Quiddities Dev, Inc.

A Creative Web Solutions Agency Weblog

Online Communities the Hassle-Free Way

In the past, if you wanted an online community for your organization, you had to choose.

Option 1: A topic-focused, highly reputable conversation platform, which is a complete time-suck, requiring you to sacrifice other work or stay up late moderating content to guarantee everything remains civil.

Option 2: A maintenance-free, lively discussion place that protects the anonymity of your members, which nobody wants to visit because the useful conversation is degraded by poorly moderated inflammatory comments.

The idea persists that online networks are either functional and time consuming or low-maintenance and low-quality. Unfortunately many nonprofit organizations, without the budget to manage the conversation and unwilling to invite unmoderated conversation, avoid having a strong online presence for exactly this reason.

Good news: now online communities can be hassle- and flame-free. Well-designed communities hand off most of the moderation work to someone else–your users.

Responsibility Buttons

Users will do more than contribute to your content: they will control it as well. Allowing users to recommend content they like builds a sense of ownership: imagine your pride when a post that you recommended makes it to the top of a highest-rated list, or one of your updates appears in the site’s featured content section.

Also, if you’re not allowing users to flag abusive or inflammatory content, you’ve skipped one of the easiest things you can do to make your community function smoothly.

Anonymous Coward

The stigma against anonymous posting exists for a good reason. If you have an axe to grind but fear public retribution, there’s no better place to do it than one of the internet’s many message boards. For this reason many communities do not allow anonymous users to post content. On the other hand, requiring users to contribute personal information treads upon personal security. There is a comfort in anonymity knowing that if your post is ill-received, nobody can track you down and attack you personally.

There is a way to walk the line, though, and it’s called reputation building. Required registration with minimal demands for information is ideal: a valid email address is enough to build accountability while protecting your user’s identity. Ultimately, this connects all of your user’s content with his username, so that instead of drifting off into space, his posts now form a record from which we can gauge his reputation. Having a lot of posts–or a high level of participation–would look really good on your reputation. Creating content that gets highly recommended by other users can’t hurt either.

People who want to protect their reputations will only publish content they are proud of, and want to have associated with their identity. As for the others, don’t worry–if they go through the trouble of signing up in the first place, they’ll get flagged down by responsible users after an update or two.

Will Work For Modules

Superusers are integral to the long-term health of your community. When a few users emerge from the conversation as the most engaged, dedicated, and invested, you may elevate them to the status of superuser. Call them moderators, administrators, or super bad-ass 12ers, they will work for free and keep your conversation focused for the pleasure of participating. Of course, it helps if you give them some shiny badges: check out the Superman insiginia used by DontStayIn.

How much power you give to your superusers is up to you, but whatever perks or badges you offer in return, take good care of them.

Regardless of the platform you choose to build in, there are lots of options available for creating user responsibility. The magical formula is creating enough ambiguity to let anonymous-leaning users feel safe while encouraging them to create online identity and reputations. Off-the-cuff journalism site Mother Jones allows users to display badges beneath their avatars that track things like print subscriptions, or donor status. Features like this encourage a user to express herself and build her reputation while keeping her identity safe.

If you need more guidance, harness the wisdom of the crowd. Finding out what features users prefer is as simple as checking out a list of popular modules, or putting a poll on your website. Creating a great online community that only takes a few minutes of work per day is possible. Just remember: it’s your conversation too, so respond to what’s being said.

Posted on April 7, 2009 – 11:34 am by Desiree in Quiddities & tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Hope Foundry: Developing Futures

Some of the SC Geeks have unofficially adopted the phrase “Think Globally, Act Locally” as a business motto. It is used by business and environmental organizations in various contexts, but to us, it expresses the ideal sustainable model: fed by local collaboration and compatible with the global community.

In that spirit, we have launched Hope Foundry. Hope Foundry provides new opportunities to small businesses and future developers by offering reduced-cost websites and free job training. We are accepting sponsors who will receive a powerful website package in one month for a (significantly) reduced rate while providing free education for the next generation of developers.

How does it work?

A sponsor pays a flat rate of $3,000. In return, they receive:

  • Strategic web consultation
  • Usability features
  • Custom appearance
  • Content management tools
  • Online community add-ons

Want to know more about what you can get? The full feature set is available here.

Ten students enrolled in Hope Foundry’s Drupal training program spend one month constructing the website, guided and supervised by Quiddities senior developers. This way, sponsors save thousands of dollars on web development without cutting corners while providing free job training to the community. There are also opportunities to hire a Hope Foundry graduate to perform routine maintenance and updates to the new Drupal site.

Want to purchase a Hope Foundry website and provide free job training? Want to enroll in our free training program for Drupal developers? You can apply at hopefoundry.com. Help us make improvements locally to the global community.

Posted on April 6, 2009 – 4:40 pm by Desiree in Quiddities & tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Here, Stand On This Spot And Hold This Sign

The Quids have seen some trials and tribulations. Then again, it’s all about who you know. January showed us how partnerships with the right people eventually pay off, allowing us to do what we’re really passionate about–community building.

