People Connection Blog

Boards Migration - All Clear

Erin Bush — 2008-02-11T16:12:00 00:00

Filed under: AOL Help, Other Stuff, Community Info, Marvelous Mob, Community Management

Hello Boards Users. We are finished with our database migration. Access to all your favorites and preferences should be readily accessible now.

Thank you for your patience!
Happy Posting!

~Erin

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As They Say In Community, It's Never Really Goodbye...

Nancie Meng — 2008-02-08T11:47:00 00:00

Filed under: Off Topic, Status Updates, AIM Buddy Blog, Community Info, Marvelous Mob

After nine years and three months, today is my last day at AOL. It's been a wild ride, lots of fun, and a tremendous learning experience. Besides working with such great folks, where else could one have the opportunity to run such a large community operation and get to know some of the most interesting, savvy, and committed community members in the world? I will miss you, more than you know.

But... other opportunities, both personal and professional have been calling and the time is right for me to move on.

My AOL e-mail box will not work after today, so if you want to stay in touch, feel free to write to NYMeng@aol.com. You can also keep track of my daily activities by reading Hummingbird Mind.

Before you ask what I'll do with myself, I have some plans. Here's just a short list:

* Sleep
* Exercise
* Read
* Play with my new granddaughter
* Fish with my father
* Walk the beach
* Focus on the youth oriented non profit I started last year with some other parents
* Take many road trips
* Complete a book I've been writing

That's just a start. I plan to take off at least a month before starting some consulting work I've been offered.

I'll also still visit AOL communities, so if you see me online, feel free to ping me.

It's not goodbye, it's so long and see you soon.

-Nancie

P.S. Be good!

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MESH Team Update: Tools, Standards, Training & Communication

Nancie Meng — 2007-10-30T18:32:00 00:00

Filed under: User Experiences, Social Media, Community Info, Marvelous Mob, Community Management

My last entry promised a series of posts about items on the MESH Team's to-do-list. Let me climb over the 800 pound elephant sitting between us to say that layoffs and reorganizations have eaten up a lot of everyone's time for the last two weeks. To add to the headaches, there's been some mutating virus (of the physical kind) that slowed many of us down. But, we've rallied and we're back. So, let me give you an update on the items that lead our task list:

Smarter moderation and enforcement tools: Two things have occurred to help speed the way to completion of this task. First, our team now "owns" the support and fix functions as well as the development of these tools. This means that we control prioritization of both feature development and support rather than having to vie with other teams for time and resources.

Second, all the MESH Team members sit near one another now, so the people responsible for policy, process and technology can toss requests, suggestions and feedback back and forth all day long. Prairie dogging and trips to the "war room" have increased exponentially. In fact, I think I heard them yell "war room" and clomp over there just a few minutes ago.

Easy to understand community standards: Once everyone has signed off on these, you will be the first to know when they'll be rolling out. There won't be any surprises except that you'll actually understand the standards if you couldn't before. And, those who did understand them (but claimed not to in attempts to worm their way out of a legitimate, well documented block) will have no excuses.

I'm tempted to call the new standards "The Seven Deadly Sins." We're aiming to have these done this week. Short of fires or floods, it should be so. In the meantime, remember that community standards are all based on Terms of Service and we all know those by heart.

New training for our teams: Though we review and train our teams on a weekly basis around here, we have done a thorough review of our curriculum. This resulted in expanded definitions and better processes related to the review and removal of user-generated content. Most of the changes were driven by a focus on our users' experience. First, we referred to all the mail we receive from users via our various feedback boxes. Then, each time we made a decision, we asked ourselves: "Can we explain this to our users? If not then why are we doing it this way?"

Clear channels for user feedback and escalations: Okay, this is a big one, especially since there are fewer of us and we want to be able to respond as quickly and effectively as possible. We've discovered that folks write to a multitude of mailboxes, some of which are appropriate and some of which don't even exist. I think many people just slap TOS in front of any old screen name and think it will go to the right place. Others write to 10 different TOS e-mail boxes each time they raise a concern. This is neither efficient nor effective if we want faster turn around times.

We want your e-mail to get to the right person and for that person to handle it quickly. When the community standards roll out we'll include the correct mailboxes to write to. We'll post that information here and in other areas, too, to get the word out. In the meantime, if you send things to AOLPeopleMGR@aol.com your mail will definitely get to the right person.

Frequent and ongoing communication with users: We will be using this blog as a way to keep you up-to-date on universal community related issues. We do not have the bandwidth to hit all message boards to ensure that folks get the information they need. Though we will still roam the boards and respond if we run across a question, we may miss something. Having this place to centralize messaging provides for better consistency. Everyone reads the same message and there's an opportunity for clarification if people need it. So feel free to ask questions of us here.

Developing better communication channels and closer relationships with product owners: This is something we work on all the time and we will continue to do so. As people step in to fill the gaps left by the actions of two weeks ago, our team will be reaching out to say hello and to bring them up to speed on what our customers are looking for in the way of features.

