September 4th, 2007
Moderation is the heart of open source support
For over 20 years I’ve been watching flame wars and a lack of netiquette drag down online efforts.
I’ve also watched professional moderation, facillitation and community management get eliminated at every turn.
Cost-cutting is the usual excuse, but if you don’t have a teacher in the kindergarten you get Lord of the Flies.
There is a lesson here for open source. If you want to build your forge communities you need professional managers who can make newcomers feel welcome, tease contributions of all kinds out of members, and stomp on the flamers.
This takes money. Money for hiring online administrators, for training them, for educating users on netiquette and for defending the tough calls.
Better community support will lead to better support, period. The first open source company to deliver on this promse of governance will gain an immense market advantage.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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