cappiello is the program manager at Google that makes sure those Local Guides feel engaged and empowered to provide helpful information to the world.

With 100 million people who have contributed through the Local Guides initiative, Traci and her 12 member team focus on the one-to-many interactions that happen on Local Guides Connect, the dedicated community space for those contributors. That includes creating online and in-person experiences that reward, uplift, and encourage the Local Guides. Traci shares the team’s approach to this work and some of the checks and balances in place to make sure that all of the content shared by Local Guides is trustworthy and accurate.

Traci and Patrick discuss:

How the Local Guides met the challenge of sharing accessibility information on Google
The tools and teammates that support the Local Guide community
What’s the difference between a Local Guide and just someone posting reviews on Google?

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community and Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community.

Big Quotes

What’s the difference between a Local Guide and someone who writes Google reviews? (8:31): “Anyone can be a [Google] Local Guide. You don’t have to jump through any hoops. You literally just go to g.co/localguides and sign up for it. If you are already a Google Maps contributor, it will say, ‘Hey, do you want to join the Local Guides Program?’ The difference between a Local Guide designation on a review and a non-local guide is simply that this person has taken the step to say, ‘Hey, I want to be a part of this. I want to be a part of something different.'” –@JumpingTraci

The biggest obstacle to contributing as a Local Guide (14:50): “People don’t realize they’re violating our policies until they’ve already violated. Oftentimes, there’ll be folks who aren’t really malicious. There’s a small handful of people that can be malicious, at times at least, … but I really think that for the most part it’s just [a] knowledge [gap].” –@JumpingTraci

Tailoring content to Google’s community and needs (32:22): “We encourage people to share original content that is tailored for the platform itself. There’s nothing wrong with excerpting. If you’ve already created a guide to 10 top places to go to in New York City; feel free to paste it over. If the crux of your posts or the intention is to just promote yourself, we’re not here for that.” –@JumpingTraci

About Traci Cappiello Traci Cappiello joined Google in 2012, working on what is now Local Guides, a program for the passionate Google Maps contributors helping the world to find the places worth discovering. Over the years, Traci has gone from managing hyperlocal activities to managing social channels with over one million followers to now focusing on designing delightful community experiences for her fellow Local Guides.

Traci’s current focus is engaging, connecting, and empowering this nearly 100 million strong community. She manages the community forum, Local Guides Connect, as well as leading community support operations and Connect Live, the team’s annual event for top community members.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community * Traci Cappiello on LinkedIn * Traci on Twitter * Local Guides Connect * Traci’s call to Local Guides to help share accessibility information on Google * Meet the Guiding Stars of the Local Guides community * Khoros and contractors from Grazitti help power the Local Guides community * Connect Live

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If you were building a community product, how would you start? Who would you choose as your first hire? What efforts would you make to ensure that the product is inclusive, safe, and well-moderated?

In this episode of Community Signal, we’re joined by Danielle Maveal to do a deep-dive on audio-first platforms and specifically, Clubhouse. While every platform and community has moderation issues to work through, Clubhouse has made headlines and Twitter rounds for the lax moderation that has brought anti-Semitism, misogyny, and misinformation to the “stage” on the app. In this discussion, Danielle and Patrick discuss how other audio-first platforms have approached trust and safety and what steps they would take to scale the teams, communities, and norms that power them. And while they acknowledge that not every conversation or connection that happens on the platform is bad, they offer a reminder that we can all do something to hold platforms accountable.

The members and the content that we allow on our platforms dictate the culture that permeates in our communities. If there’s one thing that Clubhouse proves, it’s that there is still room for platforms that are built with safety and inclusivity in mind from day one.

Danielle and Patrick discuss:

The current landscape of audio-first communities
How they would scale a team and membership base of a community product
Why community guidelines, enforcement, and tools matter from day one

Big Quotes

Community governance influences the culture of our communities (8:05): “I haven’t heard about anyone being removed from [Clubhouse]. I’m sure there have been some, but there’s no transparency. When is someone banned, or when are they muted? What if they are a repeat offender? What happens then? There’s no discussion of that happening publicly so [Clubhouse] feels like a brand new territory for these scammers to go and chat.” –@daniellexo

Not all audio-first platforms are terrible (14:55): “[At Clubhouse], I didn’t see a key community or trust and safety hire very early on to set the norms. I’m on two other audio apps with absolutely no problems. [Space and Quilt]. They’re smaller, they’re growing at a smaller rate, but they have key community hires there. The social norms that are being developed are just completely different.” –@daniellexo

How do we make people care about trust and safety issues? (17:29): “I’ll have a conversation with someone who is a very reasonable person, and we’ll talk about Clubhouse, and all the issues that have been raised. Then I’ll see them ask for an invite. My mind is blown. We are not learning from lessons of the past. How do we make people care?” –@daniellexo

The value that Clubhouse members bring to the stage (24:35): “[Clubhouse] creators who are now put into these moderator and facilitator roles; they’re going to make the founders and investors rich. [Clubhouse] invites are positioned like a gift, but really [users are] creating the experiences that draw in hundreds of listeners, thousands in some cases, and they get absolutely nothing for it.” –@daniellexo

Scaling your moderation efforts with your community is a must (34:30): “Being able to shut down a bad thing while it’s happening [on an audio-first platform] is important and if you can’t do that, maybe it’s a clue that you shouldn’t be doing this. … Taking care of a call two days later is not going to be a workable solution to stopping bad things.” –@patrickokeefe

Building a community for the long haul, not for short term vitality (38:00): “One thing I would focus on is really keeping the testing pool super small. Trusted people only, no invites, or very few and I would know who’s coming in the door. I wouldn’t be allowing more people in the door until I was ready to be responsive to live reports, so that I can come out very strongly against bad behavior.” –@patrickokeefe

About Danielle Maveal Danielle Maveal has 15 years of experience launching, growing, and supporting brand and marketplace communities. She was on the founding team at Etsy and BarkBox and since has worked at Airbnb and Lyft. She’s now moving from building community teams and programs to building community products.

Related Links * Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Clubhouse * Clubhouse on Twitter * Danielle Maveal’s website and Substack, Community Feelings * Exclusive Social Media App ‘Clubhouse’ Had an Anti-Semitic Meltdown Over Yom Kippur, by Yair Rosenburg * Jewish “Control” of the Federal Reserve: A Classic Antisemitic Myth, via ADL * “You become hostage to their worldview”: The murky world of moderation on Clubhouse, a playground for the elite, via Vanity Fair * Kia Richards, product compliance manager at Square, on Clubhouse’s disinformation problem * Taylor Lorenz, journalist at the New York Times, documents Clubhouse’s moderation issues * Other audio-first platforms referenced in this show include Airtime, Space, and Quilt * Heather Merrick, director of customer support at Airtime, on Community Signal * Tracy Chou, CEO at Block Party * Wesley Faulkner on Community Signal * Ustream

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There are many different categories of diversity and, as community practitioners, continuously learning about them and questioning our assumptions will only help us build more inclusive communities. In this episode of Community Signal, we’re joined by Wesley Faulkner, a DevRel advocate at Daily, who also advocates for neurodiversity.

Wesley and Patrick discuss several ways in which we can build for inclusivity within our products, communities, and teams, all through the lens of specific real-world situations. For example, if we approached writing job descriptions with inclusivity, would terms like “rock star” and “extrovert” still make their way into job descriptions? How can career tracks that account for the different skills and ambitions of the community managers on our teams create more inclusive games, communities, and more? As Wesley says in this conversation, “constraints makes things better. Some people think that if you do accessibility, that you’re restricting the creativity of the medium, but … when you make [things accessible from] the beginning, it actually can make things better for everyone.”

Take the example that Wesley shares about sidewalks. When sidewalks were redesigned to include ramps for people that use wheelchairs, this also made it “easier for people who are running and jogging on the sidewalk, people who had strollers, [and] for little kids so they would trip less.” How can designing your community with inclusion in mind aid your community members and colleagues?

Patrick and Wesley discuss:

Designing for neurodiverse communities
Coaching your community members to be positive contributors
Managing community managers with different skills and ambitions

Big Quotes

Designing your community with accessibility for neurodivergent members in mind (08:27): “In terms of tools [to accommodate neurodivergent people], one easy trick I learned is that if you can navigate the community just with your keyboard, you’re hitting a good 80% to 90% of … use cases in terms of accessibility.” –@wesley83

Accessible communities make for more inclusive communities (12:16): “Constraints makes things better. Some people think that if you do accessibility, that you’re restricting the creativity of the medium, but constraints actually can make things so much more elegant. When you make [things accessible from] the beginning, it actually can make things better for everyone.” –@wesley83

Make the implicit of your community explicit (21:09): “Is this person helping the community or hurting the community? If they’re hurting the community, can you define what it is that they are doing that hurts the community? [Is it] written into the community guidelines?” –@wesley83

Codifying what it means to be a positive community contributor (24:02): “Moderation is education. You’re telling people how to be the best member they can be in the community. If you’re going to do that, then you have to codify what that is.” –@patrickokeefe

About Wesley Faulkner Wesley Faulkner is a developer advocate for Daily, a 1-click video chat API. He’s previously spent time in developer advocacy or community at IBM, Atlassian, and LiveWorld. Wesley is also the co-host of the Community Pulse podcast, and an advocate for neurodiversity.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community * Wesley Faulkner on Twitter * Daily * Community Pulse podcast * Wesley on his journey through DevRel * Neurodiversity as defined by Merriam-Webster * Cyberpunk 2077 sequences may cause seizures (via Polygon) * Americans with Disabilities Act * Cindy Au’s tweets about one stereotype and unfortunate job requirement in the community industry * The Other Diversity: Neurodiversity (via Maggie McGary) * Wesley recommends Brené Brown and the Different Minds podcast * Special thanks to Carrie Melissa Jones and Maggie McGary for their input on this episode

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This episode marks 5 years of Community Signal! If you tune in, you’ll hear Patrick share a thank you for the incredible guests and collaborators that have helped get us here, in addition to the sponsors and Patreon supporters that have generously supported this work. We’re proud to share the stories and learnings of our peers in the community industry and Patrick, Karn, and myself look forward to speaking to more of you! If you ever have feedback on the show or want to suggest a guest, we’d love to hear from you. Please drop us a line, even if it’s just to let us know that you’re listening.

Around this time last year, the burgeoning online community behind the American Society of Safety Professionals was beginning to discuss COVID-19. As the pandemic made its way across the globe, Ashleigh Brookshaw, the manager of community engagement at the ASSP, adapted to make sure that the community was positioned as a core part of the society’s online experience.

In this discussion, Ashleigh talks us through the launch of ASSP’s online community and how leaders within the ASSP were vital to its construction and launch. By leveraging the experience and insight of the safety professionals that were already members of the society, Ashleigh was able to ensure that the community was easy to use and navigate from a technical perspective and also seeded with content and voices that would welcome a diverse membership. This is a common thread throughout the interview – the ASSP empowers its leaders and community members to lead much of the programming, discussion, and community moderation. Ashleigh shares the insights and UX considerations that she has implemented to power this community.

Patrick and Ashleigh also discuss:

How the ASSP is thinking about the future of the safety profession and why DEI is important to that vision
Managing a community of safety experts during a pandemic
The code of conduct and motivations that encourage community members to keep conversations professional

Big Quotes

COVID-19 has demonstrated the use-case for the ASSP community (4:15): “As you take a look at the maturation rate of community, that first year, year and a half, two years, is in my opinion, very, very critical in order to build the user adoption and behaviors that you want to see for long-term sustained engagement. The good thing about COVID-19, and I always like to try to pull the positive little nuggets where I can, is that our organization has really stepped up in terms of integrating online community more holistically and strategically at the front end, to service our members.” -Ashleigh Brookshaw

Community segmentation drives the ASSP user experience (18:47): “People sometimes want [online community] segmentation in a way that won’t actually work well. They will segment themselves off into a corner and then wonder why no one sees what they post. … ‘I posted this [with segmentation that allows me to reach] seven people out of a 7,000 member org, why didn’t I get any replies? Why doesn’t anyone care about me?'” –@patrickokeefe

But segmentation can sometimes be harmful (22:53): “People sometimes want segmentation in a way that won’t actually work well for the wider organization. They will segment themselves off into a corner and then wonder why no one sees what they post. … Then they wonder, they complain, ‘I posted this [with segmentation that allows me to reach] seven people out of a 7,000 member org, why didn’t I get any replies? Why doesn’t anyone care about me?'” –@patrickokeefe

Empowering community-led moderation (35:00): “ASSP, as an organization, has a professional code of conduct. If a member is not acting in accordance with the mission and the vision of [a] particular group and [not] helping [to] advance the society as a whole, there’s going to be [an] ethics review by [the] professional code of conduct committee.” -Ashleigh Brookshaw

About Ashleigh Brookshaw Ashleigh Brookshaw is an accomplished community strategist, who has worked with both internal and external audiences for a variety of organizations including nonprofits like Chicago Gateway Green, Fortune 500 companies like Allstate Insurance, and professional associations like the American Society of Safety Professionals. She is also the chief innovation officer of C2M Digital, a consulting services firm headquartered in historic downtown Oak Park, IL.

Related Links * Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Ashleigh Brookshaw on LinkedIn * American Society of Safety Professionals * It’s my (Carol’s) three year anniversary with Community Signal! * Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (1911) * Triangle: Remembering The Fire * The Higher Logic Super Forum * ASSP’s Common Interest Groups * ASSP’s Professional Code of Conduct

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In this episode of Community Signal, Patrick talks to four past guests of the show, Paula Rosenberg, Tim Courtney, Scott Moore, and Daniel Marotta, who are all looking for new full-time career opportunities. We’re hoping that by tapping into the collective power of our listeners, we can help them find their next big thing.

We’ve never done this before, and here’s how you can help: First, we hope that you’ll take the time to hear their stories and the work that they’re proud to have been part of.

After doing so, if you know someone who has an opportunity that matches with their expertise, please connect with them through LinkedIn or reach out to us, and we’ll gladly make a connection. More than just links to job postings or job boards, we are trying to make direct, helpful connections to people who are hiring where one of these pros would be a great fit.

And even if you don’t know someone who is hiring, if you’re willing, we’d love for you to spread the word about this episode.

With each guest, Patrick dives into the following three questions. Have you reflected on these points recently?

How would you summarize your experience?
What’s an accomplishment from your career that you’re really proud of?
What type of job are you looking for, including title, level, department, industry? Where do you think you’ll be happiest?

Big Quotes

On working across customer success, customer marketing, and community management (3:20): “[Working on different teams that touch community and] trying these different areas out [has allowed me to] see where my passions and my niche really are. … No matter what role [you have], you go on to understand each of those worlds and how those roles work because you’re going to need to collaborate with those different teams no matter what your lane is.” –@NYC_Paula

Creating experiences that reward users of all skill levels (11:25): “For every user, whether they succeed or not, we built a program [through LEGO IDEAS] that systematically treated everyone with respect and dignity, and also taught the organization how to systematically handle consumer feedback and consumer input, [in a way] that’s coming from a real place of passion.” –@timcourtney

Community management is above all else, about putting people first (18:23) “Of all the lessons I’ve learned, everything that I do, whether it’s community guidelines, whether it’s social design and technology, or whether it’s actually sitting down and talking with community members, it’s always about putting that group of people first.” –@scottmoore

Using data to explain the business impact of community (32:05): “We found out that people in the [Penn Foster] community are vested, and they want to do well. They were taking more exams. They weren’t defaulting on their tuition. They were actually paying more month-to-month on their tuition. We’re finding value for the customer, but we’re also solving a business goal, and that’s top line revenue.” –@MassMarotta

About Our Guests Paula Rosenberg has worked in community management, customer success, community events, and customer marketing. Her former employers include Vimeo, VHX, Quirky, and POGO Events. She’s also been a contributor to the WeSupport newsletter since 2016.

Tim Courtney is a customer experience, crowdsourcing, and community leader who built the LEGO IDEAS crowdsourcing platform from pilot to over 1 million users.

Scott Moore has over 25 years of experience helping organizations large and small build solid and successful, connected communities. This includes Digital Promise Global, Answers.com, Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, Communities.com, and Fujitsu.

Daniel Marotta is a community management veteran with over 12 years of experience. You can most often find him fine-tuning content and engagement strategies to continuously improve the customer experience. He previously worked at Penn Foster.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community * Paula Rosenberg on LinkedIn * Paula Rosenberg’s portfolio of published works * Paula Rosenberg on Community Signal: How to Transition a Community Team After You Acquire Their Company * Tim Courtney on LinkedIn * The LEGO IDEAS community * Tim Courtney on Community Signal: LEGO IDEAS and the Building Blocks of a Successful Crowdsourcing Community * Scott Moore on LinkedIn * Scott Moore on Twitter * Scott Moore on Community Signal: Threats to Section 230 Threaten the Very Existence of Our Communities, Threats to Section 230 Should Unleash the Political Power of Community Professionals, Facebook Doesn’t Protect Black Children, But They Did Add “Community” to Their Mission Statement, So…, Ending the Millennial Conversation, Customer Experience Insurance and Other Short Stories, Retaining Talented Community Pros and What Makes a Great Boss? (3 Years of Community Signal), and Learning from Theme Park Design * Daniel Marotta on LinkedIn * Daniel Marotta on Community Signal: Students Who Use the Community Pass More Exams – and Pay More Tuition

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As classrooms have gone virtual and people are spending more time online, Duolingo has seen an influx of students and educators on their platform. Luckily, Duolingo has a structured ambassador program to help those new users find their way and achieve their language learning and teaching goals.

Kevin Reaves, a community support specialist at Duolingo, talks extensively about who these ambassadors are, what motivates them, and how they exhibit ownership in areas from forum moderation to event management, course creation, and more. Their program has thousands of volunteer ambassadors and with that, quality assurance protocols to ensure that everyone is advancing Duolingo’s mission of bringing free language education to the world.

Patrick and Kevin discuss:

The structure of Duolingo’s ambassador program
How Duolingo empowers and rewards superusers
Ensuring quality in community-authored courses
Their “dream” community features and tools

Big Quotes

Rewarding power users with insider features (7:48): “Some people have 900+ day streaks, 2,000 day streaks [on Duolingo]. Those people are amazing. They really put forth the effort to learn. We try to reward that as much as we can [with special extras].” –@Ksquall1

Language learning brings families closer (11:43): “We have warm stories [from the Duolingp community]. ‘I can now communicate with my grandma using her native language.’ … It really goes to show a lot of what language learning as a whole can do for people.” –@Ksquall1

Course health as an indicator for community health (25:47): “[We want] at least 90% of our courses [to be] active at any given time. If we notice that a course is inactive… we check in with the team and say, ‘Are there any blockers? … Is there something that we can do to help in the building of this course?’” –@Ksquall1

Taking care of yourself as a volunteer or community professional (44:15): “The impact of seeing [self-harm and] abuse, it can wear on the body a bit. It can wear on you emotionally, and that’s why it’s important to take that break, get yourself a drink of water, walk around a bit … lean on each other and give each other advice, because [that] goes a long way.” –@Ksquall1

About Kevin Reaves Kevin Reaves has been working in community management for 7 years and, since late 2017, he’s been a contractor at Duolingo as a community support specialist. Previously, he spent time at Space Ape Games, Enthusiast Gaming, and The Huffington Post.

Related Links * Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Kevin Reaves on LinkedIn * Duolingo * Duolingo’s Global Ambassador program * Trump will lose special Twitter protections in January (via Reuters) * Duolingo Incubator * How Community Software Can Use Forensic Science to Identify Bad Members * Censor Block and the Most Efficient Use of Your Forums’ Word Censor Feature * Sarah Hawk, VP of Community at Discourse on Community Signal * Paul Bradley, manager of strategic services at Higher Logic, on Community Signal

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At this point, we likely all know someone that has lost their job or had to make budget cuts because of the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s a narrative in the community industry that we must always be communicating the value we bring to the organizations we work for, but it’s also worth saying that community has really showed up to fight back against this pandemic. The work of connecting and creating safe spaces for people (think tenant unions, social justice organizations, voter registration and education efforts, community fridges, I could go on!) is more vital than ever.

According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 53% of Americans say the internet has been an essential tool during the pandemic (with 34% more labeling it important). That means the work of community professionals in creating spaces where people can find value, joy, factual information, and human connection on the internet is so important. So if you’re looking for a job, let us know. And if you’re faced with making budget cuts for your team, reflect on crises you’ve managed and customers you’ve delighted, look to how you’ve grown and developed your team, review the data that points to your efforts, and breathe. You’ve got this.

As our guest Paul Bradley (manager of strategic services at Higher Logic) says during this episode, “if anything, community is what you need to lean into during times of crisis.” Let’s all remember the community of community professionals that we have to lean on during these times –– whether those are others on your team or your friends here on Community Signal.

Here’s a preview of what Patrick and Paul discuss in this episode:

Countering budget-cutting arguments
Some buy-low investments to consider for your community
Being accountable for the professional development of your team
Why Paul deleted his Twitter account with over 100k followers when he took his first community job
And Karn, our producer, celebrates five years on the Community Signal team!

Big Quotes

Bad moments are our time to shine (6:28): “If something bad is going on [at your company], it’s an opportunity for a community manager because they can then insert a human element into that situation and provide empathetic value that people really respond to.” –@PaulBradleyCMGR

This is not the time to divest from community (6:40): “If you are in a situation where you’re like, ‘I’m going to back out of my community,’ I would say, ‘Why? You made this decision [to invest in community]. What were you thinking when you made the decision? How can that possibly have changed just because there’s a crisis going on?’ If anything, community is what you need to lean into during times of crisis.” –@PaulBradleyCMGR

Sending more marketing or engagement emails can have a cost (16:58): “I’ve worked at places [where my bosses said], ‘Just send another email, we need two more people, hit them again!,’ and they don’t understand the law of diminishing returns. Yes, maybe we’ll get one more at the cost of 17 unsubscribes.” –@patrickokeefe

A diverse team creates a fuller understanding of problems (19:07): “One of the fun things about [having] a team of people who have different skills, is that I don’t know what my problem fully is until [one of my team members] looks at it and says this is your problem, and this is how we need to solve it.” –@PaulBradleyCMGR

Managers, make an effort to keep your one-on-one meetings (27:10): “You don’t miss a one-on-one [meeting with your direct reports]. One of the things that made me feel the worst, when I had one-on-ones, was when my boss canceled. That means something to people.” –@PaulBradleyCMGR

Helping your direct reports advance in their careers (29:56): “When I was hiring people, I would say, ‘Here’s the deal. Two years from now, if you are into this role and you do the work, I’m going to work to promote you here or you’re going to take my job or, if you’re ready to move on and we don’t have a spot, I will support you. I will be your advocate in helping you to find a new role. I will be a reference. I’ll help you however I can.'” –@patrickokeefe

About Paul Bradley Paul Bradley is the manager of strategic services at Higher Logic following community manager roles at MicroStrategy, ADP, and Intel.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community * Paul Bradley on Twitter * Paul Bradley on LinkedIn * Higher Logic * Congrats on five years with Community Signal, Karn! * Shannon Emery, who connected Patrick and Paul * Paul’s tweet about how he deleted his Twitter accounts after taking his first community job. * WeSupport newsletter * Higher Logic Users Group

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Section 230 is a vitally important law for online community builders in the U.S. That’s why we’ve consistently talked about it on Community Signal, and the growing threat to its existence.

The volume of legislation being proposed, that would amend Section 230, is increasingly rapidly with 6 bills proposed in September and October alone. These bills will impact online communities small and large – not just Big Tech.

Whenever new Section 230 altering legislation is proposed, Jess Miers analyzes it. Jess works as a legal policy specialist at Google, while finishing up a law degree, and she joins the show to talk about what’s on the horizon.

Jess and Patrick discuss:

Why are legislators so focused on Section 230 right now?
Trends from the bills that are on the table
Regulators efforts to stop communities from moderating things that aren’t illegal

Big Quotes

Why are there so many Section 230 bills right now? (4:15): “If I have to be really cynical about this, we’re in an election cycle. Doing something about Section 230 looks good for regulators that are trying to get reelected. It seems like everybody has fallen out of love with the internet, both on the regulatory and user side. Section 230 is just one of those things that’s easy to come up with a proposal for and generate a lot of excitement around.” –@jess_miers

More honesty from Big Tech could lead to more understanding from legislators (22:09): “If Big Tech was a little bit more forthcoming about [the moderation] challenges they face, maybe we wouldn’t have such a blind spot in the regulatory process when they’re coming up with content moderation restrictive bills.” –@jess_miers

Are you sure you can't increase your moderation, trust, and safety budget? (22:27): “There is an issue [when] a company has problems around content moderation and they talk about how they’ve reached a certain limit or they couldn’t hire anyone else and yet, they report record revenue. That’s a problem because sometimes you’re placing artificial restrictions on yourself with staffing because you made this much money and you decided you didn’t want to spend it.” –@patrickokeefe

Should Section 230 be amended? (34:10): “Amending Section 230 isn’t going to fix any of the issues that we have with the internet. It’s just going to make it harder for us to fix those issues in the long run.” –@jess_miers

About Jess Miers Jess Miers is a third-year law student at Santa Clara University School of Law, where she studies internet law and policy. During law school, Jess was a legal intern for Twitter and TechFreedom, a technology policy think-tank based in Washington, D.C.

Currently, Jess is a research associate for the UCLA Institute for Technology, Law, and Policy, where she speaks and writes about intermediary liability law. Her scholarship primarily covers Section 230 and content moderation. As of recent, Jess is also a full-time policy specialist at Google.

Related Links * Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Anette Beebe on Community Signal’s episode about Trump’s Executive Order * Jess Miers’ website * Google, where Jess is a legal policy specialist * UCLA Institute for Technology, Law and Policy, where Jess is a research associate * Text of Don’t Push My Buttons Act (see Jess’ redline documenting proposed Section 230 changes) * Text of House version of EARN It Act (Jess’ redline) * Text of See Something, Say Something Act (Jess’ redline) * Text of Protect Speech Act (Jess’ redline) * Text of Online Content Policy Modernization Act (Jess’ redline) * Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA)/Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) * Text of Section 230 * Zeran v. America Online Inc. * Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC * Text of Stopping Big Tech’s Censorship Act (Jess’ redline) * Text of Platform Accountability and Consumer Transparency (PACT) Act (Jess’ redline) * Facebook will pay $52 million in settlement with moderators who developed PTSD on job, about Serena Scola, at al. v. Facebook, Inc. case (via The Verge) * Fair Labor Standards Act * Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) * Jess Miers’ Medium blog * Jess Miers’ Section 230 talk at TEDxSantaClaraUniversity

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“Let the people see what I have seen.”

This is what Mamie Till, the mother of Emmett Till, said when she insisted on an open casket funeral for her brutally murdered son in 1955. Photos of Emmett’s disfigured body circulated and encouraged many to join the civil rights movement.

Darnella Frazier is the teenager that caught George Floyd’s murder on camera and posted it to Facebook. She later stated “that could’ve been one of your loved ones, and you would want to see the truth as well.” As the video circulated, it inspired protests across the country, and George Floyd’s name, image, and story, became a rallying cry against police brutality and systemic racism.

Our guest this week, Prof. Omar Wasow, breaks down the thread between the power of these images even further: “What some of these videos do, what some of these images do, is they allow people who are outside to have a window in, to have a moment of empathy, to walk a few steps in the feet of somebody who might have suffered in some profound way.”

These images clearly have the power to create understanding and power movements. These victims of brutal and heartless crimes become our symbols for change, though we must not forget that they were people, that they were just trying to exist. For example, the protests that erupted after George Floyd’s murder have been twisted into a completely unrelated conspiracy theory by QAnon.

Wasow, the founder of BlackPlanet and a professor whose research focuses on race, politics, and statistical methods, discusses how the internet gives a platform to those who might otherwise not have one, like Darnella Frazier, but also serves as fertile ground for dangerous groups like QAnon.

Patrick and Omar also discuss:

The principles that made BlackPlanet a popular community for Black people of all generations and backgrounds
How BlackPlanet and other early social platforms inspired creativity amongst their users
The power and importance of documenting and sharing injustice

Big Quotes

Wasow optimized BlackPlanet for the creativity of the community (5:38): “[The] transformation from player to programmer was really powerful and changed the arc of my life. When we were designing BlackPlanet, that was something we really wanted to offer our users as well: The experience of going from being people who are just consumers of the web, to being creators and really having it be at core, a site where your creativity could flourish.” –@owasow

BlackPlanet brought the Black communities online (12:53): “[There were] all of these institutions that involved the Black community having deep ties to each other, [sororities, historically Black colleges and universities, Black churches], that didn’t have a home on the internet and that was something [BlackPlanet] could provide. … It’s partly about making a site that was accessible, that was easy to use, that gave people lots of ways to express themselves. It also was a site that could be used in different ways by different people.” –@owasow

What communities and dance floors have in common (31:22): “There’s a seeding function, which is getting people into the community and getting a critical mass. I used to think of it as a dance floor. You’re running a social site; if it’s an empty dance floor, that’s not a place that’s going to thrive, but if you can get a packed dance floor, that’s awesome.” –@owasow

Will social media platforms give users tools to craft their own experiences? (31:57): “If you give people more tools to manage the experience, you can take off some of the responsibility of being the moderator.” –@owasow

How videos like the one showing the murder of George Floyd can ignite a movement and lead to social change (35:00): “If we have these siloed identities, it can mean that we don’t actually have a lot of understanding of people who live in different worlds. What some of these videos do, what some of these images do, is they allow people who are outside to have a window in, to have a moment of empathy, to walk a few steps in the feet of somebody who might have suffered in some profound way.” –@owasow

Why documentation of protests and injustice is important (35:25): “If I’m a protester, if I’m an activist, [I think] like a camera. What is the moment that will be documented, that could be shared more widely, that allows people outside of this particular moment to have some sense of the larger injustice we’re trying to draw attention to?” –@owasow

How the internet provides fertile ground for dangerous groups like QAnon (44:49): “[The] capacity for outsiders to gain voice and win is a really valuable part of the internet. At the same time, what we’ve seen both in politics and media is that the absence of gatekeepers has this real downside.” –@owasow

About Omar Wasow Omar Wasow is an assistant professor in Princeton’s department of politics. His research focuses on race, politics, and statistical methods. His paper on the political consequences of the 1960s civil rights movement was published in the American Political Science Review. His co-authored work on estimating causal effects of race was published in the Annual Review of Political Science. Before joining the Academy, Professor Wasow served as a regular on-air technology analyst and was the co-founder of BlackPlanet, a social network he helped grow to over three million active users.

In 2003, he helped found a high performing K-8 charter school in Brooklyn. He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship in the Aspen Institute’s Henry Crowne fellowship. He received a PhD in African American Studies, a master’s in government, and a master’s in statistics from Harvard University.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community * Omar Wasow’s website * Omar Wasow on Twitter * Omar Wasow’s paper on the political consequences of the 1960s civil rights movement * BlackPlanet * An Ode to BlackPlanet * BlackPlanet’s Founder Talks Myspace, Why He was Skeptical of Twitter, And If Facebook May Have Peaked (via Complex) * Community Signal’s editorial lead, Carol Benovic-Bradley * Gail Ann Williams, founder of The Well, on Community Signal * Stacy Horn, founder of Echo, on Community Signal * Jenna Woodul on Community Signal * Bruce Ableson, founder of OpenDiary, on Community Signal * Compute! Magazine * theGlobe * Ethel’s Club * Where are the Black designers? * Techqueria * Barack Obama jokes about his finsta account * Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting * Darnella Frazier, the young lady that documented George Floyd’s murder * Slacktivism * The story of Emmett Till and the Freedom Summer murders * George Floyd protests: Misleading footage and conspiracy theories spread online (via BBC) * How conspiracy theorists have latched on to the US protests as evidence of the ‘Great Awakening’ (via SBSNews) * Kansas City protest is billed as a Save Our Children event, but will QAnon show up? (via The Kansas City Star) * How Democracies Die

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When you contribute to open source projects, Dawn Foster makes it abundantly clear that even if “you’re there on behalf of [a] company, you need to do the right things for the community.” In this episode of Community Signal, Dawn outlines the principles that she follows and shepherds as the director of open source community strategy at VMware’s Open Source Program Office.

