A crucial aspect of community management is being able to balance both trust and control within an online community. This can significantly impact the growth, user experience, and health of your community.
Below we explore this balance and cover key strategies and points:
Defining Trust and Control
Trust: When we speak of trust within a community, we refer to the confidence that members have in the community and each other's leadership to act in the community's best interests.
This can include respect, reliability, safety and transparency.
Control: The rules set by platform managers or community managers to ensure compliance with community guidelines, maintain order, and protect the community from behaviour that is harmful are the mechanisms that are involved in control.
This can include user permissions, enforcement actions, moderation policies, and content filtering.
The Need for Control
Relevance and Quality: Having moderation in place within your community can help to ensure that the content posted remains valuable, relevant, and accurate to the community and your audience.
Security and Safety: As a community leader or manager, you should have control measures in place that help to prevent your users, members and audience from being exposed to harassment, scams and harmful content.
The Importance of Trust
Retention: If you are looking to gain member retention, you should be looking at gaining high levels of trust within your community. When the trust level is high, members and users feel a sense of belonging which in turn will lead to member retention.
Self-Regulation: Having your community members trust you as a community manager or leader can help foster a culture of self-regulation, this is where members uphold community standards and help maintain community standards without the need for moderation that could be heavy-handed.
Engagement: Ensuring that you have trust within your community can help to encourage active engagement and participation. Members of your community are more likely to collaborate, contribute and share when they feel secure.
Balancing Trust and Control
Being able to achieve the right balance between trust and control involves several strategies:
Empowerment
Feedback Loops: Mechanisms for members to provide feedback on things such as moderation and community policies should be provided for your community. This can help you as a community manager or leader adjust controls that better suit your community needs.
Member Roles: Roles and responsibilities should be assigned to trusted members of your community, this can include roles such as content curators and moderators. Having roles assigned and giving members who are trusted responsibilities can help to foster a sense of accountability and ownership.
Consistency
Regular Updates: Your community should be kept informed about any changes in control mechanisms or policies. Ensuring that you provide regular updates can help build trust and also help prevent misunderstandings among users and members.
Fair Enforcement: As a community leader or manager, you should ensure that policies and rules are applied fairly and consistently to all members, this will help to build trust within the community and also in the system used.
Transparency
Open Communication: Open channels for communication between community managers and members should be maintained at all times. Reasonings behind the rules and moderation decisions that are taken should be carefully explained to prevent confusion.
Clear Guidelines: Community rules and guidelines that are provided should not only be clear but they should also be easily accessible to all members within the community so that they are aware of what is expected of them.
Flexibility
Situational Judgement: A degree of situational judgment in moderation should be applied which includes the consideration of intent and context rather than just strictly adhering to the rules in place within the community.
In conclusion, balancing both trust and control in an online community is an ongoing and dynamic process. This kind of process requires a thoughtful approach that prioritizes fairness, engagement, adaptability, and transparency.
By managing this balance carefully, community leaders or managers can create a community that is engaged, safe and thriving.
Below we explore this balance and cover key strategies and points:
Defining Trust and Control
Trust: When we speak of trust within a community, we refer to the confidence that members have in the community and each other's leadership to act in the community's best interests.
This can include respect, reliability, safety and transparency.
Control: The rules set by platform managers or community managers to ensure compliance with community guidelines, maintain order, and protect the community from behaviour that is harmful are the mechanisms that are involved in control.
This can include user permissions, enforcement actions, moderation policies, and content filtering.
The Need for Control
Relevance and Quality: Having moderation in place within your community can help to ensure that the content posted remains valuable, relevant, and accurate to the community and your audience.
Security and Safety: As a community leader or manager, you should have control measures in place that help to prevent your users, members and audience from being exposed to harassment, scams and harmful content.
The Importance of Trust
Retention: If you are looking to gain member retention, you should be looking at gaining high levels of trust within your community. When the trust level is high, members and users feel a sense of belonging which in turn will lead to member retention.
Self-Regulation: Having your community members trust you as a community manager or leader can help foster a culture of self-regulation, this is where members uphold community standards and help maintain community standards without the need for moderation that could be heavy-handed.
Engagement: Ensuring that you have trust within your community can help to encourage active engagement and participation. Members of your community are more likely to collaborate, contribute and share when they feel secure.
Balancing Trust and Control
Being able to achieve the right balance between trust and control involves several strategies:
Empowerment
Feedback Loops: Mechanisms for members to provide feedback on things such as moderation and community policies should be provided for your community. This can help you as a community manager or leader adjust controls that better suit your community needs.
Member Roles: Roles and responsibilities should be assigned to trusted members of your community, this can include roles such as content curators and moderators. Having roles assigned and giving members who are trusted responsibilities can help to foster a sense of accountability and ownership.
Consistency
Regular Updates: Your community should be kept informed about any changes in control mechanisms or policies. Ensuring that you provide regular updates can help build trust and also help prevent misunderstandings among users and members.
Fair Enforcement: As a community leader or manager, you should ensure that policies and rules are applied fairly and consistently to all members, this will help to build trust within the community and also in the system used.
Transparency
Open Communication: Open channels for communication between community managers and members should be maintained at all times. Reasonings behind the rules and moderation decisions that are taken should be carefully explained to prevent confusion.
Clear Guidelines: Community rules and guidelines that are provided should not only be clear but they should also be easily accessible to all members within the community so that they are aware of what is expected of them.
Flexibility
Situational Judgement: A degree of situational judgment in moderation should be applied which includes the consideration of intent and context rather than just strictly adhering to the rules in place within the community.
In conclusion, balancing both trust and control in an online community is an ongoing and dynamic process. This kind of process requires a thoughtful approach that prioritizes fairness, engagement, adaptability, and transparency.
By managing this balance carefully, community leaders or managers can create a community that is engaged, safe and thriving.
