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Moderation vs. Censorship in Online Communities

May 15, 2023 By Shannon Abram

Have you seen this community management/moderation game Moderator Mayhem that is making the rounds? It is a little too close to home for us to truly be a game! It did get us thinking about moderation, and how the wider world looks at the way community managers use moderation vs. censorship their online communities.

Moderation vs. Censorship in Online Communities

Moderation vs. Censorship

Content moderation and censorship are two terms could be used interchangeably, but they have significant differences when it comes to the use of moderation vs. censorship in online communities. Both are methods used by platforms and website administrators to monitor and manage the content that users post on their platforms. However, content moderation and censorship have different goals, methods of implementation, and effects on an online community.

What is content moderation?

Content moderation is the process of reviewing and filtering user-generated content to ensure that it meets the community guidelines, terms of service, and legal requirements. The goal of content moderation is to maintain a safe, respectful, and effective online environment by removing content that is harmful, offensive, or inappropriate. Examples of content that may be moderated include hate speech, pornography, violent or graphic images, and spam.

Content moderation is usually carried out by teams of human moderators or through the use of automated tools such as machine learning algorithms that can identify problematic content. Moderators may use different criteria when evaluating content, including its relevance, accuracy, quality, and safety. Moderators may also apply different levels of moderation depending on the severity of the content, such as removing it, flagging it, or providing warnings to the user who posted it.

What is censorship?

Censorship, on the other hand, involves the deliberate suppression of information or ideas that are considered controversial, offensive, or threatening. Censorship aims to control or manipulate the narrative, suppress dissent, or protect the interests of those in power. Examples of content that may be censored include political dissent, criticism of the government or religion, and certain types of artistic expression.

Censorship is often carried out by governments or other authorities who have the power to control access to information. Censorship can take many forms, including internet shutdowns, blocking access to websites or social media platforms, and the imprisonment of journalists or bloggers who express dissenting views.

So what’s the difference?

The key difference between content moderation and censorship is the underlying motivation and intent behind each approach. Content moderation aims to protect the online community and its members by removing content that violates community guidelines or legal requirements. Censorship, on the other hand, aims to control information and restrict access to certain types of content for political or ideological reasons.

Content moderation is a necessary and beneficial practice that helps maintain a safe and respectful online environment. A safe and respectful community is the baseline environment for an productive online space, and since people love to push boundaries (and sometimes, just be jerks) thoughtful moderation is a critical component of online community management. While in some cases, content moderation decisions may be subjective, and there is a risk of moderators applying their own biases or interpretations when evaluating content it is overwhemlingly a needed process.

Censorship, on the other hand, is widely viewed as a violation of free speech and an infringement of individual rights. Censorship can limit access to information and suppress important debates and discussions. Governments and authorities that engage in censorship often face criticism and opposition from civil society and international organizations that advocate for free speech and human rights.

In conclusion, content moderation and censorship are two distinct approaches to managing content in online communities – and only one has a place in creating a safe and effective environment for members. Content moderation protects an online community and its members, staff, and organization, while allowing for healthy conflict and free speech.

Read more about effective community moderation.

Turning Around an Unhappy Community

April 24, 2023 By Shannon Abram

If we had a nickel for every time someone asked us how to turn around an unhappy community we’d have a big pile of nickels. It’s not uncommon for a new community manager to start their job, and realize they are taking over a community with members that are at best unengaged and at worst actively hostile.

A client asked us to help them turn their well-known brand community from an overwhelmingly unfriendly and hostile environment to a constructive and welcoming resource. It was no easy task with a launched community that got off on the wrong foot.

The community was founded six months earlier as a place for customers to ask questions, share best practices, and learn from subject matter experts within the company, with an ultimate goal of year-round engagement. Pretty basic brand community stuff. Soon after launch, customers began to pull the organization in a different direction and the community evolved into an alternate support resource.

Turning Around an Unhappy Community

The organization knew from the start it was undertaking a difficult task. To begin with, the subject matter was a high-stress topic (think $$$). Customers often ended up in the community when they were already frazzled and bewildered – and therefore not at their most pleasant. The community was a last resource after customers had been unable to find answers elsewhere or stressed after waiting in the customer support call queue.

