Ed Mitchell: Platform neutral

Risks when setting up new communities

The online community managers’ mailing list emint is on fire at the moment. Either we’ve all been visited by the participation fairy, or there is a lot going on in community land. I’m a believer in the second theory, as fairies don’t exist, and it is a delight to see good brains moving back into taking ‘Community’ seriously, having been distracted by social networking for its own sake, rather than properly embedding it into a practicable context (witness the move to object-related socialisation, or activity-based socialisation, or other new fangled ways of saying ‘I like to do things with mates’ rather than network for its own sake). So…

I’m keen as I always run scenario workshops with clients when we are thinking about setting up/partnering with/exploring/structuring new communities (inspired by ‘Leveraging Communities of Practice for Strategic Advantage‘ (Saint Onge, Wallace, Butterworth Heineman, 2003) ; in fact I’m particularly proud of being able to come up with some utterly ghastly scenarios.

You can never have enough scenarios - The following list is from a number of members’ input (with permission) when Helen asked if:

“…anyone as any headings/topics to share that they would put in their risk analysis (especially if based on previous experience)…”

Helen Whitehead:

Lack of buy-in from senior stake-holders including budget holders
Limitations of current IT infrastructure and IT policies
Limitations of software choice / software not fit for purpose
Sustainability after setup and particularly the lack of appreciation of the ongoing moderator role
Staff changes

Tamara Littleton (eModeration.com):

Under age registration
Negative discussion about company/brand/client
Negative reaction to project in press/blogs/other sites
Advertising or spam on site
Disagreement of moderator decision
Illegal content
Non-consenting content (video/images of people without giving permission)
Copyrighted content
Online harrasment of users outside of community
Stalking of users
Child safety
Users spam others outside of the community
Spam within the community
User posts personally identifable information (PII)
Inppropriate content
Fraudulent access to another user’s account
Hackers attack the site

Vanessa DiMauro:

Organizational integration: failure for the community knowledge assets (info from the community) to be delivered/integrated into the other areas of the business (e.g. – sales/marketing/product development etc.)
The community thrives but the org doesn’t see the real value
Failure to plan for scale – technically or operationally, failure to manage (subgroups etc) community size before it gets too big
Poorly defined governance of community: who is responsible for content, moderation, sales, sponsorships, technology etc in the short term is often different over time.
Need to plan for creation of community and transition planning.
Renewing sponsors is always more difficult than getting sponsors/partners/etc.
Plan for quarterly newsletters and information sharing with sponsors early and often to demonstrate value

Rikki Chequer:

Abuse of Private messaging systems (not easily tracked)
Impersonation of someone/ some organisation in UGC content
Forum wars ( it happens !)
Link spam

Ian Dickson:

Overoptimism. This is one for the those pushing a community project - if you get buy in and resources based on over-optimistic assessments of the impact of the community, the resources needed to support it or the timescales involved, it’s all going to end in tears.Of course this is no reason not to be optimistic (you’re making a sales pitch, of course you are optimistic), but be aware when you are making promises that are close to the wire, and be willing to accept the adversity potential. Always know when to walk away - if you want 50K and get 25K, is that really enough? Is it not enough on its own but is enough to prove the project sufficient to get more, or is it just enough to hang yourself with.

Ed (me): on membership angle:

Democratic model/social model - communities could interfere with pre-existing groups/branches etc.
Integrating staff into membership relationships
ROI: not properly assessed or clearly outlined or balanced between sponsor and member
Expectations of interaction figures (participtation ratio) - millions of posts when it might be much less
Value of interaction figures - why do you want them to interact?
Other networks pre-existing - do you want to replace them, be in parallel with them, compete with them?
Stuffing people into technical boxes without fulling understanding their requirements and behaviours
Facilitating incorrectly for the context

Liz Cable:

Not fully understanding which elements of the community will be/are already in competition, and which will be collaborative, especially assuming motivation for collaboration when in fact the community (parts of it, or functions of it) are basically competitive.
Not fully understanding or implementing privacy elements for creating groups within groups.
What functionality should be personal, team-led, available to the whole community, or available to all.
Not working with the external part of the community - offline and in real life - properly (been said elsewhere, but I think its vital so I dare to repeat :o)
Ed - re ROI above - is there a way of defining ROI for communities - or is that a whole other wiki?

I’m sure it doesn’t stop there, but this is good food for thought. If you fancy adding any more, add it either to here or to the wiki page.