Community Moderator’s Duties

The moderator’s primary roles is to set the tone and make everyone feel valued. It’s to create an environment where relationships can be developed. It’s important to build and maintain relationships in community groups is to ensure that the individuals participating develop at least enough harmony to be able to get their group work done — whether that’s accomplishing a business objective or achieving a social goal. Involving individuals in a collective discussion heightens everyone’s sense of ownership in the final outcome. Include informal interaction, as well as task related discussion, to help maintain the social lubrication critical to relationship building. Later, when groups or teams encounter obstacles or strong disagreements, the strength of their relationships will see them through.

Newcomers to a group, or new groups, will face very personal questions at the start. Everyone is uncertain when they first join and will have questions like:

“Who will I be in this group? What will my roles be?”
“How much control and influence will I have with the others in the group?”
“Will I be liked and accepted by the group?”
“How close will the group be?”
“How open can I be with this group?”

Your role as the moderator is to provide the framework within which community members can get those questions answered and the goals of the community will be achieved. Moderators don’t have to answer the questions, but they do need to be aware that those questions are floating around in the background waiting for an answer. Here are some pointers for creating a sound community environment that will help you to produce your desired results.

  • Take care of the technical aspects of the community–the simplest duty
  • Start new messages and topics as needed (have some in your pocket just in case)
  • Occasionally freeze, retire or kill topics
  • Archive good information
  • Stimulate participation
  • Have special events
  • Ask questions
  • Propose new topics for discussion
  • Deal with people
  • Remember the platinum rule — Deal with others as you *would like to be* dealt with yourself
  • Welcome every participant
  • Be sure every posting gets at least one answer
  • Encourage candor
  • Create a supportive, positive environment

    • How to Strengthen a Community

    Daily presence is critical (it doesn’t always have to be the same person moderating the same thread(s) as long as someone reads and keeps the talk flowing in a timely way).

  • Be generous with knowledge, stingy with information

    • * Share ideas freely
    * Come back to interesting questions with new research
    * Caveat 1: Don’t waste time providing “known” information
    * Caveat 2: Don’t provide *all* the answers

  • Avoid perfection

    • * Partial answers are okay – others will try to fill the gaps. You want them to.
    * Ask questions to pull others in
    * Identify unknowns/frame the issues
    * Avoid grandstanding

  • Foster diversity

    • * Nurture extreme viewpoints
    * Be respectful of all

  • Create a friendly, neutral online persona (but be yourself)

  • Focus on what’s important

    • * Ignore uninteresting questions
    * Reward interesting posts with more knowledge or enthusiasm
    * Don’t waste time defending or explaining something off-point
    * Bring straying conversations back to the business issue or point

  • When responding to someone’s question or posting, try asking a question to keep the conversation going:

    • “Can you tell us more about your experience with…”
    “What concerns you about the group’s prioritization?”
    “What would we gain and what would we miss if we moved in this direction?”
    “Have you ever been in a similar situation? What did you do?”
    “What core learning did you have?”
    “What surprised you the most?”
    “What remains unsaid?”
    “What other kinds of things could someone do?”
    “If you could do it over, what would you do differently?”
    “How common do you think this is?”
    “How would you go about…?”
    “Who else might be interested?”

    Remember–

    It’s not merely interest in a particular subject or the opportunity to interact that draws people to a community, but:

  • the quality of the group interaction
  • the scope and setting of it
  • what kinds of topics are available
  • how they are introduced
  • the tone which is set for the group by its moderators

    • New users are frequently shy, or polite, and may be waiting for suggestions and cues on how to best participate in your community. Throw them a line.