Podcast 59: Community websites Part 2

Published on: November 27, 2006 by Paul Boag

This week on boagworld Paul and Marcus continue their discussion on social participation, focusing on growing a community and troubleshooting the problems that are inevitably encountered.

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Despite the fact that I have split this subject over two weeks, we have still struggled to fit everything in. Last week the focus was very much on the business benefits of community websites. This time around we concentrate on the user. Why do they participate in online communities and how do we encourage them to get involved?

We also look at the challenges of starting and nurturing a community and tackle issues such as flame wars, moderation and gaining critical mass.

Later in the show, inspired by Jamie’s post on the forum we get into the subject of time management and how we deal with working from home.

Finally, we also take a look at the week’s web design news which includes:

An excellent article from Think Vitamin that helps you bug fix in IE7
The upcoming launch of HTML mastery by Paul Haine
A quick look at the 2006 global intranet strategies survey
The return this Christmas of the truly excellent 24ways.org

Oh yes, and Headscape is recruiting yet again!

Comments

Comments are for the discussion of this post. If you have other questions / comments then post them to the forum or send me an email

Post by Folders123 on November 27, 2006 8:06 PM

Can I say great podcast apart one small thing? Where is the rest of it? I've got to 55:29 then nothing. What happened?
Post by johnie1 on November 28, 2006 2:33 AM

ACE a UK podcast , even better it's about Web-Dev. i'm very happy now (:
Post by Seb on November 28, 2006 7:35 AM

Going great, but cut out at 37:59 on mine! Where's the rest? It seems to be a big problem among others too...
Post by Paul Boag on November 28, 2006 8:24 AM

hmmm... i have just checked it and it seems fine at my end. Maybe a temporary glitch. Try redownloading.
Post by Folders123 on November 28, 2006 9:08 AM

I was using the podcast player. So I think it could be a problem Odeo possibly. At a guess!!

It works fine now anyway.

@Paul - What does you wife say about your scandal!!?? LOL. On the series idea I think it is a good idea as it enables the listener more depth on a topic. Intranet can be quite useful.
Post by Nick Dunn on November 28, 2006 5:45 PM

I haven't had a chance to listen to this episode yet, but I've just found this presentation that others may find useful.

http://www.lukew.com/resources/articles/IxDA_SocialWeb_LW.pdf

Apart from being a beautiful presentation, it has some useful ideas. Of particular note is the slide on enabling identity - "anonymity can be a death sentence". I agree, and personalisation adds to the user experience. But I think the scope of personalisation needs to be controlled by the site owners. A case in point is MySpace where users are given free reign to (destroy the) design of their home pages. For this reason, and this reason only, I am deterred from visiting MySpace 100%. Scanning profiles and band pages simply makes my eyes bleed.
Post by Ed on November 28, 2006 11:11 PM

For more on web communities, you might like to listen to the "Managing Vendors Before They Manage You" ITConversation podcast at:
http://www.itconversations.com/audio/download/itconversations-1676.mp3

More information about which can be found at:
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail1676.html

In total, it is about 1 hour 30 minutes long, but the bulk of the community web site stuff is quite close to the start.
Post by Sashko on November 29, 2006 10:29 AM

Thank you Paul and Marcus. Another great podcast. Congratulations! :)

I think premoderation is needed in some cases.

As far as I know BBC premoderating comments on their site. And I think this is OK because forums and comments on some issues like politics can quickly become a huge and flaming war.

I know that some big and reputable organisations are very afraid of negative stuff on their pages. That's why they introduce premoderation or even try to avoid forums on their sites. I think partly because they don't want to bother with legal stuff you've mentioned and partly because they think that anything negetive on the page with their logo is ruining their brand. :)
Post by Grant Mc on November 29, 2006 1:29 PM

Another great podcast from the web celeb and Paul lol only joking. keep up the good work!

-Grant Mc
Post by Mouse on December 4, 2006 8:36 AM

Paul... Great podcast and thanks for the mention in part one! I do thing My mate Mr Powazek's Design for Communitie is a book worth your attention and maybe at a future date i think it would be great if you could review his book with him online.
while you guys agree on many points he does have a different point of view to offer AND a whole heap of experience to bring to the podcast!
Love the show and i'll be lstening tonight!!!

Mouse
Post by Tim Beadle on December 4, 2006 4:25 PM

Hi Paul,

I'm enjoying the Community Web Sites podcasts, as the company I work for is currently engaged in a shift towards "community-ising" its sites. You make some excellent and salient points, which I'm passing on in my internal blog.

Would you object to me mirroring these two episodes on our intranet to save us, and you, bandwidth?

Thanks,

Tim
Post by Paul Boag on December 4, 2006 9:00 PM

Just point them at my site Tim. Don't worry about the bandwidth. I would prefer to be able to track download levels.

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