Why Human Moderation is Not Enough in a Web 2.0 World

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RebeccaNewton/20101201/6540/Why_Huma…

WISEKIDS in Wales

I’ve just returned from 2 weeks in Wales and London (with a few days in North Yorkshire) and I wanted to say a few words about Wales and the WISEKIDS/WISP Conference in Swansea and Bangor.

The conference was well organised – really impressive. Sangeet Bhullar did an outstanding job of motivating an excellent group made up of educators, online experts, and young people – who all came together to share our collective knowledge and experience about how the online world works. Most important, I think, was the positive message that shone through. The online world is part of our every day lives and to keep harping on this media fear-based message of predators behind every screen is not only untrue but just not productive. (more…)

Gaming in 1980

I just found this jpg of a game I was completely addicted to in 1979 and 1980 while “working” at Duke University. I took a 3 month post as an administrative assistant and had about 1 hour of work to do each day so naturally I spent 7 hours a day playing “Adventure.” This was an early computer game developed by Will Crowther. I was completely enamored with this game, which was text based. A far cry from today’s gaming, that’s for sure.

I’d play it still if I could get my hands on it :)

Why I left Building and Managing Communities for the Software Dev Industry

I spent 1/3 of my life in building and managing online communities and a fair amount of time in the 80s building and managing offline communities as well. If someone had predicted I’d be working for a software development company, I would have put all my AOL stock (aka lunch money) on that bet. I love working in community and feel like the luckiest person on the planet to be a professional in the field. I now feel like lightning struck twice and I have the best of both worlds – being part of teams that build strong, healthy communities and being part of a team that allows communities to remain safe, healthy, fun and strong.

For so many years, community professionals have had very little say in the actual development of their site tools. The 90s shouldn’t count I suppose, as we were all finding our way around everything that is now called “UGC” or “social networking.” Things were much more simple – we had flat chat (text on a scolling screen) and we had boards. Around 1995 Instant Messenging was going mainstream. When people misbehaved, they were banned from the ISP or they were in chat hell (they could see their text but nobody else could – I always loved that tool!). (more…)

Suicide and Online Communities – iFroggy Network

http://tinyurl.com/nc4jck

Dealing with Suicide on Your Online Community or Forums: How You Can Help and Protect Everyone.

My friend Patrick O’Keefe over at iFroggy.com (and the author of “Managing Online Forums” http://www.managingonlineforums.com) has written a really good article on dealing with suicide threats in forums or communities.

This is Child Safety Week in the US, and though the emphasis is mainly on offline safety, I think this is a great article to spotlight for the online world. The safety of young people is just as important online as it is offline. With social networking and media/tools allowing (badly behaved) children and adults to bully and harass young people, there is a greater risk of facing suicide threats (or actual suicides) in the online world.

The article is well researched and well-written, as always is the case with Patrick’s work. I particularly like the template style communication that Patrick promotes. When I was at AOL, we always used templates to communicate to the masses and they were very effective. Using templates for communicating ensures that everyone is treated equally and allows consistent communication within your community. It also = less typos, so none of us look like chubby-fingered typo-ists.

I really appreciate the work Patrick does in this field. He’s always consistent, thoughtful and informative.

Thanks Patrick :)

Rebecca

Summer 2009 Update – really brief

I’m at CrispThinking.com as Head of Safety.
I just got back from a really great week in London where I attended the CEOPs session (amazing!), FOSI sessions (round table) and ENISA Awareness Conferences (presented). Met some fabulous people. The connections have been really good during the past 2 months. More on that later.

Probably best to find me at e-mint@yahoogroups.com or watch CrispThinking.com as we’re going to start blogging soon and I’d rather blog once than twice :)
Don’t forget to follow us at Twitter (CrispThinking).
GirlsRockNC.org is gearing up for July sessions. 90 girls this year!!! It’s amazing. Be sure to check out the rockin’ show at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro/Chapel Hill July 18th, Saturday night.

Life is very good. Hope your life is good too. Stay safe and carry a big flash drive.

Subscription Models, Kids’ sites, and Human Mob Mentality: Fair or Unfair?

We launched our subscription (premium service) at Moshi Monsters nearly a week ago. This is my third launch in 15 years and like the last two, it was completely predictable. Young or old, there are always a handful of very noisy users who feel charging for a service, especially a web service, is “unfair” and creates social divides.

It’s fascinating to see how mobs work in online communities. They’re not really any different from traditional offline communities, in my experience. There are the “Unfairs” who think everything should be free and don’t understand that it costs money to run a company, web or no web. Then we have the “Fairs” who understand and appreciate the costs involved and like to support the company or product as well as feel like they’re part of the adopters/exclusive membership group. And then we have the “neutrals” who are usually the majority – waiting to be led by the most convincing argument from either side. (more…)