Online Community Design:
Tools, Techniques and Tips for Better Digital Dialog
John Smart
Acceleration Studies Foundation
Presentation Outline
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Overview
Design Considerations
Moderation and Staffing
Community Tools
Skill Questions
© 2005 Accelerating.org
First, Some Definitions
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Web communities happen when users are
given tools to use their voice in a public and
immediate way, forming intimate
relationships over time.
-- Derek Powazek, Design for Community
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A place where education gets interesting, and
where information has personality.
-- Matt Williams, Community Director,
Amazon.com
© 2005 Accelerating.org
Success Story:
The Amazing Amazon.com
A Collaborative Community
 Customer Reviews
 Wishlists/Gift Registry
 Listmania!
 Friends and Favorites
 Trusted Friends/Purchase Circles
 Discussion Boards
eBay, and several other major ebusiness sites
owe much of their success to the quality of
their community features.
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© 2005 Accelerating.org
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Warning
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Online communities require some mix of the
following three (with at least two in
abundance):
money, expertise, and vigilance.
Powazek recommends 80% of his static web
page clients away from communities.
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© 2005 Accelerating.org
Content Determines Your Future
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Content drives online communities.
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People need something to talk about, whether it be
issues, articles, information, presentations,
debates, or something else.
Your goals and organization should all reinforce
focused individual participation.
The quality of the content has a direct impact
on the kind of community you'll create.
© 2005 Accelerating.org
How Do Know You’ve Arrived?
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When the web community begins to lead you,
not the other way around.
When people begin to feel a sense of
ownership over their contributions.
Be patient, this can take time. Communities
reward consistency and focus.
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© 2005 Accelerating.org
Design Considerations I
Coding Choices for your Techies:
 PHP (“pretty home pages”)
(The current standard, now losing ground)
 ASP
(Microsoft’s .NET standard, gaining ground)
 Niche Players: Perl, Java, ColdFusion
(Use only if you have an ideological techie
partner)
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© 2005 Accelerating.org
Design Considerations II
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Clear, Simple Goals
Pages Load Fast
Main Content is Easy to Understand
Interface Is As Simple as Possible
Maximum Readability
(High Contrast, Narrow Column Text)
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Design Considerations III
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Tie All Site Content Directly to Community
Ex: Top posts integrate into the margin of your articles. (Feed)
Bury the Post Button (The more clicks the better. You can even
require Previewing before posting).
Give New Members Lower Priority Initially
Should have a waiting period (common: 24-48 hours) before they
get full privileges. Time to learn community rules and standards.
Explain Posting Rules next to the Post Button
Rules, + "I reserve the right to remove any post for any reason."
Content and Design Tone: You Get What You Give
Give Up Control and Let Your Users Surprise You
Make Site Changes Easy to See
(New Stories, Top Post, Most Active Thread, Most Popular User)
Maximum Information Per Click (Without Clutter)
© 2005 Accelerating.org
Design Considerations IV
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Have an "Open Mike" Section.
This allows you to keep people on topic everywhere else.
Have a "How was your week?" Section
A place for sharing personal stories
Have an "Outside" Section (e.g., “Take it Outside”)
A place to move rants and heated debates, instead of banning.
Carefully Consider Your Barriers to Entry.
Good barriers will improve conversation quality, but do this with
as little elitism as possible.
Very Interesting Barrier to Entry: Reality-Check.com
("Too many talkers, not enough signal to listen to.“)
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Only 15 can be in any themed discussion group, for 1 month.
Community votes on who gets to continue in the main (vs.
secondary) conversation for the next month.
Great potential here for future refinement. Imagine collaborative
voting of secondary posters up to the main discussion level…
© 2005 Accelerating.org
Staffing Needs
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Tech Support/Programmers
(customizing, technical problems)
Editors/Content Developers
(new content, organization)
Administrators
(accounts, site problems)
Moderators
(discussions, threads, new user orientation)
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What Can You Outsource?
