…

Well, that’s a good question. Why do the users provide free content (and essentially, labour) someone else’s site? Generally a site that makes a profit off that content? Why would they so often be willing to give up their intellectual rights to that content?

That’s something to keep in mind when formulating your plan. If your Digital Strategy includes building a community around your brand, you have to ask yourself very early on, why would someone want to take the time to be part of this community and provide free content. What am I going to give them in return?

It has to be a two-way street. There has to be an added value or benefit for your community to be part of your community. Or as Jeff put it so well, the user will ask themselves, “What do I get out of the time and effort you’ve invested in this website? Personally? Professionally? Tangibly? Intangibly?”

If you don’t have a good answer to that question, you might want to take a closer look at the rest of your Digital Strategy.

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We tried all of the usual methods to resolve it. Sending warnings to the offenders, manually editing and filtering, and finally banning the offenders. Of course, with the ease of getting a new email address and re-registering, the trolls kept coming back and it turned into a kind of “whack-a-mole” game.

Finally, I took a page from Philip Greenspun (author of the classic “Philip and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing“) and got creative with the situation. Instead of trying to ban the users, we decided to just frustrate them into leaving on their own accord… without them knowing.

When a troll was identified, they were flagged in our database and we flagged the account. The next time the user logged in, they had a 1 in 3 chance of actually being able to log in, or getting a “Server Timeout” error message. If they did actually manage to log in, every page refresh had a random delay of 5-30 seconds, and even then, they would occasionally get a timeout message. The flagged users generally just got frustrated with the “poor quality” of our site and moved on.

One of our developers actually took it a step further. Trolls live for stirring the pot. They post abusive and over-the-top posts and wait for the firestorm. What if the firestorm never arrived and the other users just ignored their posts? The developer set the database so that when a flagged user posted a message, he would see his post in the thread, but no other users would see it. He would sit back and wait for his comments to start a flame war, but the other users would just carry on with their own discussions, unaware of the flame-bait posted.

The number of trolls dropped dramatically. Users were thrilled that their conversations continued without disruption and there were no more warnings issued by the moderators. And, of course, no one was aware of what was going on behind the scenes to clean out the disruptors.

It just goes to show… the tried and true methods sometimes don’t work. Looking for a creative solution based on the habits and motivations of your users often yields far better results than going with the textbook approach.

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Then I stumbled across this excellent post from Eric Barker at Barking Up The Wrong Tree. The line that tweaked with me was:

…novices sought and responded to positive feedback, and experts sought and responded to negative feedback…

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have an ego as big as the next person’s (well… maybe a little bigger). I still like it when I’ve been told that something I’ve done has been helpful / useful / profitable . However, I get more juice from someone teaching me something or guiding my thinking into a direction I haven’t been. I’d like to say I like getting pulled out of my comfort zone, but like most people I get that little feeling in my stomach that resists the move initially. But I’ve gotten to where I am because I’ve been able to take the chance to do something I’ve never done before and figure out how to do it.

Of course, it reminds me of a post I saw recently on Joey deVilla’s Accordion Guy blog:

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1. Kryder’s law which states that storage capacity doubles every year

2. Moore’s law which states that processor speed doubles every 18-24 months

3. Nielsen’s law which states that bandwidth will double every 2 years (in practice, longer)

The fourth law is what they call the Caveman Law. This article doesn’t have a great explanation of it, but in my opinion, it states that no matter how big or powerful the technology is, if it can’t fullfil a person’s primitive desires, it’s useless.

The article goes on to eulogize Steve Jobs, but this is one of the few I agree with. Apple rarely talks about the first three laws. When they launch a product, you don’t often see specs on processor speed or storage. It’s all about how it fulfills your desires. Apple did a lot of things right, but this is probably the most important.

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“Write great content… regularly and consistently”

For the most part, it really is that ‘simple’. SEO techniques will only get you so far if you don’t have good, current content.

… Which is why when I came across this Salt and Pepper post from Chris Brogan, it really struck a chord with me:

Executing cleanly on simple efforts is far more valuable than pulling off something clever that gets you attention briefly, but has no lasting change.

Much of what I do is actually quite simple. It just stems from years of experience and learning from my (many, many) mistakes. What separates the wheat from the chaff in my line of work is this: The good ones can take something that looks complex and turn it into a series of simple steps. Or as Chris puts it:

And truly, if you want to know just one more secret, I’ll share it: complex is usually just a lot of simple things played out in a smart sequence.

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I’ve used this quote several dozen times in the past several months when I hear someone complain about a free service they subscribe to. They often complain about why that product or service doesn’t care more about their customers. People are generally a little shocked when they realize that *they* are not the customers.

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