You've just pruned the comments in your company's blog for comment spam, libel, hate speech, pornography and other abuse. But just as you're about to close the laptop, you spot one last comment.

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My last post talked about how open systems teach us that we can, in fact, self-organize and find solutions, in a world that so often seems to be telling us to be passive and compliant.

In my case, the solution cleared a traffic jam... with more than half the cars already on their merry way by the time the police arrived.

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This episode finds Alex and Rob with some company in bed: the kids. (Parental discretion advised: contains explicit sounds of complaining toddler.) We talk about what happens when your favourite online community members participate just a little too much... and what you can do about it.

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Someone needs to tell the folks at Glad: Unless your customers pay for the privilege of wearing your logo, don't build an online community around your brand. That's rule #1 in marketing with social media -- and reason #1 for instead taking an approach we call reflected glory marketing. In reflected glory marketing you create a web site that resonates with your brand, but focuses on something your customer cares passionately about. Think of Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, or Amex's Members Project. Or think of some of the projects we've launched in-house: BC Hydro's Green Gifts application for Facebook, or Vancity's Change Everything.

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Last week's presentation at the Vancouver High-Tech Communicators' Exchange was a great time: a really engaged audience, provocative and challenging questions, and a razor-sharp co-presenter – mi amigo Kris Krüg. (Catch Dave Olson's amazingly thorough account here.) We took a look at marketing with social media, through the lens of some very successful efforts.

But it's human nature to stare at train wrecks, and it's no surprise that the biggest response came from our look at how you can bomb horribly. I came up with a list of nine routes to social media shame:

1. 

   ©istockphoto.com/xyn06

   Gaming the system: Yes, there's nothing stopping you from trying to rewrite a Wikipedia entry to your advantage... but something like Virgil Griffith's Wikipedia Scanner could make your life a PR misery. (Read about the misadventures of voting-machine-maker Diebold here.) The online world is full of talented people fanatically devoted to exposing online frauds and defending the integrity of the commons; cross them at your peril.
2. Putting on a puppet show: If only those social media sites had comments raving about you or your brand. So why not log in under a false identity (what the online world calls a sock-puppet) and leave those comments yourself? According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey tried it, trashing the competition and boosting his company on Yahoo's message boards. The result: a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation... and a very public humiliation.
3. Flogging: If the sock puppet has a cousin, it's the fake blog, or "flog". Take the All I Want for Xmas is a PSP blog, purportedly written by a guy begging his parents for the Sony gaming console... but in reality the creation of a marketing firm. The blog was designed to become a meme, spreading virally across the Internet, and in a way it did – but not the way anyone at Sony would have wanted. Instead, it was outed on the forums at Something Awful, and the meme's message was that Sony was duping the public.
4. Playing coy: Outright dishonesty isn't the only thing that can trip you up. Wal-Marting Across America was a blog by a middle-aged couple driving their RV across the U.S., camping overnight in Wal-Mart parking lots and telling stories about the wonderful people they met – a remarkable number of whom had glowing things to say about Wal-Mart. None of this was untrue; the couple was genuine, the RV was an RV, and nobody's disputing the stories people were telling. But what the blog didn't mention – anywhere – is that the whole thing was paid for by Wal-Mart itself: from airfares to the RV itself. The blog was outed, the story hit the mainstream media, and both Wal-Mart and their PR firm, Edelman, were left looking very much like they'd tried to pull something sleazy.
5. Forgetting your users: Not every misstep puts egg on your face; sometimes, all that happens is you don't get nearly the results you'd hoped for. The web is still full of organizational blogs, created purely to push out spin, written in market-ese and utterly failing to engage visitors. In other cases, organizations put their own preoccupations front and centre and shove their audiences' to the side. Take this page of McDonald's podcasts. The only featured podcasts are a speech by the CFO and (literally) hours of business analysts' reports. The stuff consumers would be interested in, geared to changing public perceptions of McDonald's as an rapacious behemoth bent on global destruction? Buried far down the page... among shareholders' meetings and earnings conference calls.
   
