Moderation is a tricky business. Firstly because doing it well requires excellent judgment and social intuition; secondly because being a moderator appeals hugely to people who lack either of those traits. Pick a bad forum anywhere on the internet and somewhere along the line you’re likely to find moderators who are either apathetic, incompetent, bullies or all of the above.
While it’s possible that I’ve already caused the more buzzword-averse among you to roll your eyes out of your sockets, the much vaunted “gamification” of all manner of things is one that is directly relevant to many forum communities. Give me a moment and perhaps I can persuade you of the benefits of using such systems. Perhaps more importantly, I might manage to persuade you of the pitfalls.
Earlier this year analyst firm IDC reported that the #1 social business initiative is creating online communities. Many companies, having seen the power of social media and customer-to-customer interactions, are now looking to create a cohesive ‘on domain’ community for their customers and partners rather than trying to manage interactions across multiple social networks.
Over the last few years, comment systems have become ubiquitous across all web content. Indeed, in many places the humble forum has been pushed out in favour of it’s more exciting and accessible cousin. There’s even one at the bottom of this article. There are a lot of advantages to giving your readers/fans/cultists a simpler method of feedback, but one look at many comments, for example those on YouTube, will quickly reveal a huge problem with the users of such systems. Namely, their tendency to be terrible.
Vanilla will be attending ForumCom on June 13th at the Kabuki Hotel in San Francisco.
“ForumCon is your opportunity to connect with and learn from the world’s leading forum and community managers.”
Let us know if you’ll be there! If you’re planning on attending, here’s a 20% discount code: Vanilla2013
Vanilla's next gen forum platform lets you build a community that will really engage your audience to drive participation and advocacy.
Todd Burry Chief Product Officer, Co-Founder
Tim GunterDirector of Infrastructure and Ops
Mark O'SullivanCo-Founder
Matt Lincoln Russell Developer
Luc Vezina CEO
