Added April 18, 2019

A free resource for nonprofit organizations, NGOs, civil society organizations,
charities, schools, public sector agencies & other mission-based agencies
by Jayne Cravens
via coyotecommunications.com & coyoteboard.com (same web site)


Launching & Maintaining a Successful Online Community
for a Neighborhood, Town, City or County
By Jayne Cravens, with contributions from Ashley Roth


 
There are lots of resources for how to start and maintain an online community, but they are focused on online communities for customers of a company, or people all working in a particular career field (knowledge communities), or people all engaged in a similar activity, or people all suffering from the same condition (support communities). But the resources for helping people launch and maintain a successful online community for people living or working in neighborhood, town, city or county, a community that's meant to help neighbors get to know each other and to build offline community are hard to find. In the 1990s, resources for these types of online communities was probably the most common - but they have slowly disappeared as the Internet has moved away from emphasizing civility and building understanding. The resources you are reading now is meant to remedy that (at least somewhat).

Online communities can be built to cultivate a sense of community offline and to focus on people living or working in particular neighborhoods or towns, parents of students at a particular school or all of the residents of a building or compound. These online communities are meant to help members be hospitable and decent to each other online and offline. They are meant to promote civility, respect and thoughtfulness among members offline. 

Back in the early 1990s, before the World Wide Web began dominating the Internet landscape, and long before social media (which seems to be anything but social), these kinds of online communities to promote civility and offline community cohesion were emerging all over the USA - and, indeed, the world. In fact, there were online platforms created specifically for these communities and some city governments, like Cupertino and San Jose in California, were quick to try to leverage such to create more transparency regarding information and decision-making with their constituencies, by sharing all publicly-available information via those platforms and welcoming online comment about government actions. Now, 25 years later, city and county governments in particular avoid online engagement. These agencies will post information to agency Web sites but rarely offer a way to comment or discuss such online. A municipality may have a Facebook page for city government, they may have individual Facebook pages for different departments (parks and recreation, health department, etc.), and they may have a Twitter account or two, but citizens are actively discouraged from using the comments on Facebook or replies on Twitter to ask questions, report an issue, express an opinion, etc., and government employees, even volunteer members of government advisory boards, committees & decision-making commissions, are discouraged from interacting with anyone on a public online forum (some go so far as to discourage interactions via email as well).

Adding to this is the severe decline in avenues for local news to be shared and local discussions to take place: newspapers, community radio and local television stations continue to disappear, and without these central, common information points, attendance at local events and membership in civic groups has plummeted, there is a growing lack of awareness about the diversity of ideas and humanity of any local area, and conspiracy theories about government and various groups proliferate at an alarming rate. Community cohesion is suffering because of a lack of local, credible news outlets and shrinking public comments. The news regularly talks about a decline in civility - go to Google News or Bing News and search for decline civility to see such stories.

There has never been a time of greater need for online communities set up specifically for a neighborhood, a town, a city or a county.

If you have decided to try to launch such a community, regardless of the platform you choose, this web page is meant to offer advice to make that community meet your goals of:

Define Success

Before you begin, answer this question: "I will know if this online community is helping people in my target community (neighborhood, town, school, etc.) when this happens..."

You need to be very clear about what you want online success to look like. Is it just a certain number of members? Is it a diversity of members? Is it a certain number of posts? Is it certain KIND of posts? If you have thousands of members but only one person posts every day, is that success? If you have just a few members, but a diversity of posts, is that success?

These are questions that need to be answered by the champion of the group - the founder, the person most invested in the group's success. Moderators and facilitators that the founder recruits can participate in helping to answer the questions but, ultimately, the champion of the group will give the definitive answers, and these answers will help guide the group as it moves forward.


Plan Your Content

The moderators and facilitators need to immediately and regularly post information that fits with the group's mission and sets the tone for the group. This models the kind of behavior you want the community to emulate from day one. Content should include the following with links to more information on the web whenever possible:
Putting different moderators and facilitators in charge of posting specific content can better guarantee a regular pipeline of such information. For instance, on volunteer could be responsible for looking at all the local city government Facebook pages and re-posting each announcement they find, another could be responsible for monitoring school Facebook pages and so forth.

