The blogosphere would have you believe that Facebook users are up in arms about the end of Facebook voting, Facebook private data policy changes, or almost anything Facebook does.
It's not true. The majority don't know about the issue. Of the minority that do know about the issue, the majority of these people don't care.
We covered the false consensus bias in our recent best practices newsletter.
It occurs when people believe they have gained a consensus amongst the group. Many bloggers believe most people are anti-Facebook. You can use the Facebook vote as an example. Overwhelmingly, they claim, Facebook users voted against the changes. That's not true, only 0.067% did. The overwhelming majority didn't vote at all.
The danger of the false consensus bias is you encounter members in your community who not only passionately believe they're right, but firmly believe everyone agrees with them. Look at the % of members that are protesting, open it to a poll on the community platform, check how many people bother to vote at all.
Most of the time it will be a very small number of your active members. Don't make changes to cater to the vocal minority. Use your data to find out what members really want.
It's true that most people don't care, but as a community manager what I want to know is the opinion of the people who DO care.
I wholeheartedly agree that community managers need to resist the temptation to buy into the false consensus of the vocal minority, and that hard data from surveys should be the guide. I might, however, suggest that community-wide surveys have a flaw of their own: they tend to treat all members as equal.
Community-wide surveys do not acknowledge the important online community phenomenon of the core group. It seems to me that what we as managers really need to know is the majority sentiment of the core group, not the community as a whole (though this is also interesting information to have).
In that regard, especially on more complex issues that are only well understood by the core group, the vocal minority may very well be speaking for the core group. Or not. But this is what I want to know when I look for answers.
Posted by: Steven A. Shaw | Monday, 31 December 2012 at 16:11
Wow! Thanks! I've already bookmarked the site & saved a couple reports!
http://www.surveytool.com/online-survey-programs/
Posted by: maviyan | Tuesday, 01 January 2013 at 21:42
It's not true. Facebook voting, Facebook private data policy changes, or almost anything Facebook does. I strongly believe it. Thanks for your important sharing.
Posted by: Linda | Sunday, 06 January 2013 at 11:03