These principles foster projects and communities that are collaborative and encouraging, but of course, it does not always pan out that way. Dawn discusses how documentation and education, having a clear commitment from the company managing the open source project, and balancing for collaboration instead of number of contributions can all help to build healthy open source communities.

Unlike social platforms that optimize for getting everyone to contribute an infinite amount, open source projects rely on spreading knowledge and contributions amongst the group. “In some cases we have open source projects [where] almost all of the contributions are made by a single individual. What happens if that individual wins the lottery and leaves VMware, and doesn’t want to work on this project anymore?” That’s a great question for all of us that manage communities. If our top contributors left tomorrow, who would pull the community forward?

Patrick and Dawn also discuss:

Evaluating open source community health
The tools and documentation that help with governance
Evaluating the risk of contributing to an open source project

Big Quotes

Good documentation begets good contribution practices (7:00): “Even though I’ve been contributing to open source projects for years, every time I pop up in a new community, I still have to read the contribution docs because there will [always] be something that project does in a very specific and nuanced way that the last project I worked on didn’t do. In a lot of cases, people just make mistakes and they don’t really think about what they should have been doing. They just need a little more education.” –@geekygirldawn

Illustrating contributor risk (18:37): “Some of these big open source projects are maintained by fewer people than you might think. The biggest example I can think of was OpenSSL. There was a huge security vulnerability in OpenSSL. It’s a technology that almost every single company in the world relies on. This vulnerability was going to require a lot of time and effort to fix. What we quickly realized was that OpenSSL was maintained part-time by two people, none of whom were being paid to work on it.” –@geekygirldawn

To truly be open source means to cede a bit of control (23:20): “You don’t, as a company, want to dominate the entire [open source] project because if you do that, you might as well never have open sourced it. You might as well have kept it proprietary. The whole purpose of open sourcing it is you collaborate together, and you innovate, and you get ideas that you wouldn’t have otherwise had as a company.” –@geekygirldawn

Open source thrives through collaboration (26:41): “Some of the more social platforms, it’s like the more social, the better. Collaboration doesn’t necessarily work that way. You don’t get more collaboration because I did more stuff. You get more collaboration because you got more people involved, and you gave them some space to contribute.” –@geekygirldawn

The benefit of neutral foundations for open source projects (29:42): “What you get by putting [an open source] project into these neutral foundations is some assurance that everybody’s working together on a level playing field. If I want to contribute to a Linux Foundation project, I can rest assured that I can participate on the same field as everybody else. Whereas, if the project is owned by a particular company and they have their own agenda that may or may not align with the community’s best interest, they may take things in a different direction. They may not accept your contribution because it competes with something that they have.” –@geekygirldawn

About Dawn Foster Dawn Foster is the director of open source community strategy within VMware’s Open Source Program Office. She is on the board of OpenUK, an organization committed to developing and sustaining UK leadership and open technology. Dawn is on the governing board and is a maintainer for the Linux Foundation’s CHAOSS project and the board of advisors for Bitergia. She has 20-plus years of experience at companies like Intel and Puppet Labs, with expertise in community building strategy, open source software, metrics, and more.

Dawn holds a PhD from the University of Greenwich, along with an MBA and Bachelors in Computer Science. She has spoken at dozens of industry events, including many Linux Foundation events, OSCON, SXSW, FOSDEM, and more.

Related Links * Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Dawn Foster on Twitter * VMware’s Open Source Program Office * OpenUK * Fast Wonder, Dawn’s blog * Pivotal, which was acquired by VMWare * The Social Dilemma * Tristan Harris * Dirk Hohndel, VMWare’s Chief Open Source Officer * The Linux Foundation * The Apache Software Foundation

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On Community Signal, we’ve spoken to several professionals that have left the industry for other pastures. While their reasons are never exactly the same, there’s certainly a trend amongst professionals in the industry, particularly women, who bore the brunt of online abuse.

As Patrick says in this episode, “if you haven’t received abuse then you’re probably not doing everything you can for your community, that’s just a sad reality. I wish that it wasn’t the case. I wish that you could somehow maintain order without making yourself a target.” In a profession where our responsibilities include moderating conversations, deleting posts, and banning people, yes, it’s to be expected that we will make some people unhappy.

But as Patrick and Kellie Parker discuss, it should also be expected that our colleagues and managers understand the realities, toll, and potential dangers of this work and plan for how to support one another through it. The mental and emotional toll of working in community management is real and something that we should all be aware of, no matter what rung of the ladder we’re on.

Kellie shares exactly how the mental and emotional aspects of working in community played out for her, where there must be organizational support, and the responsibility of speaking up for our own health and wellbeing. She now speaks openly and candidly about the sexism that she faced, but back then, she admits that her initial reaction was to “be professional” and power through. For professionals that don’t have institutional support, another coworker to cover for them, or the flexibility to miss a paycheck or take a personal day, the notion of self-care in the face of abuse may not be as easy as it seems. We hope that Kellie’s experience encourages anyone listening to think about how they can better support those that they work with, from an individual perspective and an organizational perspective.

Patrick and Kellie also discuss:

The sexism faced by women in gaming and community management
How workplaces can support community managers
The “magic community wand” and how to work against it

Big Quotes

No matter how credible a threat is, it still impacts you (6:34): “A lot of rape threats or death threats [that I received] were not serious. I knew it was somebody that was mad because I deleted their posts or I banned them. … But there is a compounding nature over time when you get told 10 times a day, ‘I’m going to find your house. I’m going to sneak in your bedroom. I’m going to kill you.’ I know that’s not really what’s going to happen but … there is an emotional cost for that, that is often not addressed.” –Kellie Parker

The toll that community management takes on professionals (14:52): “A lot of people who have not done [community management] and do not understand the job shrug their shoulders and say [abuse is] part of the job. Really, we need to be asking for support. Whether it’s access to licensed counselors, whether it’s rotation in the job. … That portion of the job is not often discussed, and it needs to be. People need to understand that they’re putting their mental health and emotional health on the line for this job.” –Kellie Parker

The emotional health of your community team matters (23:08): “If you’re churning out your community person every 18 months, you should really look internally at why that would be. It can be a number of factors. It doesn’t have to be that they are taking abuse. It can be poor compensation, bad workplace environment, whatever, but if people are burning out of that role over and over again, there’s probably a greater than 50% chance that [abuse] is the reason.” –@patrickokeefe

Institutional knowledge builds stronger communities (25:10): “I want the fans to see me as their inside person at the company, and I want people at the company to see me as their inside person with the fans. If you have new people in that role every six months, every year, every two years; you never get that sustained growth. You never have that institutional knowledge.” –Kellie Parker

Stay adept to your team’s work (35:25): “If you’re in a role where you have to support community professionals, whether you are a director of community, VP of community, or if it just happens to fall under you, you really have to educate yourself on the stresses of this job. If you don’t, then you’re going to lose people and the people that are reporting up to you are not going to be as efficient in their jobs or as happy and satisfied in their jobs.” –@patrickokeefe

When “culture fit” is used as cover for something else (42:53): “I can look around your company, and I can see there is nobody over the age of 30. When you tell me I’m not a culture fit, I know exactly what that means. I am 44 years old. I am female. I am not, by traditional beauty standards, beautiful. That’s what you mean. Especially if it’s for a community manager role where they want someone to be in front of the community and lead them. I’m not what you’re looking for, and you’ll tell me it’s culture fit.” –Kellie Parker

Kellie’s career change from social media and community management to real estate (47:14): “Being a real estate agent is about relationships. It’s building relationships with people, helping people, taking care of people. That’s a lot of [what] my job [was] as a community manager and a social media manager.” –Kellie Parker

About Kellie Parker After discovering chat site Talk City as a user, Kellie Parker ended up taking a job with parent company LiveWorld in 1999. This began a foray into community work that took her to PCWorld, Macworld, and SEGA, where Kellie spent more than six years. This was followed by senior social media jobs at Seasun and healthcare company, Abbott, before leaving the digital space to become a REALTOR.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community * Kellie Parker * Kellie Parker’s personal Instagram * Kellie Parker Real Estate on Instagram * Talk City * Kellie’s resume includes LiveWorld, PCWorld, Macworld, SEGA, Seasun Games, and Abbott * Sean Dahlberg on Community Signal * John Coate on Community Signal * A tweet from Carrie Melissa Jones on “community as the solution”

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Amy Jo Kim‘s work building social systems and online experiences for The Sims, Rock Band, Ultima Online, and the New York Times, to name a few, makes her an industry go-to when businesses and clients have questions about creating engaging experiences for gamers, shoppers, and more.

Amy Jo is the author of Community Building on the Web (2000) and Game Thinking (2018). While some think of her as a community professional because of her writing and others know her more for her work in games, Amy Jo sees her work as continuous and intertwined.

She was tackling questions around user incentives and gamification decades ago and even then she thought, “is it too late for me to write a book?” Let’s all take that as a lesson that it’s never too late to share what we’ve learned and then, as she says: “Keep going, keep getting better, keep developing new frameworks that give people value.”

Patrick and Amy Jo also discuss:

Amy Jo’s experience getting a community book published in 2000
Why simply just implementing “PBL” (points, badges, and leaderboards) likely won’t take your community very far
Focusing on the “middle” of your community experience
How inclusivity and diversity factor into game thinking

Big Quotes

Writing a community book in the late 1990s (3:40): “The thing that motivated me to write [Community Building on the Web] was … that, although this was a new medium, and we were dealing with tech-enabled communities, people are people and the dynamics that have always made communities rise or fall are pretty much the same, whether you’re digital or not. … [In the late ’90s], there was a lot of, as there is now, breathless hoopla about, ‘Oh, it’s completely new. We’ve never seen anything like this.’ Yet I felt that there was all this older wisdom about communities that was readily available to us if we wanted to learn from it.” –@amyjokim

Sharing your industry experience (6:00): “If you’ve got something valuable to say, if you can say it in a compelling way people understand; [being] late/early doesn’t matter so much. … Get the thing that you have to state out into the world so people can react to it. That’s an incredibly powerful thing.” –@amyjokim

Be thoughtful about your gamification practices (20:42): “If you want to capture the magic of games in your product, it really has a lot more to do with building the right systems than sprinkling [points, badges, and leaderboards] on top.” –@amyjokim

Give your superusers the opportunity to make an impact (35:46): “Find some way for your most dedicated customers to play a role in the community that gives them impact. People like swag, they like being paid, they like being praised. They like all of that, but there’s nothing that can beat having an impact on a community you care about.” –@amyjokim

Making diversity part of your design process (41:04): “If you’re building something new, and you want it to be inclusive, find people from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, different skin tones, different religions, whatever it is that you want to be inclusive about. Actively recruit early adopters from those groups and make sure that their voice is heard at the beginning and then throughout.” –@amyjokim

Onboarding is important, but… (47:36): “There are so many apps, communities, marketplaces, and services that fail because they [just] have great onboarding. They took to heart that onboarding is so important. … What about day five? What about day ten? There’s nothing there. It’s so common. The reason it’s common is it’s much easier to design pretty onboarding than to figure out your core loop. It’s actually the hardest part. It’s the part that’s going to drive retention.” –@amyjokim

About Amy Jo Kim Named by Fortune as one of the top 10 influential women in games, Amy Jo Kim is a game designer, community architect, and innovation coach. Her design credits include Rock Band, The Sims, eBay, Netflix, nytimes.com, Ultima Online, Covet Fashion, and Happify. Amy Jo has helped thousands of entrepreneurs and innovators bring their ideas to life through her coaching programs at gamethinking.io. She pioneered the practice of applying game design to digital services and is well known for her books, Community Building on the Web, from 2000, and Game Thinking, from 2018.

In addition to her coaching practice, Amy Jo teaches game thinking at Stanford University and the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where she co-founded the game design program. She holds a PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience from the University of Washington and a BA in Experimental Psychology from UCSD.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community * Amy Jo Kim on Twitter * Amy Jo’s books: Community Building on the Web (2000) and Game Thinking (2018) * Patrick’s book, Managing Online Forums * We reference a few of Amy Jo’s past clients and workplaces, including Shiseido, Ultima Online, League of Legends, and Rock Band * Howard Rheingold’s The Virtual Community * Howard Rheingold on Community Signal * John Hagel’s Net Gain * Patrick on community texts being as relevant today as when they were first published * Derek Powazek‘s Design for Community * When Leaderboards Backfire * The Tribunal policy for League of Legends * Building Inclusive Communities, Workplaces, and an Inclusive Profession

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Design for Community: The Art of Connecting Real People in Virtual Places

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If you’re reading this, we’re guessing that you are in the community management profession. Hi, how are you holding up? Between the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and too many other Black people, ongoing protests for an end to systemic racism and inequality, and a looming presidential election that has a lot riding on it, life has been more challenging than usual, to say the least. And as community managers, we’re at the center of many of these conversations.

Whether we’re creating spaces for people to safely discuss these challenging topics, working to build and foster diverse communities and teams, or helping companies make the leap to a fully digital workplace, our skills and work are in high demand.

In this episode of Community Signal, Patrick speaks to three community professionals about how current events have impacted their lives and how they think about building inclusive communities. In the day-to-day, that might mean guiding conversations within our communities. In the broader sense, it’s thinking about how we build communities, tools, and platforms that have diversity, equity, inclusion, and the knowledge from our collective decades of experience in community management baked in from day one.

As our guest Bassey Etim puts it, “we stand on the shoulders of the people before us, and we’re Called, and I mean ‘called’ with a capital C, Called to try to make this a more fair and just world.”

Listen to Patrick, Bassey, Marjorie Anderson, and Nina Collins as they discuss the following and more:

Supporting hard conversations in spaces where they need to happen
Building platforms that encourage diversity and stamp out racism
Identifying broader candidate groups when hiring
Designing systems that allow for proper flagging of abuse

Big Quotes

On fostering communities that embody inclusivity and empathy (3:55): “What’s the tone that you set the minute that people sign up to come into your community and participate? What does that look and feel like? If it’s not one where it feels like people can speak up and have their voices be heard, then it’s really hard to course-correct [later on] and start to cultivate that feeling of belonging.” –@MarjorieAyyeee

Is the time for sarcasm over? (21:35): “Earnesty, applied over time, just wins people over. It’s hard to combat it with sarcasm, irony, anger, all of those things.” –@BasseyE

Do paid communities encourage less moderation and more ownership? (22:10): “I’m finding now on The Woolfer community, we have people who behave; people are in bad moods, people are feeling sensitive sometimes, but generally, they are much more earnest, and I’ve attributed it to the fact that they’re paying for it, that people value things they pay for so they take better care of the space.” -Nina Collins

When what you share is what people will hold against you (37:34): “There is always this Libertarian utopian edge to [Mark Zuckerberg’s] promises and the promise of the internet where once we free ourselves of all of our clothing, once we put everything we are out there and everybody else is naked, it’ll be like, ‘Oh, well we’re all naked. Whatever.’ It turns out that some people, even when they’re naked, they’re going to be extremely judgmental about it. I don’t think this was necessarily something that was unknowable from the perspective of a lot of the folks who built platforms that undergird the internet today.” –@BasseyE

Talking to your community members (in a real way!) about the issues that impact their lives:

“Open up the conversation gently. It doesn’t have to be, ‘What do you think of Black Lives Matter?’ It can be, ‘This is an unprecedented time that we’re in. I want to know how you’re feeling,’ and let them talk. … You know there are people who are likely hurting and [if] you ignore that, how much does that make them feel like this is the community for them?” –@MarjorieAyyeee (51:23)

“This moment is a real moment for humility and for people to show up vulnerable and honest and careful about boundaries, but to be able to really talk about [race and racism] is vitally important. We’ve tried to make the space for them to do that.” -Nina Collins (55:08)

Our responsibility as leaders and community builders (1:23:16): “The domination of the major [social media] platforms isn’t infinite. It’s going to end one day. It’s our responsibility to think about what are we going to build in its place.” –@BasseyE

Choosing to talk about race (1:26:54): “As someone who runs a community for women over 40, where we talk a lot about sex, health, and relationships, I’m known in my little teeny world for talking about anything. I’ll talk about my vagina. But I realized I was not talking about race with these women. Here I am, a Black woman running a community of lots of white women, and I was never talking about race. I’ve decided that’s over. I’m going to be having these conversations, and I’m okay with it.” -Nina Collins

On the responsibility of speaking up for diversity and inclusion within our organization (1:28:27): “As Black folks in America, if we’re in positions in organizations where we have voices that are going to be listened to, a big part of the legacy is that we stand on the shoulders of the people before us, and we’re Called, and I mean ‘called’ with a capital C, to try to make this a more fair and just world. … We need to be agitating for getting professionals who can work on these things. We need to be agitating for change. … For folks who do have the emotional energy to be able to deal with this, I definitely encourage you to make your voice heard.” –@BasseyE

Change will come (1:30:47): “Things do change, but they don’t change if you lose your energy.” –@BasseyE

About Our Guests Bassey Etim is the editorial director for CNN’s NewsCo. He was previously the community editor at the New York Times.

Marjorie Anderson is the manager of digital communities at Project Management Institute and she also manages Community by Association, a resource for community builders in the association space.

Nina Collins is a writer, entrepreneur, and the founder of The Woolfer, an online platform for like-minded women over forty.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community * Twitter’s rules and policies * Gordian knot * A Complete Breakdown of the J.K. Rowling Transgender-Comments Controversy * Thomas Chatterton Williams on Race, Identity, and “Cancel Culture” * Supporting Hard Conversations * Rachel Cargle’s the Great Unlearn * Woolfer TV * Community Thrive! Virtual Summit 2020 * Marjorie on Community Signal * Toxic Waters by Charles Duhigg * The Program Management Improvement Accountability Act (PMIAA) * The WeSupport newsletter and Twitter * Facebook’s Secret Censorship Rules Protect White Men From Hate Speech But Not Black Children * “You are what you tolerate.” –– Derek Powazek on Community Signal

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How many virtual conferences and events have you attended recently? Now compare that to the amount of time you’ve spent playing video games during the past few months. Not giving too much away, Patrick and I would probably agree that we’ve spent more time on the latter. With screen time dominating our lives and in-person gatherings largely on hold, how can we rise to the challenge of bringing communities together in accessible, refreshing, and fun ways?

In this episode of Community Signal, principal developer advocate Austin Parker shares how he used tools like Twitch, OBS, Discord, and yes, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, to throw a deserted island conference like no other. Austin doesn’t expect every conference from here on out to be hosted in the video game, but he does hope that the pandemic and his experience with Deserted Island DevOps encourages all of us to think outside of the box when it comes to creating experiences for our communities. In his words: “You don’t have to be an expert, you don’t have to be a master event planner. You don’t need $10,000 to go rent a ballroom at the Sheraton. You can make something that’s engaging, and creative, that people like, and people will come and listen to it. You can share knowledge and you can build a community using stuff that is either free or fairly inexpensive.”

Austin and Patrick also talk about:

Pros and cons of in-person and virtual events
The moderation tools, volunteers, and code of conduct that helped make Deserted Island DevOps happen nearly seamlessly
How Austin grinded to get enough bells to pull off the conference

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

How has the pandemic changed work for developer advocates? (2:30): “[Because of COVID-19], we’re in a world where there’s this antipathy or bias against large-scale events for the foreseeable future. And maybe not even on a month’s time scale, on a multi-year timescale, we really have to rethink what does it mean to be part of a developer community? … How do you build events and get people interested in events that don’t take you out of your normal routine?” –@austinlparker

Going virtual with attention to accessibility and inclusivity (7:53): “Virtual events as a longer-term strategy are actually really good. It’s very accessible. There’s a ton of people due to whatever reason, because of where they are in the world, because of a disability or because it’s unsafe, or due to their gender or sexuality, in-person events aren’t welcoming. A virtual event can be much safer for people to attend and much more accessible and egalitarian than these $5,000 hotel and plane and then $2,000 ticket [conferences].” –@austinlparker

Moderation as a continual practice (23:36): “Moderation is never going to be 100%. It’s never going to work 100%. [There will always be] the fallibility of technology and of people. Getting close enough is the goal and just fixing any mistakes we find along the way.” –@patrickokeefe

A few tools and a little creativity can go a long way towards creating memorable experiences (34:44): “The future I see [for virtual events] is one where people are using very easy-to-access prosumer tools in order to create unique experiences and build communities around those. It’s less [about using Animal Crossing like I did] and more you don’t have to be an expert, you don’t have to be a master event planner. You don’t need $10,000 or $20,000 to go rent a ballroom at the Sheraton. You can make something that’s engaging, creative, and that people like, and people will come and listen to it. You can share knowledge and you can build a community using stuff that is either free or fairly inexpensive.” –@austinlparker

About Austin Parker Austin Parker has been solving –– and creating –– problems with computers and technology for most of his life. He is the principal developer advocate at Lightstep and maintainer on the OpenTracing and OpenTelemetry projects. Austin is the host of On-Call Me Maybe and co-author of Distributed Tracing in Practice, published by O’Reilly Media.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * Austin Parker on Twitter * Lightstep * Recordings of the content from Deserted Island DevOps * Animal Crossing: New Horizons * Community Thrive!: Virtual Summit 2020 * Deserted Island DevOps Postmortem * Open Broadcaster OBS * Elgato Stream Deck * The Code of Conduct for Deserted Island DevOps * On-Call Me Maybe podcast, which Austin hosts

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Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has been a frequent topic of conversation on Community Signal. Its existence as we know it seems untenable given Trump’s recent executive order and Joe Biden’s criticisms of it. On this episode, community and social media professional David Flores shares some of the history of how Section 230 came to be.

David worked at Prodigy just as they were coming under fire for a post that someone left on one of their message boards. While the initial court ruling went against Prodigy and found that online service providers could be held liable for the speech of their users, this decision served as the genesis for Section 230, and the ruling was overturned by the new law.

He also shares how he entered the field of community management and describes navigating moderation at Prodigy in the ’80s and ’90s. For context, all deleted posts were printed so as to maintain a record. He also discusses conversations with early community platforms and how Prodigy attempted to look after its employees’ emotional wellbeing during times of turmoil at work.

Here’s more of what Patrick and David discuss:

What was it like moderating before Section 230?
Editorial standards as a framework for community moderation practices
The popularity of Prodigy’s message boards

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

The basis for Prodigy’s community decision-making (10:28): “[Most of our staff at the time came from the editorial arm of CBS], so they were looking at [moderation] the way you would an editorial decision. What runs in our newspaper? … How do we treat their speech? Is it freedom of speech?” –@dfloresbx

After deciding whether or not to allow the word “suck” on Prodigy’s message boards (10:48): “Over time, those standards became both more loose and more restrictive. We were looking at things on a word by word basis and running all the posts through automation and against lists of not just seven dirty words, but more like 77,000 dirty words and trying to figure out what would be appropriate for our audience.” –@dfloresbx

Printing out every submission you receive (24:51): “When I got hired [at Prodigy], … part of what they did was have us print every message we rejected. It’s possible that when I got there, we were printing everything because there just wasn’t that volume, but at a certain point, the volume became such that every post that was rejected needed to be printed, and then you had to mark why it was rejected. The reason being that someone might contact management and say, ‘Why was this rejected?’ We needed a record.” –@dfloresbx

Bringing a moral compass to your moderation standards (45:17): “I use the phrase morally repugnant because that’s something that we actually used at Prodigy to say we weren’t going to post certain things because they were morally repugnant. … [But now, I go on] Twitter in the morning, there’s probably been a tweet by someone overnight, and it’s likely to be morally repugnant, and it’s just sitting there. Now people are commenting on it, and that’s the entire day’s focus.” –@dfloresbx

The emotional strain of working in community:

“Especially at Prodigy, that was a very intense situation to be in because as a community manager, you’re trying to be friendly. You’re trying to be helpful. You’re trying to relate to the people that you’re dealing with. Your favorite moments are when the community responds as a community and does things that really make a difference in their real lives. Conversely, when things go wrong, you’re that individual who they turn to and say, ‘Well, why did you do that?’ … Well, I didn’t do that. I’m representing the organization that did. That was a lot of the conflict. Your personal self, your professional self, and then not just professional self, but yourself representing this larger organization.” –@dfloresbx (33:25)

“Trump, pandemic, economic disparity, racial injustice, which has existed forever, and then all of those things coming together right here in 2020. It’s a unique time. It puts a strain on everything, and it puts a strain on how we see ourselves and the responsibility that we have with the platforms that we manage. I think most of us are doing the best that we can. We can only do the best we can, and we should always be striving to do a little better.” –@patrickokeefe (42:50)

About David Flores David Flores is the director of social media at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. He’s also the co-editor of Einstein’s blog, The Doctor’s Tablet. Prior to Einstein, he worked in various community management and editorial roles at news outlets including Everyday Health, tvguide.com, wsj.com, and Prodigy. He came to the world of online community after a stint as a police reporter in suburban New York after graduating from Fordham University. David lives in the Bronx with his wife, Elaine, and their dog, Dexter.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community * David Flores on Twitter * Albert Einstein College of Medicine * The Doctor’s Tablet * David previously worked at Everyday Health, TV Guide, wsj.The Wall Street Journal, and Prodigy * Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act * Anette Beebe on Community Signal * Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc. * Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. * The Wolf of Wall Street * John Coate on Community Signal

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For years, Facebook executives have persistently shut down efforts to make the site less divisive, according to reporting from Deepa Seetharaman and Jeff Horwitz of The Wall Street Journal.

As community professionals, we’re tasked with helping people start and participate in conversations that matter to them. We’re often held accountable by “engagement” metrics –– such as the number of people participating in conversations and the sentiment surrounding those conversations.

But in this conversation with reporter Jeff Horwitz, you’ll learn that while Facebook obviously wants to gain more attention from users and increase time spent on the platform, there’s less internal consensus around the ethical dilemma of reaching these engagement goals by amplifying divisive groups and content. Alternatively, a lack of concrete metrics to measure impact is perhaps one of the things stopping Facebook from taking a step back and thinking about how their platform is impacting the world.

Is Facebook already too much of a monolith to change its path? Or is Mark Zuckerberg still not convinced that the company is at the center of a moral dilemma when it comes to polarizing its members and advancing the spread of misinformation?

In this episode of Community Signal, Patrick talks to Jeff about the article and dives into the context surrounding the story learned while talking to Facebook employees. They discuss:

The engineers that are continuously pushing to build a more fair and just Facebook
How decision-making works at Facebook
Why “social good” has fallen out of favor

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

Polarization is being encouraged by Facebook’s algorithms (3:15): “[Facebook] found that in some instances, its platform was increasing polarization. … Facebook’s algorithms would spit out increasingly divisive content in an effort to boost engagement unless interrupted.” –@JeffHorwitz

The impact of delaying tough platform decisions (7:00): “Some of the engineers really regretted that they hadn’t been able to take action [against polarization] earlier because if they had, potentially, [Facebook] wouldn’t have had this large ecosystem of misinformation and misinformation publishers that actually started defending its own interest. Making those changes once you’ve already got an established platform and communities on this platform is a lot harder.” –@JeffHorwitz

Founders and the C-suite can hold back community initiatives (10:26): “You can’t outrun the founders. I’ve found myself reporting up the chain before to CEOs, COOs, and founders who would continually weaken my initiatives.” –@patrickokeefe

Allowing metrics to get in the way of progress (20:11): “If Facebook was asking the question, ‘Are we making the world worse?,’ how do you even answer that question? Facebook is a very metrics-driven organization, and that was a pretty hard thing to quantify. It was like, if you can’t quantify it, then how do you know you’ve solved it? Thus, if you can’t quantify it, maybe we should just move on.” –@JeffHorwitz

So, why hasn’t Facebook made more substantial changes? (25:26): “It’s a product that really does work and it really is successful in just a truly profound way. Making changes to it, I think, is pretty hard. Even if there are so many other ways for Groups to be or for News Feed to be, this is the way that has built Facebook into a wild, almost unparalleled success. Why would you give that up?” –@JeffHorwitz

About Jeff Horwitz Jeff Horwitz is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal focusing on Facebook. Before joining The Wall Street Journal, he was an investigative reporter for the Associated Press.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community * Jeff Horwitz on Twitter * Facebook Executives Shut Down Efforts to Make the Site Less Divisive by Jeff Horwitz and Deepa Seetharaman for The Wall Street Journal * Investments to Fight Polarization by Guy Rosen, VP of Integrity at Faceboook * Community builder Derek Powazek’s take on why Facebook hasn’t implemented substantial changes * Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act * Away’s founders sold a vision of travel and inclusion, but former employees say it masked a toxic work environment by Zoe Schiffer for The Verge * Facebook will pay $52 million in settlement with moderators who developed PTSD on the job by Casey Newton for The Verge * Patrick’s Twitter thread about this story * Howard Rheingold on Community Signal * Support peace and healing for Darnella Frazier * Chris Cox, chief product officer at Facebook * Zuckerberg Lieutenant Returns to Facebook, a Year After Departure by Jeff Horwitz for The Wall Street Journal * Twitter Refutes Inaccuracies in Trump’s Tweets About Mail-In Voting by Davey Alba and Kate Conger for The New York Times * Many Facebook employees think the company needs to stand up to Trump now more than ever by Shirin Ghaffary for Recode * Reporting by Jeff Horwitz for The Wall Street Journal

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Black Lives Matter.

As community professionals and hosts, we have the power to cultivate thoughtful spaces online. We serve communities and, if you’re a regular listener of this show, I doubt you’re serving racists.

Systemic problems can feel overwhelming, but small things make a difference. Your community and how you manage it, regardless of the size of it, can be a part of the solution. I encourage you to think about that as you make choices that shape these platforms.

On May 28, a couple of days after Twitter added a fact-checking notice to one of his tweets, Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting online communities and platforms.

I believe that holding Trump accountable for his rhetoric and fighting white supremacy are the same fight. This executive order is designed to stop you, me, and big platforms from doing exactly that. On this episode, we’re talking with attorney Anette Beebe about the resulting fallout and answering some of your questions.

Among our topics:

What damage has Trump’s executive order done already?
How does this impact community moderation right now?
The publisher vs. platform “debate”
Does adding notices to content make you liable?

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

The importance of being able to hold Trump accountable for his tweets (1:13): “I believe that holding Trump accountable for his rhetoric and fighting white supremacy are the same fight.” –@patrickokeefe

Content moderation is hard (9:37): “It’s very tough to get content moderation right 100% of the time. It’s very subjective. We have to remember that these platforms, a lot of the big ones especially, aren’t just operating here in the U.S. They’re global. Global norms may be very different from what we’re used to here in the United States.” –@anette_beebe

Fact-checking notices don’t impact Section 230 (21:02): “Section 230 has always been about reducing liability or immunizing platforms from putting stuff up or taking stuff down. Adding more speech, [like Twitter did with its fact-checking notices], takes it away from Section 230 and starts getting into your First Amendment.

