Online Community Design: Tools, Techniques and Tips for Better Digital Dialog John Smart...

Online Community Design:Tools, Techniques and Tips for Better Digital Dialog

John SmartAcceleration Studies Foundation

© 2005 Accelerating.org

Los AngelesPalo Alto

Presentation Outline

Overview Design Considerations Moderation and Staffing Community Tools Skill Questions



First, Some Definitions

Web communities happen when users are given tools to use their voice in a public and immediate way, forming intimate relationships over time.

-- Derek Powazek, Design for Community

A place where education gets interesting, and where information has personality.

-- Matt Williams, Community Director, Amazon.com



Success Story: The Amazing Amazon.com

A Collaborative Community Customer Reviews Wishlists/Gift Registry Listmania! Friends and Favorites Trusted Friends/Purchase Circles Discussion Boards

eBay, and several other major ebusiness sites owe much of their success to the quality of their community features.





Warning

Online communities require some mix of the following three (with at least two in abundance):

money, expertise, and vigilance.

Powazek recommends 80% of his static web page clients away from communities.



Content Determines Your Future

Content drives online communities. – People need something to talk about, whether it be

issues, articles, information, presentations, debates, or something else.

– Your goals and organization should all reinforce focused individual participation.

The quality of the content has a direct impact on the kind of community you'll create.



How Do Know You’ve Arrived?

When the web community begins to lead you, not the other way around.

When people begin to feel a sense of ownership over their contributions.

Be patient, this can take time. Communities reward consistency and focus.



Design Considerations I

Coding Choices for your Techies: PHP (“pretty home pages”)

(The current standard, now losing ground) ASP

(Microsoft’s .NET standard, gaining ground) Niche Players: Perl, Java, ColdFusion

(Use only if you have an ideological techie partner)



Design Considerations II

Clear, Simple Goals Pages Load Fast Main Content is Easy to Understand Interface Is As Simple as Possible Maximum Readability

(High Contrast, Narrow Column Text)



Design Considerations III

Tie All Site Content Directly to CommunityEx: Top posts integrate into the margin of your articles. (Feed)

Bury the Post Button (The more clicks the better. You can even require Previewing before posting).

Give New Members Lower Priority InitiallyShould have a waiting period (common: 24-48 hours) before they get full privileges. Time to learn community rules and standards.

Explain Posting Rules next to the Post Button Rules, + "I reserve the right to remove any post for any reason." Content and Design Tone: You Get What You Give Give Up Control and Let Your Users Surprise You Make Site Changes Easy to See

(New Stories, Top Post, Most Active Thread, Most Popular User) Maximum Information Per Click (Without Clutter)



Design Considerations IV

Have an "Open Mike" Section.This allows you to keep people on topic everywhere else.

Have a "How was your week?" Section A place for sharing personal stories

Have an "Outside" Section (e.g., “Take it Outside”)A place to move rants and heated debates, instead of banning.

Carefully Consider Your Barriers to Entry. Good barriers will improve conversation quality, but do this with as little elitism as possible.

Very Interesting Barrier to Entry: Reality-Check.com("Too many talkers, not enough signal to listen to.“)

– Only 15 can be in any themed discussion group, for 1 month. Community votes on who gets to continue in the main (vs. secondary) conversation for the next month.

– Great potential here for future refinement. Imagine collaborative voting of secondary posters up to the main discussion level…



Staffing Needs

Tech Support/Programmers(customizing, technical problems)

Editors/Content Developers(new content, organization)

Administrators(accounts, site problems)

Moderators(discussions, threads, new user orientation)



What Can You Outsource?

Discussion Forum: YahooGroups Member Profiles: LinkedIn HTML Newsletter: Constant Contact



Legal Issues

COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998) makes it very difficult to do a site for minors. No more un-moderated chat rooms for teens, etc.

DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998) requires a "Copyright Complaints" form so you can remove copyrighted material posted by users.



Moderation Tips I:Community Leader Attributes

The best are passionate about 1) creating community, and 2) making it easy for users to find their voice.

Stephen Covey, The Eighth Habit, 2004

“Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs.”

They are slow to criticize, ego-minimizing, always striving to be nice, modelling good behavior, empathic, yet responsive to communication problems.



Moderation Tips II:Your Community Echoes Your Voice

If your content/site voice is pushy and opinionated, you’ll get back pushy and opinionated responses, amplified.

If personal and tactful, you’ll get that back, amplified. A consistent, gentle push in one direction can send

the level of conversation into the stars or to the gutter. Personalize the people involved, make them fill out

memberships (Bios, Pics, etc.) and they will be less likely to be bad mannered.

Reward the best contributors somehow. Always be nice, even when booting content or users.



Moderation Tips III:Pick Interesting Themes

Discussion Threads Sharing Threads ("Stories") Inquiry Threads (World Question Center)

Ask your community if these are adequately focused yet inclusive. What are we missing? What can we leave to others?