That's it for today. Stay tuned for more.

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How We Spent Most of the Summer

Nancie Meng — 2007-10-12T16:30:00 00:00

Filed under: User Experiences, Featured Items, Marvelous Mob, Community Management, Online Safety

I knew I hadn't posted an entry here for a while; but, I completely lost track of how long it had been (shame on me). In fairness, the team and I have been pretty busy.

In August, two days after my last entry, other members of my team and I headed on a whirlwind tour to meet with two of the groups who support our moderation and enforcement activities. For those of you who do not know, we have a 24/7 operation supported by people in the Philippines, India and all over the United States. In September, the folks located in the U.S. came to Dulles. All these meetings were a way to introduce the new Moderation, Enforcement, Safety and Help (MESH) team, what we do, how we do it, and to tap the wisdom of the crowd about ways to do what we do better.

It would be hard for anyone who read, heard or watched the news during the past year to remain unaware that AOL's business strategy changed. One thing that has not changed, despite some user's comments to the contrary, is the importance of Community. It has always been and will remain core to AOL's business. Our Communities are an important part of the new strategy. Toward that end, the MESH team has three main areas of responsibility:

* Member Experience in our community spaces

* Enforcement of Terms of Service, Community Guidelines, Product Guidelines and Community Standards

* Communication with our community members about all of the above

While carrying on the day-to-day operations, we've spent considerable time this past quarter analyzing what we do and how we do it in the context of changing business strategies. Mostly, we've focused on how to make improvements. Your e-mail, instant messages, message board posts and comments in our blogs made you part of the process, too.

Curious about the first items on our to-do list? Check out just some of the things we identified and have begun to work on already:

* Smarter moderation and enforcement tools to help us move more quickly through your "Report This" or "Notify AOL" notifications. These will have more efficient features for cross-referencing and actioning "bad players" on our network

* Easy to understand community standards that lay out our policies related to community violations and the related penalties

* New training for our teams

* Clear channels for user feedback and escalations

* Frequent and ongoing communication with users

* Developing closer communication channels and relationships with product owners to whom we raise your requests for features.

This entry is the first in a series (and I hope, an ongoing discussion with you all) about all of this.

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Some Thoughts on Web 2.0 Security

Joseph Manna — 2007-10-10T17:19:00 00:00

Filed under: Privacy and Security, Other Stuff, Community Info, Marvelous Mob, Online Safety

Earlier today, I attended a Web 2.0 Security conference sponsored by AOL Developer Network, which focused on the array of threats and solutions to hacking in today's age of Web 2.0. Naturally, I'm very interested in Information Technology (IT) Security so I decided to learn more about it.

The slides opened up with an overview of the history of security on the Internet, as well as statistics on the behavior of the "underground" deviating from traditional Worms and Viruses towards Botnets, Rootkits, and Professional Phishing.

Our IT Security folks also informed the audience that they thwart attacks against our servers every minute by leveraging different technologies to prevent security risks to AOL (and Time Warner, collectively).

Then came the geeky stuff like preventing Cross Site Scripting (XSS) and SQL Injection attacks against a Web server. One of the proven methods discussed was how to secure Web servers from attacks with a free Web application firewall known as ModSecurity. This can be an invaluable component for system administrators to analyze and prevent common attacks against Web servers and generate informative log files for later review. It's free and works with Apache.

On a more relevant note for you, a Web user, it's important to understand that many security exploits aren't technical, but prey on human error. For instance, take Phishing (when scammers try to trick private info out of you): We tend to trust something if it looks official (such as e-mails that carry a company's logo), and may neglect to check the URL or look for other signs that an e-mail is a fake (such as e-mail headers).

You don't need to be a security expert to protect yourself -- there are plenty of easy ways to spot risky e-mails. We have a tips on how to spot phishing scams, so does Microsoft, eBay and PayPal. You can put your phish-finding skills to the test with this fun phishing game [link via PC World].

Besides reporting spam on phishy e-mails, you can volunteer that information to Phishtank [link via Security Fix] to report phishing Web sites. There you can also track and verify them and check out some interesting phishing statistics collected from users. Yesterday, they published a report on ISPs that host the most phishing sites: Right now, SBC, Comcast and Road Runner are the top three.

Maybe now is a good time to plug the free McAfee VirusScan Plus provided by AOL which includes a firewall and McAfee SiteAdvisor as helpful tool to detect phishing sites as you browse the Web.

Other tips include (for all users and system administrators) keeping your computer updated with updates from the vendor. This includes Windows Updates, Mac OS updates, as well as software updates (like AOL 9.0 VR or AIM 6.5) so many vulnerabilities are closed from online criminals.

These are my thoughts on security in a Web 2.0 world. What questions or tips do you have on staying safe and secure on today's Web? Post your thoughts in the comments below.