… Obviously, what the president tweeted out, talking about mail-in ballots, that’s where it started. [Twitter can] have a different opinion that, ‘No, this isn’t likely to cause fraud.’ What would someone sue for? Having a difference of opinion? That’s their First Amendment right. They can have a difference of opinion against the president. Thank you for living in the U.S. This is what we can do here.” –@anette_beebe

Editing content can cause issues (23:32): “Editing can [open you up to liability] if it’s materially contributing to the content or materially altering it. Removing a link isn’t materially altering it necessarily. I haven’t seen any cases where that has been an issue. There may be a Section 230 case that I’m just unaware of, but I’ve never seen that be an issue or fixing capitalization, some of those basic editorial things that one would do. Those have always been fine. It’s when you change ‘is a bad guy’ to ‘is not a bad guy.’ That would be materially contributing.” –@anette_beebe

Study is needed prior to legislation (31:35): “I have not seen any empirical studies done that would suggest, one way or another, that the [Section 230] harms we hear about, they’re so big that this is actually a huge issue. We’re on a 24-hour news cycle and people love dirty laundry.

… How many issues are there really? Versus how much we’re perceiving it’s a big issue because we’re hearing about it all the time? I would love to see some studies done that actually weigh these types of issues out so we can make better-informed decisions before we just put pen to paper and start legislating things without really having a full understanding.” –@anette_beebe

About Anette Beebe Anette Beebe has worked in the legal field for over 21 years, spending close to eight years as in-house counsel, now general counsel for Xcentric Ventures, which operates one of the oldest consumer complaint forums, RipoffReport.com. Anette formed a solo practice in late 2012 that caters primarily to businesses that operate online and individuals who have concerns about online content. In her spare time, she works to educate youth and adults about repercussions from internet use through public speaking and online courses through her company, Smarter Internet Use, and blogs about fighting fair on the internet.

In April of 2019, she was involved with efforts to maintain the Texas Citizens Participation Act, the Texas anti-SLAPP law, and had a hand in the redraft of the modified law. Anette is a member of the internet Lawyers Leadership Summit Group, a co-chair of the Digital Communications Committee within the American Bar Association’s Forum on Communications Law, a member of the First Amendment Coalition and a member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals.

Related Links * Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community * Twitter labels Trump tweets with a fact check for the first time * Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship * Previous Community Signal episodes discussing Section 230: perspectives from community pros and hosts, Patrick and Scott Moore, David Greene, and Eric Goldman * Anette Beebe * Community Signal’s call out for questions for this episode * Amanda Petersen’s response to the call out * Eric Goldman, law professor at Santa Clara University and previous guest on the show * Eric Goldman’s deep dive into the executive order * The text of Section 230 * Ravelry bans pro-Trump content * Details about FOSTA-SESTA, legislation aimed at sex trafficking * The first Trump tweet to receive Twitter’s fact-checking notice * Tweet from Kevin Poulsen about how Twitter wouldn’t be able to host Trump without Section 230 * Joe Biden and Trump saying they want to revoke 230 * Breakdown of Herrick v. Grindr ruling

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People have gotten crafty when it comes to staying connected during this time of social distancing. Zoom calls with family and friends, Animal Crossing weddings, and drive-through birthday parties are just a few of the ways we’re showing up for the people we care about. HER, a dating and social app for LGBTQ+ womxn and queer people, is also doing its part to foster safe socializing for its community. That said, you might say this comes as first nature to HER, because safety has always been a must when it comes to representing and providing a space for their members.

In this episode of Community Signal, HER’s head of community, Shana Sumers, discusses the recent changes that have been made to help community members stay connected during the pandemic. She also shares some of the tools and policies that keep members of HER safe from scams and persecution because of their sexual identity or gender orientation.

Patrick and Shana also discuss:

How community moderators make a difference on HER
Reasons why members find value in HER even after finding a partner through the community
Delivering a premium and safe experience on HER without forcing everyone to pay a premium
Why the 40+ community is Shana’s favorite on the app

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Discourse.

Big Quotes

When you happen upon a scammer meeting (12:47): “It’s almost like [scammers] have a room where they have figured it all out. … We’ve even caught some of our scammers having conversations with each other when they figure out there’s code words that they have. It’s just a whole mastermind process.” –@shanahasatwitr

Ensuring the safety of HER’s LGBTQ+ community (18:44): “We’re available in [about] 113 countries worldwide, but we [also pay attention to] where it’s still illegal to be an out LGBTQ+ person and where people get highly prosecuted. … We wanted to be sure that the app was available in places that it was safe. If you were comfortable enough to come onto the app and show your face, that that’s because you were in an area where you can, and if you didn’t, that you have the option to be able to with our incognito mode.” –@shanahasatwitr

Why building your brand and profile on HER could lead to more dates (26:35): “[We saw adding posts to your profile] as a way to hold people accountable, [but it’s also] a way for you to build your brand and make yourself seem more appealing to the community, which would then lead to more likes, more messages, and hopefully more dates.” –@shanahasatwitr

Fostering inclusivity for the HER community (36:27): “Our community is so intersectional that we want to be able to find ways that everybody can feel represented. Even though we do have a big group of people who identify as lesbian or bisexual, it’s not far off to have people who are identifying as non-binary and we want to be sure that all of those are represented, all of those fit, and thankfully, the profiles give us a lot of data in that area so we can continue to adjust and make sure that people are seeing things that make them feel like they are part of the community.” –@shanahasatwitr

About Shana Sumers Shana Sumers is a black, queer womxn, who is the head of community for HER App, the largest social and dating app for LGBTQ+ womxn and queer people. With a community of over five million users worldwide, Shana has worked from the ground up to launch and grow a community that supports the wants and needs for this rainbow-filled group. Online communities, in-person events, social media, content creation, email marketing and customer support are just scratching the surface of skills utilized by Shana on a day to day basis.

Related Links * Sponsor: Discourse, civilized discussion for teams, customers, fans, and communities * Shana Sumers on Twitter * The HER App * Incognito mode has arrived * HER’s community guidelines * HER premium * We Met on HER * COPPA: Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule * Shana’s podcast: Bad Queers

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We’re several months into the COVID-19 pandemic and the daily loss of lives is still devastating and the longterm effects on our communities and society as a whole have yet to be seen. For many of us, the pandemic has affected our routines, our families, our work, and our livelihood. While some online communities have seen more engagement from community members (I love this story that mentions how Ethel’s Club pivoted from a brick and mortar social club to an online one), we’re also seeing tremendous layoffs across all industries.

Amidst all of this and despite being just a few months old, Pandora’s community is aspiring to be a space where members can connect over music and everything impacting their lives right now. In this episode, community manager Erick Linares shares the strategy behind the launch of the Pandora community and how he’s working with his team to foster great conversations.

Patrick and Erick also discuss:

Why Erick thinks a superuser program will be integral to the Pandora community
The challenge of making the case for a new community during the COVID-19 pandemic
How the mentorship Erick received at Fitbit propelled his career growth and how he’s paying it forward

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Discourse.

Big Quotes

Turning question-askers into conversation starters (14:45): “When we respond as moderators, we have a signature that says, ‘Come share your playlist with me in the playlist swap.’ [With small things like that] we’re trying to drive engagement [so that members don’t simply] ask a question and then bounce out because that’s not actually engagement, that’s just coming in and asking a question and then waiting for your answer and never coming back.” –@thegateceo

Creating authentic conversations with your community (16:35): “[We don’t just create content that says] ‘Hey, go listen to our podcast’ or ‘Go listen to our playlist that we’ve created as Pandora.’ We’re being very personable. Some of the posts that we’ve created on the community are like, ‘How are you dealing with COVID-19 anxiety?’ Then [I share how I am] actually coping with it and how my employees are coping with it. … These are the types of conversations that are going to help our users want to engage with us and be very personable and not to only think of this as a support space or a space for Pandora, but a space where they can actually share their own experiences.” –@thegateceo

What makes a great boss? (36:22): “The difference between a good boss and a great boss is having someone who looks out for your career beyond what you can do for them in this moment.” –@patrickokeefe

About Erick Linares In December of 2014, Erick Linares took on a role at Fitbit as a customer support specialist and wore many hats during his tenure. Erick grew from a support specialist to community and social support specialist to transitioning to the community team manager of the Fitbit community, under the leadership of Allison Leahy.

In March of 2019, Erick took the leap to Pandora as community manager to begin the efforts of building the totally new Pandora Community, which launched in September of 2019. In addition to his community role, Erick also oversees the social care programs for both Pandora and SiriusXM.

Erick lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is passionate about all things music as he’s earned a Bachelor’s degree in sound arts. Prior to working at Fitbit, Erick ran live sound for the San Francisco 49ers during their inaugural season at Levi’s Stadium.

Related Links * Sponsor: Discourse, civilized discussion for teams, customers, fans, and communities * Erick Linares’ website * Erick Linares on LinkedIn * Pandora Community * Pandora and SiriusXM * Fitbit, where Erick previously worked * Allison Leahy, formerly of Fitbit, on Community Signal * The Khoros online community platform * The Pandora Help Site * Pandora’s Playlist Swap * Pandora’s Music Genome Project * Pandora’s Getting to Know You Playlist Challenge * SiriusXM is trialing free streaming until May 15th

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Nicholas Tolstoshev is talking programs. Brand representative programs, where brands pay you for access to your community. Ambassador programs, where you reward your best contributors. And empathy programs, where you help your coworkers see things from the eyes of your members and customers.

This discussion also ends on a note that we probably all need to hear right now, and that’s the importance of leaning on and being honest with each other about our shared challenges of navigating life and work during the pandemic. Nicholas shares how he has worked to start these honest and difficult conversations at Automox. Here’s to workplaces that are being encouraging and understanding during these difficult times.

Patrick and Nicholas also discuss:

Building ambassador programs and empathy programs to strengthen communities
Empowering community members to create and moderate conversations of their own
How Nicolas cultivates the internal employee community at Automox

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Discourse.

Big Quotes

Balancing your brand ambassador program (11:33): “[When creating a brand ambassador program], you’ve got to balance the rewards versus what [the ambassadors are] doing. You don’t want to either over or under reward and then have to course-correct later because much like having something be free and then charging for it, that’s always a hard thing to overcome.” –@tolstoshev

Empowering your users to build their own communities (27:50): “If you don't make room for people to have [unofficial] conversations on your own site, it's not going to stop them from having those conversations. They’re just going to go have them somewhere else. That was the lesson that an early mentor of mine drummed into me. Be part of the conversation and the best way to do that is to make a place for it. If somebody has already made a place for it, then go meet them where they are.” –@tolstoshev

The positive effects of community during the pandemic (40:10): “Since the pandemic hit … I was finding myself stuck at home and feeling isolated and depressed and not having much motivation to work. I had the idea to do this program where a small group of us get together and just share what's going on and what's frustrating in their lives. ... It was a huge benefit for me. I rolled this out to the rest of the company and fortunately, the execs saw the benefit in doing it. It's been rewarding to build community internally within the company and help people get through such a difficult time.” –@tolstoshev

About Nicholas Tolstoshev Nicholas Tolstoshev is a sysadmin turned community manager having worked on technical communities for Intuit, Spiceworks, Webroot, LogRhythm, and currently Automox. He also launched Growers Network, a community in the cannabis space.

Related Links * Sponsor: Discourse, civilized discussion for teams, customers, fans, and communities * Nicholas Tolstoshev on LinkedIn * Nicholas has managed communities for Intuit, Spiceworks, Webroot, LogRhythm, and currently Automox * Growers Network, a community in the cannabis space * Sean Dahlberg on Community Signal * The Spiceworks brand representative program * The unofficial Spiceworks Discord * Meetup wants to charge users $2 just to RSVP for events — and some are furious (via The Verge) * BoardReader

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Every community has its own shared language and for the Spiceworks community, that shared language revolves around IT. Made up of IT professionals and service providers that support them, the Spiceworks community convenes to share their collective expertise and find solutions.

In this episode of Community Signal, Sean Dahlberg, director of community at Spiceworks, shares how his team approaches community management and how they ensure that the community continues to offer value to its members, even as the company endures organizational change. Spiceworks was acquired last year by Ziff Davis and co-founder Jay Hallberg rcently announced his resignation. In response, Sean says that he and his team have prioritized being as open and honest with the community as possible in an effort to avoid rumors and reassure the community that the company is still committed to offering value to its members.

Sean and Patrick also discuss:

Sean’s transition from the Marine Corps, to the gaming industry, to Spiceworks
The pepper scale system, which allows Spiceworks members to level up based on their specific area of expertise
How Sean balanced the needs of Star Wars fans and MMORPG players

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Discourse.

Big Quotes

Highlighting expertise in the Spiceworks community (20:16): “We use what we call the pepper scale system. You get points for engaging the community. Everyone starts as a little Pimento, and you can work your way up to Pure Capsaicin. One of the challenges with that is we have individuals who are up at Ghost Chili, Thai Pepper, even Pure Capsaicin and, when they’re making posts, people are automatically giving it an assumption of expertise. The challenge there is with IT professionals, there’s so many avenues, there’s so much technology, technology is changing so much that just because I’m a Pure Capsaicin, that just means I post a lot. [We started a new status system, which] gives you a level expertise [based on those] different technology areas. I could be an expert when it comes to Active Directory, but I may know nothing at all when it comes to Linux. Now that’s highlighted on my profile, but also in the topics themselves.” –@ashentemper

Making the most of your data resources (34:05): “I used to be a front end developer myself. I know a little SQL. Don’t ever hire me for it. We do data downloads, every day, of what’s going on with the community. I was running my own reports in spreadsheets. One of our business analysts came by one day, and they saw this Excel sheet with 50 tabs, doing all these weird things. They’re like, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘This is showing my first-time posters. This is showing my retention rate based off of the different pepper levels.’ I guess they were so insulted about how bad these Excel sheets were that they actually went and built the real dashboards [for me].” –@ashentemper

The importance of anonymity for some community managers (42:20): “Back when I just started community management, at least in the game industry, you didn’t use your [real] name. Part of the reason was fear of people coming and finding you and putting pies in your face. [Once], a user found the office and had a VHS of just videos of someone getting a pie in their face for 40 minutes. Then, at the end of it, said ‘see you soon.’ You never use your real name. If you go look at the game industry, especially back in the early 2000s, everyone had these weird [usernames].” –@ashentemper

About Sean Dahlberg Sean Dahlberg is the director of community for a vertical network dedicated to technology professionals called Spiceworks. He attended nine different schools growing up while living in various parts of the globe, joined the U.S. Marine Corps, and transitioned from there into the massively multiplayer online game development industry and now to working in the B2B technology space.

Related Links * Sponsor: Discourse, civilized discussion for teams, customers, fans, and communities * Sean Dahlberg on Twitter * Sean’s website * Spiceworks * Spiceworks co-founder Jay Hallberg announces his resignation * Ziff Davis, the company that acquired Spiceworks * Nic, the senior community manager for Automox and a former community professional at Spiceworks * The Spiceworks Partner program * Trivia Crack * Submit A Ticket, Spiceworks’ webcomic * Star Wars: The Old Republic * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

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We started recording this episode about a week before its release, and since then, coronavirus COVID-19 has continued to spread across the globe. News and governmental guidance is being updated frequently and people in many regions are being mandated to stay home as much as possible in an effort to help flatten the curve.

The pandemic has obviously impacted online communities, too. In this episode of Community Signal, I (Carol), along with community professionals Serena Snoad and Rose Barrett share our communities have changed in recent weeks. But amongst the three of us, there was a common theme –– the work of maintaining our communities as sources of helpful and reliable information is more important than ever.

If you have a story to share about how your community has been impacted, we’d love to hear from you. But most of all, we hope that you are well, practicing social distancing, and doing your part to stay at home as much as you can.

Here’s some of what you’ll find in this episode:

How we can help restaurants and food industry professionals as they brace for the impact of the pandemic
Tips from a remote work community on how to adapt to working out of your home
Evaluating misinformation about COVID-19 and maintaining your community as a space for accurate information

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Discourse.

Big Quotes

The shifting conversations in the Zagat community (2:50): “Instead of sharing food photos and where we’re going out to eat, we’re talking about buying gift cards for where we’re getting meal delivery from.” – @CarAnnBen

Restaurants and food industry companies are making adjustments (4:06): “A lot of folks I know in catering are actually shifting towards delivering individual meals or thinking about how they can serve individual customers as opposed to bigger events. [One friend] started delivering seasoning salts. She’s sharing recipes online. I think it’s forcing [the food industry] or encouraging them to interact with their customers and community in a different way.” –@CarAnnBen

How you can support your favorite restaurants (4:50): “Order delivery if the restaurants are still open. Remember to tip the delivery workers very generously. A lot of restaurants offer gift cards. I’d recommend calling or checking their website to see if you can get one from them directly. Then also just check on social media. Many restaurants are offering meals to people in the community at a reduced cost or for free, while they can, for people in need. That’s been great to see from the restaurant side as well. Just get in touch with them, see if they’re still open, and ask if there are ways that you can support directly.” –@CarAnnBen

Creating a separation between home and work, if you’re new to working from home (13:01): “Even if you’re working from the house, just get up and actually leave the house, go for a little walk. It might be a minute around the block and then come back or [practice] other rituals, whatever works for you. For me, I have the habit of getting up in the morning, making my coffee, and watching a talk on YouTube [or a] TED Talk. Then I get my headphones on and start listening to some ambient music. That really helps me get into the headset that I’m starting my workday. [And] for parents, it’s having conversations with the kids, around ‘mom or dad is actually working.'” –@RemoteRose

Rooting out misinformation (26:44): “We are taking a harder line on handling [information related to COVID-19] where it’s clear that the source is unknown. Particularly, when you’re a health charity, when you are supporting people who are affected by a condition that could affect their cognition, I think you have to be very careful. With dementia, somebody could have difficulties with being able to process information and they may not be taking those steps to consider the source of information and where it’s come from.” –@serenastweeting

About Our Guests * Carol Benovic-Bradley, freelance community strategist, currently with Zagat in the United States * Rose Barrett, from Ireland, co-founder of Grow Remote, a nonprofit with a mission to make remote work local * Serena Snoad, online community manager at Alzheimer’s Society, a charity in the United Kingdom

Related Links * Sponsor: Discourse, civilized discussion for teams, customers, fans, and communities * Information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic from the World Health Organization * Carol Benovic-Bradley * Zagat * We Support * Randwiches * Help Us Help The Restaurant Community by Zagat and the Infatuation * Rose Barrett on Twitter * Grow Remote * ChangeX * Serena Snoad * Alzheimer’s Society Forum * CIPR (Chartered Institute for Public Relations) * The Simplest Way to Spot Coronavirus Misinformation on Social Media, by Will Oremus

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As community professionals, the array of platforms, reading material, conferences, and thought leaders available to us only continues to grow. And if you’ve read or written a job description for a community opportunity recently, you know that there’s often an expectation around technical literacy for everyone in the field.

In a time when a lot of our day-to-day takes place in front of a screen, I felt a little punch in the gut while listening to this episode of Community Signal, when I learned that John Coate, an early community manager, had no knowledge of the tools available when he first started at The WELL. In fact, he says that his first day on the job was the first day that he sat down in front of a computer!

So, why was I surprised? Has our industry placed too much influence on speaking engagements, platform knowledge, and revenue-focused metrics instead of the values and actual community-related experience that should govern our work? As John puts it, “computers are just a way to connect people. Never forget that you’re talking to real people, and it’s good to treat them as if you really are in the same room with them.” Sounds simple, but imagine if platforms like Facebook or Twitter followed this golden rule. We’d have a much different internet today. Patrick and John discuss this exact point and the work that John is doing to get us there. Because not surprisingly, the values that guided his work at The WELL 35 years ago are the same ones we need to call upon today.

John and Patrick also talk about:

How tools like Facebook and Twitter have changed the way that we communicate with one another
John’s transition from auto mechanic to online community manager
The movement to decentralize the internet
Metrics based on relationships, sentiment, and factual statements within the community

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Discourse.

Big Quotes

The “online gift economy” that The WELL helped create (8:14): “The WELL, because of its open nature and desire to experiment, opened up chunks of the operating system for programmers to actually play with and make little utilities for the people as a way of practicing. There was this maker culture going on at the same time. As Howard Rheingold put it once, it was where the tool makers meet the tool users. In addition to being a place where people can converse, it was also a kind of birthplace of a sort of online gift economy.” -John Coate

Is web rage the new road rage? (15:15): “Just the other day, I was thinking that in a way, [web rage is] not too unlike road rage, where you can yell at somebody in the car that cut you off … knowing that it’s almost certain they’re not going to stop and make you get out of your car and work it out with them physically. It’s safe. … [Online], it is kind of a power spot that you’re sitting in. This becomes part of your identity and you’re confident and you say things and some people can too easily go about that in an ill-considered way, forgetting that if you were face-to-face with somebody in the same room, you would factor that into however you talk to them.” -John Coate

Don’t forget, there are still people new to online gatherings (16:35): “Amazingly enough, there are a lot of people who are still kind of new to online gatherings where groups try to come together in one form or another. The main thing is to remind people that the computers are just a way to connect people. Never forget that you’re talking to real people and it’s good to treat them as if you really are in the same room with them and you’re talking directly to them and do the best you can to sort of simulate mentally some feeling of that if you can pull it off, which is not exactly that simple. I think it takes practice but I think it’s easy enough to imagine, even if you haven’t really done it that much. It did take me a while to learn it frankly.” -John Coate

On creating your own online experience (25:50): “I think it should never be forgotten by anybody that even though the internet is dominated by Facebook, Amazon, all the big guys, all the big organizations, that doesn’t have to dominate your experience. You can still find, I think, almost anything you want out there if you look for it long enough and far enough or if somebody turns you on to something.” -John Coate

About John Coate John Coate started in online community work at the beginning of 1986 at The WELL in Sausalito, California. As marketing director, he focused on the user base developing relationships with each other as the basis of the community.

In 1994, he co-founded sfgate.com. As general manager until 2001, he and his team pioneered a number of innovations, many of which are now standard features on most news websites. He also spent time at gaming company Sulake and worked as an in-game adult supervisor in their avatar-based world of Habbo Hotels.

Since 2015, Mr. Coate has been working with Edgeryders, teaching online community creation and management of workshops and managing portions of European Commission funded projects around the future of the internet and the rise of populism in Europe. In particular, he hosts and manages the Edgeryders forum, Internet of Humans, as part of the larger next-generation internet initiative known as NGI Forward. Another project, The Reef, studies a deep green co-housing and co-working space.

Edgeryders is an organization and community that acts as a talent pool for social benefit projects. They also work with the Swedish group that operates a large co-working creative space on the waterfront in Stockholm called Blivande.

Related Links * Sponsor: Discourse, civilized discussion for teams, customers, fans, and communities * John Coate’s website * The WELL, where John was employee #2 and an early community manager * A friend of the show, Chrispian Burks, is recovering from a heart attack. If you’re able, please consider donating towards his recovery costs. Patrick is offering a 30-minute consultation call to anyone that donates $100 or more. * SFGate, where John served as general manager * Game company Sulake and Habbo Hotels * Edgeryders and its forum, Internet of Humans * NGI (Next Generation Internet) Forward * Blivande * The Farm, where John Coate and Matthew McClure first met * Whole Earth Catalog * Howard Rheingold, an early, active member of the WELL and a past guest on the show * Bruce Sterling on the State of the World 2020 * Discourse, the platform on which Edgeryders hosts its community * Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act * Karateforums.com turns 19 this year! * Secure Scuttlebutt, a peer-to-peer communication protocol * Sarah Hawk, VP of community at Discourse * Patrick’s book, Managing Online Forums * The Virtual Community by Howard Rheingold * Derek Powazek, author of Design for Community * Game designer, entrepreneur, and startup coach Amy Jo Kim * Rebecca Newton, founder of Virtual Community Summit * Community Signal episode discussing cultural anthropology * IMDb Shuts Down its Discussion Boards

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Every company has the challenge of managing how to respond to customer feedback. But what if you’re managing a crowdsourcing community and actively asking people for their ideas and feedback? How do you make sure that every contributor feels seen and respected for their efforts, whether their idea becomes reality or not? These are the questions that Tim Courtney and the team behind LEGO Ideas have tackled.

On a previous episode of Community Signal, we spoke to Jake McKee, who helped build LEGO’s first community team. One of the early members of that community was Tim, who would later go on to join the LEGO Ideas team. In this episode, Tim shares a history of LEGO Ideas, a space where people passionate about LEGO can submit their own ideas for new sets. And while LEGO has many designers on payroll, Tim explains why the contributions from its community pay back (and pay forward) tenfold.

Here’s more of what Tim and Patrick discuss:

How 16-year-old Tim first joined the LEGO community
The strategy behind helping all LEGO Ideas contributors feel seen and rewarded
Measuring the ROI of the LEGO Ideas community

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Discourse.

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Respecting your community’s contributions (14:08): “At LEGO in Denmark, you’ve got dozens or hundreds of professionally trained designers. They’re used to ideating and killing ideas and not getting too emotionally attached to things. [With the LEGO Ideas community], you have people whose contributions are out of pure passion or they want to contribute something back to the brand or they want to build a name for themselves or because there was a royalty and a financial reward, maybe they want to get rewarded for it. You have got to understand what their motivations are. … Really just having to understand that and build a process where as a company we’re showing respect for the fact that they’re spending their spare time passionately ideating and championing their ideas, submitting them, going out on the internet and sharing it on social media, gaining a following; that’s commendable. We are so lucky to have a group of passionate artists who are contributing to the brand.” –@timcourtney

On lauching a crowdsourcing platform (24:00): “If someone’s out there considering a crowdsourcing platform or an open innovation or idea generation platform, don’t let the ambiguity scare you from starting as long as you’re communicative, as long as you close that loop, and as long as you strive to learn and adapt and tell your audience that you’re learning and adapting.” –@timcourtney

Why LEGO shares revenue with designers of LEGO Ideas sets that reach retail (27:23): “We succeed together. … I think what was critically important to the team … is that we reward people proportionate to their contributions, and we share in the success. If a LEGO fan designer is going to contribute something to the company that drives X amount of incremental revenue, then it’s only fair – it’s only right – that they share in that reward.” –@timcourtney

The ROI of the LEGO Ideas initiative (37:00): “99% of the smartest people in the world don’t work for us. Ideas can come from anywhere. It’s about leveraging those ideas, but it’s also it’s about building those relationships with people. … I’ve had three community members come in and get hired as LEGO designers.” –@timcourtney

About Tim Courtney Tim Courtney helped build LEGO Ideas from 20,000 to over 1 million members between 2011 and 2018. This crowdsourcing and open innovation community generates tens of millions in consumer sales and earns consistently high satisfaction scores. He’s hosted developer conferences, meetups, VIP events, and advised dozens of entrepreneurs and professionals on developing their own communities.

Today, Tim Courtney works with brands, manufacturers, and startups to grow their business, build loyalty, and future-proof against disruption by leveraging community, crowdsourcing, and open innovation.

Related Links * Sponsor: Discourse, civilized discussion for teams, customers, fans, and communities * Tim Courtney’s website * LEGO Ideas * Jake McKee, the community guy, on Community Signal * LDraw, a tool for modeling 3D LEGO creations * LEGO CUUSOO, started by Christian Thor Larsen and Paal Smith-Meyer * Boaty McBoatface: What You Get When You Let the Internet Decide (New York Times) * The “Golden Girls” LEGO Ideas set * Past winners of LEGO Rebrick

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Community pro Andrew Thomas was recruited by Northwestern Mutual while working at Shapeways. On this episode, he talks about what it’s like to go from a 200-person startup to an organization with over 7,500 employees that has been around for over 160 years.

With more teammates and internal knowledge comes the added responsibility of continuously learning, introducing yourself to new people, and advocating for your work across the organization.

Andrew and Patrick also discuss:

The standardization of knowledge management practices
How Andrew thinks about self-care and burnout for himself and for his team
Getting buy-in and advocating for your work in a 7,500+ person company

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Discourse.

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Standing out on LinkedIn as a community manager (04:16): “I think [I got noticed by Northwestern Mutual because I listed] out the tools that I have had experience with. My job is to manage our self-help portal and that includes knowledge and communities. One of my last projects at Shapeways was redesigning our knowledge base. I think that when they saw, ‘Oh, knowledge base and support communities. This is perfect.’” –@athomitron

About Andrew Thomas Andrew Thomas lives in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in sculpture, Andrew moved to New York City and has started many online and offline communities across industries that include finance, entrepreneurship, 3-D printing, and gaming. He is currently the lead community manager for Northwestern Mutual.

Related Links * Sponsor: Discourse, civilized discussion for teams, customers, fans, and communities * Andrew Thomas on Twitter * Andrew’s website * Roll Control, Andrew’s fitness game inspired by Wii Fit and Super Monkey Ball * Northwestern Mutual * Shapeways * The Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS) initiative * The official Minecraft feedback forum

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Shannon Emery manages both the external customer-facing and internal employee communities at Higher Logic. With so many tasks to manage and two distinct communities to nurture, how is a community professional to focus?

Patrick and Shannon’s conversation is about just that –– the strategies and resources that she relies on to stay focused and successfully manage both communities. These strategies include:

Leaning on dotted-line team members for support and subject-matter expertise (4:19)
Adapting the principles of agile product management to her workflow (20:13)
Asking about the bigger picture before accepting new tasks or projects (20:29)

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Discourse.

Big Quotes

On transparency in workplace communities (10:30): “If an employee asks a particularly difficult question [in the internal community], let’s talk about it. Let’s be transparent. Otherwise, why do we have a community? … Just because somebody questions something doesn’t mean [that] it’s negative [or] something that we [can’t] address for everybody. … I always say that if one person has posted it, there are a bunch of people who have the same question, so let’s make sure we’re being responsive.” –@llamasayswhat

The benefits of applying agile methodologies to your workflow (30:30): “[The agile process has helped me] when an executive comes by and [asks for] something. I can say, ‘I really appreciate that, but let me see how it fits in this week’s workload.’ That way, I can actually get it done, and I’m not trying to struggle to put something together real quick just because somebody asked for it. It’s more of, ‘Let’s take the appropriate amount of time and do this the right way.’ Because as the company scales, as the customer base grows, you have to be able to scale these initiatives. Sometimes people get really excited about something small [but they haven’t thought about how to scale it to the community].” –@llamasayswhat

About Shannon Emery Shannon Emery is a community manager for Higher Logic, a provider of customer and member cloud-based engagement platforms. She’s responsible for their internal staff and external client communities. Prior to that, she was senior community manager for Blackbaud.

Related Links * Sponsor: Discourse, civilized discussion for teams, customers, fans, and communities * Shannon Emery on Twitter * Higher Logic * HUG, the Higher Logic User Group * Blackbaud * Lindsay Starke on Community Signal * Howard Rheingold on Community Signal * Super Forum, Higher Logic’s annual conference * Tweet from Anna Rose Iovine, encouraging you to document your 2020 accomplishments

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As we’ve shared on many episodes of Community Signal, community professionals come from numerous career paths, educational backgrounds, and areas of interest. In this conversation, Patrick talks with Matt Nevill, customer community manager at Agilent Technologies, about his transition from engineer to community manager. As a one-person community team, Matt discusses how he partners with other teams within his organization to ensure the success of Agilent’s community and gets advice from Patrick on when and how to scale the team.

If you’re thinking about how to justify adding another team member or quantifying your community’s value, the advice is all here. As Matt and Patrick explain it, it’s all about clearly communicating that a more engaged community means happier customers that turn into repeat customers.

They also discuss:

A support staff that was getting crushed by calls until they launched a community
The right way and time to scale your community team
Evaluating community platform options

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Discourse.

