Flickr is a team of 42 people
MetaFilter is run by 4 people
13 hours of video added to Youtube every minute
Etsy has 2 million members and 200,000 are active creators of "things"
All-star lineup of panelists from Flickr, Current TV, MetaFilter, Etsy and YouTube today. Should be a good one.
Champ t0 panelists: what changes have you seen in your community mgt skills?
What changes have you seen in your communities from birth to the mature communities you have now?
As sites become larger you move from a single owner/direction to having to get used to being managed by a number of people...
West: first 5 years of MeFi just careened down the moderation path
Gets hard to keep an eye on all community aspects as a site gets larger.... intro community policing, more mod help, etc.
West: recently had to add flagging. Community policing. "Hey this breaks the guidelines"
Interesting: West is a librarian by day. Great day job for someone who has to sort/manage information. Many of my IA colleagues have information design/librarian background as well.
West: can now flag as offensive in addition to simply flagging language, bad links, etc
Community norms develop and evolve over time as community gets larger... what is and is not acceptable changes - eg. "offensive language"
West: current system can't scale
Challenges with scale and keeping up on growth
As your get larger it is harder to see trends and their impacts
Shaffer: harder to see trends as you grow
Schaffer: had to get smarter. Segment user base. Different networks. People using the site (youtube) in vastly different ways.
[Schaffer was at Powazek's
Wisdom of the Crowds panel earlier where he semi-seriously said that he could use some help managing commenters –A]
Stinchcomb: been at etsy since the start. Wonderign how to stay in touch with users and having a dialogue while growing. People become a lot less forgiving as a community gets larger.
Company needs to remain transparent as the site/company grows... need to explain growth and remember community is king
Stinchcomb: internal culture and communication is really imporant. Remember that the community is king.
Anima: was originally very producer oriented. What they started to notice as the site grew (current.tv) was that users started sending comments and suggestions. There was an unanswered desire to participate in the site
Users will find interesting ways to interact. Even without a facility, users will input new content, links, bits and pieces through comments and other existing tools. Challenging to keep on top of all this and understand how people want to participate.
Anima: the producers, who were the first people in the door felt pushed aside as the much larger audience of consumers came in
Need to know all your participants and balance who gets attention, especially as you evolve
Anima: at first CurrentTV was very producer-centric. Started to notice that more people started to comment and advise on editorial eleements, more than just uploading video. People could support story submission. Huge conflict for Producer community who felt pushed aside by this larger community submitting links and story ideas. Need to balance both sides of the community. Need to give them both love. Now opening up to entertainment.
Anima: as current.tv opens up to entertainment news the people who were involved originally feel pushed aside. Need to give love to all
Talking about handling censorship in communities
Champ to panelists: what do we do when we're accused of sensorship
Panelists showing names they have been called
Stinchcomb wins with the best name: cuntola
Matt from Etsy was once called Cuntola. Nice.. lol
Champ: What do we do to handle when people accuse us of censorship? We thought about this. Champ is now known as TinyFascist. West known as Stasi. Schaffer as Interesting Critter. Stinchcomb as Cuntola. Anima as Fascist.
Schaffer: Some content you can't host as a usergen site.
Schaffer reflecting the YouTube community well by completely derailing the conversation :)
Community management requires a delicate balance of legality, user experience. Also:cute hedgehog/cat videos on YouTube. :) #sxsw
Challenging to not be hostile with diverse content...
Counter-discovery
Schaffer: youtube is a platform for speech. His role is to accommodate as much diverse content as they can safely do. There are 3 factors that affect what you can host: legal issues (some content is unlawful, ie selling nazi memoribillia on ebay), user experience issues (finding porn when you're not looking for it), being socially responsible (even if it's just to your advertisers)
Anima: people get very pushy if you take down their content. If you're going to post something that steps on other people's ability to enjoy the site they might have to take action.
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