~ Joseph

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Professional Phishing

Nancie Meng — 2007-08-11T21:03:00 00:00

Filed under: Marvelous Mob, Online Safety

Symantec's Security Response Weblog published A Brief History of Phishing: Part I on Friday. The first article of the two part series contains interesting info about this automated method used by the unscrupulous to trick us into divulging personal and private information. This data can be used to steal our money and identities.

Phishing has been around since the mid-1990s and, early on, AOL members were part of one of the biggest pools of victims targeted by rather unsophisticated phishers. The authors point out that "AOL took the phishing problem seriously and... implemented numerous effective measures." They also state that the numbers of phishing expedition e-mails AOL account holders receive today are "relatively small."

I know that though I still receive requests to update my billing information from time to time on both my paid personal and employee AOL accounts, the number of attempts have diminished.

The authors refer to phishing today as an emerging technology organized by business-oriented professionals. They posit that those of us familiar with the early forms of phishing may have been lulled into a false sense of security, which new methods exploit.

Check out the articles -- the second part will be published on Monday. While the first article baited the hook with tasty tidbits about how phishing has evolved over the years into big business, I'm hoping Part II will contain information about how we can avoid getting reeled in by professional phishers.

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Google News Comments: Everything Old Is New Again

Nancie Meng — 2007-08-09T15:00:00 00:00

Filed under: User Experiences, Marvelous Mob

Via mediabistro.com, washingtonpost.com and other sites, we see that Google plans to roll out a new comments feature on its main page news articles. It allows those covered in a story to submit comments, which will be featured next to the article.

The Google News Blog states, "We're excited about the possibilities of this new feature and we hope you are too, so if you've been covered in a news article please send us your comments and we'll work with you to post it on Google News."

At first glance this seemed like a pretty neat use of an in-line comments feature for an online news community.

Disclaimer: In-line comments are not my first choice of community experience for News Communities, though I do see them as an additional feature that can be used. More on that in another entry.

Though commenting can be a community offering, Google is not providing one, because users can't participate in the conversation. They can only read what Google publishes and what the parties concerned say about what was published... that is, if we see all the comments. Still, allowing the subjects of stories to comment does add value to the user experience.

A closer look reveals this to be an online version of 'Letters to the Editor' with which we're familiar in print journalism and other media. People mentioned or affected by a story can write to the outlet to counter or commend the article and the editors decide what gets published. We all know a lot of Letters to the Editor never hit the page.

I wondered whether Google was going to set guidelines around submissions, so I followed the Send Us Your Comments link and read through the FAQs. There one sees that the News team at Google provides the following statement:

"We may not be able to respond to or publish all comments submitted but we'll try to be in touch with you and we may include your comments in future stories in which you are mentioned."

Kind of broad... am I the only one wondering what guidelines will be used to determine what comments make it through? Stating how they plan to choose which comments get published and some examples of which ones won't, would enhance the user experience. It would also help those submitting comments be more successful in having their's published.

What do you think about Google's new feature? Should all online News outlets allow subjects to submit their side of the story? Should users be able to comment, too? What do you think of comments in general?

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A Little Visibility Into Transparency

Nancie Meng — 2007-08-07T18:41:00 00:00

Filed under: Off Topic, Blogging, Marvelous Mob

Thanks to Will Kern for his 15Meanings blog post on Being Transparent. As corporate bloggers, my team talks about the ups and downs of transparency a lot. As Will states, "It seems easy enough, but is is harder than one might think." (In the spirit of transparency and full disclosure, Will is a colleague and Senior Product Manager here at AOL).

I wager that most corporate bloggers believe that the benefits for the company and the consumer outweigh the problems in most instances. But, the downside is worth thinking about.

Like Will, my team and I will answer any questions as long as we've got the information and are "in a position to give it to you." Please note the key phrases here:

* If we have the information
* If we are in a position to give it to you

On topics over which we have input or control, we're comfortable with being as transparent as possible. And, thankfully, many individuals and groups outside of MESH at AOL keep us informed by reaching out. That enables us to share upcoming changes, new features or other news you all may find useful or even essential.

But, my team's willingness to be up-front and serve as "messaging central" for other groups can make it hard for our customers to know when we're talking just about our areas of responsibilities and when we're just the messengers for others. You know what they do with messengers, right?

Here are some of the realities we work under (and I don't think we're unique):

* Dependencies: Remember the people I mentioned who keep us in the loop? A lot of others don't. People are very busy and in a huge organization it can be hard to know who to involve and when. That's a challenge we can continue to work on.
* Surprises: Sometimes we are as surprised as our customers are. How many times has one of our community users written to say, "What happened to [insert feature here]?" or "Did you know that [insert product here] isn't working?" or "When did they roll out the new version of [insert product here]?" only to have one of us respond, "I don't know. We'll look into it."
* Proprietary Info: Sometimes there are business reasons why we do not or cannot share something.

