During a Community Blogging workshop the other week I was asked about dealing with unwanted comments on a blog, from the out and out illegal (hate speech, libel) to those that just poison the environment like a bad smell. I went through the usual moderation and editing tools and then struck on a rather dramatic example of how to preempt any problems by creating an environment in which, given the chance, people will behave in a nice way.
First example, comments left on a video about the Kingstanding Neighbourhood Forum:
The second example is the comments following this photo on Flickr of a building in Washwood Heath:
When Flickr started they made herculean efforts to have the staff involved in the day to day running of the site, answering questions in the help forums, getting involved in groups and behaving like normal Flickr users in their own accounts. While they let Flickr evolve on it’s own terms their presence meant that when you got involved with Flickr you were aware that this place was more than just somewhere to dump your photos. There were rules of engagement that the community had put in place, namely be nice and helpful and share stuff. It might have been a bit sickly in places but it worked and even now Flickr is a nice place to go to. (Some, myself, might say too nice but that can’t be a terrible thing, can it?)
On the other hand when YouTube was launched it was a place to dump videos, most of which were taken from television shows and movies. There actually wasn’t a lot of user created content on YouTube in the beginning, probably because video camera usage hadn’t quite broken through to the mainstream, so there wasn’t this sense of sharing your own stuff. You were just sharing stuff you’d found and doing so anonymously in case you got in trouble for it. And while this was going on I don’t believe the YouTube staff were actively getting involved with the community that was evolving around the service. (I could be wrong here and am happy to be corrected but it’s not the impression I got.) YouTube didn’t even have groups where like-minded videographers could come together and share their films and discuss stuff. All you had was the, admittedly impressive, Related Videos widget hooking everything together and a system of following other users.
All this together is a recipe for disaster. And so it came to be. YouTube comments are possibly the worst in the history of the Internet and yet there’s nothing particularly unique about video sharing that encourages this.
The lesson should hopefully be obvious but I think it also helps to think of this in real world terms. A pub is, by definition, open to everyone. You can be barred but there’s nothing to stop you going in in the first place. But once you’re in there are rules, often unspoken, as to how you behave. These have been established by the landlord, the regulars and society in general and allow the environment to function. Another example might be a youth centre. Here there will be rules put in place by the youth workers which the youths agree to abide by. Theres a trade off – you don’t get the freedom you might have in a park but you get shelter and a space that isn’t home to be in.
A well functioning online community works on a similar tradeoff. People who use Flickr want it to be a nice place to hang out so they approach it as such. People who use YouTube do so because it’s the best way to distribute video, not because of the community features which are a drawback. If YouTube valued community they should have implemented a Flickr-style strategy from the outset but they didn’t and now it’s too late.
Online social spaces are like any other social space. They will manage themselves if the people in them have an investment in keeping them nice. Give them the reason and, more critically, the support to do so and you’ve won the first battle in community management.
Thanks to my Twitter chums for help sourcing the comments examples.
Great post Pete. I’m thinking of real world parralells here – the classic council estate where folk say it used to be loveley round here but now with the vandalism I’m scared to go out.
These places can be revived and made sociable again through patient long term attention to community. Is that possible on youtube?
While your broader point is meaningful and good to see, I’m thinking the two examples are illustrative of things that aren’t necessarily supportive evidence.
For example, the YouTube dialogue might be construed as meaningful conversation between people who choose not to converse intelligibly. They might be doing it for a laugh, because (to borrow a phrase) the interment is for flaming, a bit like that YouTube video of two professors getting out of hand at a debate. In short, the context might be important, there might be more structure to the thing than we notice.
Conversely, Flickr pages, for all the care lavished by the now departed inventors, are frequently laced with insincere and pretentious twaddle. It might be community, but not as I know it.
I’m not sure what point this makes in relation to the nuances of community management. Perhaps a well-ordered community is a matter of finding it where you can, whether it’s in sharing flames or flattery.
@dp: Thanks for that. You’re right, of course. Context is everything. Indeed, one of the most fertile communities on the internet is 4chan which (and I say this as someone who’s never been there so not an expert) is a lawless zone but which gave us such gems as lolcats and the anti-Scientology Anonymous campaign. There is a vitally important place for anarchy on the net, no doubt about that.
But this article came out of talking to people running community groups who were worried about how they might deal with comments on their blogs, etc. I’m assuming that in the same way you’d want a community centre to be safe and welcoming to new visitors they’d want the same for their websites. How can they do that? By taking the Flickr approach and not leaving it to chance like YouTube did.