Yea/Nay system installed at 3:15 PM CT today… March 4, 2008

It has been an interesting day to say the least. This afternoon I installed the rating system (commonly referred to on SoberCircle as the Thumbs). Feedback was mixed. Several people liked the idea. Others were really upset. As you can read from my previous post Regulating open blogs in a social networking community, the intentions are good and pure.    So many people see this type of system as a popularity contest, when in truth the Post Read total we post next to the blogs in the list post a much greater representation to popularity than this “thumbs” system ever would.  We aren’t even displaying the number of positive responses for a blog to prevent this beauty pageant.  Most members felt that there was a high probability they would be excluded from the public eye because of this and they immediately felt threatened.  The truth is, it will take a lot of negative opinions to get bumped from the public eye.

Inevitably, someone will have a post get bumped off the list.  This is the equivalent of forcing a person to sit down and pass the mic after going off on a rant  about something that to the group is irrelevant.  Its the harsh truth about public exchange of communication, every once and again you have to put someone in check for their carelessness or indiscretions.  My responsibility as a community leader is to facilitate free communication and empower the user base while insuring the vast majority of members and visitors get the most out of the website.  I take this responsibility seriously.  So, I had to go back after the system was launched and add a page back that shows all the blogs regardless of whether they get bumped off the main list or not.  What this does is allows the members to have it their way, just like Burger King.

Ah, the life of a social network developer, always listening to your membership, making changes and assessing the effect – both positive and negative.   It’s not a lot of fun to have to answer questions from your members in an open chat after you make a dramatic change to such an important section of the website, but you have to step up and be accountable.  Otherwise, you lose the faith of the people….

Regulating open blogs in a social networking community February 28, 2008

On SoberCircle.com, we use a unique method of functionality on member blogs.  Rather than restrict the flow of ideas that come out of blog posts to just that member’s group of friends, we chose at the outset to have all new blog posts appear in a running list where members could peruse the posts and make comments to them.  We do allow the members to make their blogs private, along with a number of other privacy features that can be applied to the blog or an individual post.  We wanted to promote the idea of open share, and it has been wildly successful.

The problem with open blogs is that from time to time it facilitates exchanges between members who don’t see eye to eye, thus chaos ensues in what is meant to be a peaceful and therapeutic environment.  To safeguard against this it would require several monitors constantly watching the posts and comments made to posts.  In a community that receives several thousand posts and comments daily, its a daunting task.

I am starting to think that the answer is a yea/nay system for rating blog relevancy, ala digg.com.   With Digg, you get the option to Digg or Bury and post based on the content.  This then opens the door to systematically rating your users based on their participation.  In other words, a member who constantly produces good posts might have more clout in the community that one that is always producing irrelevant or unnecessary content.  This in effect allows the community to be self sustaining by giving the community the power to monitor itself.  I believe this is the direction we are heading and it isn’t such a bad thing.   As a social networking community developer, I am constantly trying to give the power back to the people and empowering your community is the key.  If it improves the community without disenfranchising the masses, then it can only be a good thing.