Bumped. mcjoan
A couple of weeks ago, we had a decent-sized meta storm over the banning of a fairly prominent user. In the ensuing discussion, some commenters expressed frustration at the seemingly inconsistent enforcement of site rules, which oftentimes let problems unnecessarily fester or escalate.
That's a legitimate gripe, and one I've long agonized over. The problem has always been manpower -- there are 300-600 diaries written every day, along with tens of thousands of comments. It is impossible for us to police that massive flow of information, much less try to understand the dynamics of the various flamewars usually raging on the site.
Not to mention, it's hard to uniformly enforce the rules if the rules themselves are lacking! The current rule book is not even an official document, but an FAQ maintained by outside community members without the benefit of this site's official assistance. Those volunteers update the rules in the FAQ whenever I make a proclamation on this site, but oftentimes those proclamations are little more than throwaway comments in response to a specific situation, without regard to broader ramifications of what I'm saying (or even if I'm contradicting myself with past edicts). So while the community craves a rulebook with clear delineation of unacceptable behavior, I've failed to provide. Part of that comes from my desire to let the community establish its own code of conduct, but that laissez faire approach doesn't always work best.
Therefore, we editors have consistently done a poor of job of establishing clear rules (and rationales for them), calling out bad behavior, properly warning users who break the rules, and getting rid of the repeat offenders. Thus, disruptive users tend to stick around far longer than is prudent.
On the other hand, we oftentimes face the opposite problem with GOOD users: failing to encourage the work of great but unheralded writers (and losing them from neglect), or facilitating the creation of new collaborative projects like Energize America. Much of our work with DK4 is focused on dealing with these problems, but technology can only go so far in addressing them.
So to summarize, we are in desperate need of:
- Creating clear rules
- Better communicating and enforcing those rules
- Encouraging the best of our community
To address these concerns, we decided to create a new position -- Director of Community.
For the gig, we turned to perhaps the hardest-core community participant on the site, a long-timer who has been around longer than just about anyone here, and a veteran of several community projects like the aforementioned Energize America. His love for this community is unparalleled, and he commands the respect necessary for a job that will oftentimes seem like herding cats (and literally so, in the pooty diaries).
He is UID #6, Meteor Blades, your new community overlord.
He officially begins Monday, and you'll be undoubtedly hearing more from him in regards to his new duties. I'm particularly psyched about the community building stuff. The rule creation and enforcement stuff may be a necessary evil, but I'm constantly amazed by what this community can accomplish, and the more we can do to encouraging cool and innovative activism, the more effective we can be as a movement.
Update: I'm slightly surprised that this obvious point wasn't made until comment #443 by TrueBlueMajority:
MB was already the de facto community overlord
glad kos made it official.
this is a perfect example of authority being conferred by a community long before the title is given.
That about sums it up.