How not to do community management

Popular atheist author Richard Dawkins, unimpressed with the rudeness and bickering happening on his heavily-populated message boards, recently attempted to scale them back. Predictably, a full-scale online rebellion ensued, forcing Dawkins to defend himself with this note to his fans, customers, and commenters.

I feel for Dawkins – nobody should have to tasteless ad hominem attacks, especially on their own site.

While he is fortunate to have some his online community that is so boisterous and thriving (others only wish they had such problems) his difficulty managing their scope demonstrates the problem with trying to tightly control community forums – it’s almost impossible. Sometimes it’s just best to let discussions bloom naturally, even if they stray from your vision for them.

If content concerns and language were really a pressing problem and had to be addressed, perhaps
implementing some form of peer filtering or caretaking system would be best. At least in that case, your community is empowered with patrolling the site, and it’s not coming from “above”.

Dawkins’ predicament helps to illustrate why online community managers are a popular new career for so many people. While Dawkins’ case is a little bit different as he is not selling a product, community managers interact with customers and forum participants to ensure that the community has a human face, and ensure that concerns are being responded to … before eruptions like this occur.