Stap isi

25 August 2010

The big payback

Why participate on the web? Web metrics give you some of the story – visitor numbers, content accessed – but how do you quantify trust? And how do you explain to senior staff the benefits of participating online in the first place?

Social Web – Reputation Management Cycles diagram by Laurel Papworth – CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I’ve used this graphic many times to help get the point across.

— b3rn   community, the persuader, trust   Aug 25, 11:46 AM   #   Comment [1]

26 July 2009

Hansard for commenters

A NSW public service manager made this comment on The Hon Penny Sharpe MLC’s blog post about NSW Public Sphere:

Transparency and access are both 2-sided. Somewhere, it would be great to see a discussion about how departments avoid being tied up by citizens who get new, ever more public channels to push their own grievance? Particularly when there is no underlying basis, as sometimes happens. This small percentage of people can consume large amounts of time at current levels of access and transparency. Look at how some are adept at getting issues into the media which is, after all, interested in stories that get attention in preference to injustice and inequity per se. The number of stories in the existing media is disproportionately weighted compared to the total volume of public administration, large parts of which are both efficient and equitable. Esp the more sensationalist media. Its the side to access that we don’t like to talk about much. What happens when these citizens participate?

I like the Guardian’s community features and particularly the way comments made across the site are aggregated and displayed on a page generated for the user.

… just as every guardian.co.uk author gets a contributor page in which their contributions are archived so that their participation can be explored across topics and over time, so should our users. — Meg Pickard, 19 August 2008

There are technical challenges – you’re publishing across multiple platforms (website, satellite sites, proprietary backend systems) and you’d want to consider extending aggregation to collect contributions from constituents’ own spaces.

But if we agree that OpenAustralia is ‘a good thing’ then we should start looking at the other side of the conversation.

Your comments stand as a public record of your participation on the site: think Hansard, for commenters. — Guardian Community FAQ

— b3rn   comments, community, identity, moderation, publicsphere   Jul 26, 10:44 AM   #   Comment

24 March 2009

How do you deal with nutters?

You can’t avoid them. At some point – probably about 10 minutes after you open a forum or blog – they’re going to make themselves known. And they don’t stop.

The main cost of nutters is time. They send you and your colleagues on wild goose chases. But nutters – even being nutters – will have something to contribute. How do you draw out or corral constructive input?

Here are some suggestions on dealing with nutters from my friends (some of them community managers, others nutters):

1. give them a damned good listening to;
2. ignore them; or
3. out-nutter them.

If you’re a parent, you know the parent thing:

1. reward the constructive;
2. ignore the provocative; and
3. enforce the rules when they are broken.

If you’re a parent, you also know that’s easier said than done!

Giving it time is another strategy. You hope that the group becomes self-moderating. Reputation systems can be helpful, but ultimately your community needs enough contributions across the scale so that the extremes are seen to be so.

Good levels of participation and an active, enagaged community are probably the best bet against nutters. And there’s a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow.

— b3rn   comments, community, moderation   Mar 24, 11:50 PM   #   Comment [2]