Sebbie on the Webbie

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An English speaker using non-verbal communication.

Tell me if you agree (if you can). This is a thought that just popped into my head and I’m not sure if my hypothesis is accurate or not, but I’m going to share it with you regardless. Over the years, I’ve ran several Finnish language communities and tried to start at least equally many in English, with very little luck. I just realised, that from the get go, the Finnish communities have a different feel to them than the English, even though the same person – me – runs them. The same feel is present in other, successful English forums as well. They are far more reserved and cautious than the Finnish equivalent. And isn’t that a surprise if you have spent half a day with a group of Finns face to face!

Finns flock online. We thrive online. We drop our guard in a split second and spill our guts to the world – or well, to our nation, as the world doesn’t speak our language, even Google Translator is at loss with us. Online, we seem amazingly open, friendly and WARM. I make friends of fellow Finns online constantly, but not with such a luck with the English speaking people. A couple, here and there, but not with as much ease. I have a possible explanation for this.

Finns rely on mostly spoken message in their communication even face-to-face. Our basic interaction-face could be described as “a stone face” or “a poker face”. We’ve become extremely efficient in picking up tones and the choice of words from each other, as well as the minimal signals we give out in facial expression. When an English speaker sees no change in a Finns face, we can look at the same person and see if he’s on a bad mood or excited beyond description. But I would guess, that since we are so good at picking up tones in speech, we are more efficient in it in writing as well. Also, the facial expression doesn’t carry as much weight as it does to an English speaker. We would be pretty much as comfortable talking to each other with our heads covered in black bags as we are without them. We would feel silly, but that’s all.

In the photo, I have an English speaker waving his hands around, with a silly grin on his face. As we assume he speaks English, he’s fine. If you saw a public speaker in Finland speaking Finnish doing the same thing, we’d be thinking “what a complete wanker” and would probably not believe a word he said. And probably, the English speaking need exactly that to trust him.

The English speaking, when posting online, are probably thinking a lot more about who is going to read their post. The possibility to be misunderstood is far greater. Essentially, they are speaking to the whole world, to a host of different countries and nationalities, cultures they might not even know about. It puts a fair bit of pressure on you if you start thinking about it too much. Then, of course, they keep telling us that 90% of communication is non-verbal. When you’re not used to relying on people’s words alone, you can feel like you’re walking on thin ice with people you can’t see. Maybe that has been my problem when dealing with the English speaking, maybe they need a lot more reassurance of your character and intentions than the Finns do. I probably can’t use the same template dealing with the English speaking as I do with Finns.

What do you think, especially if you have experience in both nationalities, not only when running online communities, but also chatting with them, tweeting and that.

If you are running an active community online, you might have considered writing a regular newsletter, then debunked the idea thinking “Everyone is here already, what possible reason would I have for a newsletter?” Check out your statistics. How many of your members have logged in since they first found your site? Quite a chunk, I would imagine. Life happens, sites are found and sites are forgotten. A newsletter is a great way to remind your non-readers that you and your community exist.

I started writing a newsletter for my community site theBdoll.com at the beginning this year. First I thought I would just write a normal email and be done with it, but a silly thing happened – I run a bilingual site, so I would need to write in two languages and the other would have to scroll down to read the email in their language. That is when I decided to make two pdf’s, one in each language. And while I was doing the pdf, I thought why not put a couple more pages into it, and ended up writing a full blown e-newsletter, as in a little magazine. My members LOVED IT. They went absolutely ballistic over it, and I was blown away by the reactions. I got email from people who hadn’t visited the site for a while saying what a great idea that was and a lot of people raised their hands saying they’d like to help me with the newsletter in the future.

The whole project has brought the community closer together and as close knit as we were, the newsletter has made us even closer – I feel.

In each of the issues I introduce two of my members. Hopefully that will make all of us look more approachable as well as interesting to the non-returners – there is a lot of different types to go around, and I’m sure eventually everyone will find someone they’ll relate to and feel safe with if they’re more quiet type. In addition to that, the newsletter, or ezine rather, contains news, the latest hot stuff and a humorous gossip column of or members dolls – we’re Barbie collectors.

