Hey all, just thought I'd throw my hat in the ring so Laura doesn't feel too lonely up there on the front page.. ;)
What I would love to see come out of this group is some "best practices" documents for people building community sites. Especially sites geared towards online communities where the end user has special needs.
By special needs, I am not only referring to accessability issues, (although that is certainly one concern) I also mean things like ;
-
How do you build sites for youth that give them adequate privacy, security and priveleges(spelling?) so they can feel like they own the space, while keeping parents satisfied that their children are safe from online harrassment and stalking?
-
How do you provide a granulated set of user roles for a semi-closed group of low-level technophobes without overcomplicating the means to contribute to the site? [not like I've ever had to deal with that or anything ;)]
-
How do you explain copyright and copyleft to inexperienced webpublishers and transmit the importance of the issue adequately? Is it even necesary? What are we leaving out if we don't talk about copyright before giving a community a site they can publish to?
-
How does a web developer/social marketer do knowledge transmission for community-building online to end-users/ site editors who mostly use analogue technologies to communicate with their constituents.
-
When is a community website the solution and when is it overkill? How do you help your client develop a project/product that really fits their needs.
Stuff like that..
I am certainly no expert in any of these matters but I think the first step is to start talking case histories and how we solved particular isssues/challenges as they came up. Hopefully once everyone has committed something to the files, we can start looking for common threads and practical advice.
That's my two cents for this morning, back to work.
Ps : I also want to hear all about netsquared.
Oops I forgot something
Ps : I'd also like to figure out a way to generate feedback on my projects via this group. My idea was to make a dummy user for beta-sites giving the password in a closed post on this group and letting people log into my sites and tell me if the arhcitecture/options make good sense to a newbie.
I think that would be "da bomb" unless you all think that sounds like a recipe for disaster and people jumping in a messing things up? If anyone has a better solution then give'er. I really need access to a beta-testers group that is basically on-call once every 4 months or so.
Comments
Difficult questions
These are hard to answer. I think the community itself will inform you of a lot of it. I wonder how much can be predicted, especially if the community is being cultivated from scratch (as opposed to being migrated from another site or medium).
Much of it also comes down to design, imho. The design and architecture that make up the user interface should afford easy use, and gently guide members to the features they will want.
I'm wondering, how does a community website become overkill? A community could conceivably become its own thing and drift into a direction that embarrasses a client. (A AcmeWidget forum becomes a place for people to rant about how the AcmeWidget sucks.) Then it would take either a large customer support kind of effort in the community, or shutting it down. (The client should know that communities require client's attention, or there's little point.)
Ultimately I think it comes down to what kind of connection the client wants with its market (or constituents or whatever). That can take some heart-to-heart discussion with the client. What makes you stand out among your competitors? How do you want to be regarded by others? How much in terms of time are you willing to spend cultivating these things? Those kinds of questions. This can lead to answers as to what to build for the client -- a blog, a forum, a network....
What are your thoughts?
Laura
pingVision, LLC
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development
I think i am new to this compared to others
re: overkill
Many of my clients are not very knowledgable about the internet in general, but they'll read something about using the web to connect to their community and decide "I want that" without checking if their community is hooked in somewhere else, or if their publics aren't your advanced web user perhaps they'll need something simpler than a whole community site to get started on the web, perhaps they just need a news page, and they can email the publicity person who then posts it. I know that's totally dinosaur for us, but if you're a member of a non-profit organization who just got your first email address 3 years ago and haven't gotten much further than attachments, that may be how you want to connect to the community website. Just seeing that the email you sent your friend on the board made it to the front page is empowering enough.
So lately, rather than starting by presuming the 500 users + site I start by asking groups what they hope to provide the user with, why someone would visit the site - whether they know if they have competitors offering the same stuff. Whether they think they need to offer their constituents the tools to create content or build networks, and if they have the type of constituents who would feel comfortable with, and want to use those tools. etc.. etc..
I have been surprised to discover that lots of times the answer isn't really to install Drupal with all the lights lit up, sometimes it's better just to do one specific module like surveys for example, or to keep site membership down to the editorial board and everyone else is just anonymous until there is a recognizable demand for more privaleges. It keeps the "alienation from technology" factor down.
It's basically like market/user research 101. Many of my clients don't think to ask those questions beforehand.
The other reason I posed those questions is I have little experience with community building. I usually build the technology and other people take care of the community, but since I have started working with Drupal that distinction is getting blurry, and since community building online is not my area of expertise, I would really like some help figuring out how to incorporate strategic planning into my implementation/knowledge transfer of Drupal sites for clients.
My clients are usually smaller orgs who don't have some fantastic web marketing guru who goes out and does all the hard work of getting user-data finding out the best way to build the audience etc. Nor do I have a UI person sitting around figuring out what type of user will react to what kind of interface. It's just me, and whatever I have in my bag of tricks.
So a best practices guide or two would kick - butt.