Big Quotes

Deciding when and how to scale your community team (24:25): “What I like to think about is depth versus width. We make choices all the time where we sacrifice depth for width. Meaning, how much can we interact with an individual community member? How good of an experience can we give to that one person versus serving everyone? If you throw one person into a sea with 30,000 people, then there’s a limit to how much they can actually give individualized support to those people.” –@patrickokeefe

The value of having an open community (43:47): “I think part of providing a good experience is less hurdles to jump over. If you have an open community, then people can find [your] content because it’s indexed by external search engines. Not only that, but if they just visit your community, they can poke around and read the content without feeling like they’re trapped into [creating an account]. Some people don’t want to do that. My theory is if you have a good community site that is easy and people like to use, people are going to be more willing to create a meaningful membership in that community.” -Matt Nevill

Evaluating community platforms (48:25): “When you’re weighing your [community platform] options, you want to look at what seems to be the most stable. What has a good support structure when we need help? What has a good partner network? If it doesn’t do what we want to do, what can we customize? … When you first evaluate different platforms and pick something that you’re comfortable with, you’re going to expect to be able to use it for at least probably three to five years.” -Matt Nevill

About Matt Nevill Matt Nevill has over 17 years of experience in various customer-facing and digital roles at tech companies. He is currently the customer community manager for Agilent Technologies. Agilent Technologies is a global leader in life sciences, diagnostics, and applied chemical markets. The company generated revenue of over $5 billion in fiscal 2019 and employs 16,300 people worldwide.

Over his career, Matt’s responsibilities have included community management, customer service and support, support management, systems engineering, process improvement, digital customer experience, content standards, and customer self-help strategies. He graduated from Texas A&M in 2002 with a Bachelor’s in Telecommunications Engineering Technology and later obtained an MBA from Houston Baptist University. Matt has worked remotely for the last 13 years and is based out of Houston, Texas.

Related Links * Sponsor: Discourse, civilized discussion for teams, customers, fans, and communities * Matt Nevill on LinkedIn * Agilent Technologies * The Agilent community * ADTRAN and Layer 3 Communications, where Matt worked as an engineer * Agilent wins the Frost & Sullivan award for its social media support efforts * Community platforms mentioned: Higher Logic and Khoros (Lithium and Jive)

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Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is a frequent topic of conversation on Community Signal. As Patrick puts it, if you’re a community professional in the United States, “this is the law that places the liability for speech on the author of that speech, not on you as the [community’s] host. It allows you to moderate and remove certain content while not assuming liability for what remains. I like to think of it as the legal basis for our profession in the US, and it is an important legal protection against the wealthy and powerful who would happily take down an entire online community for one post they don’t like.”

Plainly, this is a law that protects our jobs, our communities, the people in those communities, and their right to have civil and safe discussions online.

For this episode of Community Signal, we invited past guests to share how Section 230 has enabled them to foster community and what changing Section 230 could do to the fabric of online communities.

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Discourse.

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“At The Times, Section 230 allowed us to build a modern news operation where we could have a public back and forth with our readers; an ongoing one. It gave us the chance to respect them by setting rules for engagement and privileging those who spent the time to be thoughtful about the news. By allowing us to pre-moderate, and not be legally liable for any mistakes we may have made in that process, [that’s] really what made our community operation at The Times economically feasible.” –@BasseyE

“As co-founder of a community software company, I personally rely on [Section 230’s] protection every day. If we go down the path of adding caveats and exceptions to Section 230, we risk losing it altogether. Yes, online content is messy – so is freedom, so is free speech. If we still believe in those things, we need to protect the innovators, not squash them under a burden of regulatory red tape or lawsuits.” –@rhogroupee

“Yes, online communities need to be moderated and cared for and that is the precise reason why Section 230 exists, to empower moderation without creating liability. If Section 230 goes away, the main groups to benefit will not be the most vulnerable users of the internet. It will be the huge platforms uniquely possessing the resources to be compliant with whatever new regulation that they will have helped to craft.” –@losowsky

“Without the protection of Section 230, a well-meaning person or organization may lose their right to maintain a clean well-lighted space for civil discussion and capitulate to every demand regardless of its merit. An organization facilitating online community may decide to close their community altogether deciding that the risk is not worth the benefit. Who really loses when we threaten the opportunities to build meaningful communities that can have a positive impact on people’s lives?” –@scottmoore

About Our Guests * Bruce Ableson, director of evangelism and enablement at Adobe * Gail Ann Williams who consults on community conversation and craft beer, formerly of The WELL and Salon Media Group * Bassey Etim, editorial director at Canopy, formerly of The New York Times * Rosemary O’Neill, president of Social Strata * Andrew Losowsky, head of Coral at Vox Media * Scott Moore, community veteran with a focus on nonprofits * Michael Wood-Lewis, co-founder and CEO of Front Porch Forum * Angela Connor, founder and CEO at Change Agent Communications

Related Links * Sponsor: Discourse, civilized discussion for teams, customers, fans, and communities * Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act on Wikipedia * Law professor Eric Goldman on Community Signal * The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s civil liberties director David Greene on Community Signal * Patrick and Scott Moore discuss Section 230 * Bruce Ableson, founder of Open Diary * Gail Ann Williams, formerly of The WELL and Salon Media Group * Zen kōan * Bassey Etim of Canopy, formerly of The New York Times * Rosemary O’Neill, co-founder of Ultimate Bulletin Board and Hoop.la * Andrew Losowsky, head of Coral at VOX Media * Scott Moore, a 20-year community industry veteran with a focus on nonprofit * Michael Wood-Lewis, founder of Front Porch Forum * Angela Connor, founder and CEO at Change Agent Communications

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Data breaches, distasteful ads or marketing campaigns, offensive content left unmoderated for far too long… as community professionals, we’ve studied these situations when they arise and many of us have had to manage such issues in our own communities.

In this episode, Patrick and crisis communications expert Kate Hartley discuss examples of micro and macro communications crises and how to best manage them. Kate breaks down the difference between a full blown communications crisis and negative or critical response to a change. “It’s only a crisis if it’s going to stop the community [from] being able to function,” she says. “If it’s not going to stop the community being able to function, then it’s not really a crisis. It’s an issue that just needs to be well-managed.”

Kate and Patrick also discuss:

How social media and news feeds fuel outrage
Remembering your employees during a communications crisis
Setting a strategic intent for handling a communications crisis and knowing how to measure your outcomes

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Discourse.

Big Quotes

The concept of manipulated outrage (6:30): “We are more likely to post or share commentary that makes us angry. The two things we like to share are things that make us laugh and things that make us furious. The more angry we are, the more likely we are to share things. So we’re seeing more and more of this content everywhere we look.” –@katehartley

Living up to your community or organization’s values (25:18): “One of the things that will get a community to turn on you quicker than anything else is if you go against your own values. If you do something that goes against your own values, people will call that out, quite rightly. … You have to have the actions that meet the words you’re saying.” –@katehartley

Don’t forget about your employees during a communications crisis (34:40): “We see this a lot when we’re working with organizations on how to manage their reputations in a crisis. They’re so focused on the external, on what the media think, on what their outside community think, on what their customers think, [that] they forget about their own people. In some organizations, that’s a significant number of people who actually could be your greatest advocates. … These are people who are going to be talking to their friends, to their families, [and] they need to believe in you. They need to believe that you’re doing the right thing. They need to share your values, they need to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. If you have an employee community, what better place to talk to them and explain exactly what’s going on [during] the crisis.” –@katehartley

Measuring whether or not you’ve managed a crisis successfully (40:23): “The measurement for [the successful handling of a] crisis has to come quite a long time after the crisis is over to really understand the full impact that crisis had. It needs to reflect what you wanted as the objective from managing the crisis right at the beginning. If you bear that in mind at the beginning, everything you do will be informed by it. How you communicate, how you behave, what you ask the business to do for you. Everything will then be informed by that objective. Then six months down the line, you can look back and say, ‘Did we meet that strategic intent? Did we behave in the way we said we were going to? Did we retain the loyalty of our customers? Are our communities healthy?’ That’s how you measure it.” –@katehartley

About Kate Hartley Kate Hartley is the co-founder of Polpeo, a crisis simulation company that helps some of the biggest brands in the world prepare to deal with a crisis as it breaks and spreads over social and digital media. She is the author of Communicate in a Crisis, a book that explores the changing way people behave in crisis situations, and how organizations respond.

Kate has 25 years of agency-side experience in crisis and reputation management and corporate PR. She is also a trainer in crisis communications for the PRCA, the UK’s PR industry association, where she sits on the digital steering committee, designed to shape digital best practices in the PR industry. She has spoken at and run workshops on the impact of social media on crisis management at international events including SXSW, The Global PR Summit, PR Week’s Crisis Comms, and Social Media Today’s Social Shake Up.

Related Links * Sponsor: Discourse, civilized discussion for teams, customers, fans, and communities * Kate Hartley on Twitter * Polpeo, a crisis simulation company * Communicate in a Crisis * PRCA (Public Relations and Communication Association) and CIPR (Chartered Institute of Public Relations) * The Social Element * Dr. Molly Crockett on moral outrage in the digital age * Rohit Bhargava on manipulated outrage * Streisand effect * Derek Powazek on Community Signal * Ocado says fire at robotic warehouse cost it more than £100m * Jonathan Hemus, UK crisis expert

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Communicate in a Crisis: Understand, Engage and Influence Consumer Behaviour to Maximize Brand Trust

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If you’ve ever Googled a medical condition or a new symptom that you’ve experienced you know that the search results leave much to be desired. When Nina Lorez Collins posted about symptoms of perimenopause on Facebook, she saw that many women in her network were looking for a space to talk about the same symptoms that she was experiencing. The conversation flourished into a Facebook group of over 30,000 women looking for answers and support through all stages of menopause and aging.

As the What Would Virginia Woolf Do? community (now The Woolfer) continued to grow, it tested the limits of Facebook’s product and support and Nina found herself looking for alternatives. She faced the realization that she could not sustain the group as a free community. It needed dedicated resources and income to continue operating at the same level. If you’re looking to launch or move your community to a paid model or debating changing community platforms, Nina offers lots of suggestions on what to consider as you’re negotiating with new platforms and keeping your community in the loop.

Nina and Patrick discuss:

Recognizing the product limitations of community platforms, along with your community’s product must-haves
The emotional, financial, and product hurdles that come with moving from one platform to another
How Woolfers stepped up to help those that wanted to join the paid community but couldn’t afford it

Big Quotes

On feeling used by Facebook (3:44): “As we grew, [Facebook] would occasionally reach out to us [because] they were interested in featuring us in videos or they asked us if we wanted to join their subscription pilot when they started it. We had ended up saying no. Every time we tried to reach out to them with a question or for help with something, we wouldn’t hear from anyone. They would direct us to their big Facebook groups for people who are managing groups, but it was so impersonal, and I started to feel a little bit used. Here we were directing all this traffic and having all this intense engagement and we couldn’t really get an answer from anyone.” -Nina Lorez Collins

Facebook’s propensity to silently take features away (4:21): “[With Facebook Groups], we would lose features. We had the topics feature for a long time, which we really loved and used and then it disappeared one day. Dozens of times, we wrote to Facebook and couldn’t figure out where it had gone and couldn’t get an answer. The lack of ability to communicate with these people who were essentially hosting us was impossible. … It started to feel increasingly over time like there was so much we couldn’t control, and it didn’t make sense. I started to feel a little bit like we were slaving away for this machine that we couldn’t manage the way we wanted to.” -Nina Lorez Collins

The pros and cons of breaking away from Facebook (22:05): “A friend said to me, ‘… I’ve come to be addicted to Facebook. I’m not feeling addicted to the [new community] app, so I have to remember to check it.’ I thought that was interesting. On the one hand, we’re relieved that we’re breaking our addiction to Facebook, this thing that we resent. On the other hand, it is like second nature to all of us. I mean, they’ve made it very smooth. While our app has a lot of the same features, it’s different.” -Nina Lorez Collins

Thoughtful Woolfers addressed the barrier of joining a paid community (28:40): “We were very concerned about people who might feel that the cost [of joining the paid community] was prohibitive, and we immediately had lots of Woolfers offering scholarships. We did create a way for members who wanted to sponsor people and for people who wanted to be sponsored. We’ve to date, I think, sponsored 280 women. [They] have gotten into the app for free through the generosity of other Woolfers, which is awesome.” -Nina Lorez Collins

About Nina Lorez Collins Nina Lorez Collins is the founder of The Woolfer, a community for women over 40. The Woolfer started as a Facebook group called “What Would Virginia Woolf Do?” and has recently migrated to its own platform and app.

Nina has written a book, What Would Virginia Woolf Do? And Other Questions I Ask Myself As I Attempt to Age Without Apology, which came out in April 2018. She’s a graduate of Barnard College, has a Masters degree from Columbia in the field of Narrative Medicine, and has a long professional background in book publishing, both as a literary scout and then as an agent. She has four nearly grown children and lives in Brooklyn.

Related Links * Nina Lorez Collins on Facebook * The Woolfer * The Woolfer Facebook page * What Would Virginia Woolf Do? And Other Questions I Ask Myself As I Attempt to Age Without Apology * The Grown and Flown Facebook group * Mighty Networks (formerly known as Mighty Bell) * TopFan * Why Paid Apps Could Be the Future of Online Communities (via Tech.co)

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What Would Virginia Woolf Do?: And Other Questions I Ask Myself as I Attempt to Age Without Apology

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Communities are good for business, but are businesses good for communities? This question has come up on the show before, specifically when we spoke to community hosts losing their Yahoo Groups and when IMDb’s message boards were closed and erased. What happens when corporation-led communities are determined to have outlived their usefulness to the corporation, but not to the members? Does this lead to more grassroots-led communities? How will the tools and examples we’ve created serve those grassroots communities?

Bailey Richardson, a community professional that helped build Instagram and recently co-authored Get Together, and Patrick address these questions on this episode, as well as:

The current community software landscape and why there’s still room for growth
What happens when you need to demote or ban a community leader
Why graffiti is allowed on Instagram

Big Quotes

Not all interactions can infinitely scale (10:08): “When we left [Instagram], people on our team [asked], ‘What’s the one thing that we should remember?’ Our response was treating people well on a one-on-one basis, on a very human level, I think does scale. Those interactions that you build that are deep touch interactions, I think actually can have a very big impact on culture, on a platform overall, and that’s a principle that I think a lot of people try, as their businesses get larger, to do anything in their power to not do high touch things with a small number of people. … I participated in building one of the fastest-growing companies in the world. Some of what made the platform special was the fact that we met people who really cared about our platform where they were and got to know them and celebrated them.” –@baileyelaine

How boundaries keep communities on track (17:40): “Sometimes the structure that you put in can help people actually access the value they want from you in the first place. … If I’m coming to your karate forum, I want to talk about karate. I’m not showing up to talk about politics.” –@baileyelaine

When business goals outweigh community values (44:20): “There’s something quite fragile about someone showing up for something that they care so much about that they contribute an outsized amount of effort to with very little expectation of any kind of financial or real reward in their life. … The thing that I worry most about is the reality of business is that ensuring those people’s enjoyment, happiness, and respect is not the primary goal. … It’s just painful to see them let down when you know the purity of the way they showed up for you, and when you can’t match them with that, it’s just a difficult thing to carry around.” –@baileyelaine

About Bailey Richardson Three years ago, Bailey Richardson started People & Company with Kai Elmer Sotto and Kevin Huynh, on a mission is to help people bring their people together. People & Company works with organizations to make smarter bets about investing in communities. They also interview extraordinary people organizers on their podcast Get Together, and in August 2019, they published Get Together, a book about how to build communities today based on the research and strategy work they’ve done with hundreds of community organizers.

Bailey was also one of the first 10 employees at Instagram, working on the community team. She has also worked for IDEO, StoryCorps, Pop-Up Magazine and The California Sunday Magazine, made a short film about a Pinoy inventor named Dado Banatao, interviewed Russians who are LGBTQ about what their lives are really like, asked Casey Neistat how to make and share videos people love, and started a Mola Mola Fan Club.

Related Links * Bailey Richardson on Twitter * Get Together, a book on building community with your people, written by Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh, and Kai Elmer Sotto * Get Together, a podcast about the nuts and bolts of community building, hosted by Bailey, Kevin, and Kai * People & Company, the consultancy that Bailey co-founded * Quitting Instagram: She’s one of the millions disillusioned with social media. But she also helped create it. (via the Washington Post) * Drew Kelly, an early Instagram user * Tonic is a curated news app from Canopy * Bassey Etim is the editorial director at Canopy and former guest on Community Signal * Bogleheads, a community inspired by John Bogle’s investment ideologies * Bailey names the following community platforms: Groups.io, Mighty Networks, Disciple, and Mixr * Patrick names the following community platforms: Discourse, xenForo, and Invision * Sarah Hawk is the vice president of community and product at Discourse * CreativeMornings * Heather Champ and the Biggest Threats to Great Online Communities * Howard Rheingold, founder of the WELL * IMDb’s Message Boards and Why Trolls Don’t Force Communities to Close

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Earlier this month, Verizon Media, the parent to Yahoo, announced that users of Yahoo Groups had until October 28th to continue posting in their groups and until December of this year to archive all of their conversations. After December, 18+ years of conversations will be erased from Verizon Media’s servers and the internet entirely.

Obviously, the community is fighting back. Administrators of these groups, most of whom are unpaid volunteers, are working tirelessly to download their data, collect the email addresses of their community members and, in some cases, move people over to a new platform. As community professionals, we know that a migration like this can take months of planning, research, and communication to our communities. In this case, administrators had two weeks to figure things out.

In this episode, Patrick talks to two avid organizers of Yahoo Groups about the next steps for their communities and what they hope will come out of this situation. In both cases, they want the connections and resources fostered in their Yahoo Groups to be preserved.

Patrick and our guests, Susan Kang and Deane Rimerman, also discuss:

The new tools that Deane and Susan will use to host their communities and why Nextdoor isn’t one of them
What it’s really like to download your data from Yahoo Groups
The importance of communities as archives and spaces for political action

Big Quotes

Will legislators step in to protect our data? (11:59): “I find it fascinating that in Europe, they passed legislation to give you the right to be forgotten on the internet and this is almost like the opposite. It’s like what rights do we have? Obviously, we’re all guilty of entrusting our personal data, our community’s data, to a corporation that didn’t make very many good decisions, but at the same time we as a community created this data and it’s going to take legislation, it’s going to take new laws to actually protect this data. Unless there’s a lot of political pressure before December 14th, we’re going lose this data.” –@deanerimerman

The Yahoo Groups shutdown is diluting the impact and purpose of communities (35:24): “I posted something recently asking people to call Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office [in response to ConEdison raising utility rates to subsidize their fracking practices]. … Ordinarily, this would have gotten much more of a response. People are so hung up right now on ‘What’s the future of Yahoo Groups?’ [that] I didn’t get much of a response. … There’s a lot of interesting and important political work that we need to be doing. That’s getting lost in the fray because people are like, ‘Where’s my Google Group invite?'” –@Solidaritybitch

The inevitable loss of members due to this change (44:46): “We’re definitely going to lose quite a lot of people because many of the people who are members of the group, they didn’t even check their emails. They just occasionally log onto the interface and see what’s going on. We’re just going to lose them. I’m really sad about that.” –@Solidaritybitch

On the importance of archiving (47:20): “My biggest concern in terms [of] online data and archiving is that I want people fifty years from now, a hundred years from now, who are researching projects and want to know the origins of great ideas and origins that made the world a better place, I want them to be able to dig through all of this information and find gems and find great stories and find, especially when it comes to the genealogy, remarkable people in their last years started sending emails and started writing some of their thoughts and ideas, and we’ll never know who those people were. There was a chance we could have if we had more protection of our data.” –@deanerimerman

About Deane Rimerman Deane Rimerman is an archivist and content editor who manages Warrior Poets Society, an eco-poetry group that dates back to 2001. He’s also involved with several other groups.

About Susan Kang Susan Kang is an associate professor at John Jay College. She is responsible for the Jackson Heights Families Yahoo Group for parents, caretakers, and families living in Jackson Heights, New York who are interested in building a community with other families. It was started in 2004 and has over 4,000 members.

Related Links * Susan Kang on Twitter * Deane Rimerman on Twitter * Yahoo’s announcement about the coming changes to Yahoo Groups * eGroups.com * Yahoo Groups Is Winding Down and All Content Will Be Permanently Removed via VICE * Community Signal episode about Photobucket’s changes with Jessamyn West and Jonathan Bailey * Community Signal episode about IMDB’s message board closure with Timo Tolonen * Robert D. Putnam on social capital * Archive.org * Deleting Yahoo Groups will leave a permanent stain on Yahoo’s legacy via Fast Company * Groups.io * Yahoo users united to right the Yahoo wrongs * Nextdoor Rolls Out Product Fix It Hopes Will Stem Racial Profiling via Buzzfeed News * In Jackson Heights * How New York Politics Has Changed via Jacobin * Posterous * Jackson Heights Life bulletin board * Armed with Visions * The Armed with Visions blog

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For communities that come with a membership fee, direct revenue might seem like the top benefit for your company. But the Daily Maverick’s membership program gives them direct access to their most engaged readers, which has created benefits beyond revenue. The Daily Maverick has hired employees through its community, grown new company verticals thanks to the support of its community, and has given readers and writers a way to interact directly with one another about the stories they’re most interested in.

Styli Charalambous, the co-founder and publisher of Daily Maverick, also shares the unique perspective of a founder building a membership program from the ground up, who then hires a member of the community to run the show. This episode will leave you with great starting points for discussing the ROI of community programs and a lot of inspiration around how to keep community members engaged.

Styli and Patrick also discuss:

Why Daily Maverick doesn’t have a paywall on its website
How Daily Maverick approaches comments and allowing access to its community
Daily Maverick‘s robust events and publishing strategy

Big Quotes

The goals and value of Maverick Insider (4:05): “The primary focus on this effort is to build this community and to engage with the community. It’s not [about] making money. Making money is a byproduct of doing that job well and growing the community and having a healthy level of engagement and support and interaction with those community members. That’s the difference. [The community is not] just a transactional thing that is the gatekeeper access to content, it’s about relationships, and that’s the key differentiator in my mind between a membership program and a subscription program or even a donation program.” –@StyliChara

Giving reporters a space to interact with their readers (13:50): “Some of our journalists still have PTSD from the previous comments platform. Some aren’t that keen on participating in comments. We’re not going to force them. … Some say they prefer to engage with members and readers in event format and so they’ll do it in the physical space. Obviously, the more politicized the contents, the easier it is for it to descend into toxicity. We find certain sections of the site, some journalists are more open to participating and engaging in the comments section than some trickier content areas.” –@StyliChara

About Styli Charalambous Styli Charalambous is the co-founder and publisher of Daily Maverick, a 10-year-old startup, focusing on news, analysis, and investigative journalism, based in South Africa. He oversees all non-editorial functions of the business and is a reformed accountant. He is the architect of their membership plan, Maverick Insider, and has written for the publication on business, sport, media, and other topics.

Related Links * Styli Charalambous on Twitter * The Daily Maverick * Maverick Insider * How the Daily Maverick developed its membership program via Nieman Lab * Civil Comments * Coral * Andrew Losowsky, head of the Coral Project, on Community Signal * Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act

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On this episode of Community Signal, community management consultant Tanja Laub gives a full report on what it’s like to work as a community manager in Germany. And perhaps not too surprising, the experience is not dissimilar to what guests from the United States and other countries have described. Tanja shares a breakdown of community manager responsibilities, typical salaries, and the limitations and opportunities that she’s seen in the field so far.

Tanja is also a chairperson for BVCM, an association for Germany community managers, where she has helped develop a certification procedure for community and social media managers. Rather than requiring professionals to take a class to become certified, community managers instead verify their professional history and some other details about themselves to get the certification. Between that and her work to help organizations refine their hiring needs and community manager role descriptions, Tanja is helping to set the standard for what it means to work in community management.

Tanja and Patrick also discuss:

The value of certifications
How moderation norms compare to other countries, like Australia and the United States
What Tanja sees as areas of opportunity for communities in Germany

Big Quote

On building your community with your community (18:40): “If you’re [making] changes [to the community] without them knowing, [community members will ask:] ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you change that?’ Even if it’s a minor thing. The greatest [thing] … would be to develop the community together with the users, to ask them in advance, ‘How do you want to have that feature? What works best for you? Here are two versions, look at them, work with them. Which one do you want to have? Which one shall we put into the community? What kinds of changes should we make?'” –@TanjaOnTour

About Tanja Laub Tanja Laub has worked in community management since 2006. She spoke communities for a big European media company RTL Media Group, including one about cooking, the other for women, and was head of community for Douglas, a perfume chain, essentially the European Sephora.

Since 2010, she has been a community and social media management consultant with a focus on own platforms. Tanja also gives trainings and workshops. Since 2017, she has been the chairwoman of BVCM, a German association for professional community and social media managers. They’re offering certifications and define the job descriptions to help companies better understand who they want to hire and what they need. The organization also conducts a survey to better know the market and problems of their professionals.

Related Links * Tanja Laub on Twitter * Walkabout Media * CommunityManagement.de * RTL Media Group and Douglas, where Tanja previously worked * BVCM, the Federal Association for Community Managers * 2019 Australian Community Managers Career Survey * Community builder, manager, and strategist Venessa Paech * Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz, or NetzDG * Bianca Oertel, a community professional who works at Motor Talk * Chefkoch, a cooking and baking community * Voycer, a software company focused on the German market * Article by Tanja about the role of a community manager on company-owned platforms * Julie Hamel on Community Signal

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On Community Signal, we talk to community professionals across all industries, from gaming, to healthcare, to photography, and more. And while our respective communities might convene over different topics, the tactics and tools that we employ to foster healthy communities are largely the same. In this episode, Craig Dalrymple shares how his community career started in gaming and how that knowledge has carried him into other industries.

Patrick and Craig also get on the topic of customer success, the rise of roles in this space, and how community professionals can have an impact. But no matter what team you’re on or what your title is, what’s most important is that you feel empowered in your role and that you have the tools to succeed. As Craig says (8:48): “Can I do something here? Can I move the needle? Can I take this community and make it happier and bind it better with this product that they’re getting together around?”

They also discuss:

Balancing being yourself and a community manager in your online presence
Finding opportunities to surprise and delight (potential) customers outside of your community
When your employer wants metrics they won’t adequately give you access to

Big Quotes

Adapting your discipline to your company’s org structure (7:55): “I've always tried to think like a chameleon. Whenever you go into a company, they're going to put you where they think you belong. ... This is just another version of that question of where does the community person belong? For me, it's can you have a satisfactory job? Because if you don't have a satisfactory job, in my opinion, if you're not happy working, that's the time to question your job. But if you can have a job that you're satisfied with and have the impact you want, it doesn't matter where they put you.” -Craig Dalrymple

Determining your company’s success language (21:09): “I’ve always taught people to figure out what the language of success is at [your workplace]. It doesn’t matter what it was in your last job, it’s where you’re at right now. What does this company respond to? What resonates and gets everybody to go, ‘Oh, that’s important.'” -Craig Dalrymple

About Craig Dalrymple Craig Dalrymple got his start in online communities when he helped configure Confer as a class discussion tool for his alma mater, Western Michigan University. Since then, Craig has served in the US Army and later found his way back into gaming communities by way of Sony, Zynga, and more.

Related Links * Craig Dalrymple on LinkedIn * Confer * Sony, Zynga, and The Project Management Institute, Craig’s former employers * Gabe Graziani of Ubisoft on Community Signal * Zack Cooper of Ubisoft on Community Signal * Joe King on Community Signal * Hug Your Haters by Jay Baer

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Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers

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A few weeks ago, the Community Signal team was discussing the upcoming schedule for the show and talking about the then recent news that Ravelry had decided to ban any pro-Trump related content. Community guidelines and how we moderate conversations in our respective communities are frequent topics on Community Signal, and it’s also something that we work on everyday as community professionals. If you’re contemplating new community guidelines, revising your existing ones, or debating a tough moderation decision, this episode has some terrific insights from Heather Champ.

Sharing stories from her time guiding community at Flickr, Tumblr, and more, it’s most interesting to hear from Heather not about exciting new tools and automations, but instead about how much empowering community members with options, filters, and clear community guidelines can create flourishing spaces for expression. Heather also brings up a very important topic –– the level of vulnerability that community managers face in their jobs and the repercussions of trolling and stalking as we become more deeply embedded in our communities. With Heather’s experience comes deep insights and knowledge, but also a clear message that we need to pay attention to the roles and protections that we’re building for community managers and our communities.

Patrick and Heather discuss:

Why algorithms can’t replace moderators
How Flickr created a safe space for sharing adult content
The role that Section 230 plays in fostering healthy conversations for everyone, including community managers

Big Quotes

Defining clear community guidelines and sticking to them (8:10): “A company can decide what is and isn't appropriate and then have the strength to stand up and say we're not going to tolerate this behavior because you are, as a company, what you allow people to post.” –Heather Champ

The role of humor in community management (38:52): “As people who are representing the voice of a company or representing trying to talk about these things, where I see things go off the rails is people not understanding that while you can always make fun of yourself or the company as a whole, you can’t use humor to make fun of other people or even other individuals within your company. I love making fun of myself. That’s not a problem. Just be very careful of what might come across like your humor at somebody else’s expense.” –Heather Champ

How Section 230 protects those you agree with and those you don’t (47:59):“Section 230 is the same law that protected me when I was 13 years old and started moderating content. It’s the same law that protects me now. [It applies to] big companies, small companies. It’s the thing that says that you can have a space where you can say, ‘This isn’t okay.’ It doesn’t matter what that is. If you want to start a community and you’re a Republican and you want to make it so that no one can say bad things about the president, Section 230 has got your back. You can do that.” –@patrickokeefe

On the implications of working in community management (54:41): “Flickr was the best of times and the worst of times. It was absolutely magical, but a lot of what happened there has had a lasting impact. I’m on a [Department of Justice] victims list for extortion because somebody was upset that their account was deleted and they threatened to put my face on pornography and flood it out there. … Subsequently to that, I was at a different company where I insisted on having a persona because I was so completely freaked out by … other issues with harassment and stalking that happened.” –Heather Champ

About Heather Champ Heather Champ built her first homepage in 1994 and has worked online ever since. Joining Flickrimmediately after the acquisition by Yahoo in 2005, she cowrote Flickr’s community guidelines, which became a template for best practices around the web.

Heather has led community teams at Flickr, Findery, and FiftyThree and consulted with Tumblr, Etsy, and VSCO. Enamored with photography, she created The Mirror Project (1999–2005), a website that celebrated self-portraiture well before “selfies” were a thing, and cofounded JPG Magazine, the photography magazine made by its community. She lives outside of Portland on two acres with her husband and continues to learn new things about communities from their dogs, goats, chickens, and turkeys.

Related Links * Heather Champ on Instagram * Flickr * The Mirror Project * JPG Magazine * Facebook’s $5 billion FTC fine is an embarrassing joke * Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act * Twitter’s rules * Derek Powazek on Community Signal * The Right Way to Build an Online Community: 3 Rules From Investor and Flickr Cofounder Caterina Fake * Ravelry bans Trump support: why a popular knitting website’s anti-Trump stanceis so significant * Milk Barn Farm Tumblr * Tom Coates’ take on Flickr * #RollFilmWeek * Flickr’s safe, moderate, and restricted content definitions * DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) * Flickr’s community guidelines, which Heather co-wrote with George Oates * David Greene, senior staff attorney and civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, on Community Signal * WeTransfer, where Heather currently works * Senator Ron Wyden, Christopher Cox, and Senator Ed Markey * The Telecommunications Act of 1996 * SESTA and FOSTA

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If you work in games, social media, or community management, then you know that running any communications or programming around conventions like E3 and PAX requires intense planning and coordination. Fresh off of his first on the ground activation at E3, Joe King, social media manager for GameStop, shares the ups and downs of working conventions and of working in games community management. He also shares his strategy for engaging with games communities whether he is walking the convention floor for the first time or covering the event on social media from a remote location.

Joe’s career path into community management started with his love of games and quickly accelerated when he got creative with his resume. His advice for those looking to get into community management or any other field stands out: Start small, with tangible projects that can level up your skills.

Joe and Patrick discuss:

What Joe did to make his resume standout when he was applying for a community position at Gearbox Software
Why numbers don’t matter when you’re starting out as a streamer
How landing a “dream job” can feel simultaneously exciting and paralyzing

Big Quotes

Authentic content is a must for any community: “I really love [working with] influencers, because the really smart ones know that you shouldn’t get caught up in your numbers for a while. Start your channel and then just start making things. Start streaming. … Then eventually, as your content gets better and better and more people see it, they’re going to realize that it’s authentic, and there’s value in it. It’s going to naturally grow [and] your audience is going to naturally grow.” –@jauxking

Battling imposter syndrome when starting a new career path: “When I left [my first job in gaming], I realized that the amount of fear and anxiety that I was living with every day was crippling. … Then I left, and I realized that it was never about the job in terms of what I was doing, it was about the job in terms of what I had. I was so scared to lose it that I didn’t have the confidence that I used to have. … It took leaving to get where I am now.” –@jauxking

About Joe King Joe King runs social media initiatives for GameStop. He is the former community manager for Gearbox Software and Gearbox Publishing, and has worked on such games as Borderlands, Battleborn, We Happy Few, Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition, and many more.

He recently launched Just Press Start, a podcast in which he chats with friends in the gaming industry and adjacent disciplines about what they do, how they got started, and what advice they can offer others (including him!) on how they can best achieve their personal or professional goals, rooted in gaming or not!

Related Links * Joe King on Twitter and Instagram * Just Press Start –– Joe’s podcast * Gamestop, where Joe works in social media management * The tweet that Patrick posted when he first launched Community Signal * E3, PAX, and Gamescom * Joe also worked at Gearbox Software and Gearbox Publishing, and has worked on such games as Borderlands, Battleborn, We Happy Few, and Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition * Brad Williams, CEO and co-founder of WebDevStudios.com, former guest on Community Signal * Courtney Caldwell, senior community manager at GameStop * Major Nelson Radio * More than 1,500 people have lost their jobs in the games industry in three months

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How would the internet change if Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is repealed? For U.S.-based online communities and the professionals that work for them, not for the better. In fact David Greene, senior staff attorney and civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argues that some websites and communities would disappear altogether. They simply wouldn’t be able to exist with the risk that republishing content could bring.

If you want to talk to your colleagues, your community, or your elected officials about how Section 230 protects everyone who uses and works on the internet, consider this episode your primer. Patrick and David also discuss misconceptions about Section 230 and why it’s important for all community professionals to pay attention to attempts to repeal this law.

Here’s what’s covered:

The basics of Section 230, including who it protects and how
How FOSTA intended to regulate sex trafficking and ultimately regulated so much more
What elected officials are saying and hearing about Section 230

Big Quotes

A summary of the protections that Section 230 provides: “Section 230 provides an immunity from liability for any internet … user or service provider for republishing somebody else’s content. Whereas, in another situation, you might have borne some legal liability because you republished something somebody else said or wrote, when you do that online, you cannot be liable for that. … [For example,] if you forward an email and the email you forward has awful stuff in it, you can’t be liable because the content you forwarded harmed somebody in some way. The original person who wrote the email can, but you just merely as the intermediary who forwarded the email cannot.” –@davidgreene

How Section 230 protects us all, not just “Big Tech”: “Section 230 protects any person or any entity that publishes other people’s content online. That is pretty much every person and entity that I know. There’s nothing in its language that limits it to Big Tech. I actually hear this a lot from my friends in the legacy news media community who feel like Big Tech got this statutory advantage that they don’t have. I always tell them, ‘Look, you publish online. You publish news online. Some of you are exclusively online news, and you enjoy the same protection when you are an intermediary, when you publish wire service stories, when you publish reader comments, when you publish advertisements. All these things are not your own content. You get the exact same protection that anybody, that Big Tech does, regardless of what that means.'” –@davidgreene

What community managers can do to protect Section 230: “Pay attention to efforts to limit Section 230. I think it’s actually really helpful even now just to contact your elected officials and to explain to them why it’s important to you. … They are constantly hearing from people who are blaming the whole litany of woes on Section 230 and who are talking about the bad anecdotes because Section 230 undoubtedly does protect bad actors. Any immunity is going to do that. It’s going to protect the good actors and the bad actors. Members of Congress tend to hear a lot of the bad actors’ stories. That’s what causes them to want to legislate.” –@davidgreene

About David Greene David Greene is the senior staff attorney and civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He has significant experience litigating First Amendment issues in state and federal trial and appellate courts and is one of the country’s leading advocates for and commentators on freedom of expression in the arts.

Related Links * David Greene on Twitter * Electronic Frontier Foundation * Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act * Law professor Eric Goldman on Community Signal * FOSTA and how it has impacted the internet * The Internet Society * Engine * Section 230 Is Not A Special “Tech Company” Immunity * Ron Wyden, Ed Markey, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren * Backpage

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When did you first realize that community management was an actual job? Many of the guests on Community Signal, including Patrick and this week’s guest, Shreyas Narayanan Kutty, got their start in community management by volunteering for causes or topics that they were passionate about. After building communities as a volunteer for the Mozilla Foundation, Shreyas found himself surrounded by community professionals and realized that he wanted to take his work full-time.

Shreyas now manages the developer relations community for CoinList, and with seven years of experience managing communities, he has observed a lot of positive change in how the community profession is perceived in India.

Patrick and Shreyas discuss:

How they each came to the realization that community management can be a viable job
Opportunities for growth and specialization in the community management profession
The practices and guidelines that lay the foundation for successful developer communities

Big Quotes

Community management as a career in India: “[In India] the job seeker layer understands communities now … but I think change really comes when the top layer, or the hiring layer, really understands communities. When they say, ‘We know that this is how our business can benefit [from community]; this is the ROI of communities.’ They’ve taken that decision to invest in it. That’s when you understand that this [career] is successful.” –@dun3buggi3

On searching for community management jobs: “When I was looking for the job in community … a lot of these companies were really looking for business development or sales or growth hacking. They were just sugar coating it with the title ‘community manager,’ which was really interesting to me because I know that for them it sounded appealing but they really didn’t want to invest in communities. I’ve actually had that conversation with founders where I’m telling them that, ‘This is a wrong understanding of community, this is not what community management is. If you really want to invest in communities, you probably should think about it this way and not what you’re doing right now.'” –@dun3buggi3

Getting started in community management: “When we go to events, when people just come up to me and say, ‘How do I get a role? How do I get started in this industry?,’ I tell them that if you’re really passionate about it, there’s nothing that can stop you. I know it sounds like a cliché, but there’s nothing that can stop you from achieving that. My first go-to tips are try to volunteer for an organization that you really care about. Then eventually that might get converted to a paid position but don’t do it because you’re motivated by that, do it because you genuinely care about the cause.” –@dun3buggi3

Setting a standard for how we communicate about our work: “We’ve talked about these exact things on the show, community management versus social media management and the confusion there. For me, it’s the difference between tools and strategy, that’s how I try to simplify for people. Social media is a toolset. It’s a toolset that’s used by marketing, by human resources, by customer service. Community is a strategy you apply to a toolset. It’s a different set of goals and beliefs.” –@patrickokeefe

About Shreyas Narayanan Kutty Shreyas Narayanan Kutty is a community manager primarily based in Bangalore, India. A computer science engineer by education, he succumbed to the lure of building communities and took up community management as a full-time profession. He recently joined the CoinList team to work on their developer community. Shreyas is also a volunteer with the Mozilla Foundation.

Shreyas is passionate about digital inclusion and building an open and accessible web. He runs Community Managers India, a resource for professionals with questions about the industry.

Related Links * Shreyas Narayanan Kutty’s website * Shreyas on Twitter * CoinList, where Shreyas works on their developer community * Shreyas’s contributions to Mozilla * Community Managers India on Twitter * Swarm Conference, Australia’s community management conference * Vanessa Paech on Community Signal * Telegram, a messaging app * VK, also known as VKontakte * Instagram to test hiding public likes count in Canada

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When Trello was acquired by Atlassian, Erica Moss went from being a team of one to a community manager with a supportive and specialized team. With this came the challenge of supporting Atlassian’s Community Leaders program, a group of Atlassian experts that share their knowledge with others. Tasked with taking the community from a Q&A forum to something more, Erica focused on what she thought would keep community members coming back and the “warm fuzzies” that would help community leaders define their tone and new members feel welcome.

And while Erica has grown the Community Leaders program from 60 to 128 members, it’s not quantity that she’s optimizing for. Because Community Leaders are representatives of Atlassian’s products and brand, she’s focused on finding leaders that can speak with accuracy about the suite of products and with a thoughtful tone.

In this episode of Community Signal, Erica talks about what makes the Community Leaders program successful and a value-add for its members. She and Patrick also discuss:

The different roles on Atlassian’s community team and why specialization is so important
Foursquare’s 10-year anniversary and why Erica is proud to be a superuser
The “invisible work” involved in community management and how Erica’s team brings transparency to their work

Big Quotes

The story behind the Atlassian community: “Initially, the community looked more like a Q&A forum. Someone would post a question, users who felt that they could offer any value would jump in and it was very transactional. That works in some context but I think what we find with products in the Atlassian suite specifically is there’s a lot of nuance. There’s a lot of value in [having] multiple opinions. … We really wanted to double down on that and nurture that, so that’s where you see two years ago where we switched from a Q&A forum to what is now our community built on Lithium. In doing so [we said], ‘We really want to create a sense of ownership and a sense of, “Let’s really build this thing that we know is special and we know is magical.” Let’s get some stewards of the community and really create some ownership there.'” –@EricaJMoss

On building a community that’s a conversation space: “If I think the community is not welcoming or approachable, I can treat it as a transaction. … What is my motivation to come back? What are the warm fuzzies? Why should I invest my time with these other humans?” –@EricaJMoss

Advocating for your work will make you a better community professional: “As community managers sometimes it’s tough for us to be advocates for ourselves and champions for ourselves. I had a conversation with someone recently on the team because it doesn’t always feel natural, and it doesn’t feel easy to toot your own horn and say, ‘Hey, I did this and this was the impact of it.’ It’s so important, and I think the more cognizant you are of it, and the more you practice that, the better you will be as a community professional overall.” –@EricaJMoss

About Erica Moss With roots in journalism, Erica Moss marries her background as a professional storyteller with her passion for connecting people as the senior manager of community engagement at Atlassian, helping to nurture and grow the Community Leaders program. Outside of work, she loves theater, photography, TV, pop culture, hyperbole, and cured meats.

Related Links * Erica Moss on Twitter and Instagram * The Atlassian Community * Atlassian’s Community Leaders Program * How to become an Atlassian Community Leader * Stack Overflow * Let Me Google That For You * The Atlassian Authors Program * Foursquare and Swarm

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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For all of of the convenience and value that tech companies and platforms provide, we’re also starting to see just how much they take away. In this episode, Michael Wood-Lewis, the co-founder of Front Porch Forum, shares how big tech facilitates connections between people, but at both a monetary and social cost.

In this episode, Michael and Patrick discuss how tech platforms optimize for engagement, back and forth between their users. But Front Porch Forum optimizes for actual conversations, not just online, but in person around civic engagement, and for things like borrowing a ladder or finding a plumber. If we take these conversations back, what happens to big tech?

Michael also shares:

The importance of authenticity on Front Porch Forum
What happened when local politicians realized the power of engaging with constituents through Front Porch Forum
How Front Porch Forum creates the feeling of a neighborhood block party online

Big Quotes

How big tech removes autonomy from local communities: “A vibrant local community, part of it is a functional local government. You need engaged citizens, and you need a vibrant local business sector if you want to have a healthy community. … It’s hard to do that in the age of Amazon and Facebook.” -Michael Wood-Lewis

On the pacing of discussions on Front Porch Forum: “What’s the benefit of rushing [to post]? On more than one occasion, I have seen a topic heat up in the neighborhood where I live on Front Porch Forum and at the same time heat up on Facebook or Twitter. I have to tell you, the tone of those venues is radically different. On Facebook or Twitter, it’s instantaneous, it’s back and forth. … There’s something that doesn’t encourage our best selves oftentimes in this rapid exchange environment.” -Michael Wood-Lewis

About Michael Wood-Lewis Michael Wood-Lewis and his wife, Valerie Wood-Lewis, founded FrontPorchForum.com in 2006, driven to help neighbors connect and build community. More than half of their state participates daily.

Born and raised in Indiana, Michael graduated from the University of Illinois with a master’s in engineering and an MBA. He and Valerie met while working in Washington DC, married, and have been raising a family in Vermont for the past 20 years.

When not working on FPF, you can find Michael hanging out in their neighborhood, Five Sisters, coaching youth sports, or enjoying Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains.

Related Links * Michael Wood-Lewis on LinkedIn * Front Porch Forum on Twitter * Front Porch Forum * The story of Vermont’s quiet digital revolution * How a Vermont social network became a model for online communities * Escape from Facebookistan

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If you’re working on launching a new community initiative, there are so many case studies, tools, and knowledgeable community professionals to help you along your journey. But what if you’re tasked with sunsetting a community?

In this conversation, Patrick and Luke Zimmer, manager of the educator community for the National Geographic Society, discuss both instances. Luke has been tasked with managing the community for educators interested in geography education and after evaluating the limited capabilities of Google Plus, decided to go with a platform that offered more in the way of customization and data ownership. And, plot twist: Not long after making this decision, Google announced that it would be sunsetting its Google Plus consumer product, including the Google Plus Communities product.

Launching a new community or sunsetting an existing one are both complex undertakings. As Luke puts it, our online communities are microcosms of the culture around us. What happens when that culture and those connections are wiped away?

Patrick and Luke also discuss:

A full rundown of the Google Plus Communities sunset
Why having an anthropology background is helpful for working in community
How the National Geographic Society is structuring its new online community and plans to measure success

Big Quotes

Online communities as microcosms of larger cultural movements: “When an organization chooses to foster a community like [IMDb did], they’re choosing to support a subculture of that particular group. When they choose to stop supporting that community, you’re essentially getting rid of that subculture, and you’re wiping out a culture. It’s unfortunate that that happens. … [But] in the grand scheme of things, that happens all the time, throughout history. Cultures, they rise and they fall and they ebb and they flow. It’s natural for online communities to follow that similar pattern. That’s one of the things that really fascinates me about online communities, that it really becomes a microcosm for these larger cultural cycles that we see throughout history.” –@LukeTZimmer

On migrating a community from Google Plus Communities to Higher Logic:“Google Plus has four metrics that they give you. That’s just not enough if you’re really looking at the return on investment of your community. You need [a community platform] that really provides detailed support for programs and multiple programs, like National Geographic has for its educators. … I was definitely supportive of finding a platform that could integrate with our customer relationship management system, and making sure that we had as much access to our member data as possible.” –@LukeTZimmer

Opening a closed community to the public: “Because it’s been a closed community and we’ve been working with a very specific population, even within our audience, it’s been pretty easy to understand the community and to manage their expectations and the culture of the community. One of the things that I’m most concerned about [is] opening up a private community to the public [and] maintaining that culture, that positivity that we have currently in our closed community and making sure that inviting these new populations in doesn’t throw off the balance.” –@LukeTZimmer

About Luke Zimmer Luke Zimmer graduated from Indiana University with degrees in journalism and anthropology. He has worked with associations and nonprofits for more than five years with a specific interest in social media and online communities.

In addition to his work as a community manager with the National Geographic Society, Luke also volunteers with the American Society of Association Executives where he is chair of the ASAE Communication Section Council. He has spoken at a number of ASAE events in addition to contributing to the ASAE newsletter, Associations Now.

Luke has also spoken to webinar audiences for the online community platform Higher Logic, the National Association of Bar Executives, and AssociationSuccess.org. When he finds the time, Luke also blogs on community management, social media, and technology news and issues at Skariphos.com.

Related Links * Luke Zimmer on Twitter * National Geographic Education * Luke’s blog, Skariphos.com * The American Society of Association Executives * Higher Logic * The National Association of Bar Executives * AssociationSuccess.org * Elizabeth Koenig on Community Signal * IMDb shutters its online community * National Science Teachers Association Conference * Google Plus shares plans to shutter its consumer product * Google Takeout allows you to download all of your Google-stored data * Grosvenor Teacher Fellowship Program

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When was the last time you thought about that blank text field where members of your community can leave comments? That text field and blinking cursor are the closest we have to pauses between human interaction on the internet. In this episode, Perspective’s product manager, Cj Adams, encourages us to think about how we might innovate that text field and blinking cursor in hopes of having more inclusive, difficult, and natural conversations.

Cj also explains how Perspective can help. Its API has a variety of ways that can be implemented, all with the goal of perceiving the impact a comment might have on a conversation. But Cj also explains that machine learning is is not flawless, and he reminds us that the humans responsible for training it are what encourages its actual biases. So, just like with any other tool that you consider for your community, think about how you can implement it with your community in mind and not as the be all, end all solution for creating better conversations.

Cj also shares:

How Perspective creates a conversation around moderation
Why Perspective is a tool for communities small and large
What machine learning does when it’s “really stupid”

Big Quotes

Using machine learning to encourage community-minded conversations: “People can be a little too focused on how good is the machine learning, or what is the exact technology behind it, [but] a lot of it comes down to what’s the actual user experience? What does that feel like to type something in? That idea of just giving someone a moment when they submit [a comment] to give them some feedback instead of moderating after the fact is a really powerful thing. … It’s a little bit more like when you’re in a human conversation.” –@adamscj

The bias in teaching machines: “There are three main types of machine learning. Supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and then reinforcement learning. What we are talking about here is supervised learning, where you put in a bunch of training data and machine learning is trying to identify patterns in that data and then be able to, in this case, classify new examples to say what this does or doesn’t look like. One of the things that you have to recognize is that it’s going to be as smart or as dumb as what it learns from. … Machine learning is only as right as whatever the data was that it was trained on.” –@adamscj

Addressing the challenge of an empty text box and a blinking cursor: “In a lot of forums, we have an empty white box with a blinking cursor, and that’s how we talk to other humans. … Is there anything we could do here that’s a little more creative, a structure that might facilitate less toxicity, that might facilitate people to understand the humanity of the people they’re talking to? I don’t know what that answer is there. I am excited by trying to figure out how we might nudge people in a direction towards understanding people they disagree with, listening to people, learning and sharing their views in a way that fosters understanding and fosters people being able to keep talking even when they disagree.” –@adamscj

About Cj Adams Cj Adams is a product manager at Jigsaw, part of Alphabet (Google), focused on building technology to make people safer around the world. Since 2015 he has been the product manager of Perspective, an API that helps communities and platforms use machine learning to protect voices in conversation.

Previously he led Project Shield, a free DDoS mitigation service for news organizations and before Google, he helped build a national confidential hotline for victims of human trafficking at a non-profit called Polaris.

Related Links * Cj Adams on Twitter * Jigsaw * Perspective * Project Shield, a free DDOS mitigation service from Google * Polaris, a hotline for victims of human trafficking * Bassey Etim, editorial director at Canopy * Andrew Losowsky, project lead of the Coral Project * Greg Barber, co-founder of the Coral Project * Project Respect, a machine learning training program by Google * Twitter sabotages Tay Bot, Microsoft’s AI chatbot * The False Positive * Change My View on Reddit

Transcript * View transcript on our website

Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment, spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

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When you’re booking your next flight and wondering about your in-terminal dining options or which seat will give you the best takeoff and landing views, check to see if you’re preferred airline has a community that can help out with those questions. Southwest Airlines does, and it might be the only online community hosted by a major airline.

Airlines are always managing customer-facing and public relations issues so how exactly does one make the case for building a community? In this episode, Lindsey Duncan, who oversees the moderation and management of the Southwest Airlines Community, explains the unique relationships and conversations that it has fostered. The community thrives when it comes to topics that involve a unique point of view that can’t always be provided by a Southwest staff member. For example, help traveling with children and getting tips as a first-time air traveler. These conversations also help Southwest Airlines create memorable brand moments and long-lasting customers.

Lindsay also shares:

The ROI of a community-driven knowledge base
Using community to connect customers and create memorable brand moments
How two Southwest Community Champions connected and went on a trip to Disney together

Big Quotes

On making the case for community: “A customer is more inclined to believe information if it comes from another customer, or to take a recommendation that comes from another customer. … The idea [for the Southwest Airlines Community] was, we can get people more authentic information and learn more about our customers, and gain really great customer insight, and then also deflect some of the traffic from our customer service centers.” –@LDunkster

Why community members return: “There’s a sense of camaraderie that develops [between the Southwest Community Champions] because they help each other out. … I think anytime you can form a real connection with somebody and you’ve got [a community] to nurture that and see it grow, as well as the fact that you are sharing in the activity of actually helping people out, they’re going to keep coming back for more.” –@LDunkster

About Lindsey Duncan Lindsey Duncan is a social business senior specialist for Southwest Airlines, with a decade of experience in the airline and aviation industry.

She launched and oversees the daily moderation and management of the Southwest Airlines Community, including a blog and discussion forum where customers can share experiences and knowledge. In 2018, Southwest Airlines launched Community Champions, a super user program of nine members and counting.

Related Links * Lindsey Duncan on Twitter * Southwest Airlines * The Southwest Airlines Community * Southwest Community Champions Program * Digital strategist Jason Falls on Community Signal * Flyer Talk * A Southwest community member shares details on installing a CARES harness * The careers section of the Southwest community

Transcript Show Transcript (6,198 Words) Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

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With a global network of content moderators, it seems that Facebook might be the largest employer of community professionals in the world. But even with these resources, their content moderation practices continue to make headlines. Outsourcing this work barely seems to help Facebook keep up with the volume of content that needs to be reviewed, not to mention the toll that this takes on the often undervalued and underpaid people that are responsible for it. To this Ben Whitelaw, the engagement lead for the Engaged Journalism Accelerator, asks when Facebook is going to start taking bigger risks to solve this problem?

While Facebook’s moderation practices have lots of room for improvement, Ben also shares how the platform proved to be an asset when Times readers needed a space for discourse around Brexit. For newsrooms organizing communities today, Ben shares that Facebook’s ease of use makes it easy to spin up new groups and show proof of concept, but that this isn’t a full solution for long-term reader engagement. Patrick and Ben also discuss:

How Brexit played out in comments section at The Times and led to internal advocacy for readers
Scaling the work of moderation and the importance of consistency and credibility in community management
Whether or not big platforms like Facebook should be allowed to self-moderate

Big Quotes

On public policy playing out in the comments: “Our columnists who wrote about Brexit would get 1,200 comments on an article. … Some of [the comments] were very good. Some of them were very informed. The Times has got a pretty interested and educated audience. You would have lawyers and people who work in policy, people who are civil servants often anonymous, comment on intricacies of Brexit, and it made for very interesting discussion. … There was a real passion for the topic and a need for it to be heard. Obviously, in hindsight, we see that … legacy media in the UK didn’t really highlight some of the voices of people outside London who were wanting Brexit to happen, and that was playing out in the comment threads under articles.” -@benwhitelaw

The potential impact of governance of the web: “I am afraid that Facebook will trigger something legally that will harm online communities as a whole. I think we sometimes forget that the vast majority of online communities do not have Facebook’s problems and are probably fairly well managed and are one person operations with volunteers. … Government intervention, if it happens, really needs to be targeted at people above a certain scale, above a certain size. … If it falls hard on small communities, it’s really going to stifle a lot of voices.” -@patrickokeefe

About Ben Whitelaw Ben Whitelaw is the engagement lead for the Engaged Journalism Accelerator, a program run out of the European Journalism Centre, where he is responsible for the growth and engagement of grantees and content programming. The Accelerator is a $1.7m program that provides funding, mentoring, resources and events to support a more participative kind of journalism across European news organizations of all sizes. It recently announced its first twelve funded news organizations.

The program is supported by the News Integrity Initiative at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and Civil, the blockchain-enabled journalism community. Prior to joining the accelerator, he was head of audience development at The Times and The Sunday Times in London. Over seven years there, he built an award-winning team, ran several high profile editorial campaigns, including Cities fit for Cycling, and helped both newsrooms reach 500,000 subscribers before leaving in 2018.

Ben has also worked at The Guardian as a health and government IT journalist and set up Wannabe Hacks, a online platform dedicated to helping young journalists get into the industry. He writes a weekly newsletter about content moderation on the web and the policies, people and platforms that make it happen. Inevitably, it is called “Everything in Moderation“.

Related Links * Ben Whitelaw’s website * Ben on Twitter * Everything in Moderation, Ben’s newsletter about content moderation * Wannabe Hacks, a platform dedicated to helping young journalists find their way in the industry * The Engaged Journalism Accelerator and the European Journalism Centre * The Engaged Journalism Accelerator’s first grantees * The Correspondent * Jay Rosen on Community Signal and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah * Spaceship Media, an organization using journalism to spark discourse between communities at odds * Mary Hamilton and Bruce Ableson on Community Signal * The Knight Foundation * Wikipedia page for Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act * The Cleaners, a documentary about the people responsible for content moderation across the web’s hugest social media platforms * MeeTwo, an app that helps teenagers talk about difficult things

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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Major social media platforms are using algorithms in spite of the best interests of their users, says Bruce Ableson on this episode of Community Signal. They are focused on serving you an ad at the right moment, or putting something controversial in front of you, “gaming the experience against the users to make money.”

Throughout the conversation, it becomes clear that this is emblematic of their approach in general, not just to curation and algorithms, but to moderation and management. These platforms are what they are not because of what they did last week or last month, but what they did 5 or 10 years ago. Plus:

The biggest threat to well-managed online communities
Cynical, or realistic, reasons why major platforms are the way they are
Why Bruce believes subscriptions could be the future of online communities.

Big Quotes

Having nice community guidelines vs. executing on them: “[Facebook and Twitter] say a lot of nice things. Read the Facebook guidelines and Twitter policies. They read fine. Then they want to grow as fast as they can. They cast that aside for the sake of activity, and they get to a certain point and by that point, as we all know, it’s too far along the road to try to reverse course. They’ve taken the funding. They’ve gone public. They’ve done all these things. Now you’re at a juncture where we have this policy and it sounds fine, but we haven’t implemented it.” –@patrickokeefe

On why big platforms don’t care about moderation: “The only way that [the major social media platforms] would care about [moderation] would be if it was affecting their bottom line. Because of the kind of businesses that they are. Facebook is a perfect example. Their business is driven by controversy. The more controversial things that people post and share, the more clicks they get, the more traffic they drive, and the more revenue that’s generated. It keeps people coming back, and it keeps people engaged.” –@bruceableson

On changing established social norms on a platform: “You can’t go back 10 years later, with a billion plus people on a platform, and try to change the culture. You have to have that culture from the beginning.” –@bruceableson

On Facebook’s constant moderation struggle: “Facebook has got a real problem right now because people hate it. It’s not that they hate Facebook, it’s like going on Facebook gives them a stomach ache. I had the same thing through the election cycle in 2016, and the two years since then. You go on Facebook, and your crazy uncle is posting stuff, and some of your friends are arguing with you about things that seem obvious to you. It gets to where it’s not fun because of that. They have a real problem because they can’t go back now. They even announced some of that this week, where they were like, ‘We’re adding more moderators, and we’re changing how we enforce people interacting with each other.’ It’s too late at this point.” –@bruceableson

On the biggest threat to community management’s independence: “Facebook could be the biggest threat to [well-managed online communities] because if they trigger legislation, that gets written and targets everyone, that’s how we lose Section 230, that’s how it gets weakened, and that’s how we can no longer effectively moderate the community. We take the tool away from the people who are doing the right thing.” –@patrickokeefe

On political intervention in online communities: “I just don’t need the Steve Kings of the world telling me how to manage an online community. The thing that worries me most is Ron Wyden, one of the co-authors of Section 230, sounded the alarm recently about how these platforms need to change, or it could get too far.” –@patrickokeefe

On why algorithms are working against us: “[The major social media platform] algorithms are all gamed specifically to increasing advertising revenue. That’s their sole purpose in life, to get content and sponsored posts in front of you that you might click on, and get them in front of you at a time and in a place where you’re likely to click on it. They’re gaming the experience against the users to make money.” –@bruceableson

About Bruce Ableson Bruce Ableson is currently director of evangelism and enablement for Adobe, after five years as head of strategy & solutions for Livefyre, acquired by Adobe in 2016. Bruce has been involved with social media and social networks for more than 20 years, having founded Open Diary, an early social network, in 1998.

Along the way, Bruce has been credited with inventing a number of features that are central to the social networks of today, including commenting, friends lists, and activity feeds.

Since then, he has worked as a consultant helping Fortune 500 companies build their digital presence, and most recently in executive positions leading strategy and solutions teams for a number of growing startups. Bruce came to Livefyre in 2013, to help build a client solutions team, and also to build out Livefyre’s NYC presence, and now works at Adobe out of their Times Square office.

Related Links * Bruce on Twitter * Open Diary, an early blogging and social nework, which Bruce launched in 1998 * Adobe, where Bruce is director of evangelism and enablement * Jenn Pedde, who recommended that Patrick have Bruce as a guest on the show * Wikipedia page for Yahoo! Geocities, an early free web hosting service * Wikipedia page for webrings, a once popular means of discovering related websites * Bruce’s appearance on Anil Dash’s Function podcast, where he discussed the impact of being featured on Netscape.com and Yahoo.com * Wikipedia page for Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act * Community Signal episodes with Tammy Armstrong and Scott Moore, both of which discussed Section 230 * Facebook’s Community Standards and Twitter’s Rules * Amazon Mechanical Turk, one way that large communities outsource moderation work * Bruce’s tweet about algorithms * TechCrunch article about Twitter’s “Sparkle” button * Twitter thread showing how someone can be radicalized through YouTube * Bruce’s tweet about subscriptions being part of the future of communities

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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In 2018, a common thread across Community Signal conversations was knowing how to clearly communicate the success of community across an organization. It’s fitting that for our first show of 2019, we’re joined by Tammy Armstrong, someone who is passionate about using data to solve problems.

Tammy and Patrick met on KarateForums.com and from her years as a community member and moderator, she learned a valuable lesson (care of Oprah): “When we know better, we do better.” This lesson carries throughout the entire episode. When we mature and become more empathetic, we become better community members. When we know more about our community goals and shortcomings, we can use the data at our disposal to do better. When we’re using the internet ourselves, we should be cognizant of the trade offs that we’re making with our data and whether or not it’s worth it.

Tammy also shares several tips and tools [22:30] for those that are just starting to unravel the data behind their online communities, but her greatest (and cheapest?) bit of advice involves understanding the goals and vision for your community. From there, data is just another tool to help you reach your desired outcome [40:36].

Tammy and Patrick also discuss:

The positive impact of teenagers within online communities
Best practices for data visualization
How to start unpacking the wealth of data behind online communities

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Higher Logic.

Big Quotes

On sharing data in an accessible format: “Honestly, basic charts are really powerful because they’re so well understood, they’re so well used, and it can be tempting to get into this, ‘I’ve created something nobody’s ever seen before, it’s so novel.’ … Generally, visualizations are for people other than just the person making them. Your audience is going to work that much harder to understand the message you’re trying to get across, so you’re creating some cognitive burden for them to just read it, let alone take away the point that you’re trying to get across.” –@tammylarmstrong

There’s no such thing as a free (software) lunch: “When you are giving up data, or when you’re getting free software, software companies aren’t doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. They’re getting something out of it, and most of the time it’s data. They’re monetizing that in some way, or maybe they’re latching on to your hard drive and leveraging your computing power for Bitcoin or something. There’s something that you’re giving up whether or not you know it, and we really need to be generally more savvy in terms of what that means.” –@tammylarmstrong

On making your data work for you: “Think about your goals with your community. Your data is a tool and a valuable asset, so if you start with your goal in mind and think about what you want to get out of the community, where do you want to be in five years, and then turn that around and say, ‘Well, where am I right now?’ Having that guiding point is super helpful because otherwise you can just get lost in all of your data. So, start with the end in mind.” –@tammylarmstrong

About Tammy Armstrong Tammy Armstrong is passionate about using data to solve problems and make the world a better place. As team leader of customer service analytics at Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, she works to improve the customer experience and maximize efficiency. Previously, she worked in independent education fundraising as the director of analytics for Oregon Episcopal School in Portland, Oregon. Tammy also serves as the treasurer of Reboot Iowa, a nonprofit startup dedicated to educating adults in computer science.

