More growing pains on the Building forum. Having decided as a team to give a couple of temporary bans to some troublesome users they are back with a vengeance. I’ve just gone back and re-read the really helpful comments from my post of a couple of weeks ago musing on the ethics of moderating and I think we will need to act on some of the very helpful suggestions. The basic problem is down to this - the yawning gap that has emerged between what we as forum creators envisaged it would be and how a certain vocal minority are using it.
We naively thought that a Building forum would share the same brand values as the magazine, that it would offer the type of discussion and debate that you see from people that comment on stories on the website or send letters to the magazine. That - and this is very important - the users would broadly share our world view. Well welcome to the reality.
Now all the advice and talk I’ve heard about forums has come true. And this creates a tremendous amount of stress, effort and discussion amongst the moderators. As one colleague on another site told me he “aged several years” moderating another site amongst a different business community. You feel like a school-teacher that sends an unruly pupil out of a class, only for the said troublemaker returning ready to repeat offend. Do you try and reason with them, or then get tough with them and have to endure complaints from other pupils/members that enjoy their behaviour?
One knee-jerk reaction is to close it down and to rethink it. And then come back with something much clearer for users - for them to understand from the very start the purpose of the forum is and what is tolerated and what isn’t. The shame is that the noise from some of the unruly members is drowning out some really interesting discussions from the quieter majority.
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on Nov 7th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
It’s a shame. I have seen two groups on MySpace that were supposedly created for our city hijacked by about three people and their blather.
You watch the membership count go up, but everyone’s silent, because it’s not worth putting yourself / your topics in front of the three dominant people to then pick on you.
As a member, you were hoping it could become a resource, a community. People like that prevent that. That’s too bad.
on Nov 7th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Phil - I have blogged about this here suggesting that you could:
a) block abusers from particular IP addresses from accessing the forums.
b) rate the rants - have a ratings system by which users themselves moderate the quality of posts. Excellent posts get applauded with, say, five thumbs-up, while abusive rants get booed off with five thumbs-down. Such self-regulation gives the “wisdom of crowds” to the forum manager in assessing the merits of particular posts and posters
Regards, Paul
on Nov 7th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Building a forum takes a lot of work. Just when you think it’s going well another set back. If a few are trolling your forum to the point that it’s stopping positive contributions time to really ban them.
It stinks as you never want to ban someone interested enough to visit but sometimes it has to be done for the greater good.
It’s a rollercoaster for sure; mine has been online sine Dec 2006 and just starting to pick up momentum again. That said the spammers are hitting us hard.
Cool post Paul; found you through twitter search
on Nov 7th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
The forum is good and worth persisting with. The issue you are having is not dissimilar from dealing with disruptive children!
A time intensive but probably effective solution could be to moderate all their posts, only allowing the constructive ones. Don’t waste your time or effort telling them they’re comments have been removed, let them waste there efforts unitl they tire.
Encourage the good, remove and ignore the bad? Alternatively get someone to do this for you! If their employer is obvious from their registration details consider asking their employer if they are interested in dealing with the issue.
Whatever you decide, keep going, it is a valuable activity. As a reader of the forum I’ll try to contribute more rather than enjoy it passively, hopefully others will do the same and collectively we can drown out the ******s.
on Nov 7th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Temporary bans can be effective if the issue is one of education. If it’s one of abusive behaviour: 3 warnings and you’re out, permenently!
I recently banned a member for 24 hours following several months of advising - and officially warning - that posting the entire copyrighted works of others on to the forum, is against the law and puts the forum owners at risk of serious penalty.
The whole issue took a lot of my time: editing posts; PM’ing to advise; responding and explaining our position.
Despite pointing him to a blog recounting a real-life situation which cost the blooger £8k, still the penny didn’t drop (or he just wouldn’t believe it).
I knew a third official warning would mean a permenent ban. I also knew he wasn’t a troublemaker, per se, so a temp ban, I felt, would fire a warning shot across his bow.
He came back, made a public fuss - which I welcomed because it highlighted our position to everyone - and now all is well.
The real difficult cases are with ‘Jekyll & Hyde’ characters: really helpful contributors who often add lots of value, but once a month or so - no, not a woman! - let loose, both barrels blazing!
We recently had no choice but to ban such a long-serving member after some took exception to a post - a couple left in protest immediately.
It was a great shame because, to my mind, it was abrasive, childish, humour taken out of context at worst. But his position was indefensible in the harsh light of day.
Shame. He is missed by several members and he even triggered a thread calling for his return.
Speak to these people in real life, and they are often intelligent and thoughtful - sommat about the web, methinks
on Nov 7th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Stick with it Phil! Everone’s under a bit of pressure at the moment but there are many of us our here who appreciate what you and your colleagues are doing.
on Nov 12th, 2008 at 11:23 am
My thanks again for the great responses. I think I was in a bad place last Friday when dealing with the forum - an indication of the emotional effort needed to keep it up. I’m glad to report that things have setteld down since, which is pleasing. We’ve now started a rating system for posts, as put forward by Paul.
on Nov 15th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Just a thought. Why not move some of the group activity off the blog and onto a LinkedIn group? You could brand it ZeroChampion by name and artwork, garden it a little and then stand back. Surely it leaves people to moderate themselves!
Keep up the good work, Phil! We are really impressed by this blog (our web management team and me!). Perhaps you should start a new one focused on digital media as well. We need bloggers like you - serious, thought leaders - in that space. And I am sure you would benefit from it.
on Nov 16th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Hi John,
A very tempting offer. People tell you that forums proper take a lot of work but you don’t appreciate the point fully until you have to do it. There’s a already a growing sustainability group in LinkedIn but a sub one focused on a few specific areas could work really well.
You may have also inspired me into a blog on digital social media for B2B. A pretty good New Year’s resolution for 2009.