The community staff themselves had a number of hurdles. The subject matter was vast and complex, making it challenging for a small team to address and secure other resources to assist with complex questions was also proving difficult.

In addition, team members frequently ran into questions that could not be answered due to company policy, leaving them feeling helpless and backed into a corner by frustrated customers. They felt like there was nothing they could do to make the customer experience more constructive.

Where Did We Start?

In order to determine the overall state of the community, we evaluated sentiment based on a sample of community activity.

At random, we selected 10% of the community topics each month and assigned a sentiment to each. Topics that included welcoming, constructive, or appreciative dialect were rated as positive. For example, discussions that included phrases such as “Thank you so much” or “This really helped”. We also looked for topics that included examples of hostile or unhelpful language such as “You are useless” or “I hate…” Everything else was classified as neutral. Neutral included nonaligned statements such as “I need to know” or “How do I…?”

This evaluation quickly confirmed our initial observations. The community had an unacceptable percentage of negative posts. If we were right that behavior mirroring was to blame, new members of the community were picking up and mimicking the hostile, unconstructive, and unwelcome behavior of existing members. In some cases, it was likely because it was the first thing they saw and it set the tone. In others, new users may have observed that angry topics saw more views and customer engagement.

Regardless of the cause, we knew a community where negative sentiment was 19 times higher than positive sentiment needed to change – and quickly.

The Principles at Play – Behavior Mirroring

What is behavior mirroring and how does this affect sentiment in communities? Do you ever notice how some of us tend to take on the quirks and mannerisms of others – or mimic each others words? This behavior is known as mirroring in which we subconsciously imitate expressions, speech, or actions of others. It is a thoroughly studied psychological concept, so we know that such behavior often manifests as a way to learn vicariously, build rapport and facilitate interactions in unfamiliar environments. Essentially, we are acting as chameleons – blending into our environment to observe, increase our relatability and keep safe. (Chartrand and Bargh, 1999)

Given that this behavior can be found in abundance in all sorts of daily interactions, it comes as no surprise that the “chameleon effect” is observed in online interactions as well. For example, we see mimicking in social networks with the rapid adoption of jargon as participants use hashtags and acronyms. It explains why acronyms such as “bae” (before anyone else), “smh” (shake my head), and #tbt (throwback Thursday) quickly spread and are adopted as common expressions with unprecedented speed online.

Communities also see mirroring, but the effect is more subtle. Have you noticed that once one person starts ranting, it feels like the rest of a group joins in? Or when one person posts a complaint, suddenly a dozen more appear? It is mirroring, and it becomes a feedback loop. The more people exhibit a behavior, the more it is copied.

But what if you could use mirroring to your advantage? That’s exactly what we did to turn this community around.

Plan of Action

In order to turn the sentiment of the unhappy community around, we knew we had to change the behavior of both customers and staff, which was no small task.

We developed a strategy comprised of three sections:

  1. Community clean up
  2. Guidelines & enforcement
  3. Modeling constructive behavior

Each component of the community turnaround was designed to have an immediate impact on sentiment. Cleaning up the community would help prevent negative mirroring. Guidelines would help prevent abuse and empower community staff. Setting an example would begin to show members what behavior was expected of them and provide positive behaviors to mirror.

We also had a long-term strategy in mind. Everything we proposed and enacted would become part of the community maintenance plan, and would be carried out every single year.

Community Clean Up

By the time we were tasked with turning around the unhappy community, the active season for the community had already passed and our goals were entirely focused on making sure the next active season would go better.

Knowing this, we set out to clean up the community.

To start, we set up an “archive” category. This was a place for community staff to move topics and posts that shouldn’t be in the public setting but retained for future reference or metrics.

Guidelines & Enforcement

The structure of the unhappy community was not our only concern. The community staff was growing weary and frustrated with the unwelcome behavior of many users, but they didn’t feel like there was anything they could do about it. We knew we had to give them tools and approaches that allowed them to proactively create a constructive environment.