In the situations I've outline, individuals on my team are often accused of lying, stupidity or not caring. We roll with the punches in those situations because it comes with the territory of customer service. And, we know, especially in the area of community, that people are passionate about their interests and their friends online.

A challenge for us and others is to take employees whose main jobs do not involve customer interaction or messaging and convince them of the value of talking with users early and often. There is always the issue of time. There is also the concern about the potential for negative customer feedback.

This is a big question we'll revisit time and again. For now, what would you identify as the biggest obstacle to corporate transparency?

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I Suck At Social Networking (and Other Social Networker's Thoughts)

Nancie Meng — 2007-08-06T13:28:00 00:00

Filed under: User Experiences, Social Media, Social Networking, Featured Items, Marvelous Mob, Profile Tips

A slew of "join my network" requests hit my e-mail box this week. It prompted a personal OMIGAWD moment, when I realized that people had actually viewed my many online profiles. I had to ask myself: What do my AIMPage, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn pages say about me?"

Since my work involves online communities and social networks, I joined all of the major social networking sites to learn about them. Because playing in my social networks is a bit like taking a bus driver's holiday, my profiles and networks suffer from deferred maintenance.

Social networks require that their members create, maintain, and facilitate connections. For those too busy or introverted like me, social networking can be... well... work. Hard work.

Still, whether we like it or not, our public profiles reflect on our professional lives. I decided to take an "objective" look at my own and evaluate my online self. It wasn't pretty. I found consistent themes that ran through my social networking attempts -- a virtual list of mortal sins for people who run communities:

* Lack of quality content
* Absence of engaging widgets
* A failure to respond to comments or requests in a timely manner
* A general lack of attention to my online presence

The worst part, for me, is that others (even those who know me well) might get the wrong impressions about my professionalism or dedication to my 'craft.' The state of my LinkedIn profile makes it look as though I don't care about my resume, professional connections or future employment potential.

* Note to everyone who has asked for a job recommendation: I'm so sorry, but I just saw your requests. Yes, even the one from last January. Recommendations coming soon. If you're in a hurry, please Instant Message or e-mail me.

* Note to anyone who would like to give me a job recommendation: Please feel free. I'll never ask because I'm afraid I'll make you uncomfortable and/or that you will say no.

* Note to anyone who has not been asked to join my network: I really want you to join, but I won't ask because I'm just afraid you won't; but, feel free to ask me to join yours. I join everything.

This exercise led me to think: if I didn't work here, would I have joined any of these networks? How should we balance work-related social networking with personal social networks? Can one be a social networking professional without participating fully in virtual networks? How do the most effective among us handle all this? Am I the only one who worries about this? Am I so busy answering all these questions I can't find time to participate. Should my efforts to downsize my off-line life extend to my online life was well?

What condition are your online profiles in? Take a look and let me know. Are you happy with them?

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Do As I Say, Not As I Did

Nancie Meng — 2007-07-31T10:25:00 00:00

Filed under: Off Topic, Marvelous Mob, Online Safety

Over the weekend, a friend sent the following meme to me. It seemed like a nice and lazy way to spend a Sunday morning, so I spent some time filling it out and then e-mailed it on. It occurred to me that blog memes are a great topic, so I decided to post it here as an example, with my answers. When I completed it, the Safety Muse spoke to me:

You are not modeling safe online behavior.

Damn. Caught again. I reviewed my answers and sure enough, though I might be comfortable with some of the things I wrote, I had not been very wise in the context of safe sharing. And though I'm willing to take the hits for what I reveal about myself, I do not want you to reveal information that you shouldn't. I edited my answers using the following strategy:

* Answer only the question asked -- don't elaborate. The devil loves the details.
* When supplying details make sure they don't matter or reveal too much about you or others you know.
* Don't use last names.
* Don't use cities, states or countries.
* Don't use the names, ages or other identifying info about your children or anyone else's.

To the safety muse: How's that?

Did my strategy suck the fun out of this exercise? I don't think so, but you tell me. Here's more than you'll ever want to know about me:

[Click Read More to read the meme and my answers.]

1. Were you named after someone?
Yes, my great grandmother. My free-spirited mother, felt pressured by her in-laws to name me Nancy, so she changed the spelling to Nancie. She wanted to name me Candace Ellen. Can you see me as Candy?

2. When was the last time you cried?
I'm not typically a crier. But, since my mother's death over a year ago, I find myself close to tears when random thoughts of her occur. Doesn't matter where or when.

3. Do you like your handwriting?
Yes

4. What is your favorite lunch meat?
Roast turkey

5. Do you have kids?
Yes

6. If you were another person would you be friends with you?
Maybe... maybe not. Depends on the day of the week. I'm often annoyed by me.