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Discussion Forum: YahooGroups
Member Profiles: LinkedIn
HTML Newsletter: Constant Contact
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Legal Issues
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COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection
Act of 1998) makes it very difficult to do a site
for minors. No more un-moderated chat
rooms for teens, etc.
DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act of
1998) requires a "Copyright Complaints" form
so you can remove copyrighted material
posted by users.
© 2005 Accelerating.org
Moderation Tips I:
Community Leader Attributes
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The best are passionate about 1) creating community,
and 2) making it easy for users to find their voice.
Stephen Covey,
The Eighth Habit, 2004
“Find your voice and
inspire others to find theirs.”
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They are slow to criticize, ego-minimizing, always
striving to be nice, modelling good behavior,
empathic, yet responsive to communication problems.
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Moderation Tips II:
Your Community Echoes Your Voice
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If your content/site voice is pushy and opinionated,
you’ll get back pushy and opinionated responses,
amplified.
If personal and tactful, you’ll get that back, amplified.
A consistent, gentle push in one direction can send
the level of conversation into the stars or to the gutter.
Personalize the people involved, make them fill out
memberships (Bios, Pics, etc.) and they will be less
likely to be bad mannered.
Reward the best contributors somehow.
Always be nice, even when booting content or users.
© 2005 Accelerating.org
Moderation Tips III:
Pick Interesting Themes
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Discussion Threads
Sharing Threads ("Stories")
Inquiry Threads (World Question Center)
Ask your community if these are adequately
focused yet inclusive. What are we missing?
What can we leave to others?
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Moderation Tips IV:
Personalize Where Appropriate
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Try Conversation Starters
A safe place for authentic personal
communication These will increase responses
5 to 10X over your typical posts, where you
can use them:
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"How was your week?”
"Fun thing that happened to you this month?”
“See any example of great behavior you want to
emulate?”
Polls and Questionnaires
Member Demographics
© 2005 Accelerating.org
Moderation Tips V:
Develop Bounded Conversations
Communities revolve around a succession of bounded
conversations.
 How long will each thread be allowed to run?
 What are the key topics and speakers you want to
bring to your site? How long do you want to discuss
each before moving to the next?
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“For the next two days/week/etc., we are going to discuss:
AIDS, Poverty, Best Managers, etc.”
People can be rewarded for the best community rated
stories and resources they've posted, within a given
time.
Can you come up with 50 key themes for your
community to discuss each year? If not, you may not
need a community site.
© 2005 Accelerating.org
Community Tools:
Websites I
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Hosted Web Pages [Easy]
(Yahoo! Geocities, Tripod)
Hosted Weblogs [Easy]
(Blogger, Livejournal: Free; TypePad: $20/mo)
Installed Web Pages [Med]
(FrontPage, Dreamweaver: $250)
Installed Weblogs [Med]
(Radio, Movable Type: Paid)
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Community Tools:
Websites II
Corporate Content Management Systems, Intranets,
Extranets [Hard]
Enterprise: $200K+: Stellent, Vignette, Documentum,
FileNET, Interwoven
 Upper Tier: $125-175K: Percussion, Fatwire, Microsoft,
Mediasurface, OpenText, Day, Tridion, IBM
 Mid-Market: $40-100K: Serena, RedDot, Ingeniux,
PaperThin, SilkRoad, Clickability, Upload, Atomz
 Low-Market: $15-40K: Synkron, Ektron, Sitecore,
ElecktroPost, Roxen, Refresh
 Low-Cost $3K-12K: Fog Creek, Idetix, Macromedia,
Globalscape, Emojo, Prospero, WebCrossing
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Tip: Often the bigger the company the worse the product, e.g.,
WebCT “the world’s leading provider of e-learning systems”
© 2005 Accelerating.org
Community Tools:
Websites III
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Open Source Content Management Systems
[Hard]
(Free: Zope, Midgard, OpenCMS, Typo3,
Bricolage, Mambo, TikiWiki, .NETNuke,
PostNuke, OpenDeploy)
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Easy to install, possible to customize, but these
systems are buggy and require constant vigilance.