You will hope that community members will follow the lead of moderators and facilitators and post this kind of content themselves. You also want community members to be helping to rehome dogs and cats, finding lost pets, educating each other about scams, coordinating ride shares, talking about the kindness of someone in line at a grocery store, etc. They will do this the more they see others doing it.

You might also consider having a monthly photo contest to choose a new cover photo for the community. or issuing challenges to the community, such as describing their day in meme-form. On a day with a lot of snow, ask people to share their snow photos. If there is a beautiful sunset happening, ask people to go out and take photos and share them. 


Set Civility Rules Early & Often

Rules should be communicated immediately, from day one that a person begins to participate in your online community, and communicated often - just once isn't enough.

Rules can evolve, and should, but you need to be dedicated to and radiate civility from day one on your online community.

Microsoft's Digital Civility initiative offers this Digital Civility Challenge you may want to quote for your own community and use as a guide for both your rules and the tone your moderators use on your community:

I embrace the challenge to be a leader in making the internet a better and safer place. I commit to do my part every day by living up to the four Digital Civility Challenge ideals

Live the golden rule
I will act with empathy, compassion and kindness in every interaction, and treat everyone I connect with online with dignity and respect.

I will appreciate cultural differences and honor diverse perspectives. When I disagree, I will engage thoughtfully and avoid name calling and personal attacks.

Respect differences
I will appreciate cultural differences and honor diverse perspectives. When I disagree, I will engage thoughtfully and avoid name calling and personal attacks.

Pause before replying
I will pause and think before responding to things I disagree with. I will not post or send anything that could hurt someone else, damage someone’s reputation, or threaten my safety or the safety of others.

Stand up for myself and others
I will tell someone if I feel unsafe, offer support to those who are targets of online abuse or cruelty, report activity that threatens anyone’s safety, and preserve evidence of inappropriate or unsafe behavior.

As a leader in the movement to make the internet a better place, I will share my experiences on social media using #challenge4civility or #Im4digitalcivility and encourage others to join the Digital Civility Challenge.

The Microsoft web site also includes best practices for digital civility that call on companies to "create purposeful online environments, institute codes of conduct (and) offer remedies," calls on educators, school counsellors and school officials to "teach 'citizenship,' promote social and emotional learning (and) emphasize civility online and off," and calls on law enforcement and policymakers to "promote legal approaches that deter exploitation, grow public-private partnerships (and) support responsible industry practices." The best practices call on everyone to:

  1. Work together to encourage and grow a culture of online civility that respects and values different opinions. Making room for all perspectives helps to break down echo-chambers, sparks insights and improves cooperation. Embrace free expression, tolerance, and cultural and social diversity.
  2. Develop and share educational resources that encourage individuals, families and communities to proactively engage and prepare—at the earliest ages and stages— for life online.
  3. Help build and support safe and trusted online environments where individuals are encouraged and empowered to share, create, learn and fully participate.

These are all good ideas for anyone to follow that is creating an online community for neighbors, community members, students or others not tied together by their professional work (and pretty good for knowledge-based communities as well).

Remind your members frequently that they are all real people who are neighbors within one neighborhood, one town, one building, one school, etc. Remind your members frequently, regularly, that online community members are real humans, not just a name on a computer: they are people who will stand in line next to at the grocery, pass on the street, sit next to at the movies or a school play, etc. 


Other Content Rules

Fundraising

An online community focused on just one particular neighborhood or town, or just those attending one school, will attract people who are trying to fund raise for a cause, and the number of such posts can quickly become out-of-control. People will want to post fundraisers for local nonprofits, charities in other countries a local person wants to support, a school trip, religious mission trips, medical costs, funeral costs, veterinary costs, their dreams ("Send me around the world!" or "Help me go to beauty school!").

If you are going to allow any and all information about fundraisers to be posted to your group, create a thread every week specifically for postings about these and require any fundraising discussions to take place in the comments on that weekly fundraising thread. Otherwise, your community will quickly be overwhelmed with these requests for money. 

You will want to post a disclaimer in your rules about fundraisers, something like:

The owner and moderators of this community are not responsible for vetting requests for funding that are posted to this community. If you are considering posting to any cause you read about on this community, we encourage you to ask questions about the person posting the requests for funding to help you decide if you feel the cause is credible or not. The owner and moderators of this community cannot offer any assistance at your getting a refund of any money you donate to a cause you learn about on this community. 