Moderation Tips IV:Personalize Where Appropriate

Try Conversation Starters A safe place for authentic personal communication These will increase responses 5 to 10X over your typical posts, where you can use them:– "How was your week?”– "Fun thing that happened to you this month?”– “See any example of great behavior you want to

emulate?”

Polls and Questionnaires Member Demographics



Moderation Tips V:Develop Bounded Conversations

Communities revolve around a succession of bounded conversations.

How long will each thread be allowed to run? What are the key topics and speakers you want to

bring to your site? How long do you want to discuss each before moving to the next?

– “For the next two days/week/etc., we are going to discuss: AIDS, Poverty, Best Managers, etc.”

People can be rewarded for the best community rated stories and resources they've posted, within a given time.

Can you come up with 50 key themes for your community to discuss each year? If not, you may not need a community site.



Community Tools: Websites I

Hosted Web Pages [Easy](Yahoo! Geocities, Tripod)

Hosted Weblogs [Easy]

(Blogger, Livejournal: Free; TypePad: $20/mo) Installed Web Pages [Med]

(FrontPage, Dreamweaver: $250) Installed Weblogs [Med]

(Radio, Movable Type: Paid)





Community Tools: Websites II

Corporate Content Management Systems, Intranets, Extranets [Hard]Enterprise: $200K+: Stellent, Vignette, Documentum, FileNET, Interwoven

Upper Tier: $125-175K: Percussion, Fatwire, Microsoft, Mediasurface, OpenText, Day, Tridion, IBM

Mid-Market: $40-100K: Serena, RedDot, Ingeniux, PaperThin, SilkRoad, Clickability, Upload, Atomz

Low-Market: $15-40K: Synkron, Ektron, Sitecore, ElecktroPost, Roxen, Refresh

Low-Cost $3K-12K: Fog Creek, Idetix, Macromedia, Globalscape, Emojo, Prospero, WebCrossing

– Tip: Often the bigger the company the worse the product, e.g., WebCT “the world’s leading provider of e-learning systems”



Community Tools: Websites III

Open Source Content Management Systems [Hard]

(Free: Zope, Midgard, OpenCMS, Typo3, Bricolage, Mambo, TikiWiki, .NETNuke, PostNuke, OpenDeploy)– Easy to install, possible to customize, but these

systems are buggy and require constant vigilance.– Tip: Can find good inexpensive global help for them

(India, Poland, Ukraine, Costa Rica)



Community Tools: Civic Space (Zope App)

Now:Website Mgmt/Blogging

Forums

File Storage

Photo Galleries

Polls and Surveys

Social NetworkingCalendaring

Event Organizing

Coming:

Contact ManagementMass MailingDonation Management

“CivicSpace enables bottom-up people-powered campaigns to operate on a more level playing field with more traditional top-down organizations, and, similarly, allows top-down organizations to leverage the power of grassroots organizing.”





Community Tools: Discussion Boards/Forums I

Hosted Message Boards [Easy]

(Yahoo Groups: Free; CommunityZero.org: Free/Paid)– Invidividual Email, Daily Digest, and Web-Only Modes.

Tip: Tell people how to switch between these modes.

Free Installed Bulletin Boards [Med](phpBB, YABB, Ideal BB)

– Tip: Are posts easily linkable? Spiderable? Short URLs?

Cheap Proprietary Bulletin Boards [Med](vBulletin, DiscusWare, Invision $150)

– Not very customizable.









Community Tools: Discussion Boards/Forums II

Reputation-Based Message Boards [Hard](Slash, Scoop, free + $100 month)Example: Slashdot, Kuro5hin, DigitalEarth.org– Easy to install, time-consuming to moderate.

Scoop gives users the ability to determine content. Custom-Made Boards [Hard]

(Collaborative Connections, $1,500 + $200/month)Example: ShapingTomorrow.com, Michael Jackson’s growing futures portal.– Perennially customizable. Shows commitment.



Community Tools: Post Moderation on Slashdot

Each post is rated (-1, to 5 plus a one word comment: (Funny, Insightful, Offtopic, etc.)

Users can filter a 600 post discussion thread by rating level or by comment word).

Slashdot's users lose “karma points” when their posts are moderated down, gain them when moderated up.

High karma users are more likely to become moderators. Positive feedback.

There's also "meta moderation" to weed out bad moderators where high karma users can look at 10 random comments recently ranked by moderators and give their second opinion on them. Self-Regulating Ecosystem.







Community Tools: Newsletters

PC Based Mailer [Easy]

(MS Outlook Express, Free; Outlook, Paid)– Most ISPs don’t like you doing this. Can BCC groups up to

20-50.

Automated Mailing List Managers [Med](Mailman, Listserv, Majordomo)

– Horrible interfaces, low customizability.