Our first order of business was to rewrite the community guidelines. Guidelines are often viewed as a secondary task in a community, but research and practice has shown that well formulated guidelines can be the difference between mayhem and harmony. After evaluating months’ worth of bad behavior, moderation flags, and complaints in the unhappy community, we developed a list of specific rules and very clear consequences. The impact was twofold. The rules informed visitors and members what behaviors were expected and those that would not be tolerated. They also provided community staff the justification needed to say “No, you can’t do that here.”

With these new rules, we also developed processes for community staff to follow:

  • First- and second-time offenders were informed of their transgressions, but not necessarily banned from the community until their third offense
  • Intentional offenders were subject to immediate banning.
  • Unpleasant but not clear rule breakers were assigned to a “troll” group for further observation.

In addition, we tackled the “smut” filter or blacklist. New unacceptable words were added to the existing list for automatic removal. (We won’t list them here, but you could probably guess a few.) We also added alerts for words that could be problematic, but were open to manual interpretation such as “I’m having a hell of a time installing

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” or “I’ve searched every damn place, but I can’t find…” These alerts let community staff know a post needed to be evaluated and potentially edited depending on the intended sentiment.

Even with these tools, some community staff still hesitated as concerns about moderation versus censoring arose. In order to empower community staff to moderate freely but prevent blatant censoring, we developed three rules to keep in mind:

  • Angry posts are allowed as long as they do not break any other rules regarding harassment, unhelpfulness, or swearing. Posts aimed at the company as a whole or a specific product are allowed.
  • Even if valid and not breaking any existing rules, angry posts or complaints aimed at a specific user or employee are not allowed. These posts are archived and the poster is informed of how to get their concerns or complaints to the right person or department so that action can be taken.
  • If a topic becomes a long threaded rant, users are told that the topic has exhausted itself and will be locked from future contributions. The topic is archived at a later date unless the thread has clear value.

Once we started cleaning up, there were many questions as to why we did not remove all the negativity. The answer was simple: Do you trust a product with only positive feedback? Of course not. Allowing a healthy amount of honest negativity helped customers see that we were making a sincere effort to be trustworthy.

Outcome

By the time the second season arrived, the previously unhappy community had a different feel to it that was far more welcoming, constructive, and interactive. It wasn’t perfect, but that was never the intention. We simply wanted members to feel comfortable asking questions, suggesting improvements, and letting the community staff know what was needed.

More than anything, we wanted new members to understand how to interact with each other and the company. With positive and neutral examples front and center, the “chameleon effect” was evident. For example, it was more common to see “Hope this helped” and “Thank you for your assistance” exchanges throughout the community. Good questions and answers almost always had likes. Members were clearly mirroring the behavior of others, but now it was constructive and resourceful. Positive sentiment rose, and we measured a stunning and significant decrease in negative sentiment.

We also observed some indirect effects on the community. We saw more questions and fewer statements – a welcome change for community staff as they had more opportunities to respond to customers. We also began to notice clear “super users” emerging, which we attributed to the change in sentiment and engagement. These super users provided clear value to the community, and much-needed support for the community team, and we made sure they were appreciated.

By the end of the second season, we had achieved our goal of creating a constructive tone in the community – goodbye unhappy community! The effect of that was a massive increase in member registration and volume far beyond what we believed likely.

Today, the community is thriving.

It continues to maintain a primarily neutral sentiment with rapidly growing registrations and healthy volume. Most impressively, the community staff has observed a maturation, from a community dominated by redundant questions and one-time visitors to one with high search rates and impressive successful search results. In short, what was originally an unfriendly, unhappy community has transformed into a functioning, highly-effective, and healthy community.

Connect with community peers in our free facebook or linkedin groups or in our private peer community, TheCR Network.

Community Conversations – Episode #89 – Melissa Westervelt on Policies and Governance

February 6, 2023 By Shannon Abram

Community Conversations is a long-running podcast highlighting community success stories from a wide variety of online community management professionals.

Episode #89 of Community Conversations features Melissa Westervelt, Product Manager, Digital Engagement at Cambridge Associates.