Complaints

Complaints about local businesses and various neighbors can also get out of hand. You can create rules regarding complaints, such as forbidding details on the community but allowing people to link to complaints they have written and published elsewhere, such as on Yelp or Trip Advisor. Or require anyone wanting to complain about a business to first detail how they tried to get the issue resolved with the business before resorting to complaining on the community. Be explicit about what is allowed:

Okay: So and so sold me a washing machine, it does not work, and they said they will not repair or replace it.

Not okay: So and so is stupid and I hate them and no one should shop there.

You may want to forbid complaints about individuals outright, at least by name. For instance:

Mr. Brown, living at 1235 Anywhere Street, has my lawn mower and won't return it

Would not be allowed.

Someone that lives on my street has my lawn mower and won't return it, do you think I should call the police?

Would be allowed.

Moderators should also contact:
Some other ideas for rules:

Speculation & Rumors

Because people on your community will often know each other offline as well, they will often feel very comfortable sharing rumors and speculation. This is something moderators need to keep on top of and be ready to stop, intervene, or even to delete messages.

A rumor that can start on any online community, in any country, and quickly get out of hand is rumors about strangers roaming a parking lot or neighborhood, looking for children to abduct. These rumors have not only lead to confusion and police intervention, in some countries, they have lead to mobs of people murdering people visiting a town - for instance, In August 2018, two men were murdered - beaten and burned to death - by a mob in the small town of Acatlán in the central Mexican state of Puebla - the mob believed a viral social media message about child abductions and organ thieves.

Moderators need to make a commitment to
  • encourage people who post any information that begins with "I heard..." to link to a verifiable source
  • screen capture any accusation of a crime or potentially-slanderous or misleading meme before deleting it
  • post regular reminders for community members to not post speculation about police incidents, criminal investigations, deaths, illnesses, etc.
Moderators should also contact:

What about politics and religion

What about politics? For certain political subjects, yes, absolutely:
  • Information on how to register to vote
  • Reminders about the last day to register to vote before an upcoming election, the dates of an upcoming election, etc.
  • A list of candidate's running for a particular office
  • Links to official candidate information (the candidate's official Facebook page, web page, etc.)
  • Links to official or non-partisan information about legislation being considered by city, county or state governments
  • Agenda list for city and county government meetings
  • Announcements of town halls by local, county and state officials that represent a particular community
  • Dates of events by the League of Women Voters or other groups that want to educate the community about an election or legislation
Should you allow posts about how people feel about a certain candidate, office holder or legislation? These can quickly devolve into angry, insulting diatribes. Whatever you decide, you have to be clear about what your rule is, quick to respond to violations of that rule, and quick to guide rule-breakers on how to proceed.

Should religious content be allowed? Dates and times for events - regular services, special services, concerts, plays, charitable events, introductions to religious studies, etc. - are all a great idea. Debates about religion or religious communities, criticisms of religious views, etc. should probably be discouraged.


Use Tags on Content

Using keyword tags on posts will make posts easier to find. It will also help community members quickly find information they are looking for without having to scroll through a sea of messages. Tags you can use, and encourage others to use, include:
    #event
    #government
    #police
    #volunteer
    #fundraise
    #politics