Another thoght that just occuured to me is a little tutorial on community marketing for the recipient of a shiny new drupal enabled site wouldn't hurt. The last thing my clients want once I have done the project is to hear the wind whistling down the empty streets and corridors of their ghost town community site. They would sure appreciate some help in that department. If we could work up a one pager called "How do I animate/administer my brand-spanking-new-drupal community portal effectively and enjoyably?" that would also totally float my boat.
I agree they are hard questions, which is partly why I am excited to try and answer them here. It's too much to ask the end user to continue putting their experience issues aside so I can churn out sites that follow only the basic rules of site design and end-user marketing.
I think I just went off topic oh well..
I agree with Laura and
I agree with Laura and Miriam on a lot of these points - I'm not sure there is a "best practices" on a lot of these issues but just that you have to do some user/customer research before doing the work.
There is a lot of discussion about Forums on the Performancing site that link goes to a search for the information. In particular this post on forums as a self-sustaining blog kind of gets at some of the "community is king" concepts and the comments on that page are fairly insightful.
Generally, I believe in trying to serve "demand-pulled" situations rather than "marketer-pushed" situations. For example, CraigsList started out as a central source of information about events in San Francisco. As people started using it for other purposes, the site grew to cover those purposes. As people moved to new cities and wanted to use it there, the site started covering that as well. I believe site features - and forums especially - should work this way in general.
I like to start a site off with only one or two forums, or perhaps set them up as a "Ask the {site owner}" systems. Forum posts get submitted and then the owner comments and publishes them. If the site owner smooths out the time between posts that can alleviate the "ghost town" feeling. As you start to notice patterns in the subjects of the posts start to create forums for each area and then let them grow.
In your case, it could be best to use Organic Groups with one or two groups created at the beginning based on your knowledge of the site needs. Then as people need more groups they can create more - groups.drupal has shown us how to make a great self-directed community site.
Finally, another strategy that I've used is to "pre-seed" the forum with posts. Whether they are from friends or business associates or even the site-owner posting anonymous questions and then answering them, this is a very reasonable and I'm sure a common way to start a forum growing so that people don't feel alone.
In terms of copyright/copyleft - in general I like to have some "policy" things like this decided up front and put into links at the bottom of the page. You don't need to shove it down people's throat, but if/when you do get into a situation of someone posting inappropriate information you can just say "I had the policy, you didn't read it, I'm deleting this page."
I don't have any comments on netsquared or peer feedback/review. It might make sense to make a groups.drupal group based around "peer review" where people could announce a new site and ask for feedback on it. That would definitely be handy and while it does raise some potential problems I think that on Groups.Drupal there is some trust here - to allude to your other recent discussions ;)
Regards,
Greg
--
Growing Venture Solutions
Drupal Implementation and Support in Denver, CO
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
+1 on peer review
That's a great idea. Should I create a group now?
Laura
pingVision, LLC
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development
Rather than create a new
Rather than create a new group, why not use this group for that purpose? I'm assuming that it's possible to edit the group description to include the expanded focus -- given that the peer review of community sites would contribute a lot to our discussion of what works in community sites, I think we'd stand to gain by keeping a unified focus.
FunnyMonkey
other site types?
And when someone has a non community site that they want to get peer-reviewed...?
--
Growing Venture Solutions
Drupal Implementation and Support in Denver, CO
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
I created a peer review group
http://groups.drupal.org/peer-review
It's an open group.
I tend to agree with greggles. The idea of this Community group was to focus on best practices, recipes and philosophies that go into building successful community sites.
The peer review group is for any kind of site, and perhaps a way to get feedback from peers. If the group seems redundant, or goes unused for a period of time, we can ask the admins to delete it.
Laura
pingVision, LLC
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development
wicked
I wish i had a site ready for review right now, but my biggest project is being done in zope.
Is that a swear word 'round these parts :)?
Peer review group sounds great!
I, too, am a newbie in terms of building a community web site. I've been joining various groups here in my search of knowledge and am glad to have joined this one. I've been reading lots of great comments!
I believe that a separate "peer review group" would probably make most sense. Although there will likely be some overlap with this "community" group", I think there's enough interest for both groups. The PRG would focus on all types of web sites and folks like me could go there and learn from others while also being able to provide candid opinions on what we think, thus allowing the web site under review's creator to perhaps see things from a different perspective.
I think a separate "peer review group" from this "community group" makes sense because there are all sorts of web sites: community, academic, corporate, nonprofit, arts, music, movie review, etc.
Walt Esquivel, MBA, MA, Captain - U.S. Marine Corps (Veteran)
President, Wellness Corps, LLC
DreamHost Rewards Affiliate Program
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
Best practices - Greenpeace
Although not exactly fitting your need for a "community" best practices, you might want to take a look at Prioritized CMS Requirements for Greenpeace UK. It's good reading and I'm sure someone could probably start including parts of it for "best practices" documents for people building community sites.
I found it to be a good example of how requirements should be established and I also found the two spreadsheets helpful. There's a spreadsheet at the above link and another one here.
Walt Esquivel, MBA, MA, Captain - U.S. Marine Corps (Veteran)
President, Wellness Corps, LLC
DreamHost Rewards Affiliate Program
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing