What makes a productive community?

After listening to a TED Talk by Jane McGonigal I finally found the inspiration to write down what I think a healthy community website should look like.

The communities I participate in are HItRecord and BlogHer. These communities work.

[You could count Facebook and Twitter on there, but I would categorize those as more social networking, and you’ll see why in a minute.]

These two sites have four common traits

1. Users must register to commennt
2. Clearly defined rules about comments
3. Users can contribute content to the site
4. There is a common goal among community members

ETA: I forgot to mention, it also has to be fun for your members. As evidenced by Guardian’s attempt to document thousands of pages of reports on MP spending (Thanks Jeff Howe), people are only willing to do so much before it gets tiring. WOW is fun, HitRecord is fun, new sites’ projects should also be fun.
The fourth is the trait that’s been missing from my hypothesis. Because as many news sites know, allowing comments doesn’t equal healthy discussion.

So why is a common goal necessary?

Jane McGonigal, game-designer extraordinaire, did her graduate study on why gamers spend so much time in online worlds, namely World of Warcraft. The simple conclusion is that there is an immediate sense of trust and a sense of mission.

From her explanation (as I’ve only had cursory exposure to WoW through ex-boyfriends), when you first start out you are placed with a band of gamers who all want to help you complete a mission. The mission is never beyond your skill level, it’s always achievable, but still challenging.

As you go about playing the game, the longer you spend at this goal the greater the bond you create with your fellow gamers. It’s apparently rare for a gamer to abandon the mission because of this insatiable sense of mission.

This is the feeling I get from HItRecord.

HitRecord started out as just a multimedia depository for actor-cum-artistic-collaborator Joseph Gordon-Levitt (RegularJoe to HitRecorders). Then he opened it up to the online world and what has happened is a surge of artistic collaboration that make the film industry’s version of “collaboration” seem Draconian.

The basic premise is that users can upload a piece of their own original work so that other users can build upon it, edit it, or create something wholly new inspired by it. A picture of a daisy suddenly becomes a key character in an animation.

At Sundance and SXSW, Gordon-Levitt showcased just how HitRecord works. His goal was to screen films and animations done by members of his website. Some were already in the making, while others were being put together that week. The number of contributions to each project were in the hundreds and range from drawings to large-scale editing (really, all editing is large-scale, isn’t it?).

That was the goal. Help RegularJoe show the people at Sundance and SXSW what we’re made of, what we can accomplish together. It was an incredible, epic adventure.

Another example how the HitRecord community works well is through how they handle conflict.

Recently, Gordon-Levitt posted a remark on the site reminding HitRecorders what the site is all about – collaboration and creation.

“What about constructive criticism? Well, if I see potential in something, but I think it needs adjustment, I download it, make the adjustment myself, and Release that new Result.” *

Although he made a point about having nothing nice to say, his bigger point was to extol users to be productive. Do something! The goal of HitRecord is to create.

Goal, goal, goal, goal goal, mission! I think you get it.

Now, about comment moderation. This is essential to establishing a community that is productive.

BlogHer is a community where I feel the safest. Not because all the women there share the same opinions, but because the debates feel like productive discussion and not flame-fests.

First of all, you have to register in order to participate. And there are enough steps to register to make it easy and to cool-off the most heated troll. Second, BlogHer has pretty strict rules about how they define and handle acceptable comments. Well, strict compared to the crazy shenanigans going on at most comment boards.

To me, their rules seem perfectly reasonable:

“We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked that is:
- Being used to abuse, harass, stalk or threaten a person or persons
- Libelous, defamatory, knowingly false or misrepresents another person”

After seeing so many hateful comments, it makes sense to forbid “stalking” and “threatening” remarks. Why in the world would anyone want to have a discussion in a space where people say horrible things about each other? Especially following you around the comment board…

This is why it is so important to foster a safe environment in an online community. Without that sense of trust and even belonging, members who are truly committed to helping the community get scared off. What you have left are a bunch of chimps throwing poo at each other. While I love chimpanzees, I’d really rather not get into an argument with one.

One facet to a healthy discussion is expounded upon in Tom Kelly’s “Ten Faces of Innovation.” Sometimes worse than a comment troll, is the Devil’s Advocate. The DA (haha) isn’t just his court appointed attorney, but could be the Devil himself (or herself).

Kelly outlines why the DA is so destructive – because he offers nothing constructive. Just as Gordon-Levitt asked his members to be productive, so too does Kelly ask his IDEO colleagues to offer new or complementary ideas rather than criticisms. Those new ideas should come from a place or perspective, i.e. the 10 faces. Read the book, because it would take too long to detail each personality type.

[I’d like to make a quick digression to say that newsrooms need to start looking more like IDEO. I say that even without the experience of having my story pitches thrown in my face in flames.]

Now you’re might wondering – yeah but comments are for discussing not collaborating.

First, imagine me zinging a finger rocket at you for saying “but.” Second, sure there’s a time and a place for your community to just flap their lips. That’s great too if people can just debate with another. However, you aren’t going to build the same kind of trust and camaraderie that collaborative sites build without some common goal (goal goal goal mission!).

Why do news sites want camaraderie? I don’t really have an answer for that. Sorry. I can say though that a lot of people feel helpless when faced with news stories. What can they do it about? Why pay attention if they have no power?

And I can say that communities like BlogHer, HitRecord and World of Warcraft have a strong bond between members because of a shared sense of accomplishment. This is an area I think journalism should experiment in. It’s not something that has been really tried in earnest.

I’ll save the analysis of past journalism and crowdsourcing experiments for another post. But right now, l wanted to focus on how to build a sense of community online.

So to sum up what makes a good community news website:
Members must feel safe in discussion boards through clearly defined moderation rules – Members must feel a shared mission and goal to solving a problem, better understanding an issue

Please share your thoughts, since you already know my comment policy.

*They have their own vernacular at HitRecord. “Release” means upload and publish, “Result” is a new creation based on someone else’s work.

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