Grow Your Community

"If you build it, they will come" does not apply to anything except magical baseball fields. Getting the word out about your community should include:
  • emailing your friends and colleagues directly asking them to join and encouraging them to share information (and being explicit about the kind of information you hope they will share)
  • emailing civic groups (Rotary, Lion's Club, Optimist, etc.) and asking them to join, also asking them to put a notice in their membership newsletter about the group and how to join, and encouraging them to share information (and being explicit about the kind of information you hope they will share)
  • emailing churches, temples and other religious communities and asking them to join, also asking them to put a notice in their membership newsletter about the group and how to join, and encouraging them to share information (and being explicit about the kind of information you hope they will share)
  • emailing cultural centers and neighborhood groups and inviting them to join and encouraging them to share information (and being explicit about the kind of information you hope they will share)
  • posting about your group to other online groups, as appropriate, on Facebook, Reddit, NextDoor, etc.
  • emailing each elementary school, middle school, high school and private school in your area and asking that they share information about your community with faculty and staff encouraging them to share information (PTA meetings, teacher conference days, deadlines for signing up to participate in sports, etc.)
  • emailing various departments and offices at the nearest college or university and asking that they share information about your community with faculty and staff and encouraging them to share information (and being explicit about the kind of information you hope they will share)
  • emailing the police state that serves your local area, as well as the local fire station and other local government offices (power & light, gas, garbage, water, etc.) and asking that they share information about your community with their employees and encouraging them to share information (and - yes, I'm saying it again - being explicit about the kind of information you hope they will share)
  • emailing elected officials and inviting them to join your group and to share information about their public meetings on the group
  • sharing information about the new community on your own social media accounts and encouraging others to do so
  • looking on Twitter for accounts and keywords related to your own neighborhood, town or immediate area and leverage those accordingly (use the tags yourself, Tweet people directly, reply to relevant Tweets, etc.)
  • attend a city council meeting and, at the start of the meeting, when public comment is allowed, use that time to announce your group and invite participation
  • post a flyer at the local library and on any public bulletin boards that see a lot of traffic, like the local post office or local grocery store
Once your group is up and running and at least somewhat rich in content, you can also let your local newspaper know - if you still have a local newspaper - and encourage them to do a story about your community.

It's unlikely local elected officials or city or county workers will join your community, unfortunately. Elected officials and government employees, even volunteer members of government advisory boards, committees & decision-making commissions, are regularly discouraged from interacting with anyone on an online forum. If they do join, they may observe silently and not share information, for fear of getting a response they won't know how to handle.


Screening & Adding New Members

A good way to screen out people who may not be appropriate for your community is to have three questions you require every pending community member to answer. You cannot guarantee that they are answering truthfully, but having questions sets the tone right from the start, letting you have grounds for removing a member later and being able to point directly to your community rules as justification for doing so. Examples of questions:
  • In what zip code do you live?
  • Why do you want to join this community?
  • Have you read the rules for this community?
  • Do you agree to abide by the rules of this community and do you understand you can be removed at any time if a moderator decides you have violated these rules?
  • Do you understand that everything posted to this community could become public at any time and can be shared by any community member at any time?
  • What does "online civility" mean to you?
Requests for membership in your community could be rejected if the person doesn’t answer the questions, joined Facebook only recently (if your community is on Facebook), has no obvious ties to the community, or has a Facebook page or Instagram account filled with especially volatile messages, such as tirades against various religions or ethnic groups, insults against ex spouses or ex employers, promotion of violence, etc.

You may not want to add a large number of new people to your community all at once: imagine a room with a group of people inside, getting along nicely for hours, and then suddenly twice as many people rush in. That is what adding a large number of people to an online community, all at once, can feel like. You may want to add just a few people each day, or just a few people every other day, so that new members can see how the group converses and so established members can acclimate to new members.


Removing Members

If you follow all of the aforementioned advice, then it will be relatively easy to identify who should be removed from the community, and when you remove that person, you will be able to say, clearly, exactly why.

Screen capture any post that is going to result in someone being removed from the community and keep that on file in case it is needed for later reference. When removing a member, contact that person OFF list (email or direct message), say that you are removing the person and why and include the screen capture, include a link to your rules that detail the violation this person has committed. Is there an appeal process - as in, can the person go to the other moderators and say this is unfair and let the other moderators weigh in? If so, say so. Can the person ask to come back to the community after a three month cooling off period? If so, say so, and say how that process can be undertaken. Screen capture any replies from someone being removed that are insulting or threatening. If a person threatens the safety of you, other moderators, your families, etc., or expresses any desire for violence ("Someone should just blow up your house!"), screen capture those insults, print them out and report them to police. 

Will people who are removed from your group get angry and express that anger to moderators and other members online? Yes, that will sometimes happen. Will it spill over into the face-to-face world? That could happen - you are in a neighborhood, a town, a school, a building, etc. with everyone on this community. You are neighbors. You will see each other in the "real" world.

If you have trouble dealing with angry people or need more guidance, please look online for the many free resources on how to deal with angry customers.