Of course, not all sites have topics that allow quite that elaborate ezines, and on the other hand, your topic might be even more open to ideas, I know that each issue I’ve made has brought in another idea. Have a look at our newsletter to get ideas for yours! http://www.thebdoll.com

I love emoticons. A lot of people do, and if you’re running a forum, spending a bit of time for finding great emoticons does pay off. The default sets on  most forum software are simply boring and ugly. The good news is that you can find awesome emoticons for free. The bad news is that it takes a little bit of time, and again, the good news is that you probably only need one site to find them on. Then you need a bit of time to set them up for your forum, but do save them on the computer in case you’re a serial forum admin, because you can reuse the same set you have – and maybe add some topic specific in there if you want. Remember to find replacements for the most commonly used at least; those in the picture.

During the years I’ve been working with forums, I always get positive feedback about the emoticons, and when I’m talking to the people on some other site, they often refer to the forum emoticons by typing a description of it in the message like: *the cute hugging smiley* or similar. Doesn’t that tell you how much people love them?

Okay, so here’s a link to my favorite place to find emoticons – Deviant Art, naturally. (Oh there’s some new cute ones, I wanna get a few, too…)

We all have been told a million times how to behave when you’re on a discussion board. There are some very common practises that admins do though, that are driving me crazy, and kill any wish to participate into a discussion. That is why I mainly run my own discussion boards, because I can easily control the administration practises on them – being the only one. Let’s go through a few do’s and don’ts, shall we?

1. Try not to be condescending when you point out that someone has posted in the wrong board.

It happens to the best of us; Sometimes we post in the wrong place. I did that last week, after frequently participating on several boards for the last 10 years or so, never being told I was out of line. I was mortified when a forum mod told me that “this board is not the place for your post”. This happened after I had read through each of the board descriptions and as nothing seemed to fit my post, I posted it on the board that said: “… and everything that doesn’t fit anywhere else”. I thought that would be the safe option, but I was pretty much told off by the admin and I think they updated my status somehow so that a notice “read the guidelines for newbies, this means you” came up! You betcha I din’t feel welcome! I had even thought that I could hang out on the board a bit as I had gained some experience using their product for about 5 years, and could be of some help to some new users… Let’s just say I’m not thinking that anymore.

The way I see it, if people post in the wrong board means that your navigation isn’t clear enough. Secondly, if your forum software doesn’t allow you to just move the topic to a more suitable location without treating the poster like a criminal, you have chosen the wrong software! By just stating that the post is in the wrong place and not moving it you’re forcing the user to break yet another rule: Do a double post. Both of these problems are YOUR BADS, and you should rather apologise for the bad organisational functions of your board than treat the posters like they’ve done a poop on your dining table!

2. When you tell people they should not reply to an old (dead) thread AND that they shouldn’t repeat topics, you’re not making much sense.

When people face situations in their lives or using different products that they need support for, the situations can be similar, but they are still often slightly different. You CAN point them to a direction of an earlier topic, but you should do it respectfully (hope this helps, but if not please tell us more) and again, not treat them like they were idiots. No matter how many idiots there are not using the search function (and if your search function isn’t good enough, it’s again not their fault) you should assume for the first few times that this particular poster has done their best to find a solution for their problem prior to posting.

In my forum rules I have actually stated this: “Try to keep to a topic, and reply to even old topics when it suits, but do NOT reply to a topic by stating that we have already discussed that matter. We all love this topic, and that’s why we’re here, so a little repetition won’t kill anyone. Also, a good laugh is always more important than staying in the topic.” I was especially strong worded about this on a peer-support board, where people were going over their traumas… You need repetition. Each person needs to tell their story, reading that someone has gone through a similar trauma is not nearly as helpful. Often in tech support the situation isn’t exactly that much different. Some users may be so afraid of trying out new things, like your product, that they are nearly going through a trauma while settling in with your product. That’s the last time you want to insult their intelligence.

3. Shut down non-admin-policing

NOTHING is more annoying than a regular member that does the above, and the more frequently they do this, the more annoying it is. Either make them an admin and tell them that when you’re correcting people, be condescending only after they break a rule for the 5th time, or email them and tell them that you don’t need help administrating the forum at this time. If they continue doing this, seriously consider banning them, because this sort of behaviour is very disrupting and can drive people away from the board, no matter how much they like your board. (People won’t say much, because they usually treat this member as an authority, and some will even mistake them for an official admin to start with. They also think that other members support this behaviour.) But again, if you have a board with someone doing your job for you… You should step up to the plate yourself – or officially appoint someone do that for you.

