Engagement & Discussion
Stimulating, initiating, and sustaining discussions. - also involves soliciting opinions from members and highlighting discussions you want members to participate in.
There are several types of discussion:
Convey information. People interact to exchange information with one another. This is the rarest of the three interactions and often misidentified as the most valuable by organizations aiming to develop a community.
Bond with others. This refers to all conversations that lack purpose, but increase the sense of kinship between members, like chitchat between friends that leads to great familiarity.
Status-jockeying. Similar to bonding, people interact to defend or increase their status. This is common among existing members, and isn’t necessarily bad; having an established pecking order is good for community structure.
Initiating Discussion
Examples of possible bonding/status discussions:
What is your favorite ________? - Ask members to list their favorite experiences, objects, or people concerning the community’s topic.
What is your average day like? People love to talk about themselves.
What do you think about ________? - People are keen to express their views on relevant issues; however, they are less likely to ask for the opinions of others.
What advice would you give to someone who ________? - This is a status-jockeying discussion.
Can anyone recommend ________? - members compete to provide their best recommendations.
What is the worst thing that has ever happened to you while z ? - Discussions that ask members to recount a memorable personal experience are excellent for bonding.
Can anyone fix ________? - Present a difficult problem and ask members to submit their solutions.
What is the best/worst ________?
Who do you most admire ________? - These popular discussions invite members to identify the individuals within the community’s sector whom they most admire.
Is (x) really better than (y)? - Identify a controversial issue and use it to spark discussion in the community. This should be a discussion members will have a split opinion on.
If you weren’t ________would you ________? - Create a hypothetical situation
Who/What are your top five ________?
How would you handle (topical issue)?
What ________do you use?
Does anyone know how to ?
Has anyone tried ________? - Both a bonding and status-jockeying discussion.
Is ________right about ________? - Take someone’s stance on a topical issue and throw it open to comment by the entire community.
Is it ever ok to ? - Another type of hypothetical question, asking members about ethics will stimulate a high level of debate and self-disclosure.
What should every newcomer know about ________? - It allows members to provide feedback directly to newcomers looking for quality information.
Share your pictures/top tips here.
Steering Community Topics/Focus
The moderator has the power to spotlight discussions that s/he believes should have greater prominence over the discussions.
Bumping. to reinitiate activity in a discussion that has dropped down the list of topics, by adding a comment to the discussion, often with the word ‘bump’ in the post.
Locking. prevent discussions from spiralling into personal conflicts, to end discussion on an issue that is causing difficulty to the community or redirect the community’s attention to other matters.
Sticky threads. give certain threads greater prominence.
Deletion. It is far more preferable for the member to edit or remove the post themselves.
Moving. move discussions from one section of the community to another. The power to create new forum categories.
Soliciting contributions from other members.
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