On this special State of Community Management 2022 episode, Melissa Westervelt and host Anne Mbugua discuss the trends in community policies and guidelines. Melissa explains the difference between community policies and community guidelines, and shares tips for designing effective policies and guidelines for your online community.

Melissa Westervelt

Melissa Westervelt on Policies and Governance

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About Melissa Westervelt

Melissa is an experienced Product Manager with a demonstrated proficiency in SaaS management for digital engagement. Her specializations include enterprise-level community management, community building, and employee engagement strategy. She possesses strong skills in stakeholder alignment, platform search and implementation, IT change management, and managing vendor relationships. What does all of that mean? She loves helping people collaborate by giving them digital tools to ensure their projects succeed.

About Cambridge Associates

They are a global investment firm and aim to help endowments & foundations, pension plans, and high net worth private clients implement and manage custom investment portfolios that generate outperformance and enable them to maximize their impact on the world. Working alongside its early clients, Cambridge Associates pioneered the strategy of high-equity orientation and broad diversification, which since its inception in the 1980s has been a primary driver of performance for institutional investors. Today, they deliver a range of portfolio management services, including outsourced CIO, non-discretionary portfolio management, investment staff extension, and asset class mandates. Cambridge Associates maintains offices in major financial centers across the globe, with headquarters in Boston, MA.

About The State of Community Management

Now in its 13th year, our annual State of Community Management report provides strategic ideas and tactical benchmarks for global community management professionals.

The State of Community Management 2022 explores the state of the community management industry through the lens of the eight competencies in the Community Maturity Model™.

Each section includes data, ideas, and expert practitioner perspectives to give you new insight into the community management industry. 

Kelly Munro on Content and Programs
Download your free copy of the State of Community Management 2022.

Interested in Growing Your Community? Become an Enabler!

January 30, 2023 By Shannon Abram

Community managers are often connectors by default – it takes a certain type of person to excel at the role. People with high EQ tend to thrive.

Our research has shown that community leaders with a network of communities are more likely to provide enabling resources to their organization than those with a single community. Comparing the data from respondents who reported “one community” vs. “a network of communities” at their organization, we found a dramatic increase in CoEs once a network exists (i.e., once they’re past the initial use case).

Also interesting, 17% of respondents (8% in a network of communities) reported only ad hoc/informal governance. (Question: Who’s in charge of the communities there? If this is you, please contact us. We want to feature you in a case study.)

State of Community Management 2022 - What Resources to community teams provide?
©2022 The Community Roundtable – The State of Community Management 2022


It’s interesting to note that 30% of community managers who represent a single community provide none of the resources mentioned in the survey, which likely results in a less strategic initiative. For those who want to grow beyond a single community, get out there and coach/evangelize!

Some common use cases to extend the reach and the benefit in your organization include:

  • General employee communities for knowledge sharing and collaboration
  • Customer support communities for providing fast, inexpensive, always-on access to answers to product and service questions.
  • Membership communities for groups like students, patients, alumni, or association audiences

Tips on Getting Started

  • Start a monthly “community jam” for those who want to learn more about community and how it might help them with a specific business use case.
  • Coach executives on how they can best support your work — try to get them to an “aha moment” on how community approaches could help another area of the business.
  • Document what has or hasn’t worked in your community, and begin compiling templates, and (ultimately) a community playbook for your organization.

It may feel overwhelming when you consider it, but by taking an iterative approach you’ll get where you want to be faster.

Help Community Programs Scale

December 12, 2022 By Shannon Abram

The Policies & Governance competency of the Community Maturity Model™  details operational guidelines for successful online community programs. Policies refer to how a community interacts and can be divided into two areas: Terms of service – How a community is managed in legal terms and Guidelines – Articulate what behaviors are expected and why, plainly. Governance is how the community team is structured, operates within an organization, and supports community-related activities across the organization.

Most organizations could support multiple communities with myriad use cases. The most common include:

  • General employee communities for knowledge sharing and collaboration
  • Customer support communities for providing fast, inexpensive, always-on access to answers to product and service questions.
  • Membership communities for groups like students, patients, alumni, or association audiences

In 2021, we saw the emergence of the “Center of Excellence’’ (CoE) approach, where community work is decentralized, but supported with a host of resources. While responses from this year’s data suggest CoEs are falling out of favor, digging deeper shows a different perspective.