In their spare time, Tammy and her husband Mike record Bright Lights Big Data, a podcast exploring how local communities work through interviews and discussions on urban planning and analytics. Tammy has an MS in Analytics from North Carolina State University, and a BA in Economics from Gettysburg College. She enjoys baking, playing soccer with her husband, and chasing after their toddler daughter and two cats.

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Tammy Armstrong on Twitter * Tammy on LinkedIn * Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield * Oregon Episcopal School * Reboot Iowa * Bright Lights Big Data, a podcast exploring urban planning and analytics, recorded by Tammy and her husband, Mike * KarateForums.com was the first community that Tammy joined and where she met Patrick * The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act * Emily Temple-Wood, Wikipedian of the Year, on Community Signal * Nexidia, an interactions analytics software * Power BI, a data visualization tool from Microsoft * Rise of the Evil Algorithm * Fitness tracking app Strava gives away location of secret US army bases * Ron Wyden and Ed Markey, two elected officials working to fairly govern the internet * Threats to Section 230 Should Unleash the Political Power of Community Professionals

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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This week, Patrick and Scott Moore continue their conversation commemorating three years of Community Signal, touching on a topic that’s important to the work of all community professionals but that doesn’t necessarily get a lot of attention: the laws and regulations that govern our work.

You’re probably familiar with GDPR and Section 230 of the Telecommunications Decency Act. And for those of us that are paid community professionals working for established companies, we likely have resources internally that help us address legal concerns. But Patrick also raises the point that many communities are small, run by volunteers, and have minimal tech and financial resources. Are the laws protecting community members also protecting communities and community professionals, regardless of their size or backing?

And let’s get real, it’s clear that not all of our government leaders are caught up on the online community landscape, or even on the internet itself. So how are we informing them and letting them know how these laws impact the communities we serve, for better or for worse?

Scott and Patrick also discuss:

The other laws and regulations that impact the work we do
The “right to be forgotten” and what it means for communities as a whole
Patrick’s Community Signal dream guests for 2019
Our collective responsibility to raise up community as a profession and Patrick’s promise to give a pep talk to anyone who needs one

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Higher Logic.

Big Quotes

On being informed about the laws that impact our work: “I really see [Section 230] as fundamental to the work we do and if it changed, the work we do would fundamentally change. How we moderate, how we protect people, what we allow for. It would change in a really negative and bad way. Understanding the laws that impact our work and how important they are is super important.” –@patrickokeefe

On making sure the tech you use doesn’t overpower your community: “There’s always a power in having your data and having it so that you can download it and move it wherever you want, whenever you want and not have that be tied to a contract. … That’s always a question for me when I get pitched on platforms. Where’s my data? How can I remove it? In what format? You can’t answer those questions well, you can’t win me, period. We have to be smart about those things.” –@patrickokeefe

On pushing the industry forward: “We should advocate for those higher roles because each time one of us does that, each time someone insists that they get the director title instead of the community manager title because their job reflects it … instead of just accepting that they can be community manager because, hey, the money’s good and I’m being paid like a director, it matters. … Don’t sell yourself short, really believe in yourself and push yourself forward. If you need a pep talk, let me know. I’ll be happy to do it. … I believe that this work is important and I think that it is partially on us to push it up and find those opportunities whenever we can.” –@patrickokeefe

About Scott Moore Since 1995, Scott Moore has been helping organizations large and small build solid and successful connected communities and the teams that support those communities. He seeks opportunities to use his experience in online communities to help people help each other to make a positive change in their own lives and those around them. Scott has fostered and directed community at Digital Promise Global, Answers.com, Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, Communities.com, and Fujitsu. He has also consulted with non-profits to help with a variety of online community needs including Healthsparq, Diabetes Hands Foundation, and Edutopia.

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Scott Moore on Twitter * Scott Moore on LinkedIn * Retaining Talented Community Pros and What Makes a Great Boss? (3 Years of Community Signal) * Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act * DMCA, the SPEECH Act, COPPA, and the CAN-SPAM Act * The Electronic Frontier Foundation * GDPR and the Right to Be Forgotten * California Passes Sweeping Law to Protect Online Privacy * California’s Eraser Law * Patrick references his Community Signal conversations with Jason Falls, Jay Rosen, Bassey Etim, Howard Rheingold, and George Kelling * Patrick’s dream guests for 2019 include Jake Tapper, Senator Ron Wyden, and Amy Jo Kim * [Note from Patrick:] Special thanks to Carol, Serena Snoad and Bill Johnston for contributing to these last two episodes

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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This week, Community Signal proudly celebrates three years of conversations with community professionals. We’re taking this opportunity to talk to Patrick about his experience running the show and giving him a chance to reflect on the state of online community management and how he’s seen it develop over these past few years. We’re also grateful to be joined by past guest, Scott Moore, for this conversation.

Combined, Patrick and Scott have over four decades of experience in community and a recurring topic in this conversation is how we can learn from industry veterans and those who came before us, as well as recognizing that the community problems of today likely have past occurrences that we can learn from. As Patrick mentions towards the end of this episode, hosting this show has been a way for him to stay up to date on the themes, tools, struggles, and triumphs that the community landscape is seeing and we hope that these conversations are useful for you, too.

I know that I can confidently speak for Karn, Patrick, and myself in saying that we’re all looking forward to continuing to ask the tough questions when it comes to community. It’s our duty to push the profession forward.

We’re breaking this conversation up into two episodes. In part one, Patrick and Scott talk about:

Choosing metrics that matter
The career trajectory for community professionals and how he approaches managing his team
His go-to resources for staying current on all things community

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Higher Logic.

Big Quotes

On learning from the past: “There’s a lot [that can] happen in communities that seems like a major crisis, that seems like the end of the world, that seems like it’s over. You just have to do the work, persevere, make it right, apologize, and do your best. … Most things, you get through and you persevere through.” -@patrickokeefe

On communicating the value of community: “[Community metrics are] really about understanding who you’re talking to, what they value, and then how you can tie the community to it.” -@patrickokeefe

On knowing our worth: “We [as community professionals] should recognize our value and in cases where we feel that we are not being utilized fully or we are not being fully appreciated, we do that work for as long as we can and we start to look for better opportunities elsewhere at organizations that will value and respect us. It’s almost like being in a relationship and people think they can fix the other person. It’s not necessarily something that can always be accomplished.” -@patrickokeefe

On what makes a great boss: “Great bosses make the careers of the people who report them a priority in their professional work. Whether that be raises, whether that be promotions, whether that be helping them get the new job and not making them feel like they should be scared to ask you for help getting a job or ask you for a reference letter or tell you that this amazing opportunity came up. I’m happy for people. That’s my legacy. That’s how I see my legacy as a community professional: The people that I helped advance.” -@patrickokeefe

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Scott Moore on Twitter * Scott Moore on LinkedIn * Learning from Theme Park Design, Scott Moore on Community Signal * Facebook Doesn’t Protect Black Children, But They Did Add “Community” to Their Mission Statement, So…, Scott Moore on Community Signal * The Virtual Community by Howard Rheingold * Design for Community, by Derek Powazek * Managing Online Forums, by Patrick O’Keefe * Lessons From The WELL and Making a World Where the Sun Rises the Next Morning, Gail Ann Williams on Community Signal * Everything in Moderation * How The New York Times is Building Thoughtful Comment Sections in the Trump Era, Bassey Etim on Community Signal * Patrick also mentions past Community Signal guests Bill Johnston, Rebecca Newton, and Marjorie Anderson * WeSupportNYC, a weekly community-themed newsletter

Transcript * View transcript on our website

Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards

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Over the past few months, Patrick has spoken to several leaders in the world of journalism and for this episode, we’re welcoming back Bassey Etim, community editor at the New York Times. Bassey was originally on Community Signal in December of 2015 and it’s overwhelming to think about how public perception of the media and the Times, in particular, has changed since then. To give you some context, Barack Obama was still in office at the time of that interview and Donald Trump had yet to win a primary.

Patrick brings up an important question during this conversation: How are moderators at the New York Times doing? And perhaps that question can largely be answered by how Bassey manages his 14-person team. He shares how the team blows off steam, what he does to advance people within his team, and how he views AI as a human-powered tool to moderation, not a human-replacing one. Is it Bassey’s emphasis on people and objectivist journalism that powers a positive environment amongst his team and the comment sections at the Times? I think so! Bassey also shares:

The impact of the midterm elections and politics in general on moderators at the Times
His own career path at the Times and how he elevates others for growth opportunities
Getting AI machines to ask humans for help

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Higher Logic.

Big Quotes

On positively fostering comment sections: “We want to make comment sections [that] people want to read. There’s two elements to that. One is that the comment sections are interesting and good and reflect modern society. They don’t feel like they’re in some weird cloistered bubble. The other is that you feel safe, you don’t feel dirty when you read them.” –@BasseyE

On using automation to create transparency around moderation decisions: “It’s really interesting to see how we could [use automation to] educate people along the process of submitting content to make sure that they have the highest probability of being approved. Everyone loves that automation. Members don’t want to have their content removed after they spend time on it. Moderators don’t want to remove content and have to talk to the member or deal with whatever the fallout of that is and then have to readjust or re-approve it once they try to submit it again. That’s a perfect example of automation done well that everyone would like.” –@patrickokeefe

On not repeating the industry’s outsourcing mistakes: “The really important thing for us in the industry is probably going to be avoiding that old tech problem which is that there’s this piece of technology and it can solve everything. … The technology is really a tool. Just because you have a good tool you can’t just have one person wield it. … You’re going to need a lot of people using the same tool to truly be effective.” –@BasseyE

On machine learning’s biggest problem: “If you let machine learning models operate in the wild without trained human intervention, what you’re going to be doing is perpetuating a cultural cycle of silencing certain people’s voices, filtering out a critical mass of people from certain communities. Wouldn’t it be quite ironic if the thing that’s supposed to save us all, technology, only winds up taking all the human biases and codifying them into code so that, unaccountable executives can say, ‘Oh, well, the model does this. We’ll try to fix the model sometime. We just don’t understand the complexities of the model.'” –@BasseyE

About Bassey Etim Bassey Etim is the community editor for the New York Times, a novelist, and a musician. He’s currently putting the finishing touches on his second book and planning for his wedding next year. Bassey is a first-generation American with roots in Nigeria. He’s from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and graduated from the University of Wisconsin School of Journalism.

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Bassey Etim on Twitter * Bassey Etim on LinkedIn * The New York Times, where Bassey is the community editor and product manager for community * Bassey’s first appearance on Community Signal, in December 2015 * “I Was a Paid Internet Shill” Happens and Veteran Community Managers Know It * Sara Bremen Rabstenek, product director at the New York Times * Perspective, Google’s comment-screening API * The Times is Partnering with Jigsaw to Expand Comment Capabilities * New York Times: Using AI to host better conversations * Quartz

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Jason Falls knows where your customers are talking. He’s studied conversations for several years and, time and time again, he’s shed light on an inconvenient truth for brands: If you’re ignoring online forums, you’re probably ignoring a substantial part of the conversations happening in public – maybe even a majority of them. And it usually doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. Banking? 90%. Elderly care? 83%.

He doesn’t work in the community space, he’s not drinking the Kool-Aid. Jason is a veteran digital strategist who follows the data, and the data tells him that brands are continually missing a major opportunity to build loyalty and increase sales. And that’s one of the topics on this episode. Plus:

Why angry brand ambassadors are actually a positive
The obsession with vanity metrics
Where community fits in customer journey mapping

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Higher Logic.

Big Quotes

On how forums influence search results: “If we can all go back 10, 15 years, advising brands in the social media or digital marketing space and say, ‘Here’s what I want you to do: The first thing I want you to do, when you launch your website, is add a forum to it. We’re not going to talk about your product or service, we’re going to let people ask questions about how to use it. Like a customer support board, but we’re really just going to talk more broadly about how to do things and about broad topics within your work, within your industry.” If every brand did that 15, 20 years ago, then brands would rank number one, two and three for all these search terms that they’re spending a bazillion dollars a year trying to rank for now.” –@JasonFalls

On breaking the allure of vanity metrics: “Even the social networks are saying it’s not really about building vanity metrics anymore. We report that up the channel to our executives, our companies, our clients if we’re at an agency and still, the first question that they typically ask at a monthly meeting or on the call is, ‘How many people are following us now?’ Unfortunately, it’s going to take probably another 12 to 18 months of reinforcing the idea that vanity metrics don’t mean anything or don’t mean as much. Then, it’s going to take an aha moment for a client or an executive at your company to be able to understand what you mean by that.” –@JasonFalls

On convincing CEOs that fans online are spending money: “In 2010, I was working with an environmental products company, and the CEO would call me. I only talked to him once a week. He would call me at 9 on Friday morning, and he would ask me how many Facebook fans they had. Never mind that you could go to your own Facebook page and see the number yourself. He would call me from five hours away and ask me how many Facebook fans he had. I would tell him because, I mean, he was the CEO. … I figured out what he was doing. He called me at 9 because he had a 12 o’clock golf game with a bunch of his buddies, and so he wanted to be able to brag that his Facebook fans had increased every week, and so I said, ‘Okay, this is ridiculous.’

“The next Friday, he called me, and he said, ‘Jason, how many Facebook fans do I have?’ I said, ‘You know what? I’m going to email you the link to your Facebook page, and the number is in the upper corner. You can look at that number any time you want. I don’t really have time to go look at that number for you right now because I’m too busy trying to figure out how to get those fans to buy your product.’ He went, ‘Oh.’ He really, for the first time, thought, ‘You mean you can actually use social media to get people to buy things?’ Then, the questions were different.” –@JasonFalls

On how communities fit into customer journey mapping: “[Online communities are a part of customer journey mapping] especially on higher end purchases, where there’s a lot longer lead time. If you’re purchasing something that costs more than a couple hundred dollars, you’re going to research it for days, if not, weeks or months. You’re going to ask a lot of questions. You’re going to read a lot of articles. That investigative process is probably going to take you to forums and message boards of some sort.” –@JasonFalls

About Jason Falls Jason Falls is one of the most widely read and respected voices in the digital marketing and social media industries. His digital strategies have touched a number of the world’s most iconic brands including AT&T, Valvoline, Buffalo Trace, Humana, Rawlings, Maker’s Mark, Sealy, Fireball Whisky, Trident, GM and more. Falls leads digital and social strategy for Cornett, a full-service ad agency in Lexington, KY. He loves the state of Kentucky, sports and bourbon.

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Jason’s website * Cornett, where Jason is director of digital and social strategy * Google is Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers Following Security Lapse * 90% of Conversations in Social Media About Banking Occur in Online Forums * Conversation Research Institute, Jason’s former project aimed at researching conversations online * Independent Living to Nursing Homes: Understanding the Buyer Journey for Senior Care, a report produced by Jason about conversations online around senior care * 5 Things You Don’t Know About Senior Living Shoppers * Home Depot’s Online Community Isn’t Here to (Directly) Sell You Hammers * Meredith Humphrey, global community manager at Spotify, on Community Signal * Maker’s Mark Ambassadors * Less Potent Maker’s Mark Not Going Down Smoothly In Kentucky * A case study on the Fiskateers community from the agency that created it * Jason on Instagram * Team Valvoline, a content and community hub from Valvoline motor oil, which Jason helps advise

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Spotify’s Rock Stars are super users, officially recognized by the company and given tools, resources, guidance and perks for answering questions and starting conversations in their online community and helping users on Twitter, through the @AskRockStars account.

With more than 150 members, the program will celebrate its fifth birthday next month. Each year, Spotify hosts Rock Star Jam, an event at their head quarters in Stockholm. They fly in the top 10 most helpful Rock Stars to meet company leaders, see whats coming next, offer feedback and enjoy the city.

Global community manager Meredith Humphrey has been with Spotify since 2011, starting as a community moderator, and she breaks down the Rock Star Program on this episode of Community Signal. Plus:

The shift they made in product announcements to protect community staff
How the Rock Star Jam has evolved over the years
Meredith’s exploration of what ROI means for community at Spotify

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Higher Logic.

Big Quotes

On the start of the @AskRockStars Twitter account: “We had this hypothesis that there were super users that preferred Twitter. … We asked four of our stars to try it out, and we had to do a lot of testing to make sure that we could give super users the tools we use for Twitter. … They loved it. It was really successful. They were sending out thousands of tweets because people will obviously just tweet their thoughts. ‘Having a bad day, Spotify is not working.’ They were finding loads of these tweets. … It’s their preferred medium, but we’re reaching out to the customers that prefer that medium, as well.” -Meredith Humphrey

On surprise and delight moments on Twitter: “We said to the [super users] that prefer Twitter, ‘Why? What is it that you love about it?’ They said that the folks who are reaching out on Twitter are so pleasantly surprised that they’re getting help. They weren’t expecting it. They were just complaining to the world about something, and when they get this really nice, ‘Hey, I can help you,’ they’re so delighted in a way that community users sometimes aren’t. Community users are there because they have a issue and a question, and they expect a reply. The gratitude and being able to surprise people like that, it really makes [our Rock Stars’] day.” -Meredith Humphrey

On the creation of Rock Star Jam: “In 2013, we had this user, he’s no longer in the program, but he made an incredible amount of posts in the community. I think when he left, he was at 50,000, but he had this really amazing system of macros and templates that he used. Super knowledgeable, really friendly guy. Our VP of customer service just said, ‘Let’s fly him out to Stockholm. He’s contributed so much. Let’s introduce him to the founders and the community team.’ We did. He was based in the UK. We flew him to Stockholm, and it was such a great experience on both ends. It was so great to chat with that star and get great feedback and talk to him one-on-one, face-to-face. We said, ‘This was so successful, let’s expand this. Let’s launch a full event for the top 10.’ That’s how it started in 2014.” -Meredith Humphrey

On how different departments view community ROI: “My goal as the global community manager is to have a model or multiple models lined up side-by-side that I can show to anyone at the company and they will say, ‘I can get behind these numbers.’ Because I think some teams look at the impact survey and say, ‘This is spot on.’ Other teams say, ‘I have a lot of questions.’ I want to be able to go to any team, any department and they say, ‘These are undeniable, solid numbers.'” -Meredith Humphrey

About Meredith Humphrey Originally from South Carolina, Meredith Humphrey received a BA in English with a Journalism minor at Clemson University. She then went on to get a Master’s degree in International Journalism with a Music focus at City University in London. Meredith spent time in the UK writing for various B2B live music industry magazines such as Live UK, Audience and IQ.

In 2009, she heard about a new exciting company on the horizon called Spotify. Meredith started with Spotify in 2011 and, since then, has filled many roles in the UK, US, and Sweden – most recently becoming the global community manager in Stockholm.

Meredith is passionate about the music industry and helping artists reach new audiences around the world. She’s also equally passionate about trivia nights, tacos, and her cat, Murray.

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Listen to Community Signal on Spotify * Spotify, where Meredith is global community manager * Meredith on LinkedIn * Spotify Community * Retirement of Our Running Feature, Meredith’s announcement in the community that led to users seeking out her personal Twitter account * Spotify’s Idea Exchange * @SpotifyCares, the company’s official support Twitter account * Spotify’s Rock Star Program * Community post announcing the creation of the Rock Star Program * Spotity Community’s help boards * Spotify Community’s music chat * @AskRockStars, where Rock Stars answer tweets sent by Spotify users that don’t tag the brand * Rock Star Program points and rewards * Community post about the 2018 Rock Star Jam * Lithium, the software that Spotify uses to power their community * Rorey Jones, former global community manager at Spotify, who helped set the tone for the Rock Star Program * Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, Spotify’s co-founders

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Local newsrooms are tasked with representing their local communities and the issues and topics that matter to them. For that reason, it seems especially important for there to be reader advisory boards and feedback loops in place to ensure that the local community can share feedback with the newsroom. But if your newsroom or publication is in a pre-community state, Rebecca Quarl has suggestions on scalable measures that you can take to let your audience know that you value their readership.

Rebecca has the unique vantage of having worked across 28 for and non-profit news organizations with the News Revenue Hub, originally starting her career as a journalist. Her firsthand experience with news membership as a community model raises an interesting approach for scaling community tactics across the newsroom.

Patrick and Rebecca also discuss:

Why Rebecca left the agency world to rejoin newsrooms
The readership survey that Rebecca conducted with those 28 news organizations
Membership as a shared responsibility across the newsroom

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Higher Logic.

Big Quotes

On making time to connect with your readers: “For our clients who are spread pretty thin, if they don’t have time to manage an online community or don’t have time to really harness crowdsourcing, I tell them that’s okay. Let’s instead do an audit of your e-mail products and figure out how to drive that daily habit and essentialness and make it something that people are opening and clicking regularly. Instead of using that time to moderate an online community, let’s make sure that at the end of each day you’re checking all of the responses that you got from e-mail subscribers and responding to each one.” –@rebeccarives

On the importance of buy-in for membership: “Where we’re seeing membership programs really take off is [in] the newsrooms that see membership as a shared responsibility. [In] the newsroom [that] has decided together that membership, more than page views or unique visitors or the latest newfangled metric from Google or Facebook, becomes the highest indicator of success and so there’s a collective buy-in on this notion that membership is the highest sign of engagement for our newsroom, that’s when the magic happens.” –@rebeccarives

On membership as a community model: “Membership, first and foremost, is a newsroom saying that we believe the healthiest business model for the news is one in which readers help sustain it, and that sustainment is not about exclusivity. They’re not donating because they are going to get something that other readers cannot. It’s about creating a sense of belonging, again, in this sort of membership community and feeling like you’re putting your hard earned dollar between something that is holding the powerful to account.” –@rebeccarives

About Rebecca Quarls Rebecca Quarls is the director of client relationships for the News Revenue Hub, working with 28 for and non-profit news organizations around the country to preserve the sustainability of public service journalism. Specifically, the Hub is focused on helping client organizations grow their email subscriber list, loyalty and engagement within that list and then conversion to membership. At the Hub, membership—not unique visitors, not page views, is the highest measure of success and the ultimate sign of an engaged reader community. Rebecca was previously the membership manager for the Texas Tribune.

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Rebecca Quarls on Twitter * The News Revenue Hub * The Texas Tribune * The Times-Picayune * Jay Rosen, journalism professor at NYU, on Community Signal * Metrics that move the needle * Bassey Etim, community editor at the New York Times, on Community Signal * The American Journalism Project * The Coral Project

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As community professionals, we have more tools than ever to help us do our jobs. That said, the qualities that make an online community and an online community professional successful are likely largely the same today as they were 10, 20, or even 30 years ago. This episode of Community Signal focuses on those exact qualities and opportunities to delight.

If you’re applying for a job in community, Patrick and our guest, Angela Connor, have some tips on standing out [00:30:13]:

Point to specific communities that you’ve worked in
If you don’t have direct experience in community, start one!
Skills from other fields translate, but you should still be eager to learn and grow

And if you’ve been working in community for a while, but are looking to refresh (or rewind) your approach, Patrick and Angela suggest [00:37:48 and throughout]:

Revisiting how you talk to your community
Leaving room in macros and canned responses for customization
Approaching each conversation as an opportunity to invite in new community members
Visiting outside communities where your members might be talking about you

In addition to these qualities and skills, Angela also surfaces the topic of knowing her worth and the value of the communications skills that she brings to the table. This worth translates to a certain salary, but as with all roles, it also requires internal buy-in and the right resources to make sure you can get the job done. There are many companies that think they can’t afford someone at this skill level, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need someone at this skill level.

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Higher Logic.

Big Quotes

On the value of community management skills: “[When it comes to hiring community professionals,] there’s a fine line between what [companies] can afford and want to afford. … It’s not very difficult for me to step into a social media crisis and help a client, figure out what to say and what to do because I understand social communications. I understand how you talk to people online and then the digital space. I don’t think that people really understand that that’s a unique value proposition.” –@communitygirl

On the importance of effort and personalization: “[With community management,] you get what you give. If you are mediocre, then you get mediocre results. If you do the same thing over and over again, [deliver] the same canned responses [without] nuance. It’s what you get if you see community management as something that can be automated. If you think that an algorithm can do all that for you without a human touch, then what you get is poor comments and a poor community and you don’t get anything out of it. Meaning, you don’t get to lift anything out of that section and bring it into other things that you were doing.” –@patrickokeefe

About Angela Connor Since 2010, Angela Connor has been the driving force behind the success of marketing and community managers, directors of social media and digital directors at companies of all sizes and across many industries including Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Deloitte, South State Bank, Duke Energy, UNC Health Care, Fidelity Charitable, Carolina Biological Supply Company and many more.

Angela mastered the ugliness of internet and community trolls as the managing editor of user-generated content at the top news outlet in North Carolina – WRAL.com. She grew their first online community from zero to 14,000 members and chronicled that experience in her 2009 book, 18 Rules of Community Engagement.

Angela recently founded Change Agent Communications, which serves companies looking to reach audiences in new ways, capitalize on an emerging trend, head down a different path strategically, reimagine their business model or reinvent themselves.

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Angela Connor on Twitter * Angela on LinkedIn * Angela’s website * WRAL.com * Change Agent Communications * The Social Rewind * 18 Rules of Community Engagement * Maria Ogneva, director of online customer experience and community at FinancialForce, on Community Signal * Patrick’s post on Donald Trump’s threat to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act * Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act * Jay Rosen, journalism professor at NYU, on Community Signal * Goodbye, GOLO; Hello, SHARE * Angela mentions Goodreads, CafeMom, Nextdoor, and myFICO Forums as thriving communities * Hug Your Haters by Jay Baer * Niche communities are still popular * Venessa Paech, co-founder of Australian Community Managers, on Community Signal * Howard Rheingold, writer and early member of the WELL, on Community Signal

Transcript * View transcript on our website

18 Rules of Community Engagement : A Guide for Building Relationships and Connecting With Customers Online

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What if the intro song to Cheers wasn’t about a bar, but instead about an online community where everyone knows your name? That’s what Stacy Horn created when she launched Echo, an online community that sought to connect New Yorkers.

But Echo wasn’t Stacy’s first go at creating a community. While studying at NYU’s ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program), she was working in the telecommunications department at Mobil and had an idea to connect employees and improve processes by way of an internal community. The community failed but throughout this conversation, Stacy’s learnings from this first experience come up over and over again: the importance of actively seeking out a diversity of voices and experiences to be represented in your community, having a clear intention and set of community guidelines, and creating a space for the best in people.

Today, Echo is nearly 30 years old. Its archives are on record with the New York Historical Society and the historians that look back on its conversations will be in for treat. In fact, it’ll be like they stumbled into a neighborhood bar full of people that have been chatting with each other for years.

Stacy also shares:

Why she failed when it came to starting an internal community for Mobil’s employees
The costs and infrastructure behind Echo, including an NYC street excavation
How she made Echo an inclusive space for women
Echo as an archive to pivotal moments in NYC’s history, including 9/11

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Higher Logic.

Big Quotes

On building an internal community for Mobil employees in the 80s: “The reason my [internal community] failed was that a number of [employees] across the country had just decided they were going torpedo it and just not participate. They were going to make sure it didn’t work. The reason they did that was not because they were bad, evil people trying to destroy my corporate dreams. What I saw as a way of finding problems and fixing them, they saw as exposing their mistakes.” –@stacyhorn

On starting a community based on your passions: “People will sometimes ask me if they should start a community [related to their passion]. My answer is usually that if you start the community, you'll still talk about that passion but you'll have a whole new passion that'll suck up your time. That passion is community management. It takes you away from that hobby, that love, that passion, and puts you into that seat where you have to maintain the environment so that other people can have that same passion that you once had and hopefully still do.” –@patrickokeefe

On where she was hoping to see more progress: “It isn’t the internet or any of our tools that have failed. It is still us. It still comes right back to us and the people that are spreading ugliness. It’s them, not the internet. It’s a shame that they have a platform that they didn’t have before which allows them to grow. Again, the ugliness is in them.” –@stacyhorn

About Stacy Horn Stacy Horn, who Mary Roach has hailed for “combining awe-fueled curiosity with topflight reporting skills,” is the author of six nonfiction books. Her newest is Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad & Criminal in 19th Century New York. Her previous books include Imperfect Harmony: Finding Happiness Singing with Others, Unbelievable: Investigations into Ghosts, Poltergeists, Telepathy, and Other Unseen Phenomena from the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory, and The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City’s Cold Case Squad, which received starred reviews from both Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly.

Over the years Horn has produced pieces for the NPR show, All Things Considered, including the 1945 story of five missing children in West Virginia, the Vatican’s search for a patron saint of the internet, and an overview of cold case investigation in the United States. Horn is also the founder of the New York City-based social network Echo. Echo was home to many online media firsts, including the first interactive tv show, which was co-produced with the then SciFi Channel.

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Stacy Horn on Twitter * Stacy’s website * Echo * The WELL * Stacy’s interview with the Women’s Internet History Project * The WELL’s community guidelines * The SitePoint forums * IMDb is closing its message boards * Community Signal episode about the IMDb message boards * Growing Old in New York’s Snarkiest Early-Internet Community

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Consider this episode of Community Signal your community career advisor on speed dial. If you’re looking for a new job, growing your team, or thinking about your career advancement options, Patrick, Daniel Marotta, Jenn Chen, and Marjorie Anderson share great advice and observations from their own career journeys.

What skills and experiences created the foundation for your career in community management? [2:04]

“If you marry customer service with website release management and content management… those [skills] are the basis for a great community manager.” –@massmarotta

“[Don’t] just cut and paste a response from some template that your company printed out. Put a little bit of yourself in your responses. Build up a personality that really shines through with how you correspond with your member base.” –@massmarotta

What makes a good community management job and what warning signs should you look for as you consider new opportunities? [4:42]

“A good community role is one that’s actually community, that’s really about connecting members or customers with one another and not just broadcasting from the brand perspective.” –@patrickokeefe

“There has to be buy-in for actual community work at the organization. … It’s really about an organization that understands the value [of community] and isn’t going to place a burden on community that isn’t placed on other departments.” –@patrickokeefe

Will having an in-house platform and resources make your job easier? [16:06]

“Being blocked by what our platform could or couldn’t do was a bit of a challenge as a community manager. … A lot of times, you want to advocate for your users, you want what’s best for them, you feel like there’s a great need, but your hands are literally tied, and as a community manager, you have to be very careful about how you communicate that. … The exciting thing with building our own platform is that the sky’s the limit. I can think of all these different features that would be beneficial to the community … evaluate it from all perspectives, and then we can either implement it or put it down on the roadmap.” –@jenntothechen

What’s the career trajectory for community professionals? [20:43]

“It was tough to find a [community] role where I felt like I was moving up and taking a positive career step. I’d say 1 in 10 [roles out there] are senior roles. … I was okay with [any] title as long as I was top of the department and building something good.” –@patrickokeefe

“[The] role of community manager has a wide salary [and experience] range. [According to the Community Roundtable’s last research study, the] community manager [salary] was an average of $70k, but the range is over $100k. … There are some [amazing] community managers with tons of experience who are well paid. They just don’t have [a senior] title.” –@patrickokeefe

“I don’t need the title of community manager. I don’t necessarily even need a title that says I’m head of community but what I want to do is continue to contribute to the space, and that’s what’s important to me.” –@MarjorieAyyeee

This episode of previously unreleased clips also includes:

Emily Temple-Wood on how community has the power to make room for all voices
Dave Cayem on sustainable community metrics and the importance of a viable community mission

If you’d like more behind the scenes clips and the chance to contribute potential questions and conversation topics to the show, please consider backing Community Signal on Patreon.