Tip: Can find good inexpensive global help for them
(India, Poland, Ukraine, Costa Rica)
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Community Tools:
Civic Space (Zope App)
Now:
Website Mgmt/Blogging
Forums
File Storage
Photo Galleries
Polls and Surveys
Social Networking
Calendaring
Event Organizing
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Coming:
Contact Management
Mass Mailing
Donation Management
“CivicSpace enables bottom-up people-powered campaigns to operate on a more
level playing field with more traditional top-down organizations, and, similarly,
allows top-down organizations to leverage the power of grassroots organizing.”
© 2005 Accelerating.org
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Community Tools:
Discussion Boards/Forums I
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Hosted Message Boards [Easy]
(Yahoo Groups: Free; CommunityZero.org: Free/Paid)
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Free Installed Bulletin Boards [Med]
(phpBB, YABB, Ideal BB)
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Tip: Are posts easily linkable? Spiderable? Short URLs?
Cheap Proprietary Bulletin Boards [Med]
(vBulletin, DiscusWare, Invision $150)
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Invidividual Email, Daily Digest, and Web-Only Modes.
Tip: Tell people how to switch between these modes.
Not very customizable.
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Community Tools:
Discussion Boards/Forums II
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Reputation-Based Message Boards [Hard]
(Slash, Scoop, free + $100 month)
Example: Slashdot, Kuro5hin, DigitalEarth.org
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Custom-Made Boards [Hard]
(Collaborative Connections, $1,500 +
$200/month)
Example: ShapingTomorrow.com, Michael
Jackson’s growing futures portal.
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Easy to install, time-consuming to moderate.
Scoop gives users the ability to determine content.
Perennially customizable. Shows commitment.
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Community Tools:
Post Moderation on Slashdot
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Each post is rated (-1, to 5 plus a one word comment:
(Funny, Insightful, Offtopic, etc.)
Users can filter a 600 post discussion thread by rating
level or by comment word).
Slashdot's users lose “karma points” when their posts
are moderated down, gain them when moderated up.
High karma users are more likely to become
moderators. Positive feedback.
There's also "meta moderation" to weed out bad
moderators where high karma users can look at 10
random comments recently ranked by moderators
and give their second opinion on them. SelfRegulating Ecosystem.
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Community Tools:
Newsletters
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PC Based Mailer [Easy]
(MS Outlook Express, Free; Outlook, Paid)
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Automated Mailing List Managers [Med]
(Mailman, Listserv, Majordomo)
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Horrible interfaces, low customizability.
Graphical (HTML) Mailers [Med]
(Cooler, Lyris, Constant Contact, Express Mail: Paid)
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Most ISPs don’t like you doing this. Can BCC groups up to
20-50.
Templates, automatic bounce management, forwarding,
Pricing varies (by list size, by email), list of 3,000 mailed
monthly typically costs $10-30/month.
© 2005 Accelerating.org
Community Tools:
Conference Calls
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Telco Conference Calling [Easy]
(FreeConference.com, <30, long distance
charges)
VoIP Conference Calling [Easy]
(Skype, <5, need computer and broadband,
no charges)
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Tip: Get a good speakerphone (Dedicated
Polycom on eBay). Run multiple mikes if room
acoustics are bad.
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Community Tools:
Web & Videoconferencing Groupware
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Enterprise-Level Web Conferencing [Hard]
WebEx, Centra, MS LiveMeeting, Lotus, Interwise, Raindance.
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SOHO Web and Video Conferencing [Med]
WaveThree: $199 one time. Max of 10, 128 Kbps/user.
Linktivity: $1,500 + dedicated server. Max of 5 users.
VoiceCafe: $75/month. Max of 5 users
Viditel: $35/month/person, unlimited meetings
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Dramatic improvements over the last year.
Groupware [Med]
Groove: $69 per person, one time cost.
Robin Good: Best SOHO groupware solution for PowerPoints,
file sharing, IM, private spaces, and project development tools.
