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.

Gifts

Yes, you can block applications, but you’ll have to do that separately to each application. I WISH I could just block all gift apps at once! I am a Barbie collector, and you can bet I get Facebook Barbie gifts a lot, from more than one app and from more than one friend. I love Barbies, but I still blocked all Barbie gift -apps, because I like them in flesh and… sorry, in plastic and vinyl instead of pixels on the screen. So if I block a gift app of things I love, how do you think I feel getting a bunch of other “gifts” that just take up the space from the stuff I really like to see – my friends actual updates and their photos. (Yes you can select which type of feed you want to see, but if all these gifts are posted on your wall and you want to see if someone has actually sent you something worth while, you’ll have 3 pages full of gifts… ARGH!)

Games

There are few games I love on Facebook and that I play a lot… Too much in fact. Every time I get a personal high score, the game asks me if I want to post it on my profile. I select “no” 99% of the time. I post it if I score MASSIVE, which happens maybe once a month. I also played a game, Vampire Wars, which required some wall posts to work well, so I created a separate account for it, so I could only add people who also play Vampire Wars and wouldn’t be annoyed by the constant updates. Other games that can be annoying as hell: Farm games, the zoo games, pet games, Mafia, pretty much anything that does repeated public updates. Either don’t play them, only post sparingly or start a separate gaming profile and only add fellow gamers. (There’s Facebook groups where you can find strangers to play with so you don’t have to bug your co workers with it.)

Quizzes and “personality tests”

Most of these are so dodgy that I don’t know why you’d like to fill them. They may be entertaining for a few times but seriously? If you take the quizzes, consider if the response has enough entertainment value to be posted on your wall.

Let’s just say that if you’re over 15 years of age, and your friend is over 15, lay off the entertainment apps and only post them to people who you know very well or who you know enjoys that stuff!

Signing up for newsletters on Facebook

DO NOT DO THIS. Some of them not only add you, but your friends as well, so please, please don’t do this through Facebook! (You know how the app asks you to give a permission to access Yours and YOUR FRIENDS information through your profile?) I’ve been starting to receive a lot of “offers” to my email through Facebook, and there’s not a snow balls chance in hell I would have signed up for those, especially as they come from Finland and I don’t live there anymore!

Computers, the Internet and social networks can be very confusing to new users. People wonder, if it’s professional for a teacher to be on Facebook at all, or if we can ignore friend requests from people we hardly know. Some people can’t see the difference between a business network and a dating site, which is not really that surprising as there are still people who don’t know the difference between an email and an Instant Message through MSN. (Or the difference between a book and a magazine for that matter.) It IS frustrating to those of us who have used all these things for years, but I think we have to be somewhat tolerant to the mistakes of an eager newbie, and just try to give a few tips here and there and hope the newbies find their way to them by accident because it would be too much to hope that they would actually google it… :p

If you have a newbie friend or relative who has just found the social web, you could find your favourite social network etiquette post and forward it to them through the medium they are most comfortable with.

Here are some of my tips:

1. Before you do ANYTHING find out what the site is MEANT FOR. Not all social networking sites are meant for the same purpose. The cultures between Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and Match.com are very very different.

2. Once you know what the site is meant for, and you think it suits your needs, sign up and COMPLETE your profile. You will need a picture of yourself. It’s just nicer for everyone that way.

3. Before you contact a person, read their profile unless you already know them very well. Their profile will give you an idea what they are there for, and if they would like to know about you.

4. Before adding a person as a friend, consider your relationship with them. Is it appropriate for the site? Are you really interested in their daily antics? Are they interested in what you have t say? If you don’t know them personally, always tell them why you added them as a friend. (This rule doesn’t apply on Twitter though, you can follow anyone you like on Twitter.) Most of the time it is NOT the purpose of a social networking site to collect every other person on the site on your friends list. It doesn’t serve any purpose and it doesn’t make you look popular, it makes you look like an attention whore.

5. Don’t assume that people are using the platform in the same manner or for the same purpose as you are. (Related to #1, but not the same thing.) Especially on general social networks, like Facebook and MySpace it is possible that some people use it for dating and some for business networking. Find out what the person you are interested in is using it for and if you want to contact them for some other reason, be very respectful and make sure they know that you are aware that you have read their profile and that you are aware that you’re walking on thin ice.

6. NEVER invite people on a social network before you know if it’s worth it. Also, invite only selected people, not everyone on your address book! You probably don’t even WANT TO have everyone on your book as your friends so think for a bit. For example your happily married 60-year-old boss probably won’t appreciate your invitation to join LavaLife (a dating site).

7. (On Facebook & some others:) NEVER EVER invite people to use an application you haven’t tried out yourself. If the app doesn’t have “skip this step” on the invite friends -part, just leave it. It is probably not worth bothering your friends with! Also, consider who you send the invitation to when you do. The less you know a person, the less likely it is that they appreciate your invitation.

8. You don’t have to worry about ignoring friend requests or application requests. Normally these sites do not notify people about rejection. That would be a bad practise anyway if they did. The sites are not created to create drama but friendships. Of course, drama happens when there’s a lot of confused people around.

9. Don’t start a friendship by asking for a favour, like “Can you add me too” or “Can you retweet this” or “Can you visit my blog too as I visited yours?”

10. Remember that you are amongst PEOPLE, (who are not automatically your friends.) This may sound obvious, but it seems not to be. Consider what kind of message it sends to people if you select a screen name like “hugeDXXX76″ or “CheapAutoParts”. Speak to people online like you would speak to people offline. Don’t try to sell stuff to everyone you meet, especially not randomly. (Like I shouldn’t try to sell a wedding dress to a hetero sexual man for example.) Be respectful and friendly and at the same time, and do have a sense of humour.