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Web 2.0 Discussion: Do Communities Need Active Management?

Social Web design expert Joshua Porter asserted in a Web 2.0 Expo session on Designing for Community that companies must appoint a manager to actively run their community efforts. This individual, according to Porter, plays a critical role in managing the discussion, applying your community policies to participants, answering questions, ushering users around the community, and more.

Porter goes so far as to say the community manager is one of the most important roles in a Web business today "because of the disconnect between the people you're providing service for and your company." Porter cites Craigslist’s Craig Newmark as the ultimate example of the involved community manager, who has said he’ll play that role until the day he dies.

Some of the key functions a community manager must perform, Porter says, include: maintaining the morale of the community; greeting new members and bringing them up to speed; handling complaints and compliments; resolving problems; identifying trends; and keeping the peace, especially among participants who can readily turn combative.

I tend to agree with Porter, having found in recent years that the community at InformationWeek.com can’t operate in an entirely self-sufficient or self-sustaining manner. We deserve some of the blame for that, because our community software -- which powers our forums and comments in articles and blogs -- has been unstable in recent months, and made it difficult for some in our community to interact when they wanted to do so. I'd like to apologize but, fortunately, I've got something more meaningful to offer. We've fixed the problem with a new version of our community software, which appears very stable initially.

Now we're looking to the future and evaluating new community platforms that we expect to spark far more community involvement, make it easier for readers to form their own communities and groups, and to rate the quality of information submitted by participants. So back to community design expert Joshua Porter's discussion points, I'd like to pose the question and ask you to respond in the comments section or write to me. Those questions:

• As we plan to upgrade our community underpinnings, should we be looking to step up our management efforts, and go so far as to appoint a community manager? If yes, just how active should a community manager be? What are you looking for from them -- is it just policing bad behavior, or sparking new discussions, mixing it up with readers and looking for trends that represent the leading edge of what’s going on in IT? I'm eager for input from the community here, as we've debated this internally and have a wide spectrum of views -- from full moderation/management to completely hands off, even if readers are blasting individual writers with expletives.
  
• What are some of the communities you find most valuable? I’m especially looking for lesser-known names that aren't obvious, so we can learn from some of their best practices.

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