Ed Mitchell: Platform neutral

A quick addendum about facilitation and moderation on online spaces before a longer post about strategy.

Pete Ferne and Dan Dixon grouping a mindmap at The Media Sandbox community launch event. Are they facilitating, moderating, re-purposing, or nothing at all?

Facilitation:

Is largely around helping people connect, share, and learn together; disrupting the walls that keep them apart, understanding the purpose behind their interactions and assisting them achieve this in the longer term.

Knowing who they are and how they interact, and not dragging them into communal contexts they would naturally shy away from or drive others wild with rage.

Understanding where the knowledge lies in the network and how to approach it.

Knowing the people: when to bring in an extrovert, or when to refer to an introvert (yes I know that is a wide generalisation). Knowing when the big picture stuff is good and when to focus and produce detailed stuff, and who is good at that too. And while I’m on the whole personality and behaviour thing (more on that soon), having a feel for which tool, or which community outcome, different participants will be attracted to.

Moderation:

Is the coalface end end of the model. From member logins, to moving threads, via editing comments (be careful you then become a ‘secondary publisher’ and thus own the words legally). You can pre-moderate conversations, or post-moderate them. I say post-moderate, and only when someone complains with good reason. Do not let rules and moderation processes get in the way of knowledge creation through firey conversations; this is a careful balance and can kill good mailing lists and other spaces.

When issues arise, ‘moderation’ is the set of communications and processes thing that deals with them.

Either a problem needs to be escalated through pre-existing organisational processes, or new community based ones. It all needs to be transparent.

When it has to be done, doing it elegantly. If you want some practice, throw a party and then find yourself having to physically push a leery mate (who is only wearing one shoe for some reason) out of your front door at 6am and be decent about it at the same time.

Is best done on the back of communally and transparently discussed rules and processes which you should have done in the preparation phase of the group. That way the rules are owned by the community who had a chance to get involved in them, and understand that they are there for the best general purpose.

Thus when the moderator is being publicly and loudly compared to Attilla the Hun or the baby eating bishop of Bath and Wells by your outgoing resident nutter who everyone quietly wishes would push off but is a bit scared of, or doesn’t want to put their heads above the parapet) or being referred to the universal declaration of human rights, or free speech, or some other external declaration of something the nutter refers to, everyone knows what the rules are, how they came into being, and why the nutter is being stuffed, reasonably, out the door.

Never nice. If you are a facilitator who likes the fringes, it may be someone you really like. And it’s only really necessary in centralised controlled spaces, but it can happen very rarely, so have your groundwork up your sleeve.

Don’t believe that ‘the community will self-police’ and thus not bother set up proper processes. I hear this from people and think ‘hmm nice, but the wrong advice’. You don’t want to scare people setting up community spaces, but as Miguel introduced me to, ‘believe in Allah but tie your camel’.
In my experience in both worlds, when someone goes off on one and loses the plot, people rarely self-police. They hope someone will handle it. Why else do we have a police force? There’s always one person who tackles the issue. I have seen this in trains, libraries, squats, festivals, street corners, shops.

Why people don’t approach trouble makers is another question: are they afraid of the tribulation that that might entail or do they not want to be disliked? Either way, someone has to do it. So do it with spirit and heart and love, and with the utilitarian perspective of the group at large at the front of your mind.

It won’t happen often, I promise.

Somewhere in between lie the editorial skills of coaxing conversations out of people, re-purposing, summarising, bashing out newsletters, and otherwise helping the community digest and share its findings.