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Comment by zacharycohn

14 years ago

I've seen this happening in several communities, namely some of the online parkour forums. One in particular used to be a very tight nit group of people, but as Parkour grew, more and more people got on the forum. As those original "high quality" people left, I thought the next level of people "took over" there positions.

This kind of kept happening, but every time it got worse and worse. It wasn't until reading this article that I realized that they weren't "taking over" or "stepping up," but they were simply the next highest level.

I've seen it happen and tried to warn people who manage those communities of it.. usually with little success. Great article though, explains the concept extremely well.

5 comments

zacharycohn

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acabal  14 years ago

I think it's one thing to see it happening, and a totally different thing to actually know how to fix it.

I run an online community and what this article describes has happened to me a few times already, even with a karma/reputation system in place. I know I must fix the problem, but I don't know how right now.

Does anyone have specific suggestions on how to broadly lessen this kind of problem?

  • shalmanese  14 years ago

    I agree, it's not an easy thing to fix and there's no broad panceas or it would already be fixed. I tried to put in some very broad level fixes in the article but it's really something that needs to be figure out on a community by community level and many communities are intrinsically designed so that it can never be fixed.

  • zacharycohn  14 years ago

    The first step to fixing it is to understand what is happening, though. The reason I couldn't fix it in my example was that the people who were in charge of the forum didn't understand or agree that this was the core problem.

  • Mz  14 years ago

    You can start by finding out what your "best" people want from the community and try to find a reasonable means to ensure they get it. (At the risk of sounding like an egomaniac:) I have left a number of online communities and seen evidence that amount and quality of conversation went way, way down after I left. In almost every case, I could have been kept if people would have just engaged me in conversation without turning it into either "let's kick the crap out of Michele" or "let's fawn all over and idolize Michele". My need is for a social (and intellectual) outlet and being idolized and then attacked for it doesn't remotely meet that need. I need people I can talk to who will actually speak to me like I'm a human being -- like I make mistakes and don't know everything but don't deserve to have the living crap kicked out of me because I made some stupid mistake. Letting forum members pounce on little mistakes made by your best members and blow them all out of proportion and turn it into a fucking federal case is a great way to encourage them to leave.

    Other people will want other things from what I want. And you will need to find some healthy means to balance meeting their needs with the needs of the forum. I have seen forums go completely to hell because it got all twisted out of shape to meet the need of one or more top members in a really unhealthy manner. So while trying to find out what your best people want, don't let it become their personal pond to piss in either. You want to foster an environment that is highly likely to consistently provide things that more than one top member is looking for without specifically making it about them as an individual. Don't prostitute the forum to them as an individual but shape the forum to be highly likely to provide X, Y or Z so that most of your current top members are likely to stay but fresh blood will also be attracted.

    HTH.