Sage advice from the Wall Street Journal:
“Part of giving up control is also giving visitors the freedom to complain and criticize the brand, or to wax lyrical about a competitor, to their heart’s content.”
This isn’t really giving up control. It’s pretending to give up control while tightly holding the reigns to stop things going wrong.
Giving up control is giving people control over the community. Real, proper, control. Like giving some members the power to delete and moderate comments. Offering the power to open and close forums. The power to physically alter and adjust aspects of the community as they see fit.
The danger, of course, when giving members this level of control is they might use it to destroy the community. This rarely happens. Usually, it’s only when you give members the power to really screw things up that they take responsibility for making it successful.
