users “prefer moderated discussions” – or do they mean hosted?

I’ve always said that brands that want to “do” online community need to find a topic, or a small number of topics, that they can plow all their effort into. There’s no point in trying to do a whole bunch of things poorly – it provides a bad experience for users, brings few benefits to the site owners, and opens up a legal, editorial and technical can of worms.

People who join online communities do so because they find something, or people, of interest there. So, for example, an Arsenal FC supporter is much more likely to join and become engaged with an online discussion specifically about Arsenal rather than one about Norwich City. Or, for that matter, a general discussion about football, fly-fishing, Heidegger‘s existentialism, etc.

And that’s all just fine. There is no reason an Arsenal supporter would expect Arsenal FC to host and manage online communities on a wikipedia worth of topics, just as – one would hope – no one at Arsenal FC would come up with the hair-brained idea to try to do that.

MediaPost quotes a recent study at the University of Missouri-Columbia, the spiritual home of American Journalism, that suggests users “prefer moderated dicussions” to unmoderated ones:

Reasons [for moderating range from protecting themselves from libel to keeping discussions focused to simply preserving a certain tone on the forum. Now, a new study out of the University of Missouri-Columbia offers proof that moderating online comments doesn’t just further publishers’ goals, but also encourages readers to participate in the site.

For the study, researchers created two versions of a mock Web site, one that indicated it was moderated while the other did not. The researchers showed student-subjects one of the two sites and then surveyed them, asking whether they intended to participate in the site. Those who saw the seemingly moderated site appeared more likely to say they would interact than those who viewed the apparently unmoderated one.

It seems to me that what the participants in the study really meant was that they prefer online discussions that are editorially led, continue to be relevant to the topic at hand and where the presence of an on-site discussion host helps keep it that way.

I’ve written before about why I see hosting and moderation online discussions as two different, albeit complimentary, roles requiring different skill sets.

Moderators are a negative presence in that, to most users, they are invisible unless they break the rules and have a message removed or find themselves calling for the help of a moderator when they are victimised by another users. It’s a bit like the police – you’re unlikely to really notice them unless they’re dragging you off to jail or helping keep you out of danger.

Hosts are the other side of the coin. Like someone hosting a dinner party, their role is to set the theme, organise the venue, meet and greet newcomers, introduce party-goers, kick off and wrap up discussions or other activities, and keep an eye on things to ensure that they can step in to resolve any issues before they get out of hand. It’s obvious from this description that hosting is, for the most part, positive and re-enforces a sense of belonging for many participants.

In my experience, as hosting presence goes up, the need for moderators to intervene almost always goes down. Put another way, as the positive presence of hosting goes up, the negative actions which require moderation go down.

Simply moderating an online discussion does little to create a positive, engaging, on-topic discussion where participants feel welcome and safe to express their viewpoints no matter how unpopular those may be. Hosting, on the other hand, can achieve exactly that.

If I was a big brand setting off to build an online community, I’d:

I think what the results of the Missouri research tells us is that users want a positive experience from their participation in online communities and discussions. I think that hosting, rather than moderation, is the way to best achieve effective, positive control that reinforces community.