7. Do you use sarcasm a lot?
Yes

8. Do you still have your tonsils?
No

9. Would you bungee jump?
Absolutely, unequivocally, NO.

10. What is your favorite cereal?
Bare -Naked granola

11. Do you untie your shoes before taking them off?
Not usually.

12. Do you think you are strong?
Yes.

13. What is your favorite ice cream?
Butter Pecan and Swiss Almond are neck-to-neck.

14. What is the first thing you notice about people?
Offline: their body language (often the sub-text). Online: their words -- only the text. I try not to read too much subtext online until I know someone well).

15. Red or pink?
Pink

16. What is the least favorite thing about yourself?
My distractability exhausts me.

17. Who do you miss the most?
My mom

18. Do you want everyone to send this back to you?
Sure, but only if they're careful and feel comfortable.

19. What color pants and shoes are you wearing?
Black sweats, no shoes of course

20. What was the last thing you ate?
Six almonds and a cup of tea

21. What are you listening to right now?
The "Food Network" is on in the background.

22. If you were a crayon what color would you be?
Midnight Blue

23. Favorite smells?
A baby right after a bath, gardenias and brewing Coffee

24. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone?
My eldest daughter

25. Do you like the person who sent this do you?
I 'heart' her, she's amazing and she knows who she is, but you don't.

26. Favorite sports to watch?
Major League Baseball

27. Hair color?
Well... there is increasingly more silver appearing, but I cover it with its original color and some highlights.

28. EYE COLOR?
Green

29. Do you wear contacts?
Do you think I should?

30. Favorite foods?
I don't have any favorites, I love them all. That's my problem.

31. Scary movies or happy endings?
Happy endings

32. Last movie you watched?
"Breach" with Ryan Phillipe and Chris Cooper

33. What color shirt are you wearing?
Gray T-Shirt

34. Summer or winter?
Winter

35. Hugs or kisses?
Hugs

36. Favorite dessert?
Strawberry shortcake with real shortcake like my grandmother used to make.

37. Most likely to respond?
I want to be surprised.

38. Least likely to respond?
I want to be surprised.

39. What book are you reading now?
"Nine Months in August" by Adriana Bourgoin

40. What is a on your mouse pad?
It's generic, solid black.

41. What did you watch on television last night?
48-Hours on CBS

42. Favorite sound?
Handel's 'Water Music'

43. Rolling stones or beatles?
Beatles

44. What is the farthest you have been from home?
The Far East

45. Do you have a special talent?
I make great salads.

46. Where were you born?
New York

47. Whose answers are you looking forward to getting back?
I want to hear from anyone who wants to answer.

Have fun, but be careful out there.

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Keep Private Discussions Private

Nancie Meng — 2007-07-27T14:40:00 00:00

Filed under: User Experiences, Marvelous Mob

It shouldn't, but it always surprises me when some of the negative online behaviors we encounter here on a day-to-day basis happen in one of the communities where I participate.

For instance, today in my favorite online writers forum, one of our regulars reported that she had stopped posting in her usual manner after someone in our group forwarded an e-mail to her, wherein one of us had said unkind things about her. To me, this is the cyber-equivalent of "Guess what Sally said about you."

I'll be the first to admit that I have talked behind people's backs in e-mail. When people have been together as long as we have (15-plus years) there are bound to be days when some of us get cranky. And, in fact, I don't have a problem with taking an issue out of the public space and into private e-mail, even if I'm the subject. I should expect that if I piss people off they're going to talk about it. This sort of back-channel or off-line discussion can be a good thing. Here's why:

First, shooting off a private note to other friends allows them to set you straight. Often they provide perspective you might not have had or info that sheds a different light on what you experienced. Sometimes they agree with you and that's all it takes for you to let go of the conflict.

Second, when private conversations like this take place outside of the larger community then the rest of the group doesn't have to witness unpleasantness, feel as though they should take sides, or get angry that they can't discuss the topics they came to discuss. This is why, in situations like this, I urge our community members to "take it outside."

To me, the bigger sin occurs when someone in an e-mail discussion forwards the mail to someone who is not. Or when they share the correspondence with the person being discussed. The leak breaks the trust of those on the e-mail list, hurts the person being discussed, and foments disruption among the participants in the community-at-large.

Maybe, in addition to the "Do you know who sent this?" message we see before opening e-mail, there should be a "Do you know where this e-mail will wind up?" message that appears before we click 'send.'

I'd really be interested in hearing your thoughts on this.

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If I Don't Get Caught Have I Broken the Law?

Nancie Meng — 2007-07-25T16:31:00 00:00

Filed under: User Experiences, Marvelous Mob, Community Management

We receive a lot of e-mail and Instant Messages that contain the same or similar questions each day. I thought that broadcasting the answers here might be helpful and encourage discussion or suggestions. If readers like Community Q&A, I'll make it a regular feature. Feel free to post other questions here, too, since it is a great method for encouraging dialog about these issues.

Q. "This is a member-managed board. We've promised not to report one another, so why are you hiding posts and 'TOSing' us?"

