Someone gets nasty, in a comment or post -- maybe personally insulting or unjustly accusatory toward you or another community member. Almost immediately someone else takes offense, and lashes back on your site. Then more people join the fray from all sides, flaming each other brutally. Comment threads overflow with vitriol.
Distressed loyal community member start crying out -- on the site and via e-mail -- for you, the site manager, to stop the brawl and make the creeps shut up. Their concern is well-founded: When online communities get overrun by hostile posts, it has a chilling effect on all other conversation. If this happens too often, it can kill a community.
Is there a better way to ruin any online community manager's day?
The bad news is this: These kinds of problems are inevitable, at least occasionally, on any site where open discussion is allowed. The more controversial your site's content, the more frequently you'll have to battle flame wars. In short, if you allow discussion, you can bet that a fight will break out sometime.
The good news? There are many things you can do to cultivate a positive, constructive online community where vitriolic outbreaks are relatively rare, short-lived, and easy to handle.
A list of 12 tips can be found here. As a fellow playwrighting pal of mine would say, there's something about the power 12.
No comments:
Post a Comment