Internal communities where visitors can contribute just like members
Had a discussion yesterday with a community leader (facilitator) who was mentioning that people who came across his community may wish to participate in forums, but first had the hurdle of requesting membership.
He instantly grants membership without batting an eyelid, and currently has over a hundred members, which isn’t too bad considering it’s a business-unit type community.
I said aren’t you picky about people you add as members, wondering how they are going to add value to the shared identity of the community.
This did not bother him, in fact he’d rather his community be open so any visitor can contribute.
He did not want to miss out on receiving valuable inter-disciplinary participation just because of permissions. A visitor passing by may contribute a gem, as much as any member, and may never come back, but we are glad they visited that one time, and are welcome again.
Unlike the web, behind the firewall all our communities have something in common, and that is that we work for the same company, so any visitor may have something relevant to say.
In this case he would not abolish membership, but instead have a smaller membership of key contributors who would help with participation to engage and sustain the community.
But, there would be no difference in permissions/access between members and visitors, the difference is that members would be there when times are tough, they are a pillar of the community.
The next thing I mentioned is that wasn’t he worried that visitors would post forum topics/replies that would pollute the community. Eg. off-topic, in the wrong forum, has been talked about in earlier topics, doesn’t blend into the wavelength of the group (this is more of an issue in small communities of ten or so people).
From what I have read in the literature communities may get polluted, as it ain’t what is used to be, the original dynamics, banter, calibre of talk, and all those elements that make it feel homely, all of a sudden feel like a city. Some important members may stop participating, and others may contribute less as they wouldn’t say things a certain way to people they don’t trust, plus they may not feel confident participating in front of hundreds of members (but this may be a non-point as anyone in the company can subscribe or visit a community without having to be a member, so there are indeed more listeners out there than people may realise).
One thing I like about this idea is that Groupthink can be challenged or broken by a visitor perhaps from another discipline.
Anyway, he acknowledges this total openness will obviously require more facilitation/moderation as visitors don’t know how things operate round here, so are more prone to do or say the wrong thing, but that’s OK, because that’s how we learn. To mitigate a little of this it’s a good idea to have a visitor welcome message with some pointers on the specifics of the community, and to please search forums before asking questions, which forums to use for which questions, etc…
He said, behind the firewall we don’t have an issue of “anonymity” as anything someone posts will have their name marked alongside it, so it would be career suicide to be a troll. In this respect, the act of “membership” has one less function to play.
I like this approach in that it doesn’t miss or prevent any opportunities and is totally a culture of welcomed sharing across all teams. But at the same time I wonder how it will effect the domain and community dynamics.
At the moment I think participation full stop, is an obstacle as people are used to closed tools like email, so I don’t think the total openness is going to be that big of a deal. If we ever get the network effects of the web, then we can see the bigger effects visitor contributions are having on the community. Anyway we are going to test this model on this community, so we will find out.
To wrap up, this community is not doing away with membership, instead they are adding another dimension, which is, visitors are free to contribute just like members.
If we were to do away with “members”, then we would really have no direction, and sustaining mechanisms.
It may help if I mention the default permissions Visitors and Members have at the moment in our communities. We do have the option of private communities for confidential stuff, but we like most of them to be open.
Visitors - visit, subscribe, leave blog comments
Members - all the above, and request to join or create a blog, post forum topics/replies
Please leave your thoughts.
[ADDED 22/01/09: Community membership reinterpreted online]
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It is funny how we define membership online eh? It is a technologically affirmed thing - you have a user name and a password.
But isn’t membership really a state of mind and an expression of identity, but as “me” and as “we?”
Funny, how things are reinterpreted when intermediated by technology, isn’t it!
Comment by Nancy White — January 20, 2009 @ 8:13 am
Perspectives:
- Openness is relative. If I have a community that discusses “super, double top secret” stuff, then I probably want to control membership strictly. In most internal communities, informal norms, new member guidelines (”read the ****ing FAQ”), etc are enough.
- “it ain’t what is used to be” - and it won’t be! Communities are dynamic and it’s part of our job to work with the older hands to either adapt to the change or start a new group for “indepth” or “expert” discussions on a topic.
- Membership is often presented as a binary “yes,no” issue. But there are many levels of engagement/involvement and people move between them. It’s probably better to think of it as a I am unhappy with the term “lurker” for this reason. I sometimes wonder if we give people community thermometers:
— I’m so hot for this community right now!!!
— It’s good, I’m getting value.
— It’s OK, a bit quiet.
— Meh.
Comment by Matt Moore — January 20, 2009 @ 9:22 pm
Hi Nancy and Matt,
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
My comment back was getting lengthy, so I created a new post. Love to hear your comments.
http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2009/01/21/community-membership-reinterpreted-online/
Comment by John Tropea — January 21, 2009 @ 7:14 am
Rather agree with your friend… and with Nancy and Matt.
First, membership really is a state of mind. So many people register in a community and either never come back, or never care for it, or -worse- write over 800 messages in two years and none of them to help another person.
Second, making it easy to make a comment is always good (lowering barriers of entry is the evident start of fostering participation). It may start as a passing comment, continue as a conversation, and end up as a pillar of the community
.
Third, definitely it would need more moderation. If the barrier is too low, people will comment as on blogs - without caring for the local conversation mores and uses. You will get offtopics, wrong tones, mispostings (wrong place) more frequently. And you’ll get flame wars, however polite, because it is always easier to get people wrong writing online.
Best of luck with the experiment
, and best regards,
Miguel
Comment by Miguel — January 27, 2009 @ 11:10 pm
Excellent Miguel,
You have noted the advantage for having non-members contribute to a community. But also the disadvantage.
What we have to do is weigh up how much of a disadvantage this is.
1. You don’t have to be a member to contribute. But you have to be a member to come to meetings about the direction of the community.
- if you are a high contributor, but not a member, then bad luck if you don’t agree with decisions that are made…otherwise become a member.
- this type of community has to be highly facilitated, and we hope it doesn’t become too noisy that people leave
2. You can only take part in forums if you are a member, which means you lose out on some potential input from visitors
- this is a great opportunity cost, especially if we are promoting knowledge sharing across teams, as we are preventing the sharing from happening (sure they can visit a community and read, but they can’t contribute unless they become a member, and they may not really want to be a member…all they want to do is leave a valuable reply and be on their way, and perhaps visit again one day in the future)
Comment by John Tropea — January 29, 2009 @ 8:57 am