No audio or video capacities at present. Need a fast computer.
DIY Videoconferencing [Med]
(PC: VSee, CitizenX, Mac: iChat AV)
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WebEx: 45 cents/min/person. 100 seat, 1 hour event: $4,800
Great way to meet F2F on occasion. Most people’s processors and
bandwidth not quite ready.
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Community Tools:
Networking Sites
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Event/Meeting Sites [Easy]
(eVite.com, Meetup.org: Free)
Social Networking [Easy]
(Tribe, Orkut: Free/Paid)
Business Networking [Easy]
(Rhyze, LinkedIn: Free)
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Can set up Groups within LinkedIn. Tip: Better
contact management than proprietary solutions,
and more networking potential. No need to fill out
yet another membership form (YAMF).
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Business Networking: LinkedIn
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Community Tools:
Wikis
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Hosted or Installed Wikis [Med]
(WikiPedia: Free, SocialText: Paid)
Wiki Definitions:
Online collaboration model and tool that allows any user to edit
some content of webpages through a simple browser.
Web pages which are editable by visitors to the website as
opposed to conventional websites which can only be changed by
the webmaster. Usually used for "community" or technical sites
to allow for joint authoring and ownership.
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Community Tools:
File Sharing
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Free Hosted Photo Albums [Easy]
(Flickr, Ofoto: Free/Paid)
Free Peer to Peer File Sharing [Med]
(Kazaa, BitTorrent: Free)
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Copyright issues, broadband, and computer power
keep this underutilized. The last two limiting factors
are scaling fast and may allow more great P2P
apps (like Skype) in the future.
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Community Tools:
Chat
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Basic Chat and Instant Messaging [Easy]
(AIM, ICQ, Jabber: Free; Lotus, MS Office: Paid)
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Professional Chat [Med]
(RealChat, $495, ParaChat, $17/month)
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Tip: Keep IM groups small, w/ concise netiquette.
Can get big name speakers. Can require readahead or selective
admission. Subroom discussions. Event can be archived
Tip: Some chat rooms have a collective booting feature.
Rule: If more than half the participants vote to boot a chatter at any
time, you are out.
– Message: “You've been booted because you were acting like a dork.
You may return in one hour. Until then, chill out.”
– This bans static IPs (cable modem, DSL), and it bans sessions for
dialup users (dynamic IPs).
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Community Tools:
3D
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Persistent Worlds [Med]
Example: Second Life, LindenLab. Streaming audio
for main speaker, chat for others. Streaming video
(new). Cost: $10 for life + fast graphics card ($180)
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Community Tools:
Future
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Moblogging [Hard]
Example: Nokia’s Lifeblog. 7MP Camera Phones.
Podcasting/Audio Music and Spoken Word [Med]
Example: iPod and iPod Mini. Audible.com, but free (after
purchase of $200-300 player).
Games/Entertainment [Varies]
Location Based Filtering (GPS, GIS) [Hard]
Collaborative Filtering (“Amazon for the rest of us”) [Hard]
Allow members to rate stories, filter based on rating,
generate dynamic content from the collaborative filters.
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Skill Questions
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If your only community goal was to create a
collaborative online book, what kind of tools
would you use?
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Skill Questions
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If your only community goal was to get
together locally in an interest group once a
month, what kind of tools would you use?
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Skill Questions
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How would you create production-oriented
online community for a low-budget futures
company with five employees spread across
the U.S.?
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Skill Questions
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How would you create education, social, and
resource-oriented community around a lowbudget futures-oriented email list with 4,000
members worldwide?
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Skill Questions
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How would you create a low-budget virtual
community around a big name monthly futurist
speaker?
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Skill Questions
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If you were creating a community for futures
studies scholars, what site features would be
particularly helpful?
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Skill Questions
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What kind of content could a futurist website
make available for use on cellphones? How
could this be used at the homesite to improve
community?
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Skill Questions
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What kind of users would a futurist website
currently want to attract to join a 3D virtual
community?
© 2005 Accelerating.org