Growing Successful Communities

[#1]

Happy Friday!

I'm starting to see a few instances where people will post their question across multiple forum boards, and I'm trying to figure out how to handle this in terms of Community setup, moderation, and best practices. 

I know that it's a best practice to not have too many boards or at least, ensure that you have enough traffic to merit another forum board, but I'm curious how you handle situations where users are posting their question to multiple boards.  I have a couple of instances where people are either (a) not sure where to post, so they're cross-posting or (b) answer-shopping (c) want feedback from a diverse set of stakeholders.

For the most part, it's not a problem, but it is happening with a little more frequency and now a Community member has asked what the "guideline" is for cross-posting, so I think I should probably address it and start moderating accordingly (if it's a situation that requires moderating).  

My gut reaction is that (a) this is hugely influenced by the # of forum boards (b) you shouldn't cross-post across multiple boards, because the discussion becomes disjointed; you're creating more threads and spreads posts on the same topic across the Community...so you lose some of the concentrated discussion; it clutters the Community; and it has the potential to totally undermine the purpose of having topical boards.  But I wanted to weight in here and hear if any of you were having this problem and how you were handling it.

Thanks in advance for any input!

[#2]

Roxy,

I suppose the first thing that you need to look into is if any of your forums have a slight overlapping of purpose. For instance, if you have one forum titled "Technical Support" and another titled "Community Technical Support," it could get a little confusing for new or unlearned members. That example may or may not apply to your particular community, but I hope that you can see what I mean.

If you do not have any instances of forums with conflicting purposes, it may just be--like you said--that the user wants more feedback, or is not very patient. Now, a simple way to solve this is to make a rule that says something to the likes of, "Please do not cross-post your issue onto multiple forums." Then have your moderation team lock messages that are cross posted with a friendly message. You can also have them sending a friendly private message to the person that did the cross-posting.

I might add to this message later (or write another one) because I don't have a ton of time to post right now!

[#3]

We get so much of this that I have a macro set up for my response - "Note from Moderator: Please don't post the same message in multiple boards/threads as it splinters the discussion. Duplicate(s) removed."  We remove the duplicates and either leave a moderator note in the single message left in public or send a PM.

This is one of the typical situations where a warning function makes the moderator's task easier.  Move the duplicates out of sight, and hit the warning feature in the one that's left to PM an appropriate response.  It could be called something softer than warning to keep from putting innocent newcomers off, but logging the activity would help keep track of repeat offenders.

Jane

[#4]

Thanks for your feedback!  Really appreciate it...and I hadn't really thought of a way to use Macros, but I was totally overlooking the obvious use case--common moderator responses...love it! 

[#5]

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Roxy wrote:

Thanks for your feedback!  Really appreciate it...and I hadn't really thought of a way to use Macros

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You're welcome - I love the macros!  I have a number of them for all the things we have to say over and over again.  I may personalize what they say depending on the situation, but if I just have a minute, they're really handy to be able to pop out a quick message and move on.

Jane

[#6]

I usually discourage macros because it tends to incite disruption within some parts of our user base. It feels a little too impersonal, and then people begin calling the moderators robots.

Message Edited by Nikias on 02-03-2009 01:14 PM

[#7]

Robot would be a step up from some of the things I've been called after some of the most benign requests.  There are some truly unhinged people out there in forum-land!  ;-)

For my part, having a well thought-out response at hand for everyday situations (location needed, duplicate removed, empty message, language, etc) helps me be more efficient and helps preserve the brain cycles I need to put together a reasoned response to some of the more outlandish hijinks our members get up to.  If I have the core of what I need to say already written, I can always add a few personal remarks to it if need be.

Jane

[#8]

I see what you mean. It's just that the moderation team does most of the "grunt work," so I usually only handle suspensions/banishments and things related to actually managing the community. If I spent all of my time browsing the forums and enfocing rules, I could work all day and still not have 1/2 of it done. haha

[#9]

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Nikias wrote:
I usually discourage macros because it tends to incite disruption within some parts of our user base. It feels a little too impersonal, and then people begin calling the moderators robots.

Message Edited by Nikias on 02-03-2009 01:14 PM

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Hello Nikias,

While you're correct that macros can foster some ill feelings toward Moderators, Administrators, and Community Managers, I don't think there's anything wrong with having a rough outline of what you'd like to say in certain situations and then modify the text accordingly. Even with some type of built-in warning system, there will be some type of "canned" response to start from.

As for the original topic of cross-posting, I think it is important to stress to users that topics can only exist in one particular area in your Community. I always try to present it to users in terms of "if we allow you to do it, then we're going to have to allow everyone to do it, and we're going to have 10 boards with the same threads in them". Most users will understand and abide by the rules. Those that don't probably need a little more stern talking to, and possibly more consequences if they refuse to play nice.