As someone who is preparing to jumpstart a community of their own I found this article very interesting, but after the initial stages of community building it appears to turn into community facilitating, more or less.
Reducing your influence and encouraging self-governance seems necessary and inevitable but also opens the doors to seeing your community and your vision for it devolve into something you don’t want or aren’t prepared for.
How do you step in and nudge a community that has grown to that point in the “right” direction without scaring off those involved?
Note: maybe you don’t. I understand that “be specific” is not only important in bringing in and retaining community members but also ensuring the community stays on the rails.
Honestly, I think the answer is 'keep the site/community very niche'. Since the more niche the topic, the more the community both tends to stay civil and stick to the original vision.
The somewhat more general gaming community I used to run devolved into chaos a couple of years in, and eventually the visions of myself, the staff team and many of the actual members all diverged dramatically, leading to almost complete collapse and no end of drama.
On the other hand, the much more niche site I currently about a very specific series has stayed mostly drama free for the last decade, and works exactly as I'd want it to. Probably in part because the only people who join are those who actually want to discuss the topic in question.
For better or worse, I think having a paywall and being in control of who is allowed to remain a member is the default answer here. Otherwise, I think it would be nearly impossible to maintain any sort of culture when you’re competing with the wider world.
I think the key thing is being able to remove people that aren’t playing by the rules. A lot of sites functionally don’t or can’t do this because they have free account access, etc. and have no “buy in” - as in, it’s easy for an anonymous new account with no history to contribute. Reddit is a perfect example of this.
Freemium style could work, but I think if I were going about this, I would provide a product and then include access to a private community. The key point being that you’re not just charging for the community access, but that there is a genuinely useful product being sold. You’ll get more people that are really there to participate and not just because they’re bored and have time to kill. (A major issue with online discussion forums IMO.)
Also, just as a disclaimer- I have no direct experience is managing a community like this myself, my opinions are just from being a member of online communities for the last ~20 years.
I’m still curious on thoughts, I have no experience other than my previous ~15 years with online communities. But I never really thought much about it until I considered building something of my own. I do agree a paywall seems like the easiest way to sift through legit users, and offering a product makes the paywall a little more digestible.
Yeah I have had a desire to build a similar thing myself. The main problem, I think, is avoiding the “social lifers” becoming your main user. By this I mean people who spend all of their time talking and arguing on social media. Most “regular” people are busy and don’t have time for this, but they’re exactly what make a community great.
If you merely have a paywall, and no product, I think this is what will inevitably happen. So you need some sort of product or service that is useful in-itself.
not really trying to do self promotion or anything, but just offering my recent piece for people in a similar spot doing community building research https://dx.tips/how-to-community
echos a few of TFAs themes, but is perhaps more specific about tactical things you should try
Reducing your influence and encouraging self-governance seems necessary and inevitable but also opens the doors to seeing your community and your vision for it devolve into something you don’t want or aren’t prepared for.
How do you step in and nudge a community that has grown to that point in the “right” direction without scaring off those involved?
Note: maybe you don’t. I understand that “be specific” is not only important in bringing in and retaining community members but also ensuring the community stays on the rails.