Downsizing

Community members that only contribute negative comments should be kicked out.

Community members that don’t add anything to the conversation when they post, should be kicked out.

Community members that don’t increase the value of the community, should be kicked out.

Any member who don’t improve the community should be kicked out.

It’s not as harsh as it sounds. If your members don’t add value, they’re adding flab.

They’re cluttering your interface. They’re distracting your community from it’s goals. They’re taking up your time. They’re slowling down the meaningful stuff from happening.

You'll be doing your community a favour.

Comments

[Matt]

Pretty harsh. Couple points

"Community members that don’t increase the value of the community, should be kicked out.

Any member who don’t improve the community should be kicked out."

--Should it not be the goal of the community leader to engage these bad apples and provide an opportunity for them to contribute?
--Who cares about the fluff? Even if the long tail of inactive members add clutter and distraction, they're present in any community. Why should an online community be any different?

[CJ]

And when the member you just kicked out turns out to be the best friend of you CEO's wife?

[Ken Allan]

Kia ora Richard

I like your style here.

You've got some real dinkum statements - sure to involve conversations. But, hey, wait on . . .

How do you define negative?

According to whose rules?

And what do you mean by adding to a conversation. Or not as the case may be. Is this a mathematical 'add'. Does that mean that things deemed to be 'negative' subtract? Or can they too add to the conversation? I guess it all depends on what you mean by 'add'.

No wait on. You also used this word 'value'. That has a definition too? Add value. Add value? That means the value increases because of it? Or was there no value to start with?

'Adding flab'. I like that one. Flab. I guess that means the unwanted waste of space. Hmmm? Hey, how do you define unwanted. You got a comment guideline somewhere I could read? Maybe I should check it out.

Meaningful stuff. Now that's what I like. Something with some meaning to it. Stuff. German origin. Means substance. I like stuff better.

Come on Richard. Your commenters are the stuff of your blog posts. They are the very substance of that part of it.

Negative or positive, there is always a way the fine blogger can use this 'stuff'.

Show us Richard. Show us your stuff!

:-)

Catchya later
from Middle-earth

[Andrew Lync]

A great example of this is the Rudius Media messageboard on Tucker Max's site:

http://messageboard.tuckermax.com/index.php

It's quite a tightly moderated forum, which annoyed me when I first started reading it, but I realised that this level of moderation meant that all that was left was high quality posts that added value to the forum or to the thread. Because of this it's one of the best and definitely the smartest forum that I've ever seen. It's brilliant.

[Richard Millington]

Matt, great points.

Yes, it should be the role of the community manager to engage those people.

But, online, some people just aren't willing to participate.

Everyone cares about fluff. They really do. The little distractions, the annoyances, the flame-wars, all this stuff adds up. It makes the community less fun. When the community is less fun, people don't want to participate as much. And that's when it gets serious.

CJ: Nothing much you can do about that. If the best friend of the CEO's wife is being a pain in the community then be willing to stand your ground. Would you want to keep running a community that you can't prevent people from ruining?

Ken, A: So much to cover. It's a judgement call at the end of the day. The community builder to that effect has been hired to use his or her judgement.

I don't apply these rules to my own blog. Nor would I stop people reading it. It applies more to the closed social networks like forums, Ning and co.

Andrew: TuckerMax is just that sort of volatile community that would tear itself apart without those rules. What a great example.

[CJ]

I thought the subject here was communities, not forums. Surely, a forum is only one possible part of a community and communities are made up of people - all sorts of people. There are also all sorts of communities, some of which are intended to produce profit (directly or indirectly) and some that aren't.

Sorry, but I guess i'm missing the point here somewhere, because you discussed building a community can help your business and then you talk about chucking people out. There are many people who like to "belong to a community" and yet hardly ever really take part, but that doesn't mean they're not there and keeping an eye on what's going on and taking note. They MIGHT just possibly be the best potential customer you ever had. In such circumstances your ruthless attitude would just make me feel "F*** you! Stick your community AND your business where the sun doesn't shine." Like I said, though, maybe I'm missing the point.