Help Community Programs Scale

Comparing the data from respondents who reported “one community” vs. “a network of communities” at their organization, we found a dramatic increase in CoEs once a network exists (i.e., once they’re past the initial use case). Also interesting, 17% of respondents (8% in networked communities) reported only ad hoc/informal governance. Question: Who’s in charge of the communities there? If this is you, please contact us. We want to feature you in a case study.

Interested in Growing Your Community? Become an Enabler!

On a related note, those with a network of communities are more likely to help communities programs scale by providing enabling resources to their organization than those with a single community. When comparing total data on community resources from 2021 to 2022 there isn’t much to report. Comparing responses from individual communities vs. a network of communities tells a different story (see pg. 45 of the 2022 SOCM or the image above).

It’s interesting to note: 30% of community managers representing a single community provide none of the resources mentioned in the survey, which likely results in a less strategic initiative. For those who want to grow beyond a single community, get out there and coach/evangelize.

Want to help community programs scale? Start a center of excellence?

Check out this short interview with Claudia Teixeira, Senior Knowledge and Learning Consultant at the World Bank Group.

Claudia and Anne Mbugua discuss what a center of excellence entails, the path to centers of excellence at the World Bank Group, and advice for implementing a center of excellence at your organization. Listen now.

Get more community ideas and advice in the 13th annual 2022 State of Community Management report:

Help Community Programs Scale

Vanessa DiMauro on Trust in Communities

December 6, 2019 By Shannon Abram

Podcast - Vanessa DiMauro, Georgian Partners

Join the community experts at The Community Roundtable as they chat about online community management best practices with a wide range of global community professionals. Topics include increasing online audience engagement, finding and leveraging executive stakeholders, defining and calculating online community ROI and more. Find more episodes.

Episode #63 features Vanessa DiMauro, Vice President at Georgian Partners.

Vanessa shares her unique perspective on trust as a competitive differentiator. She also shares best practices for fostering trust using technology and community, and effective ways to align community goals with business goals.

This episode of Conversations with Community Managers is sponsored by Telligent.

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Ensuring Consistent Brand Voice through Community Governance

September 13, 2017 By Shannon Abram

When we talk about the eight competencies of the Community Maturity Model people tend to get really excited about the work they do for culture, or content and programming. There are even those among us (Jillian, I’m looking at you!) that get super fired up about metrics and measurement. Policies and governance tends to get overlooked, which is crazy since our research shows that paying attention to the policies in place in your community has a big impact.

This case study from Aetna illustrates how having a comprehensive governance strategy for your community can ensure a consistent brand voice. You’ll learn how Aetna uses a community playbook, comprehensive social media training, and regular social media audits to achieve their community governance goals.

Download the free case study now. 

Privacy, Free Speech, and ‘Blurry-Edged’ Social Networks

October 24, 2016 By Amy Turner

By Amy Turner, The Community Roundtable

Screen Shot 2016-07-08 at 8.40.35 AMThe right to privacy online is not so clear-cut when debated with the right to free speech. There is much more citizen journalism happening, but laws have been created with traditional publishing institutions in mind. These laws favor the right to free speech, which puts the right to privacy in an uncertain balance. TheCR Network had a sobering discussion about this with Lauren Gelman, Principal & Founder at BlurryEdge Strategies.

The center of the debate is privacy vs. free speech. At its very basic level, an individual’s right to protect his/her privacy interferes with another individual’s right to talk about another person. For example, any right an individual has to stop another individual from publishing a picture that had the first individual in it also stops the second individual from expressing him/herself through that picture. The same holds true in a blog scenario that publishes information about another person. To not publish for privacy reasons infringes on the bloggers right to free speech. The result is a strong tension in the advocacy community about how to balance these interests because the same people who are working on these issues are the chief advocates for both of these conflicting sides.


