Last March I went to SXSWi 2009. I posted the notes from two of the days, but conference exhaustion got in the way of me posting the notes from the last three days. After much delay, here they are.

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From Flickr and Beyond: Lessons in Community Management

Heather Champ Dir. of Community, Flickr

Jessalyn West Dir of Operations, MetaFilter

Micah Schaffer YouTube

Mathew Stinchcomb VP Community, Etsy

Mario Anima Dir Online Community, Current TV

Jessalyn West:

Metafilter is all text all the time. There are only four of us.

Micah Schaffer:

The biggest issues that we deal with is scale. There are tons of videos uploaded and watched.

Mario Anima:

Their community is more politically active and small.

Heather Champ:

What changes have you seen in community management as you’ve grown?

Jessalyn West:

We used to be a one-person blog. As the site got bigger, the site started bigger. I came on as a super fan. Over time, we had to institute a flag system and a spot where people can gripe about the site. We now have an extra flagging option for offensive content.

Micah Schaffer:

It became hard to see trends. We had to get smarter about detecting things. We have to look at our traffic in different ways. People use the site in VASTLY different ways.

Mathew Stinchcomb:

The big challenges we’ve faced is how to grow big, but stay small at the same time. Let’s make sure that we have a dialog instead of issuing information. We’re trying to make sure that the company stays transparent.

Mario Anima:

When we first launched, we were very producer-centric. As the site grew, more and more people wanted comments. We picked up on the fact that people wanted to interact in different ways. We opened it up so people could submit news stories that they thought were popular. Crowd sourced news.

It’s hard to maintain equal amounts of love for different groups.

Heather Champ:

There is a misconception that online communities are a mistake. How do we handle when people accuse us of censorship?

Micah Schaffer:

YouTube has tried to accommodate as much of that content as we can. Three factors:

Legal: There are constraints on unlawful things.

User Experience: Some things create a negative user experience. There is some content that is potentially hostile. The top search terms aside from Britney Spears, etc. is SEX. You want diversity, but you have to find ways to account for counter discovery.

Your Brand and Advertising: It’s important to be socially responsible. You want to give your users something thatthey can believe in.

Mario Anima:

People get amused that we censor things because we were founded by Al Gore. We treat it like everything else. We aren’t out with an agenda to remove things. They like to read into things that we remove. I was told that I was anti-Israeli and pro-Israeli in the same day. Try to be as transparent as possible.

Heather Champ:

Transparency is key. It’s finding a balance between what you can and cannot say. Lawyers will create something that scrolls forever.

Mathew Stinchcomb:

The people who deal with Etsy really believe in them. There is an anti-Etsy site that has attacked us. Keeping sane, I meet up with the local teams. Talk to the people who appreciate what you’re doing. Don’t let the haters get you down.

Mario Anima:

Not everything will be hate, but not everything is sunshine and roses. We have town meetings to talk to them. It really helps. You still end up with people not agreeing, but the sane people are able to feel better. The insane people tend to not to show up. A lot of people have pointed and said, hey why didn’t you come to the town hall meeting.

Jessalyn West:

We don’t want to replace your human community. There is more to the world than our website. Metafilter is a part of my larger community.

Micah Schaffer:

Abrasiveness is good. It keeps us honest. You don’t want to dismiss everyone as crackpots, but it’s hard when the crackpots are loud and persistent.

If people KNOW why something was removed, then it’s better.

There are amazing things that we have done on this site. I have to remember that when people complain. I’m so glad about that, but it’s hard when people are mean.

Heather Champ:

One of the hardest thing for me to learn was knowing when NOT to respond.

What one piece of advice would you give to people who are thinking of starting a community?

Mario Anima:

It helps if you’re an insomniac. There is a lot more to this role than just removing comments. There is a lot of one on one back and forth that goes on.

We have multiple avenues of feedback: Twitter, forums, etc. By making that open, you have to be able to be open to hearing the bad with the good.

Mathew Stinchcomb:

Focus on communication internally. Make sure all the teams are speaking to each other. Communicate with your users in as many ways as possible and LISTEN. Be able to answer honestly, even if it’s not what they want to hear.

Micah Schaffer:

Have an idea what kind of community that you want to build. Be flexible. You’re growing something and the community is going to have its own idea of what it is. It’s going to change a lot of the time. Adapt to it and grow with it. People might use your service in ways that you didn’t expect. Give it a chance to flourish. Adapt your product and policies to match it.

What’s good for the community at one stage, might not be as good when the group is bigger.

Mathew Stinchcomb:

Keep it all very simple.

Micah Schaffer:

People are always coming up with new ways to use your site.

Jessalyn West:

We have certain goals, but then there are certain things that aren’t happening now. We might revisit them or they might never happen.

We started with one basically one rule: Don’t be a jerk. Sometimes we have to explain what it means to not be a jerk. It helps to explain why you have to have the rules.

Have a place where the feedback can happen in public. It will keep you honest.

Question: How do you get people from a first time user to when they are a member.

Heather Champ:

With any community, you kind of get what you get. You can’t go to any online community without doing some work unless you are a young girl and take off your clothes.

Question: What sort of cut off do you use?

Micah Schaffer:

YouTube video comments are super mean. We DO delete comments. It’s so easy to say whatever you want.

Heather Champ:

Allow your members to determine what they want for a cut off.

Question: We did this to you, what do you think? How do you do that with anonymous people?

Micah Schaffer:

You have to be logged in.

Mathew Stinchcomb:

How you behave on Etsy will affect their sales.

Jessalyn West:

When we talk about our guidelines, it’s for the members. We don’t deal with the anonymous people. They don’t get to complain about comments.

Mario Anima:

We have TV viewers who don’t participate in the site. We reach out to them, but we don’t allow anonymous.

Question: What is the funniest way that the community?

Jessalyn West:

We banned a member and then there was a Free That Member campaign. We banned him for a reason.

Mathew Stinchcomb:

We had a similar thing with Free The Etsy Five.

Mario Anima:

We had one producer had stopped engaging on the site. He eventually said, “I want a divorce from Current TV.” I responded with a Dear John Letter. Then he responded with a love letter.

Question: What do you do when some other community invades your site?

Heather Champ:

In 2005, a woman in NY snapped a photo of a man masturbating. It was picked up by the NY Post. But then these Men’s Rights People showed up and they attacked her. We paid very close attention to our hot spots. I call them party crashers.

Jessalyn West:

If you’re not a member, we don’t try to help you. It’s five bucks to get in.

Micah Schaffer:

One group of vocal people who are intensely interested in one subject. The same community guidelines apply to everyone.