Anybody with experience in other kinds of communities?

harishankar

Anybody here who has managed other kinds of communities than web forums, for example mailing lists and newsgroups and so on? What are the differences between such communities and forums? How do the dynamics of a community change with respect to a web forum?

I would be interested in your experiences in this!
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chrispian · Posted: 9/18/2005, 11:42 am Post subject:

Good question. I've managed a lot of different kinds of communties.

Mailing List where anyone can post - This can be a tough thing to manage. Unlike forums conversations aren't bound to a subject easily. Also, most lists are moderate ALL messages or NONE. There might be some software out there that allows moderating user by user, which would be nice. One of the things you need to do for lists is define subjec tags and suggest tips for using them. For example a subject might be like [LISTNAME] [Help Request] Subjec here or [LISTNAME] [Advertisement] Subjec here. Also make sure members retain subjects so their email clients can easily group messages or filter them. A mailing list can be devistated by a troll pretty easy. Boot them swiftly. Always require them to validate their email address to join the list.

Recently I started a private Google Group and I like it quite a bit. It's a group for professionals and so far there hasn't been any trouble. The only problem is, when you get a group of people together, no matter how much they have in common, arguments will happen. Just something to keep an eye out for and as moderator you may have to step in and mediate.

An open newsgrouop would work a lot like a mailing list. I've been a moderator on one before and in the past they also didn't have the ability to moderate a single user. That may have changed by now though. The subject tags are still an important trick to use as it helps people sift through the volume of posts. Forums have the advantage of being category based while lists and groups are pretty linear like reading your email. Things like google groups helps though, as they group replies to the parent if you keep the subject in tact. Very, very helpful.

Hope that helps a little. If you have specific questions I'll be glad to try an aswer them from my experience, anyway.
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harishankar · Posted: 9/19/2005, 1:31 am Post subject:

Thanks, chris, for those insights.

I haven't much experience with mailing lists. But I am a member in a Yahoo group with my friends at college... You're right in that it's totally different the way it works. Quite difficult for a regular forum user to understand how they work, at first.
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Teknomancer · Posted: 9/19/2005, 11:46 pm Post subject:

I manage a mailing list myself. Just started though. Administration of a mailing list is more vague than a well defined Admin control panel of forums and has very limited options...
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