Growing Successful Communities

[#1]

Howdy yall. An idea came up today to create a private board for Good Users -- not just Superusers, but also long-time users who couldn't quite make it to Superuser. Kind of a "Superuser Board Lite". If you have...

- What criteria do you use to allow access to the board? (RANK, # solutions, # posts, time since reg)

- What types of discussion do you allow?

- Is it successful in growing a healthy community?

[#2]

hmmm.. Tricky one this...

So you have a group of users, who are Almost superusers.. but not quite?

If these are people, who post/participate occasionally, but not quite often enough to qualify them as superusers... Then can we assume that what you really want from them is more content and more activity?

If that was a "Yes" to the above, then you need to look at the reasons for why these people are not quite posting enough. My big concern would be that by giving them a private area to chat in, then they may spend their time chatting there, instead of in the public areas, where you need them most!

My first impulse, would be to think more along the lines of highlighting their public posts, and therefore encouraging them to post more in public.

If you are really sold on the idea of a private areas for them, then perhaps create a staging ground for creating larger or cooperative documents, which will be later pulled together and put back into the public?  That way you are not loosing the content that they create.

[#3]

Phil,

Excellent points.  I especially like your last one to encourage team work / collaboration with a pay off for the greater community.   You've given me something else to think about !

Liquidsasquatch,

We have board like this, and it is a place for deeper technical discussion, private interaction with the moderators, and a place to build trust with some members that we might want to recruit as a future moderator.  The board has also been a place to try out some new ideas. For example, one of our mods ran a 24 hour kudo contest - the intent to have some of our super users focus on finding and kudoing quality contributions from members that may not be particularly well known.

This activity paid off in a couple ways - it helped identify some potential new talent for us to keep our eyes on, while boosting the recognition of those new folks making quality contributions, and it got our super users to become more situational aware in the forum - looking at people and not just issues.

But, coming round to some of Phil's line of questioning... What kind of change in behavior are you hoping to create with this new board?   Could you tell us a bit more?

Mark

[#4]

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Mark_Hopkins wrote:
...What kind of change in behavior are you hoping to create with this new board?   Could you tell us a bit more?

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Our forum is mosty Support, and I think this would encourage more Enthusiast discussions. However, something I didn't think about was the Superusers might take offense to its implementation. It might seem to cheapen their private board. I doubt we'll implement it, but was wondering what effects people saw, for those who started one.

[#5]

Were you planning to include the Superusers in the new board so that they could interact with/mentor the SU-lite group?  If so, they still maintain their "elite" status and their own private board which I wouldn't think would cheapen it.  Or, at least, we didn't take offense when Mark asked us what we thought about setting up the board he described.  We're included, of course.

(Yes, I'm back after a short interruption by Real Life!)

Jane

[#6]

Real life? What's that???

Yeah, the plan was to include superusers... I think a better choice for a board at this time is a Non-product related board (we don't have one yet). That might whet their whistles for now. Thanks for all your input!

[#7]

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I think a better choice for a board at this time is a Non-product related board (we don't have one yet). That might whet their whistles for now.

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I'm confused - would that still be a private board for the SUs and the SU-Lites, or are you thinking of an off-topic board for all members?

Thanks - Jane

[#8]

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jloyless wrote:

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I think a better choice for a board at this time is a Non-product related board (we don't have one yet). That might whet their whistles for now.

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I'm confused - would that still be a private board for the SUs and the SU-Lites, or are you thinking of an off-topic board for all members?

Thanks - Jane

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It would be an OT board for all users, whcih would probably get used most often by our regular users (AKA the SU-Lites).

[#9]

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LiquidSasquatch wrote:

It would be an OT board for all users, whcih would probably get used most often by our regular users (AKA the SU-Lites).

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Let us know how that goes and if it gets your SU-Lites engaged, please!  I have to be honest and say that I'm not a fan of off-topic boards in a support forum, but you know your membership and how they'll conduct themselves.  Good luck!

Jane

[#10]

The other  folks here pretty much covered what I would say...steer clear of having a private board for SU-lites and look rather at what you can give them that maps to their current behavior, motivation, & content. 

I thought ppriston & Mark_Hopkins made some knock-it-out-of-the-ballpark suggestions with highlighting SU-lite's public posts and having a contest where you ask the super users to go and give kudos to the best content from other users.  Talk about a good way to get them to start thinking about nurturing and mentoring other users.  

Couple other easy ideas--highlight them as one of your Community Member Spotlights or send them a note or PM or inviting them to a physical event.  I continue to be amazed at how much something as simple as acknowledgement can influence someone's behavior.