If you are talking about communities made up of, for instance, salespeople within a large organisation, then I can see where you are coming from. In which case, I take it back since I've never worked for a large organisation, wouldn't want to and indeed have no desire to be any sort of salesman either.

[Richard Millington]

Hi CJ, some great things to debate there. Thanks for the comment.

An online community can be defined pretty much however you want. To me it means people who are inside against the people who are outside. Typically, the work I do is building a community within an interface. It might be Ning, a Facebook group, a forum or something else.

I didn't mention whether a community is about profit or not. I talked about achieving goals. It's an important distinction.

Also people that don't take part, but still read the community do increase the value of it. Just by reading it they help. I have nothing but gratitude for these people.

It's the people just past that, the people that become a drag on the community. The people that only post negative comments, start the flame wars, never stay on topic and generally cause problems.

These people alone can destroy a community.

Eliminating your community of these people will only be doing a favour to your members.

[Tim Jahn]

Great idea here. It's like the "Good to Great" mantra...get the right people on the bus, wrong people off.

This notion only helps your community enrich its content and value.

[Kat]

This reminds me of a recent article on Mashable, "12 Great Tales of De-Friending" ~ http://tinyurl.com/6x8l4k. Kind of hilarious.

With so much focus on "building" and "adding" friends, karma, votes, points, kudos etc... we tend to lose sight of the quality of our online connections and friendships. I rather like Richard's encouragement to determine the goals of your community, be they profit for not.

I suppose the goals ties into the why blog, eh? Or perhaps they are one in the same.

[Jodith]

I'm glad you clarified that about lurkers, Richard. Many communities have lurkers (folks that read but don't post). They can actually be positive about the group off-line, sending readers your way. I lurk on a couple of forums where I almost never post, but send folks in that direction for help (the GIMP forums are one of those). I usually don't post unless I need specific help that I can't find the answer for on my own. But that isn't very often because I usually find the answer quickly by searching the forums.

As for negative folks, I agree, if all they are doing is causing problems, get rid of them. I usually have a 3 strikes rule on any forum I administer depending on the severity of the issue (for some severe things, like the use of racial epithets, booting is immediate). I'm a pretty tolerant moderator. I know sometimes you're having a bad day and post something unusual, which is why the 3 strikes rule. I've rarely had to ban regular contributors. As a matter of fact, I think I've only done so twice. It's usually trolls that get the immediate boot. Most folks either value the forum enough to shape up on warning, or they leave in a snit. Either way works for me.

[AmyL]

Oh, phew! I was a bit concerned about the lurker issue as well. Glad to see that they're welcome.

I wonder, how do you go about removing people from your community though. Seems like a difficult task.

[Grant Simmons]

A few communities I'm a member of give me a little 'kick' if I haven't logged on in a while - I think this is a great example of automated engagement that, if the email includes a 'leave this community' option, helps week out those that realize the community wasn't for them. Same can be said for community opt outs on digest emails as well. Often this option *isn't* given (merely an email opt out.)

Community leaders believe on making 'community farewells' more difficult in an environment where membership numbers are more important than quality members.

On the point of negatively, I'd hate to impose censorship on any community member in a 'big brother' kind of way. I much prefer a community approach to government and haven't seen it implemented (can anyone point me to an example?)

Imagine a 'vote them out' scenario where community members have the ultimate control over banning, ousting or approving members - becomes the ultimate self-governance and meets my criteria of building relationships as opposed to "number of MySpace friends" hysteria.

I'm big into facilitation - giving communities the tools they need to build - rather than onerous community management.

Welcome thoughts.

[Johnny Truant]

Fo reals. I was part of a community that decided it shouldn't moderate. We eventually had to kick a guy out because he was a cancer. Bad folks can ruin it for all, and then things start to die.

[CJ]

@feverbee: Thanks for the clarification and yes, I can see what you mean about negative, or wrong people in those terms. I think it's worth pointing out that people like me are NOT particularly "street wise" when it comes to stuff like this, so a little more detailed (or even just more basic) explanation for dumbos like me is sometimes worth adding.

Thanks again anyway.