   The flip side of the nothing-but-spin blog is the nothing-but-nothing blog. CEO bloggers who tell us what they had for breakfast, how their last flight went, what the view's like from their hotel room may be fascinating to themselves, but their readers deserve a lot more. This is an opportunity to offer insights, passion and some thought leadership; please don't pass it up.
6. Acting like you own the place: You may own the servers, the software, the branding – but you don't own the community. Forgetting that, for instance by making big changes without consulting the community or, worse, letting them know why, is a recipe for disaster. Facebook triggered a firestorm recently with its Beacon fiasco; that suggests they may not learn from their mistakes, because they went through a similar debacle in September 2006 when they launched news feeds and minifeeds. In each case, they backed down. Heavy-handed actions can be just as bad. When the Washington Post encountered a flood of abusive comments on one of its blogs, they could have decided to have a moderator approve each comment before publishing it, until the flood subsided. Instead, they temporarily suspended commenting altogether – and endured a week of accusations of censorship and bad faith.
7. Looking down your nose: Oh, Target, Target, Target. Your selection of quality goods is so impressive; your blogger engagement strategy... not so much. In January, a blogger asked Target to explain one of their ads, which she felt was sexually exploitive. Target's PR department replied by email, "Unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with nontraditional media outlets." That garnered them a bunch of ill-will in the blogging world... and some bad press in one of those more traditional media outlets that Target prizes so highly.
8. Letting it slide: Setting up a blog or other social web presence is the easy part. The real work comes in doing the gardening: seeding new content, nurturing the shoots of new community and, when necessary, weeding out abuses. Canadian politician Paul Martin launched a blog that went months without new posts; it became an embarrassment. And you don't have to search too far to find blogs and forums that have become playgrounds for comment spam.
9. Pitching without looking: Engaging with bloggers? Good idea. Firing off impersonal pitches with no idea who you're talking to? Bad idea. For an extreme example, see what happened when a PR firm pitching an upcoming American Idol gimmick included a public relations watchdog site in its mailing list. That's a worst-case scenario; more likely, you'll get a snarky blog post or just plain ignored for your troubles. Blogs are highly personal endeavours, and only a few earn an income for their creators; the rest are labours of love. Treat them that way. My co-presenter, Kris, wisely suggested you read a blog for at least a week, then join its commenting community, and then try pitching the author – in a personal way that relates directly to the blog's focus.

Actually, there's a 10th way to stumble in this space. And that's to let the first nine scare you away from social media.

The fact is, you only have to search Technorati to see that the conversation is already happening: about you, your competitors, or an issue you care about passionately. It goes on with or without your participation.

You can make that participation positive and productive – and avoid pretty much any of those pitfalls I've mentioned – if you start from the right place. Proceed with authenticity and transparency; respect your audience and the community you're engaging; understand that this can be hard work, and dedicate resources accordingly... and even if you do stumble, you'll have friends ready to catch you.

This isn't an exhaustive list – I'd love to know what navigational hazards appear on your map of the social media world.

By the way, here's some of the coverage of our talk in the blogging world:

• Dave's extensive recap
• Greg from TechVibes
• Jacob at Sip of Water
• Rob McMahon at Spilling the Beans
• Monica Hamburg (who's also doing great things at One Degree)
  

Usually, when an online community shuts down, it's an admission of failure: not enough time or staff to keep the trolls at bay; people drifting away after an initial surge of interest gives way to a lack of a compelling reason to participate; a divisive internal conflict or catastrophic technical collapse. (And sometimes the community's hosts - or their financial backers - just plain lose interest.)

But that doesn't appear to be the case with the impending closure of Omidyar.net, the social-change-oriented community established by the Omidyar Foundation Network in 2004. Initially, it was a bold experiment in crowdsourcing (long before that became a buzzword), with community members deciding where to direct some of the foundation's funds. As time went on, it became a venue for collaboration and discussion.

Now the foundation is closing down the community infrastructure. But they're doing it in a unique way designed to do much more than just turn out the lights.

Instead of the usual practice of shutting down the servers with little or no notice and posting an "It's been fun, now get out" message, Omidyar.net created a forum to discuss the transition process to a new home or homes. They held elections that wrapped up earlier today, selecting a board to guide the process.

According to the community's executive producer, Thomas Kriese,

We strongly believe in the power of community-based efforts, and we feel the best way Omidyar Network can continue facilitating the kind of work that's being done both within and through omidyar.net is to empower communities online that are more narrowly focused on specific interests and moderated in a style of their own preference.

One of the things we've learned over the last three years is that self-managed communities can work. Given the tools and the space in which to use them, the community can and will manage itself and keep things running with little to no oversight. We've also learned that communities are all about the people, not the platform, and that's informed our decision for moving forward.

Just how much attachment members have to their home and the passion they feel for their community are clear from the comment thread following Thomas' announcement. That, along with the mindfulness and attention apparent in the way Omidyar.net's administrators are proceeding, give the community a solid chance of surviving its upcoming transition.