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Higher Logic.

Big Quotes

“You can be the greatest community professional in the world but if you don’t have resources and support, you’re just not going to be effective, you’re not going to be as successful as you can be.” –@patrickokeefe

“Wikimedia found out the hard way that when you focus too much on tech, you neglect the human element and you lose a lot of what makes your community special. … You need things like invitation culture and funding community members to do cool stuff, simple things like in-person meetups and conferences. All the best stuff that any of us has done has come from just being together in a space and [feeling] safe throwing some spaghetti.” –@keilanawiki

“Community guidelines shouldn’t just create this idea of everyone being the same. They create a baseline for us to respect each other and be productive.” –@patrickokeefe

“You have to get that intersection between community mission and user need, and you have to figure out what that community mission is before you launch your community.” –@davecayem

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Community Signal’s Patreon campaign * Daniel Marotta, director of community at Brighter Horizons (Community Signal episode) * Serena Snoad, online community manager at the Alzheimer’s Society * Emily Temple-Wood, med student and Wikimedian of the Year (Community Signal episode) * Wikiproject Women Scientists * Genius: $56.9 Million in Funding, 6+ Years to Add a Report Abuse Button * Jenn Chen, community manager at CallidusCloud (Community Signal episode) * Marjorie Anderson, community engagement specialist for the Project Management Institute (Community Signal episode) * Community by Association, resources to help community pros build thriving communities * Cindy Au, previously VP of community of Pilotworks and Kickstarter (Community Signal episode) * Alex Dao, senior manager of research and customer insights at Vimeo (Community Signal episode) * The WELL, one of the oldest virtual communities still in existence * Dave Cayem, head of forum moderation at TripAdvisor (Community Signal episode)

Transcript * View transcript on our website

Thank you for listening to Community Signal.

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There’s so much to unpack in this extremely timely chat with Jay Rosen. Jay teaches journalism at New York University and on this episode of Community Signal, he discusses an era of journalism where readers hold the power. The power of choice, the power to talk back to journalists and media organizations, and the power to rally with their fellow readers. And with this shift in power comes a (positive) shift in responsibilities for journalists.

Interestingly enough, technology platforms like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and YouTube, are being met with similar calls to action and Jay cites their inability to listen to their users as a clear absence of business culture and principles. But is the recent removal of Alex Jones and Infowars from a few of these sites a sign of an internal crisis of conscience? This journalism student and community pro sure hopes so.

Patrick and Jay also talk about:

Why audience engagement managers are in such high demand
The role that media organizations and journalists play in protecting journalism and the democracy
The benefits that a membership model could bring to journalism

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Higher Logic.

Big Quotes

“I was very interested in the way [Alex Jones being banned from social media platforms] unfolded with Apple's Tim Cook making the decision and then Facebook and YouTube following his lead, in effect. To me, that’s very interesting because these platform companies don’t really have principles that apply to this situation. They would prefer that these kinds of judgement calls don’t come up because they don’t really have principles and decision-making routines and any tradition, any culture, that would allow them to make smart editorial calls, which is essentially what this is. It’s an editorial decision. This belongs on our platform, this doesn’t. I think they have tried to avoid making these kinds of judgments. Then when Tim Cook at Apple just said, ‘We’re not going to host this guy anymore,’ that was enough for Zuckerberg and for YouTube to say, ‘Us, neither.’ Which is funny because it indicates an inability to think for themselves.” –@jayrosen_nyu

“When you talk about ‘asymmetrical bulls***,’ it just reminds me about one of the core principles of community that I adhere to, which is the idea that I serve the community that I manage, whatever that is. I don’t serve one person in it. If I have to spend an inordinate amount of time on one person because they are Alex Jones, or because they’re just in some other way problematic, destructive, damaging, harmful to the community, what it stands for, what it is, the standards it has, then something is wrong. You have to cut that out of the equation. Otherwise, you can get sucked into just serving one person instead of the community as a whole.” –@patrickokeefe

“Media companies, the employees of those companies who are journalists, newsrooms as professional communities; they should not be in the business of trying to defeat Donald Trump or make sure he loses his next election or elect Democrats, or anything like that. They have to find a way to oppose a political style that erodes democratic institutions and makes it impossible for a democratic public to function. I don’t think that’s an easy distinction to put into practice … but I do think that that is the germ of the distinction that we need.” –@jayrosen_nyu

“Solving these riddles of participation [tied to the membership model], which is definitely an adventure in online community, is, I think, a really important challenge to journalism now. Because if everything goes to a subscription model, what we’re going to have is a class of people who can afford to pay, who are very well informed, and then crap for everybody else, and that just isn’t acceptable.” –@jayrosen_nyu

About Jay Rosen Jay Rosen has been teaching journalism at New York University since 1986. From 1999 to 2005, he served as chair of the program. Rosen is the author of PressThink, a blog about journalism and its ordeals, which he introduced in September 2003. In 1999, Yale University Press published his book, What Are Journalists For?, which is about the rise of the civic journalism movement during the pre-internet era.

In 2008, he was the co-publisher, with Arianna Huffington, of OffTheBus.net, which allowed anyone who was interested to sign up and contribute to campaign coverage for the Huffington Post. He is currently serving as ambassador to the American market for the Dutch site, De Correspondent as it looks to expand to the U.S. In 2017 he became director of the Membership Puzzle Project, funded by the Knight Foundation and Democracy Fund. It studies membership models for sustainability in news. Rosen is also an active press critic with a focus on problems in the coverage of politics.

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Jay Rosen on Twitter * New York University’s journalism program * PressThink, Jay’s blog about journalism and its ordeals * What Are Journalists For? * OffTheBus.net * De Correspondent * Membership Puzzle Project * Adam Sharp, former head of news at Twitter * Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act * President Trump Just Made a Direct Threat to Online Communities, by Patrick about the threats to Section 230 * How Journalists Should Not Cover an Online Conspiracy Theory, by Whitney Phillps * The Upshot, NYT’s website with data analysis and visualizations about politics, on Github * Sociologist C. Wright Mills * The Membership Models in News database

Jay also references and recommends these readings:

The people formerly known as the audience, 2006
What I learned from assignment zero, 2007
From “write us a post” to “fill out this form:” Progress in pro-am journalism., 2011
This is what a news organization built on reader trust looks like, 2017
Introducing Join the Beat, a force multiplier for beat reporting, 2018
Pricing access to the Trump White House: the strange case of the Times social media policy, 2018

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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As community professionals, it’s our duty to create inclusive spaces for our community members. This means setting the stage for them and making sure that they have everything they need to be successful within the community, and in some cases, protecting them from hate-driven vitriol.

And while many of us have created clear guidelines explaining that hate speech and violence are not permitted in our communities, platforms like Facebook and Reddit have had a harder time defending their users from hate speech. After hearing Mark Zuckerberg’s explanation for allowing Holocaust deniers on Facebook, AskHistorians moderator Andrés Pertierra explained in a now viral tweet that Holocaust deniers post decontextualized information or flat-out lies with the goal of undermining people’s belief in the Holocaust with the hope of ultimately radicalize them.

In his discussion with Patrick, Andrés brings up an ultimate truth – that when we moderate against Holocaust deniers or others posting hate speech, we’re showing our communities that we care about protecting them and that we care about the integrity of the space that we have created with them.

Patrick and Andrés also discuss:

How Andrés and other moderators can tell if someone is posing questions in good faith
The community guidelines that AskHistorians uses to keep hateful posts at bay
Why moderation makes sense from a business perspective

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Higher Logic and Structure3C.

Big Quotes

“The position that we should not tolerate [Holocaust denial] within our community, because it’s being done in bad faith, eventually won out. It became part of a broader, more tougher moderation policy which has helped our community, despite the fact that it keeps growing and growing, to have a reputation of one of the less cesspooly sides of Reddit.” –@ASPertierra

“It’s actually very easy to suss out who’s a JAQer (Just Asking a Question) and who’s not. … First, [their] thread is removed. … [Then] we deploy a macro, and it has responses to all of the most common Holocaust denialist points. It offers resources; points people in the right direction. … Based on how they react to that, we have a fairly good idea if this is a JAQer or not. Because a JAQer is going to respond in bad faith. They’re going to be angry, they may even notice, ‘My thread was removed. Why is my thread removed?’ Because what they want is attention. They don’t genuinely want their question answered.” –@ASPertierra

About Andrés Pertierra Born and raised in Washington, DC, Andrés Pertierra completed his undergraduate degree in history at the University of Havana, graduating with honors in 2013. His undergraduate thesis was on American spy networks in Cuba in the early 19th century. After completing the prestigious Victor S. Navasky internship program at The Nation magazine, Andrés published articles on Cuba and U.S. immigration policy in several publications, including The Nation, Jacobin, and Rewire. Andrés has been a moderator on the AskHistorians subreddit since 2016 and a co-host of the AskHistorians podcast since 2017.

Related Links * Sponsor: Structure3C, expert community strategy for large organizations * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Andrés Pertierra on Twitter * AskHistorians subreddit * AskHistorians Community Guidelines * The AskHistorians podcast * Mark Zuckerberg’s interview with Kara Swisher for Recode * American Indian Genocide Denial and how to combat it * Denial, a film about the libel trials surrounding the Holocaust * Derek Powazek, farmer, author, community professional and previous guest of the show * Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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Every community professional has had the challenge of explaining their role and job duties to others within their organization. For many of us, that means always being prepared with qualitative and quantitative anecdotes that ladder up to our company’s mission and goals. In this episode of Community Signal, Mary Thengvall explains the importance of tailoring the message of what we do to the person we’re speaking with, whether it’s our boss, the CEO, or CFO.

If you’re in need of tips or new inspiration on how to prove the value of your work to your organization (and yourself!), Patrick and Mary provide an important reminder that you are your own best advocate and that means taking initiative to know and explain your team’s contributions.

Mary shares the story of her job path through community, and how a one-year experiment at O’Reilly Media led to a career in developer relations.

Patrick and Mary also discuss:

Mary’s thinking around “time-to-value”
The worst public firing in community history
The different causes of burnout for community professionals

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Higher Logic and Structure3C.

Big Quotes

“About three years into my eight-year stint [at O’Reilly Media], I started asking a lot of questions [about] the topics people want to hear about. How do we know this is the right topic to pursue? How do we know these are the topics people want to know about at conferences or books or webinars and all those types of things? Being the early twenties person that I was, I fully embodied the squeaky wheel and kept asking those questions and kept trying to figure out, okay … our reviewers are saying those are great, but how do we know it’s actually what our community wants?” –@mary_grace

“It’s difficult anytime you get rid of a community team. To me the biggest thing [about O’Reilly Media firing two community managers at a conference was] that there wasn’t an understanding of the value that the team brought to the table, and when you don’t understand that value a lot of what you can see is you attend all these events and you go to all these places. We spend a lot of money on all those sponsorships and we don’t have a direct way to say, ‘That adds value to the company because of X, Y, Z.'” –@mary_grace

“I think it comes back to if the stakeholders don’t understand the value that [community] brings, and that might be their fault, that might be the community team’s fault, that might be a combination of things. If they don’t actually understand the value that you bring to the table as a community person, then they’re going to make the best business decision that they can make and the impact that it’s going to have on the community isn’t even going to be a thought in their minds, because they don’t understand that there’s value in the impact that that team has on the community.” –@mary_grace

“Time-to-value is this interesting concept of how long does it take someone to hit that first milestone after they’ve signed up for your product. … Shortening that span of time makes it easier for your customer, it makes it easier for the community member, makes it easier and gives you that much more potential for that individual signing up for a full-blown account, because they can see just how easy it is and just how good of an experience they can have on your platform.” –@mary_grace

“Having a manager who not only understands the value of developer relations but can articulate that is key, I believe. Otherwise, we land in these situations where the team is not only trying to prove their value to the higher ups and stakeholders but they’re also trying to prove their value to their manager. That’s a really, really difficult situation for anyone to be in. … If you have someone who understands the value of DevRel and can keep you going on that straight and narrow, you don’t get pulled into handling the latest 10 support tickets or being the technical support on the sales call or helping marketing with the rebranding of the website.” –@mary_grace

About Mary Thengvall Mary Thengvall is a connector of people at heart, both personally and professionally. She loves digging into the strategy of how to build and foster developer communities and has been doing so for over 10 years. In addition to her work, Mary is known for being “the one with the dog,” thanks to her ever-present medical alert service dog Ember. She’s the author of She’s the author of The Business Value of Developer Relations, coming later this year from Apress.

Mary is founder and co-host of Community Pulse,, a podcast for developer relations professionals. She curates DevRel Weekly, a weekly newsletter featuring a curated list of articles, job postings, and events. Mary is the founding member and “Benevolent Queen” of the Evangelist Collective Slack team, and a member of Prompt, a non-profit that encourages people to openly talk about mental illness in tech. She speaks at various conferences and events about building and fostering technical communities as well as how to prevent burnout.

Related Links * Sponsor: Structure3C, expert community strategy for large organizations * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Mary Thengvall’s website * Mary on Twitter * The Business Value of Developer Relations * Community Pulse, a podcast for Developer Relations professionals * DevRel Weekly, a weekly newsletter featuring articles and job postings * The Evangelist Collective Slack * Prompt, a non-profit that encourages a dialogue around mental illness in tech * O’Reilly Media, where Mary began her career in developer relations * Laura Baldwin, president of O’Reilly Media * Ignite, a series of speedy presentations * Chef Software

Transcript * View transcript on our website

The Business Value of Developer Relations: How and Why Technical Communities Are Key To Your Success

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Great teachers always seem to have command over their classroom, but what happens if your classroom meets online and has thousands of students? Even the greatest teachers in these situations might need the help of a troll hunter like Tanja de Bie.

While Tanja dubs herself a troll hunter, she’s also a mediator and a teacher in her own right. She recognizes that in higher education communities, it’s often the responsibility of the moderator to teach students how to put their emotions aside and have civil, fact-based discourse. Easier said than done, right? As Tanja would say, grab a cup of tea and hear out her moderation techniques.

At this point, you might be wondering how Tanja became such a prolific master of trolls. If you’re a gamer or writer, you’ll find yourself nodding along as she discusses the friendships and moderation skills that she forged in RPG communities. I personally love how she discusses RPG forum guidelines as a rubric to encourage positive behavior, not as rules that dissuade negative behavior. Later in the episode, she discusses how negativity can silently destroy communities, which is a great reminder for those of us writing community guidelines and doing the moderation, as well.

Patrick and Tanja also discuss:

The storytelling, meaningful conversations, and friendships found in RPG communities
Demanding higher quality participation from your community
The science behind fight or flight reactions

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Higher Logic and Structure3C.

Big Quotes

“If you want to do meaningful things online … go out there and create a space and then curate that space. And there's nothing wrong with saying that for instance, we're going to make it a little harder to sign up. We're going to ask people questions before they join and pre-qualify people. There's nothing wrong with saying that we're going to cap it at this number of people or let people in at a slow rate.” –@patrickokeefe

“[Downvotes are] used for bullying and used to express all kinds of things that [you] don’t want in the community. … Basically, you downvote somebody you dislike and all the power-play that can come with it. These engineers [at Coursera] were genuinely surprised because they had never encountered it before because they were just using up and downvotes to see if a piece of coding was the correct piece of coding. But in the [course] forums, that became something entirely different.” –@bietanjade

“This is higher education so we want people to express themselves in an academic way. They need to be able to remain respectful and they need to be able to use sources and facts and evidence because this is the game that we call science, and you’re not allowed to just to give your opinion. We keep challenging the users and explaining to them what we expect. Surprisingly, that works.” –@bietanjade

“One of the mottos that we have in the volunteer community is “drink a cup of tea.” What I mean by that is … detach yourself before you reply. Go to the kitchen, make a cup of tea and have a 10-minute timeout. [Then] once you come back, you are calmer.” –@bietanjade

About Tanja de Bie Tanja de Bie is project coordinator and community manager at the Online Learning Lab of the Centre of Innovation at Leiden University, helping to produce massive online open courses and small private online courses, and other forms of blended learning.

She studied History at Leiden University from 1990 onwards, and later had 3 children and worked in home care for nearly 10 years, as a project manager in charge of care teams, and quality care coordinator. Along the way, she also acquired more than 15+ years of experience running online role-playing communities. And when the intellectual pull of the university was too strong, Tanje brought that experience with her.

She assists professors and other people at Leiden exploring the online space and its many rules. She published some research, mostly practical advice on how to deal with trolls and create safe learning environments online. Her articles are available via open access.

Related Links * Sponsor: Structure3C, expert community strategy for large organizations * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Tanja de Bie on Twitter * Leiden University * The Centre for Innovation at Leiden University, where Tanja works * The Centre for Innovation’s Digital Learning Lab * The Centre for Innovation’s Youtube Channel * Leiden University’s course on terrorism * Age of Intrigue, an online RPG that Tanja plays and moderates * Tazlure, an online RPG that Tanja used to manage * Leiden University’s Coursera page * Open Science MOOC

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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The role “community manager” can mean different things at different companies and the responsibilities for this role can often be conflated across different teams and areas of expertise. But how does this role translate across different continents and cultures?

In this episode of Community Signal, Patrick and Jean-Yves Lemesle discuss just that. Jean-Yves is an experienced social media and community manager and he shares how both of these areas of expertise, social media management and community management, came to have separate career trajectories in France. They also discuss:

How Jean-Yves has built a career moving around Europe
Why the number of people who speak a language can impact how successful you’ll be in community
A prevailing lack of focus in many interest-based Facebook groups

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Higher Logic and Structure3C.

Big Quotes

“[Community management is] setting the rules, setting the moment, catching the good light, and helping people build amazing things together. It’s a good job to do.” -@jyv

“In France, the community management job title [is seen as a] really junior title and [there are] few senior community managers. [The role] is really about execution and the social media manager role became [more strategy oriented].” -@jyv

“When you start something as a business, you want to have a clear exit, a clear strategy, and a clear goal. You can fish with a really big fish net and try to have many people [in your community], but [that’s not your goal]. You need to be specific and you need to be on point.” -@jyv

“[As a community manager or social media manager], you’ve got the illusion that your users will read everything that you post on Facebook, [the illusion] that all of your content will be displayed for your users on the timeline. The fact is that the timeline that Facebook displays is totally broken and it’s totally out of your control. Your [content could] be displayed with your competitor’s [content alongside].” -@jyv

About Jean-Yves Lemesle Jean-Yves Lemesle is an experienced community pro and social media marketer, motivated and dedicated to helping and developing relationships with brands and their audiences. He has worked in community for more than a decade, most recently at Houzz.

Related Links * Sponsor: Structure3C, expert community strategy for large organizations * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Jean-Yves Lemesle on LinkedIn * Jean-Yves on Twitter * Houzz, a platform for home remodeling, where Jean-Yves worked previously * Managing Online Forums, Patrick’s book * Le Journal du Community Manager * Social Media Community Time Facebook Group * Blog du Modérateur

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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When was the last time you looked at your resume? How about the last time you wrote down a list of everything you’ve worked on and accomplished at your current gig? If it’s been a while, this episode is going to come with some homework afterward.

Maria Ogneva, who has held senior community roles at companies like LinkedIn, Salesforce and Yammer, shares the story of how she turned a lost job into a “fun” journey. Fun is in quotes there because I’m sure that for most of us, the job hunt is hard to imagine as anything but daunting. But by the end of Maria’s story and hearing her tips on knowing your worth and putting yourself and your work out there, I myself became excited about the new tools and motivation that I have going into future job searches.

After you listen to this episode, I’d encourage you to revisit your LinkedIn, resume, or professional bio and make sure that it’s fresh. You never know when an interesting opportunity might come your way and you’ll need to forward it along!

Patrick and Maria discussed:

Breaking the work of community into small, manageable tasks
Approaching your job hunt from a place of empowerment
How to always be prepared for your next big opportunity
Tooting your own horn (that’s talking about your accomplishments)

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Higher Logic and Structure3C.

Big Quotes

“Imagine a community that you’re a part of. If you are asked to continuously deliver big, hairy projects, you probably wouldn’t come back to it. You have a job, maybe you have a family, you have hobbies, and so this community is asking you to do these big things, and that can be really demotivating. Instead, I think what really motivates people is breaking down whatever big tasks you have into small goals and figuring out how to also distribute the work across multiple people.” -@themaria

“It’s sometimes much easier to just do the whole project by yourself end-to-end, but just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. It always counts for more when you can do it with other people, especially in a community setting, because the community is not about you. It’s not about any one person. … If it’s really, truly a community, which presupposes a shared ownership, and a shared culture, and shared activity, you cannot and should not attempt to do anything by yourself.” -@themaria

“Just because you’re not employed does not mean that you can’t come at [your job search] from a position of strength. Just know your strengths and really believe that you have something to offer to whoever you’re talking to and that will make establishing the guardrails and being really honest about what you want that much easier. … Just because you don’t have a job in the hand does not mean that you have lost all leverage. Your experience, your network, they’re all great leverage.” -@themaria

About Maria Ogneva Maria Ogneva is the director of online customer experience and community at FinancialForce. She has extensive experience in various roles in community and social strategy, customer development, and marketing. Maria is passionate about building communities and loves helping businesses better connect with their customers and employees. She has built world-class, global social and community programs at companies like LinkedIn, Yammer, Salesforce, Sidecar, Sumo Logic, and Attensity.

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Sponsor: Structure3C, expert community strategy for large organizations * Maria Ogneva on LinkedIn * Social Silk, Maria’s blog * Maria on Medium * FinancialForce supplies apps for accounting, billing, supply chain management, and more * Why Big Goals Demotivate And Incremental Changes Mobilize * KarateForums.com turned 17 in May * Looking for my next opportunity

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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Can you recall the community-related news and trends of last summer? Let us refresh your memory.

YouTube announced new guidelines for advertisers that inadvertently led to significant changes in revenue for many creators on its platform. Photobucket broke countless images across the web without notice. The city of Charlottesville, Virginia was descended upon by white supremacists during the violent, hateful, and deadly Unite the Right rally, yet Twitter still gave them (and still gives them) a place to convene and organize online.

These topics were covered on Community Signal as they happened and this week’s episode is a gathering of unreleased clips from last summer. These were originally released to our Patreon supporters between July and September of 2017. If you’d like more behind the scenes clips and the chance to contribute potential questions and conversation topics to the show, please consider backing our show on Patreon.

In this compilation, you’ll hear from Jonathan Bailey, Jessamyn West, Christina Shorter, Alessio Fattorini, Lilah Raptopoulos, Josh Millard, and Randy Farmer.

These clips touch on the events mentioned above, the following topics, and more:

Having a backup plan when you rely on third-party software
Creating a culture of reciprocity in support communities
The goldmine waiting for journalists in the comments section

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Higher Logic and Structure3C.

Big Quotes

“If you base any significant part of your business or your community on a third-party, you need to have … some means of how to replace them should they shift, should they change, should they pivot or just outright pull the rug out. [You should] be thinking about who you’re working with, who your hosts are, who your advertising partners are [and] then determine, ‘Well, if they go away tomorrow, what do I do? What’s my plan?'” -@plagiarismtoday

“You can’t always rely on the technology but you can often rely on the people.” -@jessamyn

“People are hard. … Code is easier than people, sometimes. It’s harder to deal with people. You have to be personal. You have to be there. Automation can help but it’s not enough. It’s hard to replace a good community manager or a good personal touch.” -@ale_fattorini

“I didn’t really want to just encourage our journalists to jump into the comments just because the audience engagement team says they should just because that’s engagement, and whatever engagement means, you have to do it now. That’s not what our role is and that’s not useful for anyone. If someone told me that, I would think, ‘What’s in it for me? It doesn’t make any sense.’ I have been careful to angle it with what’s in it for them, which is how can it then improve your journalism or add some insights that might be of interest to you. What do your readers want to know? What are your readers not understanding in your stories? That’s all stuff you can get from the comments.” -@lilahrap

“People don’t care about the feelings of white supremacists. … Like when GoFundMe bans them from their platform and they complain on Twitter, GoFundMe doesn’t respond, because why respond? Nobody cares if these people are unhappy. You drive them away to whatever platform that will take them at that time: Reddit, Gab, The Daily Stormer, whoever will take those people, that’s where you push them because they’ll always find each other and will exist but you don’t have to have them on your platform.” -@patrickokeefe

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Sponsor: Structure3C, expert community strategy for large organizations * Jessamyn West, librarian and former director of operations for Metafilter (Community Signal episode) * Jonathan Bailey, copyright expert and voice behind Plagiarism Today (Community Signal episode) * Christina Shorter, community manager for National Geographic (Community Signal episode) * Alessio Fattorini, community manager for NethServer (Community Signal episode) * Lilah Raptopoulos, community editor and comments advocate at the Financial Times(Community Signal episode) * Josh Millard, owner and manager of Metafilter (Community Signal episode) * Randy Farmer, co-creator of Habitat, often regarded as the first graphical virtual world (Community Signal episode) * YouTube’s “advertiser-friendly” guidelines * WhatCulture Wrestling, a wrestling promotion that saw a dip in revenue after YouTube changed its advertising policies * In the Company of Givers and Takers by Adam Grant * Unite the Right Descends on Charlottesville, Virginia * How Photobucket broke images across the web, without notice to their users * Patrick talks discusses the Photobucket debacle with Jessamyn West and Jonathan Bailey * Spi.ne, a container hosting platform

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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Think about the last time you were working on a new product, tool, or resource for your community. You probably looked through feedback that they had shared with you and compiled a list of all the needs they have. You created a “use case utopia” that you thought would be well-received by your community and internal stakeholders.

As Jakkii Musgrave shares in this episode of Community Signal, use case utopias can be easily conceived, but not so easily implemented without the guidance of shared goals or a community manager to make sure that things are moving in the right direction.

And related to the topic of conversation within the workplace, Jakkii gives her take on how GDPR (the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation) will impact the work of community professionals. If your community has members that are from the EU, make sure that you and your company are aware of how these new regulations may impact how you handle their data. And if you’re well-read on this topic, we’d love to have you on the show!

Jakkii and Patrick also discuss:

How GDPR will change content sharing and data storage within employee communities
Why digital and network literacy are increasingly important in our ever more dispersed workplaces
Getting buy-in from and sharing skills with every level of your organization

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Open Social and Structure3C.

Big Quotes

“Generation Z has grown up in an area where it’s more ubiquitous that the internet just exists. But it’s not always necessarily a positive. They don’t want their parents to be able to see what they’re doing. They have to manage cyberbullying and all those kinds of things lead them creating fake profiles or having public Instagram profiles while they have a private one that they actually just share photos of each other looking miserable with their friends. Those accounts aren’t the public face of themselves but that’s how they’re managing their own image, as well as their privacy. I think they’re a little bit more sophisticated without necessarily having given it any particular consideration about what it means to put information out in the public space.” -@slybeer

“In the workplace, you need skills like network literacy. How do you build networks? How do you interact within a network? We need information literacy. How do we filter though all of the content and information that’s available to us? How do we find what it is we’re looking for? How do we cut through the noise and find the signal? How do we curate content? Those core community management skills are about influence and connection.” -@slybeer

“Your internal online community will reveal your culture. You can’t use it to change your culture, it will reveal it.” -@slybeer

About Jakkii Musgrave Jakkii Musgrave is a senior consultant for Ripple Effect Group, where she ensures a user-focus in the digital workplace and in online communities more broadly. Her professional experience spans a variety of industries in the public and private sectors, ranging from blue-chip multinationals to small and medium-sized businesses. Much of her work focuses on providing strategic direction and advice on the digital workplace, community management and engagement, and conducting user and landscape research to underpin recommendations.

Before joining Ripple Effect Group, Jakkii worked as a community manager in employee, fan, and customer communities at organizations in Australia and Canada. Jakkii has presented at conferences, universities, and organizational development days on community management and the digital workplace. She writes for the Ripple Effect Group blog and has been published in the AITD magazine.

Related Links * Sponsor: Open Social, community building for nonprofits * Sponsor: Structure3C, expert community strategy for large organizations * Jakkii Musgrave on Twitter * The Ripple Effect Group blog * EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) * Unroll.Me, a service that aims to clean up your inbox * Facebook announces new integrations for its workplace platform * Workplace by Facebook * The Cambridge Analytica Scandal, in 3 Paragraphs * Facebook Wants to ‘Bring the World Closer Together’ * Maggie McGary, a prior guest of the show, VP of Strategy and Audience Development at 5:00 Films & Media * Rachel Happe, co-founder of the Community Roundtable, on Twitter

Transcript * View transcript on our website

Thank you for listening to Community Signal.

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What brings you to your favorite social networks? Is it the people that you know you’ll find there or the topics and content that you know you’ll be able to discover? In this episode of Community Signal, we dive deep into what Chris Brogan, a digital marketing expert and New York Times bestselling author, thinks he wants from social networks and conversely, how he observes his children using Twitter, SoundCloud, and more.

The gaming industry is at the forefront of this conversation. Chris and Patrick discuss the unique social engineering behind the Nintendo Switch and how other hardware items, like digital photo frames, really need to catch up.

All this, plus:

Teens forecasting the future of content and internet platforms
Fortnite and the Queen’s gaming preferences
The reckoning coming to the way we work

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Higher Logic and Structure3C.

Big Quotes

“Kids are faster than we ever were. They’re using smaller bites. The right word might be a symbol or package or something where they’re making a reference to something where the word no longer actually is the direct literal translation, but now has a whole different set of meanings.” -@chrisbrogan

“We’re going to get down to Snapchat story-sized humanity. When a lot of people hear me say that, they scoff and go, ‘Kids these days.’ I’m thinking, ‘What if they’re right? What if stories are too bloated?’ Spider-Man: Homecoming is the best Spider-Man movie ever made because they didn’t bother telling us the origin story because guess what? We’ve all known it since like 1964.” -@chrisbrogan

“I think that there is such an absolute disservice being done to educating entrepreneurship in this country right now for the digital space. We still have a tough time explaining to small towns that you actually don’t need jobs that reside in the town where your house is. That you could actually work on the internet anywhere on the Earth and just happen to get your WiFi from that town. There’s a schism and I don’t know what’s going to really change it, but I know that there’s a huge reckoning coming where a lot of people are going to suddenly realize, ‘Oh, I need a new way of doing work.'” -@chrisbrogan

About Chris Brogan Chris Brogan is a digital marketing expert advisor and the CEO of Owner Media Group. He’s worked with brands like Google, Pepsi, Disney, Sony Electronics USA, Comcast, and Microsoft. He is a professional keynote speaker and the New York Times bestselling author of nine books, the latest of which is Find Your Writing Voice. He is engaged to Jacqueline Carly, and between the two of them, have three wonderful kids. Chris lives in northern Massachusetts.