These sort of practises make your board feel very unwelcome to join, and people who are shy to participate or are new to the whole thing are more likely to stay as “lurkers” because they don’t want to be told off. If you are running a “casual, relaxing and fun” board, it is even more important to stop doing this. It is not even that you’re insulting the offending members, sometimes when I read replies of this sort made to other people, I feel like c*** on their behalf. If you are running a board that you know that no topic can never be on the gray area between two boards, and you know every poster is familiar with your structure and with your definitions of topics, feel free to continue this condescending behaviour. If not… You know what to do: Put a sock in it!

If you are serious about your online presence or otherwise just everywhere and want people to recognise you outside your normal circles, avatar is the best way to do this. Online world relies heavily on written word and images. Images, I think we all agree, draw our attention more efficiently than text. This means, that when people are reading your words, they won’t necessarily spend time memorising your name but they will probably at least take a glance at your avatar. In addition, your user name might not be always available for every website you want to join, but your avatar will be. That is why you should have a bit of a think about your avatar. What do you want people to remember you by? There are some types of avatars that tend to give a negative impression of you at first glance:

Baby photo on man’s avatar. Probably the last time any woman told him he was cute.

Baby photo on woman’s avatar. A stay at home mother who has nothing else to talk about apart from her kids. (Probably uses a screen name such as “MomOf2″.)

Just the eye. Seeks a deep contact with people while trying to remain anonymous and appear soulful. Kind of works but is quite unoriginal and thus utterly forgettable.

Popular cartoon character – A male who is trying the “boyish charm” angle although it has never worked for anyone. We’ve seen enough of Vinnie the Pooh and friends already! Original cartoon characters by the man/woman behind the avatar, such as Tony’s are encouraged though!

Disproportioned photo - An avatar of a casual Internet user who hasn’t yet found the delights of Photoshopping. (Has uploaded a photo straight from the camera, without shaping it into a square first.)

Logo – impersonal. Is here to sell me something.

The vast majority of people prefer the picture of a person in an avatar over a logo or other graphic. People want to speak to people. If your avatar is listed amongst several others (like recent visitors list), the likelihood that you’ll get a click is higher if it’s your face in there. But, sometimes you need to put that logo up there. Another thing is, that if you’re using your photo, it gets boring after a while, and intolerable to you when you get a better photo of yourself. But the problem arises, that people get confused if you change your avatar. They won’t remember who you are for a while, until you say something really characteristic to yourself. I believe I found a solution to both of these problems. You are not likely to change your logo too often, right? So why not use that together with your photograph?

Here are some of my recent avatars:

See what I mean? There are elements in the avatar that stay constant while I get bored with the rest of it – me. :p This of course requires some Photoshop skills, but nothing too complicated. What do you think? If you decide to give it a go, please post a comment after uploading your new avatar to SezWho, or to Gravatar if you don’t use SezWho. (SezWho will override Gravatar on my blog.)

If you are setting up or running a forum, one of the most important things with creating a relaxed atmosphere is to select the right emotioncs for your boards. That may sound funny, but on every forum I’ve ever run, I have had a set of carefully selected emoticons, and people LOVE them. On one board, they came such a part of the community, that I felt compelled to give them a week off from work. (This was to rearrange them really, but I informed people that they have been working so hard that I’m giving them a week off.) The response was hilarious. People didn’t want to see them go, but understood their need for rest and requested post cards from their holiday resort. (And indeed got a photo with all those emoticons in front of an European church.)

When ever I’m a member of a discussion board that only allows the basic set of yellow faces, I feel kind of depressed. It tells me that this board is SERIOUS, and the guy running it doesn’t really care about the members. The set of emoticons that are available on a board, also tell me about the sense of humour on the board, and topics that area allowed. (You can get rather naughty little emoticons if you look for them!) There is a wonderful world of emoticons out there, let me tell you! They make you laughThey make you cry.. and when you’re feeling low, they give you a hug.

To help you to get started, I have collected a basic set of smileys for you to use instead of those awful yellow ones. It still comes with Mr. Green though, as there’s nothing better than Mr. Green! (What? You didn’t know he had a name?!)

Download the groovy basic smiley set

As far as I know all these emoticons have been published in the public domain. I have mainly downloaded them at Deviant Art, which has a great section for emoticons!

One word of advice though: Don’t put all the icons into the post form, but set most of them into the pop-up window, as having a lot of them clickable will slow down your forum. Put the most used icons on the form and the rest of them behind the “more” screen. Also when selecting post forum icons, stick with the standard sized icons, that won’t stretch the rows too much, or it’ll look quite messy.

Then wait to see the reactions when you put up more smileys! I quarantee your members will be stoked!