Updated: The site was founded by the Omidyar Network, not the Foundation. Thanks, Thomas, for the correction!

Things are changing at The Tyee, a Vancouver-based news and commentary site. Home to some of the best alternative coverage of issues and ideas in Canada, The Tyee's discussion threads were also becoming home to something a lot less welcome: vicious grudge matches among a handful of participants.

Readers were growing used to seeing interminable bouts of tit-for-tat insults, and would-be commenters were losing their appetite for taking jumping into the fray. It wasn't affecting every thread, but politicial discussions in particular had become dominated by a few angry belligerents.

The site's staff embarked on an intensive project to pull online discussion out of its toxic swamp. They consulted their readers, worked with technologists and contractors (I was one of them, and was overwhelmed at just how thoughtful and committed to productive, open discussion the site's staff and leadership are), tweaked the interface and then, today, launched a brand new commenting system.

Starting today, there is more than one way to read comments on The Tyee.

The first is the All Comments tab, which looks and acts similar to the commenting thread you're used to. Your post automatically goes to this thread along with those from other readers. If you want to read everything people are saying about a Tyee story, just click this tab. New to this thread are buttons to tell us when you think a comment is especially good. And to alert us to offensive remarks that violate our guidelines.

The second is the Best Comments tab, which displays by default at the bottom of every story and includes comments we have selected from the All Comments thread.

How does a comment become one of the 'best'? By being on topic, presenting fresh insights or arguments, no matter what position taken. Who decides? Tyee editors do. Certainly, we will be guided by your recommendations. That is why we gave you the power to make them. But the decision ultimately falls to us.

It's an interesting take on the dilemma facing those of us who animate online communities: how can you promote positive participation, discourage the bile and avoid the accusation of censorship? The Tyee's approach is elegant: you can always wade back in by clicking the "All Comments" tab, but I'm guessing most readers will be voting with their mice for the more positive stream.

By the way, this doesn't mean the death of vigorous debate, criticism or passion in The Tyee's threads. Used judiciously, the "Best Comments"/"All Comments" division will allow genuine discussion to rise to the top. But it does mean that users who can't seem to rise above the personal insult and verbal battery will find it a much lonelier venue for peddling their wares.

That may cost The Tyee some of their more prolific commenters. But just as most rivers wouldn't miss the effluent from the local sewage plant, I expect The Tyee's community ecosystem will rebound quickly – and be a lot stronger for the change.

Making friends in the real world can be hard. You need to overcome issues of trust, intimacy, vulnerability and, sometimes, conflicting loyalties. But the payoff matches the effort: a good friend is invaluable.

In the world of online social networks, the word "friend" is a lot less meaningful; it includes your most casual of virtual acquaintances. Until you have a chance to build a certain level of trust with them, respect and affection, your interaction with your online friends (a.k.a. "buddies" or "contacts", depending on which social network you're using) will often be the digital equivalent of nodding at each other as you pass in the hall.

The good news? It's much, much easier to make "friends" than to make friends. These folks will come in two flavours: people you already know from elsewhere, and people you've met through this particular social network. Here are some tips for adding people from both groups to your buddy list. We'll use Facebook as the example, but many of the tips here will work just as well on other services:

• Start with the obvious: Tools like address book importing and search will actually take you a long way. But you may be surprised at just how many of your friends aren't in your address book, or who signed up with different email addresses than the ones you have for them, or whose names don't jump to mind when you're searching. So you'll need to use some of these other strategies.
  
• Find friends from work and school: Once you've entered your work and education history in your profile, Facebook lets you browse people who also worked for your past employers, as well as people who graduated in the same year as you did.
  
  And don't limit yourself to that one year. Facebook also lets you choose other graduating years. Chances are you knew people who graduated a year or two before or after you.
• Look for birds of a feather: Scope out the groups that speak to your interests... especially niche interests. Browse the member lists for names you recognize.
• Use a friend to find a friend: Just as you'll often run into one friend talking with another in the real world, chances are good your online friends have already linked up with other folks you know. Flip through their friends lists and you're bound to run into somebody.
• Participate: Did you ever read those Ann Landers columns where someone would write in asking how they could meet people, and Ann would suggest that they get involved in their local church? The same thing works well in social networking sites. Start a group or join an existing one, and get active. Post on the wall. Comment on forum posts and people's notes. As you take part, you'll also get to know new people – and you'll soon be sending them friendship invitations, if you haven't received them yourself.
• Bag on the boilerplate: I know we're using Facebook as an example, but I can't resist adding a LinkedIn tip. When you invite someone to join your network, don't use the canned boilerplate text that LinkedIn gives you. Instead, write a personal invitation, something in your own voice that makes some reference to your relationship with the recipient. You'll start getting a lot more of your invitations accepted.