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Sponsor: Structure3C, expert community strategy for large organizations * Chris's website * Zack Cooper, a previous guest of the show, discusses Ubisoft's Community Content team * Vlad Dusil, a previous guest of the show, shares that forums are still very much alive * Bring the Edge to the Center and the Center to the Edge * Jay Baer, who wrote Hug Your Haters * Mastodon, a decentralized, open source social network * The medium is the message, a phrase coined by professor and philosopher Marshall McLuhan * Steve Kamb's website, Nerd Fitness * Queen Elizabeth loves the Nintendo Wii * GamePuncher, where Chris initiates conversations about how teens are interacting on the web * Crypto.Kred, founded by Jodee Rich, puts community on a coin (Chris advises this company) * A smart fish tank left a casino vulnerable to hackers * Mike Creuzer, a previous guest of the show, on Xenforo and Harry Potter * Inside the Hollywood Home of Social Media’s Stars * Owner Media Group * Chris Brogan on Twitter

Transcript * View transcript on our website

Find Your Writing Voice: How to write more like your amazing self, for books, blog posts, and email

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RPG (RolePlayGateway), a community of game designers, world builders, and storytellers scripting entire universes, is entering its 14th year of existence. And while RPG founder Eric Martindaleknows that some members of the community might move on, he’s in it for the long haul. He’s energized by the relationships that he’s seen members of the RPG community build and the excitement behind INK, a Bitcoin-backed digital currency that people within the community are using to tip one another for their creative work, and purchase digital goods.

In this episode, Eric gives a crash course on blockchain, which he chalks up to being a “highly inefficient database.” If you haven’t done your homework on this subject yet, his definitions and suggestions on things to look out for will help get you up to speed. We discuss:

The ups and downs of managing one community for 14 years
How the RPG community deals with wordiness
Three things that every community manager should know about blockchain

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Open Social and Structure3C.

Big Quotes

“Tipping is extremely popular [with my community’s currency]. Users are in some cases donating 5% or 10% of their total holdings to other users because of forum posts and that’s really exciting to me. It shows that people are really appreciating one another and willing to show that appreciation through some form of monetary exchange.” -@martindale

“One of the most valuable things that a blockchain can provide is the ability to verify published information without having to trust any particular party. … A blockchain can provide the ability for any participant in a community to know that something is true based on when it was published and all of the other people that have verified that information.” -@martindale

“I would really recommend enabling user-to-user tipping. That has been extremely successful for us because it allows individual users to show their gratitude and appreciation for one another. That’s something that, up until now, has really been difficult. You have to use these official karma points or various tools and mechanisms, whereas, with digital currency, you have the ability to actually transfer real value to show your gratitude and appreciation.” -@martindale

“Any time you hear the phrase, ‘What do you think of blockchain?’ and you don’t put a definite article in front of it, chances are it’s going to be one of the people that are excited about the hype and the excitement of the phrase. But really, just replace that word. Replace the word “blockchain” with the word “database” and see if it makes any sense. If it doesn’t make any sense, then it probably isn’t a very good use case because what a blockchain is, is a highly inefficient database.” -@martindale

About Eric Martindale Eric is the founder of RPG, an online community of game designers, world builders, and storytellers entering its 14th year of independent operation. RPG recently announced “INK,” a Bitcoin-backed digital currency given in exchange for community-focused work and used for pricing of player-owned virtual assets within their custom “Universe Simulator” game engine.

Eric has been a software engineer, entrepreneur, and community manager for over 15 years, building software for startup companies in a wide number of industries. More recently, he worked as a developer evangelist and open source strategist in the Bitcoin industry, helping several well-known companies in the space with technical communication and community growth. He’s now focused on launching Fabric, a decentralized operating system and communication protocol for building peer-to-peer applications that operate without any central server or authority — a tool he hopes will be most useful in helping communities self-organize without the threat of censorship, abuse, and privacy violations present in existing centralized providers of community platforms.

Related Links * Sponsor: Structure3C, expert community strategy for large organizations * Sponsor: Open Social, community building for nonprofits * Eric Martindale on Twitter * RolePlayGateway, an online community of game designers, world builders, and storytellers founded by Eric * INK, RPG’s Bitcoin-backed digital currency * Fabric OS, a decentralized operating system for serverless applications. * Initial coin offering * Lightning Network

Transcript * View transcript on our website

Thank you for listening to Community Signal.

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LEGO might be open to your ideas now, but it wasn’t always like that. Afraid of legal blowback, they once turned away ideas – and largely ignored their adult fan base.

Jake McKee helped form LEGO’s first community team, and usher in a new era of openness at the company. He opened the lines of communication between adult consumers of their products, who had more discretionary income than the kids, driving home the understanding that LEGO was not just a child’s toy company. Plus:

Finding the job you want, not necessarily the job that’s posted
How Jake made busy people find time to talk about community
Building super user programs

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Higher Logic and Structure3C.

Big Quotes

“Why not ask? Look past the job postings that are out there and actually go for something that interests you. Put aside the fear of rejection for a minute and just go for it. If they say no, then you go to the next thing. It’s not the end of the world.” -@patrickokeefe

“One of the things that I found fascinating when I got [to LEGO] was how little interest most of my colleagues, at that time, had in talking about adult consumers. … When I would go and try to talk to colleagues, they wouldn’t take my meetings. They had better things to do and giving them the benefit of the doubt, at that time, the adult fans did make up a really small footprint, and they didn’t necessarily see the vision that I had. That’s not what their task was.” -@jakemckee

“A super user program is a fan program, it’s an engagement program. The idea is, there are people in your community that are actively, knowingly, participating more than others and your desire [as a community owner] is to see more of that activity and to maintain those folks doing amazing things, so you put together formal programs that recognize and incentivize and reward that activity.” -@jakemckee

“It takes a few years for any individually, emotionally-driven type of activity, where you engage real people in real time, whether it’s community or super user or anything else, [to mature]. There’s a build to that. You’re building a relationship and like any relationship, you won’t get married on the first date for a reason. It takes a while to get to that point of effectiveness.” -@jakemckee

“There’s a vulnerability to community that I don’t think people understand or appreciate. When you start talking about it in terms of dating, they get a little closer, but it still feels a little odd to use that metaphor. The reality is, somebody that’s spending time on the community is making themselves vulnerable. They are coming in, they’re opening themselves up, they’re spending time in that place, they’re building a profile. … It’s really wonderful in the beginning and we start opening ourselves up and that’s scary, but it becomes really comfortable and that comfort is an absolutely amazing thing you want to maintain.” -@jakemckee

About Jake McKee Jake McKee calls himself the community guy (as in communityguy.com) because he’s been developing community for a long, long time. Jake’s always joked that this started in 1998 when we finally convinced brands to add email addresses to their web sites.

Over the years, he’s had a series of dream jobs: Jake started his career building websites for the Dallas Stars, Texas Rangers, and a multitude of brands when websites were brand new. He then developed the community engagement strategy and execution at LEGO, eventually landing a Wired cover story due to his work. Jake built a successful social media consulting practice, Ant’s Eye View that he and his partners sold to PwC, where he worked on massive digital consulting projects. He ran the Apple Global Support Community, one of the largest, most active communities on the web. And today, Jake is running Community5, a consulting practice focused on building and designing online communities and fan engagement programs.

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Sponsor: Structure3C, expert community strategy for large organizations * Jake’s website * Jake McKee on Twitter * Ready Player One Challenge: The Maze, a brand activation in Hollywood * Geeks in Toyland, the Wired magazine cover story about LEGO’s efforts to cater to adult fans * Social media strategy firm Ant’s Eye View to Join PwC * Apple’s support community, which Jake ran while with the company * The single largest LEGO set ever sold * LEGO Ideas, crowdsourced LEGO product concepts * Community5, Jake’s consultancy * A summary of Jake's talk at Word of Mouth Supergenius * Tarmod Askildsen, who Jake worked with at LEGO * The Lego Ambassador Program * Microsoft’s MVP Program

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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Once worried that big social media companies would displace online forums, Vlad Dusil is now “pretty damn confident” that niche forums are not only alive and well, but here to stay. He’s the COO and co-founder of PurseBlog, including PurseForum, a flourishing community of over 550,000 fans of luxury handbags.

Together, Vlad and his co-founder and wife Meaghan are building a trusted community of luxury handbag enthusiasts and authenticators. We discuss:

The resurgence of niche forums and communities
How authenticators volunteer their services to help other community members make safe handbag purchases
A surprise (and somewhat nerve-racking) visit from the Secret Service

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Open Social and Structure3C.

Big Quotes

“When you talk about this emerging trend of stepping back from all of the noise [of social media] and embracing a bit more of a minimalistic and calm lifestyle… the first step is to just disconnect yourself from all this rubbish noise in the first place. That’s basically why I feel like forums will remain very much relevant in the years going forward. As long as we keep providing our users with a pleasant experience, I don’t really see why forums need to die out. I think they’re very relevant. They shouldn’t go away. Social media, all these apps, they’re not a replacement for it at all.” -Vlad Dusil

“Of course, sometimes there are people who pop in and give unsolicited advice on these [handbag authentication] requests. We don’t mean to sound ungrateful by any means. We love anybody contributing to the community and giving their time and their effort and their energy, but you’ve got to get it right. The group of authenticators, they’re a very proud and very particular bunch. If there are newbies coming in and starting to authenticate, they will flag it to us as admins and say, ‘Hey, this person doesn’t really qualify to be an authenticator. Would you mind sending them a message and let them know that we’ve got this covered?'” -Vlad Dusil

“Fake [handbags] were being listed by people who had absolutely no place listing things on our community. Basically, they were looking to exploit the goodwill of the community by selling them a bunch of crap. So, we created an invite-only marketplace that has maybe 2,000 or so members in it.” -Vlad Dusil

About Vlad Dusil Vlad Dusil was born in Prague in 1980, and spent his childhood and adolescence growing up in Germany after his parents fled the communist regime in Czechoslovakia in 1982. In late 1999, Vlad emigrated again, this time to Columbus, OH, where a swimming scholarship allowed him to pursue studies and his continuing swimming career. As he didn’t care much for the studies, and swimming ceased to be a priority in his life, he taught himself to code and build websites.

This would come in handy when, a few years later, Vlad’s then swim team girlfriend Meaghan literally had her shoulder explode during a swim meet warm-up, effectively ending her career as a swimmer. Meaghan’s parents expected her to get a job with her newly found free time, but she, like Vlad, never really had the mindset of going the traditional route. In late 2004, they devised the plan to launch a blog where she could explore her love for handbags.

Later in 2005, Vlad decided to add the community arm of PurseBlog in form of PurseForum. The early members really liked the idea of a place where their obsession with expensive designer bags could be celebrated and shared without the fear of being judged by others. That community has now grown to over 35 million posts with more than 550,000 members all around the world.

Related Links * Sponsor: Open Social, community building for nonprofits * Sponsor: Structure3C, expert community strategy for large organizations * Vlad Dusil on LinkedIn * PurseBlog and Purse Forum * PurseBlog on Twitter * Meaghan Mahoney-Dusil on how PurseBlog united half a million handbag fanatics * UI/UX Digital Strategist Mike Creuzer, who previously spoke on Community Signal * PurseBlog’s eBay forum * Amazon Associates, Amazon’s affiliate program * eBay’s affiliate program * eBay Partner Network (EPN) * CJ Affiliate (formerly known as Commision Junction) * The Fred Miranda photography forum

Transcript * View transcript on our website

Thank you for listening to Community Signal.

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Jared Smith found my community when we were both teenagers. He got to see me early in my career. He became a great contributor to the community, as well as a moderator. He also hacked my website.

In high school, he couldn’t find any other Van Halen fans, so he joined an online community. That took him down a road that led to him co-authoring 2005’s Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress, and building a career. Plus:

phpBB’s insularity problem, that helped create an opportunity for Jared
The shift away from chronological order online
Russia’s manipulation of opinions online, through online communities and social spaces

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Higher Logic and Structure3C.

Big Quotes

“I would have a very hard time finding somebody that’s my age who’s working on the web that didn’t do something with GeoCities. A part of me died when they shut that down. All good things must come to an end.” –@jaredwsmith

“Life is not lived in slices. It’s not lived out of order unless you’re on something very interesting. Life is not lived in different time slices of different periods. It is lived in chronological order.” –@jaredwsmith

“Anonymous speech is still the most important speech that we should protect on the internet, because for people who are legitimately trying to speak out from regimes that are oppressive, they need the ability to stay anonymous. We need anonymous whistleblowers to do the right thing and speak up. Speak truth to power while giving them the option of keeping them self-protected.” –@jaredwsmith

About Jared Smith Jared Smith is a development team lead at BoomTown in Charleston, SC, where he specializes in engineering on the company’s WordPress-based consumer sites. He brings over ten years experience with the WordPress platform to BoomTown, providing subject matter expertise not only within the development team but also throughout the company.

In whatever time there is left, Jared runs @chswx on Twitter. @chswx is the most-followed Charleston-specific weather source in the Lowcountry, and works closely with local media and the National Weather Service to ensure that critical weather information gets disseminated with as little hype and as much substance as possible.

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Sponsor: Structure3C, expert community strategy for large organizations * Jared on Twitter * BoomTown, where Jared is consumer software development manager * @chswx, Charleston Weather on Twitter, created by Jared * VHLinks, a Van Halen tribute site * 1984, Van Halen’s sixth studio album * Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress by Robert T. Douglass, Mike Little and Jared * Jared on Quintin’s Close-Ups, talking about the death of chronology * UBB threads * Rosemary O’Neill, the co-founder of Social Strata, on Community Signal * Now closing: GeoCities, a relic of Web’s early days * Microsoft’s MVP program * Phorum and Ikonboard * Remnants of UBBHacks can still be found on VHLinks * Little Bobby Tables * Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg, the founders and developers of WordPress * WordCamp, a conference that focuses on everything WordPress * Jared gets interviewed on Quintin’s Close-Ups * Mueller’s indictment of Russians for interfering with US elections * I Was a Paid Internet Shill * Bassey Etim, Community Desk Editor at the New York Times, on Community Signal * Evan Williams, CEO of Medium

Transcript * View transcript on our website

Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress

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Ubisoft’s community content team helps the gaming company’s community developers and managers by creating polished content, inspired by and sometimes derived from the community.

After spending time as a community developer himself, Zack Cooper was tapped to start this team, and has led it for the last 3 and a half years. We discuss:

How the community content team benefits the community team
Zack’s favorite stories of content that has come from the community
If this model could make sense in other industries

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Open Social.

Big Quotes

“I am absolutely in love with community creations as a whole. I think it’s important that, as a community team, we create an environment that allows people to share written word on a forum, Reddit post, tweets, whatever it may be. Art is such a wonderful form of expression. We see that in fan art. We see that in cosplay… if we can prop up an artist and showcase some of their work, provide them with a wider range of eyeballs, that’s a great thing.” –@Z_Cooperstown

“The mission [of community developers in gaming] is always to ensure that the development process is humanized and that people understand that games aren’t made in a vacuum by robots, that it is real people [working on them].” –@Z_Cooperstown

“[Having an in-house community content team] speaks to flexibility and affordability. It allows us to ensure that our productions are indeed completed with the passion that we hope to get from the community, as well. The team that I lead is filled with people who also play and love games, so they’re familiar with what it is that we are doing. This ensures that we’re able to look at it through the lens of the player.” –@Z_Cooperstown

About Zack Cooper Zack Cooper is community content lead at Ubisoft, working with their community teams around the world to help tell great stories. He started at Ubisoft Toronto in March of 2012, fresh off the birth of his first daughter, following an 11-year career in radio broadcasting. Zack was a reporter, talk show host, and sports anchor, while hosting a video game show on the side. He appreciates quality and creative storytelling and has a passion for music, both of which help maintain sanity amid all the stresses of everyday life.

Related Links * Sponsor: Open Social, community building for nonprofits * Zack’s Twitter * Ubisoft, where Zack is community content lead * Ubisoft Toronto, where Zack started at Ubisoft and worked for more than 5 years * Gabe Graziani, a previous guest of the show, who also works at Ubisoft and contributed to this episode * I hope Zack Cooper is our Splinter Cell 7 Community Developer, a Ubisoft forum thread * Into the Creed, a documentary about the community behind Assassin’s Creed * “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” a community project from players of Ubisoft’s Rocksmith

Transcript * View transcript on our website

Thank you for listening to Community Signal.

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Lana Lee spent 15 years as a civil and structural engineer, before switching careers and, shortly thereafter, becoming a community manager.

On this episode of the show, we discuss what drove that change and the similarities between the two roles. Plus:

What Lana did when she was worried that some teams wouldn’t take the company community seriously
The community bootcamp program she’s working on
Why Facebook might be the greatest use case for pre-moderation I have ever seen

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Higher Logic.

Big Quotes

“Engineers have to be organized and also have to think two steps ahead. When I was putting together our community, I had to think, ‘What kind of problems would this person have in the future? How can this document be misunderstood? Are there any loopholes?'” -@lanalyzer314

“I think of Facebook like a toy. Most people are there for social things or just to kill time whereas if you were in the Zuora community or some [other] community, you’re in a different mindset.” -@lanalyzer314

About Lana Lee Lana Lee graduated from UC Berkeley in civil engineering and then went to USC where she got a music degree in oboe performance and masters in civil engineering.

For 15 years, Lana worked as a civil and structural engineer in the mining and gas industry, but in 2012, she wanted to do something different. She went back to school to earn a certificate in internet development and became a freelance web designer, creating websites for musicians. Freelance was great, but she missed being a part of a larger organization, so she added social media manager and community specialist to her job queue!

Currently, Lana is the the Zuora community manager, but she still loves building communities through Meetup and Facebook, playing oboe and English Horn around the Bay Area and volunteering her web and social media skills for non-profits like Mensa, the Jenny Lin Foundation, the Contra Costa Orchestra and Life.Church Online.

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Blips on a Blog, Lana’s blog * Zuora, a software company focused on businesses with a subscription business model, where Lana is community manager * Mensa, the Jenny Lin Foundation, the Contra Costa Orchestra, and Life Church Online, four organizations to which Lana volunteers her web and social media skills * Lana on LinkedIn * Zuora Community * “Zuora Community News | January 2018,” a community announcement where Lana mentioned the community bootcamp program that she is working on * Life.Church Online, which has an active Facebook group where Lana is a volunteer administrator * Lithium, producer of the community platform that powers the Zuora Community * Woodwind Web Design, Lana’s freelance work in web design for musicians * Lana on Twitter

Transcript * View transcript on our website

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Not every segment we record on Community Signal makes it into the final episode. One of the perks of being a supporter of the show on Patreon is being among the first to hear bonus clips and cut for time extras.

That’s what this episode consists of: A group of clips that were released to Patreon supporters between June and July of 2017 and have only been heard by them – until now. With new insights from past guests Maggie McGary, Christopher Carfi, Kim England, Tracey Todd, Bob Hubbard, Scott Moore and Venessa Paech, this edition of the show is like a collection of short stories for community professionals, including:

Lessons learned from fighting for buy-in for more than a decade
When your community is deleted by a disgruntled employee of your web hosting company
Candid reactions to Facebook’s inconsistent moderation manual

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Open Social.

Big Quotes

“The lesson that I’ve learned, that I still have to remind myself of every day, is that patience is essential. [Community] makes perfect sense to you, from the community manager point of view, because you understand it and can clearly see the value… [but put] yourself in their shoes and understand that change is scary, doing things differently is scary, extra work is scary. Put the brakes on yourself … and just really try to see it from the point of view of somebody who may not understand what community is.” -@maggielmcg

“This idea that we have millennials and other labels for people in the workplace is actually really divisive, and I don’t think it’s helping when we start to think about how you engage employees. I really like to think about engaging employees based on their needs, their wants, and what they can get out of it and what’s in it for me. I think that kind of millennial discussion is really unhelpful, and it’s something that I have a serious bee in my bonnet about.” -@sociuscommunity

“You have immense power in your hands if you’re in charge of any community. If you’re building a community, you’re at the very start of your journey. If you are in charge of any large following … you’ve taken over the role of media provider. Your followers are going to look to you as a content provider whether your ambition is sports, pop culture, politics. I say, for community builders, it’s really important that you recognize the responsibility of that role and that power and the impact of your post. [Do not] disregard the fact that there is immense power there, and a post could be literally life-changing, life-altering for any of your followers.” -@TraceyTodd

“I don’t know if it’s just because context is tricky to scale but context makes moderation easier and more efficient, I would argue. It might make it more challenging in a few areas, but without context, you can’t possibly do [moderation]. It does explain why when you see the outcome [of so many of Facebook’s moderation decisions], you’re left scratching your head because you feel the absence of context. Why A and not B? Why that and not that? Why the picture of the woman breastfeeding but not the porn stars? It just makes no sense.” -@venessapeach

Related Links * Sponsor: Open Social, community building for nonprofits * Community Signal’s Patreon campaign * Maggie McGary, VP, strategy & audience development at 5:00 Films & Media (Community Signal episode) * Christopher Carfi, director of content marketing at GoDaddy (Community Signal episode) * Kim England, global community director at Pearson (Community Signal episode) * Tracey Todd, digital communications director at the National Institute of Civil Discourse (Community Signal episode) * Bob Hubbard, co-owner of Hubbard Photography and founder of MartialTalk.com(Community Signal episode) * Scott Moore, formerly of Answers.com, the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation and Fujitsu (Community Signal episode) * Venessa Paech, founder of Swarm Conference and community manager at Australia Post(Community Signal episode) * Community Signal episode with Denise Law, that Maggie tweeted about * The GoDaddy Community * Nobody Likes to be Called Millennial * Liquid Web * KenpoTalk, a discussion forum dedicated to Kenpo Karate * Facebook moderators are trained to protect “white men” and not “black children” from hate speech

Transcript * View transcript on our website

Thank you for listening to Community Signal.

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For the 100th episode of Community Signal, we’re talking about the show itself. How it came to be, what drives it and how we make it each week.

My guest is the producer of all 100 episodes, Karn Broad. Karn is my creative partner in the show, but if he does his job well, you never think about it. This episode really gives you a sense of the rapport than Karn and I have, and how we work together every week to produce Community Signal. Plus:

How Karn and I met
Why I ended the first community management podcast that I hosted
The process of creating the show each week

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Higher Logic.

Big Quotes “If you do your job really well as a sound engineer, you almost become invisible. If that’s the right way to put it. People don’t think about you if you’re getting your job right. Same in live sound engineering. You’ve connected the audience to the live music, they’re not thinking about you at all.” -@WebKarnage

“I don’t think about my job as a sound engineer while I’m playing [music] much because I’ve got to focus on being a player. Otherwise, the job I’m doing isn’t going to be 100%.” -@WebKarnage

“It’s still not a shock if I’ve done six or seven hours of editing work on a podcast, maybe more. That can happen some weeks. It really depends on how it all clicks. Sometimes I can pull things together really quickly. Sometimes the episodes are long and I find the editing tricky. Some people that you think are going to be awkward for me, actually prove to be quite easy. People that tend to leave pauses, you can take the pauses out; with a blink, they are gone.” -@WebKarnage

“One of the things that makes me happy … is that a lot of people we have on are first-timers to a podcast. Out of 100 episodes, we’ve had 98 unique guests. I really want to do a survey but I would hazard a guess that for 30-45% of those people, [Community Signal is] the first podcast they’ve ever been a guest on. I always thought that’s pretty cool. What I’m saying is, we don’t go after influential people. I don’t go after people who have Twitter followers. I just want people who I actually want to talk to.” -@patrickokeefe

About Karn Broad Amongst a large variety of work, Karn Broad has spent over 20 years in the audio world, and has been involved in web design for over 10 years, making websites for small businesses and working in software support for a web design package called RapidWeaver for Realmac Software. He spent several years as the producer of the SitePoint Podcast, which is where we met and built our working relationship.

His direct experience in community is as a user of several forums and as a moderator for the RapidWeaver user forums.

Currently, in addition to producing Community Signal, Karn works in education with children that have specific learning needs, plays bass (sometimes double-bass, sometimes electric bass) in three different live bands, and teaches both guitar and music production. He likes things busy.

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Karn Broad on Twitter * The first episode of Community Signal * The Social Element, Higher Logic and Open Social, companies who have sponsored the show * Tamara Littleton, CEO of The Social Element * Hunter Montgomery, CMO of Higher Logic * Mieszko Czyzyk, director and co-founder of Open Social * RapidWeaver for Realmac, where Karn provides software support * The SitePoint Podcast, where Karn and Patrick met * The Podcast Network, where Patrick previously hosted The Community Admin Show * Brad Williams, Stephan Segraves and Kevin Yank, co-hosts of the SitePoint Podcast * Karn’s go-to podcasts include Click and the Royal Society * SitePoint wins Podcast of the Year award from .net magazine * Trivia: All episodes of Community Signal have been recorded on Skype, except for this one and this one * Total Recorder, an application Patrick uses to record audio for the show * Soundtrack Pro and Logic Pro X are software tools that Karn uses to produce Community Signal * Alex Embry’s episode clocks in at the longest episode of Community Signal * KarateForums.com, a forum that Patrick has moderated for going on 17 years * Community Signal bonus clips * CommunityCo, where Patrick recently started a new role * GoTranscript, which we use for transcription

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Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

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Sue Ryder, a well-known charity in the UK, provides support for end of life care and bereavement. In 2015, after more than 60 years of operation, they launched an online community.

For a majority of the its members, the community serves as the first touch point between them and the organization. Not only that, but in a survey, more than 90% of members said that the community made them feel less alone and more able to cope with their situation. Community manager Priscilla McClay joins the program. Plus:

The research that led to the launch of the community
How the community has shifted to focus primarily on bereavement
What Priscilla does to cope with the nature of the community

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Open Social.

Big Quotes “It is okay to be affected by [difficult issues in the community], to find [them] emotional. You don’t have to be some professional robot. In fact, if you’re the kind of person who’s not at all affected by it then maybe, you’re not really the kind of person who would get much out of working on a charity support network community.” -@MillionMonkeys

“It is important to debrief sometimes and to talk about the most difficult issues. To be able to switch off as well. Like with any kind of community or social media job, there is a temptation to take it home with you because it’s extremely easy to access from anywhere. … I had to try and be really strict with myself about my holidays, my off days and my evenings, not to get dragged into it because … it could take over your life.” -@MillionMonkeys

“I did want a career where I was really making a difference and helping to support people. Although a lot of people, having a look at the community and seeing the [conversation] titles, would go, ‘Oh my God. This is bleak and this is hard going.’ And it is. But there are great things that happen there as well. … People are so relieved to find other people who are in similar situations.” -@MillionMonkeys

“One of the things I really need to think through is how do we make sure that anyone who’s in our superuser or volunteer program doesn’t feel obligated to do too much or to just have to give and not take as it were, or to feel overwhelmed by the task of supporting others. There might be times when they need to take a step back from other people’s sadness. I want to be very careful to set up a way where there’s enough of them and also they feel supported enough by Sue Ryder or by me as the community manager that they don’t find the role too much for them.” -@MillionMonkeys

About Priscilla McClay Priscilla McClay has a BA in English literature and creative writing and a master’s in journalism. She has spent seven years working in digital in the non-profit sector, five of which were in community management. Prior to Priscilla’s current job at Sue Ryder, she worked in the community team at Macmillan Cancer Support.

Related Links * Sponsor: Open Social, community building for nonprofits * Sue Ryder, where Priscilla is online community manager * Macmillan Cancer Support, where Priscilla was previously senior online community officer * Serena Snoad, a previous guest of the show, who connected me to Priscilla * Sue Ryder’s online community * Priscilla on Twitter

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Thank you for listening to Community Signal.

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Matt Mecham‘s code has powered far too many online communities to count. Developing popular online community software since 2001, he worked on YaBB and founded Ikonboard, before co-founding Invision Power Services, the company behind Invision Community.

Given his long view of the industry, Matt sees the timeline of online community as progressing through a few eras: The early years, when he began developing software. The middle years, where platforms became more cognizant of UI considerations and SEO. The recent years, Facebook opening to the public and the resulting impact. And now, which he refers to as the “post-Facebook era.” Where will online communities go in that era? Plus:

The community software business shift from licensing to SaaS (software as a service)
New features vs. bloat
Why he turned down a job offer from vBulletin

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Higher Logic.

Big Quotes “Running a good community is transcendent of the software you use.” –@mattmecham

“Facebook is very much about now, what’s happening now. You try and find, even in a group, even a moderately busy group, trying to find something from last week is chaos. It’s crazy. It’s really really hard to do, so I think people that have had success with Facebook Groups are now looking at the next step. What’s the next step that they’ve got to take? They understand that they can’t keep a Facebook group because it’s too chaotic, once you get to 5,000, 10,000 people posting.” –@mattmecham

About Matt Mecham Matt Mecham is a print designer turned Perl developer turned PHP developer. He has been creating community software since 2001. Matt founded Ikonboard and then started Invision Power Services with Charles Warner in 2002. 15 years later, their product, Invision Community, powers countless communities. Matt leads development and social media marketing. He still codes and, even though he’s been doing it forever, really enjoys it.

Related Links * Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers * Matt Mecham on Twitter * Wikipedia page for Ikonboard, an old community software platform that Matt developed, starting in 1999 * Invision Community, community software by Invision Power Services, the company Matt co-founded with Charles Warner * YaBB, a long-running community software platform, where Matt was once part of the development team * “Jarvis Entertainment Group Acquires Ikonboard.com” press release * Forumbee, Zendesk, CMNTY, Open Social, Discourse and vBulletin, community software platforms mentioned in our discussion about the shift from the licensing business model to SaaS * Bravenet and ezboard (Wikipedia page), two services that essentially offered SaaS forum hosting in the 1990s * Community Signal episode with Mike Creuzer, where we discussed vBulletin’s platform changes * “Managing Online Forums,” Patrick’s book * Invision Community on Facebook

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When a member makes a post on your community, there is a status associated with that post. How long they have been a member, how many contributions they have, their reputation, whether or not they are a staff member – all of these things impact their status.

While the content of the post may remain the same, the status of the member changes, as their reputation does or they are removed from staff. Still, when you view their post – old, new, good or poor – only their current status tends to be reflected. That’s one of our topics this week, as we celebrate 2 years of the show with Mark Williams. Plus:

What community platforms can do to encourage co-creation
Why Mark voted to deprioritize community at the company where he works
Early gamification systems

Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Open Social.

Big Quote “[If you are implementing a reputation system,] my first question is, what’s your goal? Why are you doing it? … Often people just say, ‘Oh, we’re doing a reputation system because everybody else is doing it.’ That’s not a goal. Knowing your goal informs your choices and your decisions around what your reputation system should be.” -@mdfw

About Mark Williams Mark Williams likes to build things. He has been a developer and a community manager and a number of other things (including sound engineer and producer in developing radio plays that were presented live). Mark ran the community program at a large technology company whose name involves fruit. He’s also run community for a non-profit called TechSoup. Mark is currently running marketing and building community for kaizenOps.io – a small intrapreneur startup inside CA Technologies.

Related Links * Sponsor: Open Social, community building for nonprofits * Mark on Twitter * Karn Broad, the show’s producer * The Social Element, Higher Logic and Open Social, companies who have sponsored the show * For episode #100, we would love to hear how the program has helped you. Maybe it’s a general feeling, a specific lesson, a favorite moment. Record your thoughts and submit them via our contact page or as a voicemail to (252) 558-0130 * TechSoup, where Mark was previously community manager * kaizenOps.io, an intrapreneur startup with CA Technologies, where Mark is community manager * Jive and Lithium, community platforms that Mark has used * Lithium’s Tribal Knowledge Base, a “crowd-curated knowledge sharing and management” tool * Discourse, a community platform * GitHub, a software development platform * Wikipedia page for Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, a tool used to power chat rooms * Community Signal episode with Rebecca Newton, were we discussed the AOL volunteers lawsuit * “Building Web Reputation Systems” by F. Randall Farmer and Bryce Glass * Community Signal episode with Randy Farmer * SitePoint Forums, an online community Patrick was a staff member on that introduced a reputation ratings system as part of their vBulletin installation * Stack Overflow, a community with a reputation and badging system that Mark likes * “Introducing Team Discussions” by Katie Sipos on the GitHub blog, tweeted by Mark

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Thank you for listening to Community Signal.

Community Signal: Recent Episodes

Patrick O'Keefe