I’ve written a few times about the importance of community management (more here and here). Online communities thrive with guidelines and guidance. They become rant farms when left unchecked. Newspapers have often failed at online community because they’ve failed to properly staff and run their communities.
Via Mac Slocum, here’s a piece by Cory Doctorow on “troll whisperers.” Great stuff.
We need to develop more talent in the industry for managing online community.
The blogs at my paper suffer from a similar thing. I don’t think any have trolls, but whenever someone comments, the bloggers don’t often respond. I feel a kind of jipped when my comments go ignored, and I’m less likely to go back and comment again.
Hey, I thought I was your troll.*
*And note, I didn’t ignore your comment :-)
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