A. Anyone using our network has agreed to abide by the Terms of Service (TOS). There are no TOS-free zones on AOL or AIM. Just because a board is member-managed doesn't mean that TOS or Community Standards do not apply. Member-managed means that we do not proactively moderate an area (as we do in AOL-managed boards). So, no matter where you are on our network, we expect you to:

* Understand the Terms of Service and the community standards for that area

* Abide by the rules and manage your own behavior

* Use the empowerment tools we provide (like filters) to control your experience

* Notify us if you feel standards or TOS have been violated (see methods below)

Member-managed does not mean that you can violate the rules just because people agree that they won't report one another.

[Click Read More for more Community Q&A.]

Q. "I just got TOSed for a post I made a week ago. That's not fair."

A. There is no statute of limitations on TOS. We will take content down that violates TOS once we know it is there.

Q. "You just gave me a TOS violation. I see all kinds of other people doing the same thing I did. Why don't you give them a TOS violation?"

A. Each of us is responsible for our own behavior. Just because I get caught and someone gets away with something, doesn't mean I shouldn't be held accountable. Many of you are tired of my speeding analogy; but here it is again

Joe leaves the office tonight and speeds home at the rate of 90 miles an hour without getting caught. I do the same thing, but being the police magnet I am, I get caught. Is it fair? Perhaps not. But, I still broke the law and will be held accountable.

If you see others violating TOS then let us know; but, bad behavior by others is no excuse for our own.

Q. "Why do you allow this garbage to be posted?"

A. We do not and cannot (on principle and for legal reasons) preview all user-generated content before it 'goes live' on the service. We cannot prevent people from behaving badly. All we can do is try to stop the behavior once we are aware of it and remove content that violates the community standards or Terms of Service once we see it.

We want to partner with you to make certain that our community areas are enjoyable and safe, so use the Notify AOL or Report This functions.

In the case of egregious behavior that should not wait 48 hours for a response (child endangerment, child pornography or illegal activity), write to AOLPeopleMGR@aol.com or contact one of us via e-mail or IM. My AIM screen name is nanciymeng and my e-mail address is Nancie.Meng@corp.aol.com.

Q. "I reported this and nothing has been done. Why aren't you people taking this stuff down?"

A. A few reasons exist for why user-generated content you report to us might not be removed right away or at all. We receive tens of thousands of notifications a day. We strive to remove bad content within 48 hours (usually we take things down within hours), but the time it takes us to review notifications can be affected by several things including:

* Level of seriousness. User behavior or content that falls within the "big three" (child endangerment, child pornography, and illegal activity) takes precedence over all other offenses.

* Multiple reports from the same person about the same content can bog the system down. Try to keep the 48 hour turn-around-time in mind. If something you reported has not been taken down after 48 hours then, by all means, contact us. Remember, too, that when you use a notify button or link and write to multiple screen names then many people focus on one piece of content. This slows down our ability to plow through all the other reports we receive.

* 'Frivolous reports' or reports of activities that do not violate guidelines. The vast majority of notifications we receive each day report behavior or content that do not violate community standards or Terms of Service. In these cases, no action is taken. If you have questions about something you've reported, refer to community standards and Terms of Service and then contact us if you still have questions.

* Something is broken. We know this can happen. A mailbox fills up, human beings (fallible as they are) don't read a report correctly, or some technical glitch results in a report not getting read. Just reach out to us to let us know.

We've built a new organization and have plans for new technologies and systems that should speed response time and increase efficiencies. You can help us by understanding the standards and knowing how to use the notification system effectively.

Q. "I got blocked from the message boards because some people don't like me so they report all my posts. I don't think it's fair that I get TOSed because they don't like me."

A. We can't make them like you if they don't; but, rest assured that we only action behavior and remove content that actually violates standards or Terms of Service. So the best strategy is to know the rules and abide by them. Then they have nothing to report. Those who abuse the notification process put themselves in a position of being blocked.

Got questions? Comments? Suggestions? Comment here. And, I'd love to hear from other community managers, too. Does any of this sound familiar? Do you handle things differently?

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Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Nancie Meng — 2007-07-19T18:03:00 00:00

Filed under: User Experiences, Marvelous Mob, Community Management, Online Safety

Some of you noticed the new sighature lines that Joe M (not to be confused with Joe L) and I have been sporting in our e-mail and message board posts. This prompted questions.

Where's COMET? What's MESH? Well, here are the answers:

The Community Operations, Management & Experience Team (COMET) has evolved into the Moderation, Enforcement, Safety & Help team (MESH). We have a new home inside the Safety & Engagement group. And, we have new additions, too. The team formally known as CAT (Community Action Team) is part of our group now.

We've worked so closely with the CAT people for so long, it just made sense to finally align the moderation and enforcement teams so that we could leverage processes, experience, expertise, technologies and information. The COMET-CAT Mashup puts everyone on the same page where community moderation, enforcement, safety and help are concerned. This will enable us provide better experiences for everyone. Stay tuned for entries about what we're doing and why.

