Sebbie on the Webbie

Archive for the ‘Online communities’ Category

Constructive criticism: You call this an effin' sock?

Unfortunately, it is very common for a website to create a culture of bitchyness if the administrators fail to discipline members early on. In the worst case scenario the bitchyness starts with the admins themselves, in which case the site is doomed to it. If the admins don’t know how to behave in a supportive manner, nobody else has a chance turning the site around. I have witnessed this with many websites. One that springs to mind was a community for photographers; the idea was to share your photos for “constructive criticism from your peers”. You can bet that when a new photographer is revealing their work for the first time to a knowledgeable audience and is greeted with nothing but bitchiness, nastiness and sarcasm, (nothing constructive about it) there is no way he or she will continue using that service. When they realize that it’s not really about their photos, but that everyone gets the same treatment, they may feel a little better about it but will find that the site has nothing to offer to them. On a site like this, meanness spreads like wild fire: If you said a nasty thing about my photo, don’ think I can’t find something wrong with ALL OF YOURS, you bitch!

It is completely up to you to set the tone on your websites. You cannot allow ANY rudeness to occur without reacting to it strongly and with as little fuss as possible -meaning that you cannot make it public (will easily result into a public flame war), but you will have to contact the offending member privately and let them understand that rudeness is not tolerated and if he doesn’t clean up his act, he’s good as gone. To fit in, people usually modify their behaviour to suit the surroundings. It is very unrewarding to be the only bitch in a group (because it’s not “fashionable” in the said group), but when you get one “friend”, on board, then another one… An yet and other one, THEN it starts feeling pretty damned cool. If you do not allow the first two bitches to bond, your site will be fairly safe to build on. As your site grows, you need to implement some sort of a report member (and post) -system to help you weed out the bad apples efficiently and without exception. You may put in a zero tolerance policy or a three strikes you’re out -policy, but you do have to be consistent about it. Sometimes people acting rudely are so ashamed of their behaviour that they’ll remove themselves after being corrected by the site admin. They may do this throwing shit at you during departure, but the reason they are departing is not because of you, it’s because they realize that going back into the group of nice people after what they said would be inconceivably embarrassing. And in all honesty, you don’t have anything against a rude person leaving your site. In fact, that’s the best thing that can happen to it. (If they don’t leave but keep bullying people, you can then give them a full ban and be rid of them.)

It is equally important not to let this policing go too far. It is not a relaxed place either if nobody is entitled to an opinion if it’s the least bit provocative (like, say being childfree) or a member is penalised for using words like “big head” describing a doll, because some member happened to be bullied by that name at school. Sometimes the victims can bully the community by being so overly sensitive, that everything reduces them into tears forcing the actually nice people tread around these sensitive souls like they were walking on broken glass. You can not allow this happen either. Everyone is allowed their own space, and their own thoughts and expression, but when one person tries to manipulate the space and dominate other’s way of thinking, speaking and expressing themselves one way or another, it is not cool. As a generic rule, if your first thought to a complaint is “don’t be ridiculous” or “grow a pair”, it’s probably about the member being manipulative instead actually in need of protection. (Unless you are inclined to being a bully yourself, in which case I don’t know how effective measurement this is.)

Even if a general balance is achieved, there’s always people who are so timid, that someone with a little more oomph to themselves will make an other feel inferior. You can’t help that. People are not created equal in talent and self-esteem, and if one person’s shine will make the other feel like she or he is sitting in a shadow then that’s how it’s going to be. It is not fair to ask a superiorly talented person to hide their candle so that others wouldn’t feel bad about themselves, any more than it is fair to belittle the untalented because their candle can’t shine as bright as the other ones.

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