Below are three best practices that emerged from our discussion with Lauren:

TheCR Network Guest Expert: Lauren Gelman

TheCR Network Guest Expert: Lauren Gelman

Recognize that all Actions are Public 

People do not realize that they are publishing to the world. Perhaps it is because they do not see faces and eyes staring back at them. It gives them a false feeling of anonymity that allows their guard to be lowered. Lauren believes that social network technology tools are designed to keep us ignorant and are designed to incent us to over-share our private information without understanding the full ramifications. These tools benefit from the fact that people do not understand the extent of their audience. The more you tell Facebook about yourself, the more you can get in touch with people who match your criteria. The more you tell LinkedIn, the more accurate their suggested contacts will be. So, all of these platforms are built in a way to incent you to disclose more. The problem is, however, that the law does not see it that way. Always be aware that everybody and anybody can see what it is that you are publishing.


Tagging Content 

Lauren suggests a tagging regime. In this way, people would be able to tag their published content with certain privacy expectations, such as: “Please do not archive this or cut and paste or publish it in another forum.” The idea behind this is to express a level of privacy sensitivity. That is one of the reasons that the law is so hard-lined in this space. In the real world it is very hard to understand an individual’s privacy sensitivity about something being repeated. So, the same would then hold true for the Internet. The law basically uses what is termed an “objective test.” It assumes that everybody’s privacy sensitivity is the same in that if you tell somebody, you do not have an expectation of privacy. This way, everybody in the world knows what to expect of the law. However, if you are able to tag your Internet content with your privacy sensitivity, then the law has something to work with in order to try and protect people.

Establish a Complaint Mechanism 

Currently, there is a “notice and take down regime” under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This has established a means for individuals to contact companies if they think their copyright is being violated. Perhaps a similar institution could be established for privacy concerns.

How do you balance the right to free speech and the right to privacy across social media and communities?  

To hear more from Lauren Gelman, connect with her on LinkedIn or follow her on Twitter.

 

SOCM Fact #10 – Don’t be afraid to define community guidelines

August 29, 2016 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, Director of Research and Training

Rules. My 6-year-old hates them – but really she doesn’t. The same holds true for many communities.

trellisCommunities – and 6-year-olds – tend to function best when there is some defined sense of appropriate behaviors. But there’s a catch. Policies and guidelines shouldn’t just explain what you shouldn’t do – they should highlight what you should. Once again this year, our best-in-class communities drive this home. The best communities are more than twice as likely as the average to have policies and guidelines in place that don’t just define what shouldn’t be done, but guide members to the behaviors that benefit the community.

Before you say, “Duh!” – recognize that it’s a delicate balance. People don’t love being told what to do, or what not to do. But we need both. A community that works to have no rules or guidelines for expected behaviors can descend into the chaos of many media comments sections. But communities that are too restrictive can crush the constructive disagreements that are the heart of innovation and dialogue. The same holds true on the positive side – if a community doesn’t shape desired behaviors, it’s hard for members to figure out what to do. But being heavy-handed in saying what should be done can be as conversation-crippling as being heavy-handed about what shouldn’t happen.

SOCM2016_Fact_#10_DefineBehaviors

So what’s a community manager to do? Here are a few ideas:

  1. Recognize the power of policies and guidelines as a positive force. If your policies and governance structure are solely designed to catch unwanted behaviors, you’re building a box, not a trellis for growth.
  2. Go back to your community values. What are the behaviors that lead to that value? Those are the ones you want to highlight in your policies and guidelines.
  3. Get community input. Community buy-in is critical for successful implementation of polices and guidelines. Getting members involved both improves the likelihood you’ll find the right language, and that when the hard decisions come you’ll have community support.
  4. Be transparent – about the process and the things that aren’t negotiable. Every organization has policies that protect key information and people – especially when it comes to legal requirements, confidentiality, and personal information. Be clear about those non-negotiables, and be upfront about other areas of disagreement. And as a crisis unfolds, share what you can with members. If you’ve effectively developed policies and guidelines, you’ll likely find more support than you might expect.

What are your best practices for community policies and guidelines? Share them in the comments.

The State of Community Management 2016 from The Community Roundtable

We can’t wait to hear what you think – tag your thoughts with #SOCM2016 to join the conversation!

Are you a member of TheCR Network? Download the research inside the Network here.

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