You had other questions, too. For instance:

Where is the COMET blog? Why a Social Media Blog? Where will we get answers to our questions about community features?

The COMET blog, or Community Info Blog has a new look and URL, but Joe is still here to answer your question or to track down the people who can. That leads us to the answer for why we started the Social Media Blog.

Think of the Social Media Blog as an aggregator of blogs related to AOL products and features (or a interactive table of contents for AOL and AIM blogs). Here you'll be able to mingle directly with product developers and managers. You'll see the list of contributors grow day by day. In the meantime, we're still here to answer questions and provide support.

If you subscribe to the Social Media Blog, you will receive the updates from all of those who blog here, so you won't miss anything.

Joe Loong wrote Oh, Look -- Yet Another Social Media Blog and About This Social Media Mess as introductions. Then each of the leads wrote one to explain their individual blogs. Check these out:

If you want to read my intro again, it's First Post Is the Deepest.

The whole point of this is foster a direct relationships with you and give you a way to interact directly with us to ask questions, make comments and present ideas, which should encourage a great deal of "socializing" around our communities.

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Wired Hospitals and Sick Rooms

Nancie Meng — 2007-07-18T19:07:00 00:00

Filed under: Off Topic, Marvelous Mob

Monday evening, my 19-year-old daughter logged onto the Web moments after they wheeled her up from recovery after her mandibular osteotomy and connected her to all the tubes in her hospital room.

First, she signed on to AOL.com to check e-mail. Then she logged on to MySpace and Facebook. No, she didn't bring her laptop. The room was equipped with a wireless keyboard and full Internet access. Her father and I watched in amazement, but my eyesight wasn't good enough to peek at her MySpace page.

"Hospitals have sure changed," her father muttered, shaking his head. I think it's great. The child can't talk for at least a week as her mouth is wired shut, so the phone is out. She can keep up with her life without missing a beat.

We brought her home yesterday, and this afternoon I watched teenage social networking up close. Two of her friends dropped by with the obligatory flowers, balloons and lots of sympathy. They watched as I asked if she needed anything and waited as she wrote out her response. I left them alone and then tried to finish my blog entry. Within two minutes, Jeremy came out and said that my daughter wanted to tell me something.

"What do you need, Sweetie?" I asked. She began typing and a voice emanated from her laptop.

"I wanted to thank you and may I have some ginger ale?" the voice said. She smiled as much as she could through her jaw bra.

Let's face it. Kids don't have the patience to wait for the patient to write out all her responses. So, in this case, they just took matters in their own hands and found some assistive technology right on her laptop's control panel under Sounds, Speech and Audio Devices. Who knew?

You have to be impressed. They hooked her up with some text to voice software. After all, she can type like the dickens... almost as fast as she can talk. This will come in handy. She can answer the phone now, too, which is a help, even if it's just to say:

"I'm sorry. I can't help. Whom may I say is calling?"

or

"Sure. I will buzz you in."

Last I heard they were Googling celebrity voices she could swap in and out. I wonder if George Clooney is available.

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Save the Children

Nancie Meng — 2007-07-17T10:52:00 00:00

Filed under: User Experiences, Featured Items, Marvelous Mob, Online Safety

In the last few days, I learned of several cases where the AOL/AIM Community Moderation, Enforcement, Safety & Help (MESH) team assisted law enforcement in the arrests of child pornographers in different parts of the country. Though we do have some "magical methods" for finding those on our network who endanger children (well, the methods are magic to me -- it's stuff the Operational Security group, or OpSec, does), it is often our users who click the "Notify AOL" and "Report This" buttons to sound the alarm. So, when we tell our community members that we partner with them to provide the best and safest online experiences, we mean it.

Like other large community providers, scaling to offer safe and enjoyable experiences to our users is an issue. Unlike most of our competitors, we do moderate some of our communities in a proactive way; however, most of the moderation we do is reactive -- based on the reports our users send us. And, they send us hundreds of thousands of notifications a month. This means we must perform our own version of triage, dealing with the most serious reports first. The big three are:

* Child Pornography
* Child Endangerment
* Illegal Activities

We take a lot of heat when our community members don't feel we've reacted quickly enough to quell Mean Girls-type spats or to rein in the trolls. We understand because the quality of their experiences is important to us. Users should take advantage of the features we provide, like filtering. Remember, just ignoring the annoying can be quite effective.

In the meantime, congratulations goes to our community members for their vigilance where our children are concerned. We couldn't do it without you.

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Whole Foods' John Mackey Reminds Us Why Sock Puppetry Is Bad

Joe Loong — 2007-07-12T18:23:00 00:00

Filed under: User Experiences, Busted, Blogging, Social Media Mess, Marvelous Mob

Sock puppetry (posting under an alternate identity to give yourself supporters) is a generally despicable practice when it comes to your average forum or blog drama. But it's an especially bad idea if you represent anyone other than yourself (say, as a corporate blogger, marketer, political operative, etc.)

