Looking the Part - Page 7

No matter how important you determine the role of the host is in your site, having one user post with more authority than the others creates a design issue. It is crucial to communicate the host's authority visually; otherwise, any user could say, "Hey! I'm in charge! Listen to me!"

Sound fanciful? Tell that to whoever took the moniker "KVETCH CONTROL" in Kvetch.com. That person, whoever it was, told the visitors to Kvetch that they would all be evicted if they did not behave appropriately. He said that the site would be shut down if people didn't spell correctly.

Of course, he wasn't the host--I was. But that didn't stop users from taking the posts seriously. When KVETCH CONTROL posted that the website had been infected with a virus, I got some very concerned emails from community members.

Aside from deleting the posts and fantasizing about smacking KVETCH CONTROL upside the head, there were only a couple of things I could do about the situation. Since Kvetch didn't require a registration, I couldn't ban the user. But I could block the user out by his IP address (which was available in the server logs). I also instituted a design change: From then on, whenever I posted something official, it was prefaced by "MODERATOR:" and the color was changed slightly so that the community would know that it was official. There was no way for anyone else to format his posts in the same way.

The main issue is that when someone with authority posts in the common space, his post has more weight. So his words should be differentiated visually as well.

Another good example of this is a site I designed for business guru and author Tom Peters in 1998. It was his first foray into the web, but he took to it with enthusiasm. At the top of his list of things he wanted out of the experience was the ability to converse with his readers--an ability his books lacked.

So when I designed his site, it came with a full complement of community tools. But Peters soon found that when he jumped into the community space, his words got lost in the cacophony.

The solution was a simple design change. When Peters posted to the community area, his comments were called out visually with a different background color. This subtle design change underscored that this was his site, he was the authority here, and everyone took notice.

If you have hosts actively participating in your community space, you should consider a similar design solution. The change should be subtle, but different enough to be noticed. And it should be something that the community members are incapable of mimicking, lest you wind up with a KVETCH CONTROL of your own.

Barriers and Hosts

The egalitarian, inclusive, idealistic web is not dead. Far from it--the joy of the Internet is that everyone can have a voice, and there's always someone out there who wants to hear it. There really is a community out there for everyone.

But communities will implode without some structure, rules, and guidance. The rules you set also define your community, setting the tone for all the members. And the hosts maintain that tone, and nurture the members along the way.

When these elements work in concert, it benefits the entire community. The right people, with the right tools and just the right amount of guidance, can work wonders.

Job Description of a Host - Page 6
Design for Community
A Conversation with Caleb Clark - Page 8