Graphical (HTML) Mailers [Med]

(Cooler, Lyris, Constant Contact, Express Mail: Paid)– Templates, automatic bounce management, forwarding,

Pricing varies (by list size, by email), list of 3,000 mailed monthly typically costs $10-30/month.



Community Tools: Conference Calls

Telco Conference Calling [Easy](FreeConference.com, <30, long distance charges)

VoIP Conference Calling [Easy]

(Skype, <5, need computer and broadband, no charges)– Tip: Get a good speakerphone (Dedicated

Polycom on eBay). Run multiple mikes if room acoustics are bad.



Community Tools: Web & Videoconferencing Groupware

Enterprise-Level Web Conferencing [Hard]WebEx, Centra, MS LiveMeeting, Lotus, Interwise, Raindance.

– WebEx: 45 cents/min/person. 100 seat, 1 hour event: $4,800 SOHO Web and Video Conferencing [Med]

WaveThree: $199 one time. Max of 10, 128 Kbps/user.Linktivity: $1,500 + dedicated server. Max of 5 users.VoiceCafe: $75/month. Max of 5 usersViditel: $35/month/person, unlimited meetings

– Dramatic improvements over the last year. Groupware [Med]

Groove: $69 per person, one time cost.Robin Good: Best SOHO groupware solution for PowerPoints, file sharing, IM, private spaces, and project development tools. No audio or video capacities at present. Need a fast computer.

DIY Videoconferencing [Med](PC: VSee, CitizenX, Mac: iChat AV)

– Great way to meet F2F on occasion. Most people’s processors and bandwidth not quite ready.



Community Tools: Networking Sites

Event/Meeting Sites [Easy] (eVite.com, Meetup.org: Free)

Social Networking [Easy] (Tribe, Orkut: Free/Paid)

Business Networking [Easy] (Rhyze, LinkedIn: Free)– Can set up Groups within LinkedIn. Tip: Better

contact management than proprietary solutions, and more networking potential. No need to fill out yet another membership form (YAMF).



Business Networking: LinkedIn



Community Tools:Wikis

Hosted or Installed Wikis [Med](WikiPedia: Free, SocialText: Paid)

Wiki Definitions:

Online collaboration model and tool that allows any user to edit some content of webpages through a simple browser.

Web pages which are editable by visitors to the website as opposed to conventional websites which can only be changed by the webmaster. Usually used for "community" or technical sites to allow for joint authoring and ownership.



Community Tools: File Sharing

Free Hosted Photo Albums [Easy](Flickr, Ofoto: Free/Paid)

Free Peer to Peer File Sharing [Med](Kazaa, BitTorrent: Free)– Copyright issues, broadband, and computer power

keep this underutilized. The last two limiting factors are scaling fast and may allow more great P2P apps (like Skype) in the future.



Community Tools:Chat

Basic Chat and Instant Messaging [Easy](AIM, ICQ, Jabber: Free; Lotus, MS Office: Paid)

– Tip: Keep IM groups small, w/ concise netiquette. Professional Chat [Med]

(RealChat, $495, ParaChat, $17/month)– Can get big name speakers. Can require readahead or selective

admission. Subroom discussions. Event can be archived Tip: Some chat rooms have a collective booting feature.

– Rule: If more than half the participants vote to boot a chatter at any time, you are out.

– Message: “You've been booted because you were acting like a dork.You may return in one hour. Until then, chill out.”– This bans static IPs (cable modem, DSL), and it bans sessions for

dialup users (dynamic IPs).



Community Tools:3D

Persistent Worlds [Med]Example: Second Life, LindenLab. Streaming audio for main speaker, chat for others. Streaming video (new). Cost: $10 for life + fast graphics card ($180)



Community Tools:Future

Moblogging [Hard]Example: Nokia’s Lifeblog. 7MP Camera Phones.

Podcasting/Audio Music and Spoken Word [Med]

Example: iPod and iPod Mini. Audible.com, but free (after purchase of $200-300 player).

Games/Entertainment [Varies] Location Based Filtering (GPS, GIS) [Hard] Collaborative Filtering (“Amazon for the rest of us”) [Hard]

Allow members to rate stories, filter based on rating, generate dynamic content from the collaborative filters.





Skill Questions

If your only community goal was to create a collaborative online book, what kind of tools would you use?



Skill Questions

If your only community goal was to get together locally in an interest group once a month, what kind of tools would you use?



Skill Questions

How would you create production-oriented online community for a low-budget futures company with five employees spread across the U.S.?



Skill Questions

How would you create education, social, and resource-oriented community around a low-budget futures-oriented email list with 4,000 members worldwide?



Skill Questions

How would you create a low-budget virtual community around a big name monthly futurist speaker?



Skill Questions

If you were creating a community for futures studies scholars, what site features would be particularly helpful?



Skill Questions

What kind of content could a futurist website make available for use on cellphones? How could this be used at the homesite to improve community?



Skill Questions

What kind of users would a futurist website currently want to attract to join a 3D virtual community?

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