This is because:

1. You'll get caught.
2. When you do, you'll look like a complete and utter egomaniac toolbag when people see the complimentary things you've said about yourself.

Case in point -- the CEO of Whole Foods is John Mackey. Mr. Mackey has a CEO blog, and on the face of it, it looks pretty good. It reads like Mr. Mackey writes it himself; he's expressing opinions, he's responding to readers. It's a good, authentic, hands-on CEO blog. (See items 3 and 4 where he talks about people's responses to a CEO blogging. Barring any regulatory considerations as the head of a publicly-traded company, why shouldn't he be allowed to have opinions?)

However, according to news reports, Mr. Mackey's behavior over the past 7 years on a Yahoo Finance message board [the WSJ broke the story yesterday] seems to be a different story, where he posted under a pseudonym, denied who he was, and said retroactively cringe-worthy stuff about himself like:

"I like Mackey's haircut. I think he looks cute!"

Anonymity, pseudonyms and even alternate identities are not necessarily bad things. If Mr. Mackey had been posting on, say, a golf forum or car owners message board, it wouldn't matter. But by talking about his industry, his competitors, his company and himself from the point of view of someone else... well, that's sock puppetry.

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Am I That Transparent?

Nancie Meng — 2007-07-12T10:58:00 00:00

Filed under: Marvelous Mob, Community Management

Imagine: It's 1:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning. My cell phone rings. On the other end a member of one of our communities informs me that there is a problem in the message boards. Since no child endangerment, illegal activity or threat to national security is involved, I respond, "Uh, hi... I'm on a bus on the New Jersey Turnpike in the middle of a blizzard. I'm chaperoning hungry, tired, and rebellious teenagers weary from a competition who are too silly to sleep. There's some questionable activity taking place in the back of the bus I need to handle. Can this wait till morning?" (It could. It did.)

Many community managers would consider that a "worst case scenario;" but it's my life here. And, it isn't that bad.

I understand when employees worry at the prospect of becoming more transparent and accessible to customers. They are concerned about personal info traveling the Web, intrusions into their personal lives, retribution for community actions taken, and mountains of e-mail or Instant Messages to answer.

You have to be thick-skinned, good at setting boundaries and expectations, aware of who the audience is, and the different ways they might interpret your words and behavior. Most of all, you have to maintain the right balance of professional distance to be effective, while you remain approachable. And finally, you also have to give people the benefit of the doubt and trust that most people are reasonable.

Transparency has had its downside. I get my share of drive-by death threats via Instant Message and e-mail. It comes with the territory.

But, the upside is huge. People who contact me start out as individual customers with comments or complaints. Soon they become part of a special community. I hear about their children, the passing of other members, their jobs, and all the life events that human beings have in common. They tell me what they like and don't like about our features and products. They share ideas for improving them. They are brutally honest about what they think of us and give me the opportunity to clarify, reset expectations and stay on top of what we do well and what we need to improve upon. They validate every day why what we do here is important.

I just think of it as all of us working together to build the best online experiences we can.

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First Post Is the Deepest

Nancie Meng — 2007-07-09T17:02:00 00:00

Filed under: Featured Items, Marvelous Mob

Welcome to The Marvelous Mob. In case you're wondering, this blog's title is complimentary. It references an incident I experienced as a child: My family had just arrived in Taiwan after three weeks on a ship. I stared out of our hotel room, which overlooked one of Taipei's main streets, which pulsed with the lives and activities of people from all over the world. "It's a mob," I observed. My mother responded, "Yes, but it's a marvelous mob."

Online communities and social networks are like that street. Think about it. Millions of people from different countries, races, religions, socio-economic classes, with disparate values and world views gather 24/7 in virtual spaces scattered across the Web. In the almost 20 years I've been involved in online communities -- both as a participant and manager -- I've found the experiences not only marvelous, but in some cases miraculous.

Here's the thing about virtual communities. They reflect the people who live in them. There are lots of products one can throw at a community like message boards, chats, blogs, profiles and widgets; but the result depends on the topics of interest and the people who gather to talk about them.

We will, as we hope you will, use this blog to share thoughts, ideas, philosophies, methods, a little madness, and the trends that circle around and evolve out of people interacting with one another online. Where it makes sense I'll talk about my experiences with communities on AOL and AIM, but we want to learn about others, too.

I hope this conversation will grow to include anyone interested in how online communities and social networks work. We want to hear from community members, community product developers, content developers, community managers and others who understand that communities are not made up of things. We are not just eyeballs, page views or uniques visitors. We're human beings driven by a need to connect with others and share what we know or believe.

Introduce yourself. Tell us about your online life. Suggest topics to discuss. Join the conversation.

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