The 30 Days of Sustainability 2007 site has gone live (and if a few of us at Social Signal look a little more relaxed today than we have for the last week, that's a big reason)... and with it, a new initiative from the ever-inventive 30 Days folks.

They're calling it Turn It Off! British Columbia. Taking a cue from similar initiatives in Paris and Sydney, TIOBC asks British Columbians to use as little energy as they can on May 16th. You can use the web site to pledge your participation, and then check back afterward to see how we all did.

While we were building the site, I wondered how TIOBC could dovetail with some of the other web places we were exploring. One of the principles I've tried to apply since we launched Social Signal is to meet people where they already are. (So, for example, rather than ask visitors to upload their pictures to the 30 Days site, we ask them to tag their photos "30days2007" on Flickr, and display a Flickr stream across the bottom of the page.)

And right now, a lot of folks are heading to Facebook. Already the place to be networking for high school, college and university students, Facebook is suddenly hot with parents, professionals and the public at large.

One reason why: the tools are almost supernaturally easy to use. Adding friends, updating your profile, changing your status message – you can do them all in seconds thanks to a clean, simple interface that makes judicious use of now-famous AJAX technology.

And one of the easiest things of all to do is to create and join groups. There are thousands of them on Facebook. And while most are dedicated to things like pop culture and lifestyle, a growing number have a social change focus.

So I created a Facebook group called "Turn It Off! British Columbia". It took me less than a minute to create the group, fill in a profile and upload a logo. Another minute, and I'd sent an invitation to eight friends, asking them to join.

A few days later, there are more than 60 members.

Bear in mind: there was no promotion, no supporting web site (it hadn't launched yet), and not even a request in my invitation that my friends pass the news on.

This is a testament to two things: the compelling nature of the idea, and the phenomenal ease that Facebook lends to collaboration. If you're hoping to bring people together online, you could do far worse than check out Facebook.

A campaign of attacks on a much-loved blogger (click here for the background) has reignited a long-running debate over civil online behaviour. One leading voice in the social web has gone so far as to call for a blogger code of conduct.

From flame wars to hate speech to death threats, online communities have always had the potential to turn ugly. And once they do, a vicious circle can form; gentler users leave for sunnier destinations, and without their calming presence, conflicts escalate more quickly.

But this doesn't have to happen to your community. Here are a few simple steps you can take to stay on the right side of the line separating healthy conversation from verbal abuse.

• Your initial users will set the tone for those who follow. When you're setting up your community, open it at first to a limited number of participants. Choose people whose conversational skills you admire – people with a proven ability to agree to disagree, and (even more important) to listen.
• Set clear boundaries from the start. Make it clear when users join that this is a space that's going to be free of personal attacks and verbal violence. And phrase it positively: for the vast majority of your users, this is going to be a big plus.
• Give users a way to report objectionable content (such as a "flag this as offensive" button). Respond quickly if they do.
• Consider adding a "preview" step before a user confirms they want to submit a comment or post. Even a few seconds of reflection can be enough time for someone to reconsider a hasty, angry rejoinder.
• If a conversation seems to be spiralling out of control, don't be afraid to intervene. Remind the participants that disagreeing with ideas is fine, but attacking individuals isn't. If the discussion is getting too heated, and especially if it reaches the stage where new arguments aren't being advanced any more, suggest that they move on to another topic.
• Watch out for mobs ganging up on new users who ask "dumb" questions, or who reopen issues that old-timers think were settled long ago. You don't need to be heavy-handed; just treating the newcomer's post with respect can shift the tone of the discussion.
• Set clear rules and enforce them consistently, regardless of how you feel about the issues at play. Let your community know what to expect when a user steps outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour – whether it's a warning, suspension or (in extreme cases, such as the repeat offenders who deliberately try to provoke conflict, known as "trolls") outright banning.
• Be vigilant, but don't let paranoia stifle passion. If you've set a positive tone from the beginning (and if your community isn't focussed on party politics, Macs versus Windows or other religious conflicts), genuine mouse rage should be very rare.

In other words, participation – the heart of any online community – is also its immune system. Encourage that positive participation, and your community will be resilient enough to fend off the flames.