Community Leadership

Your community may start off with just one founder who serves as the one and only moderator and facilitator, but it will not continue to grow and will not best serve the offline community it was meant to serve if that person is the only one posting information, approving new members, removing members, choosing moderators, etc. Absolutely, there there needs to be one person who is the ultimate leader of the community, the person who decides who becomes a moderator, who gets moderator privileges, and who serves as the final arbiter of online disputes. But online community leadership must be shared for a community to stay relevant and vibrant. You want different people who dedicate time regularly to:
  • finding relevant content to post to the community
  • reviewing each person that wants to join the community 
  • reviewing each complaint from a community member about content that should be deleted
  • reading the community at given times (the morning, lunch time, afternoon, evening) to ensure posts are appropriate
You want to encourage all moderators to:
  • "like" every post in some way (if there is a "like" button, use it; otherwise, comment with a positive emoji) - this shows the community you care, like if you were in a room full of people and, after any person rises and speaks, you say, "Thank you."
  • ask for clarification on posts, as necessary (some people may use an acronym not everyone understands, for instance)
  • tag posts with keywords if the original poster has not done so
  • screen capture posts before deleting and store these in a shared space for later reference, as needed

Your Community Will Evolve

Your community will continually change. It may start off as vibrant and active, with exactly the kind of information you want people to share, and it might regularly devolve into a sea of insults, requiring your moderators to frequently step in and remind members of the community rules. Moderators may have a wonderful way of defusing arguments - and then need to leave because they move, have a baby, have a life-changing event that doesn't allow them the time to serve as moderator any more, etc. New moderators may be more rigid. Any group is going to have a tone that is influenced by the person or people that lead that group.

How do you ensure your group evolves in the right ways and stays vibrant and relevant? By:
And it's important to remember that, some day, the person who founded and championed this community and has served as the "final say" on any disputes moderators don't handle by themselves will want to leave. He or she will want to end that role of being in charge of the community. No matter how hard you try to say the community belongs to the members, that one person's personality, when withdrawn, will leave a vacuum, and one of the moderators is going to have to become that primary leader. I personally have never seen any kind of online community flourish without ONE primary leader - and I have been a part of more online communities than I can count.

I also have never seen any online community that did not, to a degree, become a reflection of that one person - and that's okay. That's not a bad thing. When there is a change in leadership, acknowledge that things will change, to a degree. The leader that is exiting needs to publicly express his or her support for the new leadership. If that founder wants to be a moderator or facilitator, rather than the primary leader, that's fine - but I suggest that person take AT LEAST a nine-month break from the community as anything except a lurker - moderating, not even posting, so that the new leadership can become established quickly and can evolve.

Be Prepared For Member Confusion

People will read information about a police event on the community and think someone from the police department posted it. A post will be made about the dates and times of the next city council meeting and people will respond with questions for the city council members, unaware that no one from city council may ever read those questions. Moderators will frequently have to remind members that the people posting very often are not people affiliated with whatever group they are posting about. Community members will think moderators and faciitators are being paid for their work.

Be prepared for community members to ask the same questions and for you to give the same answers over and over. It's frustrating but it's the reality of working with people, online or face-to-face.


Platform Choices

This isn't the first step in creating your community, though many spend an inordinate amount of time at the start deciding on which online platform to use for an online community. Online platforms come and go, so remember that what you choose now very likely may not be around in 10 years. 

Your online platform needs to be:
You also want the online community to allow you to

You may also want a platform that allows you to review messages before they are posted, so that each message can be reviewed by a moderator and approve it for public viewing or delete it altogether, depending on the rules of your community.

Facebook is a very popular platform for groups, but here are two cautions about it:
Other options for your online community:

Example of a Region-Based "Neighbors" Online Community:

In April of 2014, Ashley Roth, a resident of Forest Grove, Oregon, population 24,000+, started a moderated Facebook group for the community. She is neither an employee with a government agency nor an office-holder in the city, and she has no affiliation with any newspaper, nonprofit or civic group. Her vision for this online community was similar to those early regionally-based online community efforts back in the 1990s: to create an online discussion space, “a watering hole of sorts for the community, a bulletin board, a place to share events and get involved with volunteering and with the city in an uplifting manner. To positively impact your immediate surroundings and to encourage others to do so, leading by example with what you would like to see from everyone else." I profiled her Forest Grove Facebook Community on my blog because I think it’s a great example of the kind of online community those Silicon Valley government leaders envisioned back in the 1990s, and I think the way Ashley administers the group provides a terrific model for any municipality that might dare to buck the current fear-based approach to social media and decide to use it, instead, to engage with their constituency.

 
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