We looked to RadioEngage with a mixture of fear and apprehension. Picture four over-caffeinated women sitting in an office surrounded by statues of Buddhas, framed photos of family members, enormous potted plants, and the endlessly filtering-in coworking babble, clutching our mugs and saying, “Are we on track? Where are the station protocols? Are we prepared for the board meeting? Who’s working on the wireframe? Have you done the install yet?” Paying no heed to the coffee we spilled on our pants as we twitched with anxiety. Yeah. It was kind of like that.

A big sigh of relief came when we realized we had made it over the public radio hill. Work still remains to be done, but there’s something comforting about giving the new KUSP.org a face. With the media components finalized, and the website themed, all that remains is for the content to be transfered. The site is about to be a fully interactive community radio portal with content on-demand! For a more detailed update, check out Margaret’s interview with Kristen Taylor from the Knight Foundation.

I Spot Compassion has been a messaging and marketing beast. How does a nonprofit create a viral campaign to raise awareness and money for an unpopular subject? Furthermore, how does it happen when the nonprofit is Children’s Hospice: an organization that advocates for the rights of terminally ill children, a topic which most people would rather not think about? Some meetings it seemed like we were forever going to be standing around the monster, hitting it with sticks in hope that it might retreat into its cage.

The solution lay in empowering people to do something about it themselves. Somehow, Lori and Devon of Hospice teamed up with the Quids to come up with this psycho idea to stop people on the street in Downtown Santa Cruz, make them stand on giant purple spots, give them signs to hold that say “Where Do You Spot Compassion?” and videotape them sharing moving stories of social accountability. It was amazingly successful. We interviewed over fifty people by stopping them on the street.

Yesterday’s visit to Pacific Collegiate, a local charter school (and alma mater of yours truly), also marked a turning point for I Spot’s community engagement strategy. Juniors and seniors were eager to help discover ways the I Spot campaign can avail itself of the enthusiasm and creativity of students, without forcing them into situations they’re not comfortable with. Hopefully we’ll continue to work with the students to make the project a global success.

So, thank you, to everyone who has reached back to us this month. No great feat is possible without the support of others. We are stronger together than apart. Remember to have compassion, and faith in the compassion of others: people will do remarkable things if you ask them the right way.

Posted on January 28, 2009 – 4:26 pm by Desiree in Quiddities & tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Seeding Compassion

  • The I Spot Compassion GirlsThe I Spot Compassion Girls

    • Yesterday, the MLK National Day of Service, was a big exciting experiment in the name of research for our Children’s Hospice project - I Spot Compassion. We were out on the streets of Santa Cruz asking folks to tell us where they last spotted compassion. We had adorable kids holding I Spot signs, handmade purple spot carpets and thick skinned video-camera-toting interviewers putting themselves out there, interacting with the general public in a way that can sometimes make you feel foolish and self-conscious.

    When looking at the day in context to the paradigm shift that’s going on in our country, our results were quite interesting. A lot of people said they don’t spot compassion anywhere. What’s up with that? No compassion? Anywhere? We have our work cut out for us. Because, ultimately, what we are trying to do with Children’s Hospice is seed a revolution of compassion. That seems overwhelming to some, but it doesn’t have to be. There are so many small, easy acts of kindness we can do throughout the day, but when added together with the other masses of humanity and their small acts, really add up.

    It seems so simplistic, but I think we just might need to remind eachother. I was driving across town this afternoon, late as usual, and I had to really, really think about letting other drivers merge in front of me. When did that happen, this silo-sighted view of my relationship with traffic (me, me, me!)? Fresh off the compassion imprint from yesterday, I did slow down and let others go in front of me. Some may not call that compassion, but if I was letting another harried mom go first, I think compassion is what it was.

    There is so much more to think about in starting this project, particularly after today - inauguration day, where Obama over and over called us to service. Service is compassion’s cool big sister, you know, the one you look up to and hope to be like one day. I think we can start small and work our way up. Try it, it’s really not that hard and once you start, maybe it will become one of those good for you habits like flossing, or eating your vegetables.

    Posted on January 20, 2009 – 11:53 pm by Amie Forest in Quiddities & tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

    Compassion: Spot & Do It

    Today President-elect Obama is calling for a national day of service, and I would like to request that you join us in a project that is very near and dear to my heart “I Spot Compassion.” I  Spot is a campaign being developed for a terrific non-profit, Children’s Hospice and Palliative Care Coalition. CHPCC is honoring their children by seeding compassion. They believe that by identifying acts of compassion we begin to imprint and seed more in others, and by using the tools social media now provides us, we can all begin to remind each other to create a more compassionate society.

    You’re probably hearing about things like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr in the mainstream media. I don’t know how many of you are using it, but social media is growing exponentially, and it’s a tool we can use to encourage compassion.

    Last week my friend Iris tweeted (for those of you who aren’t familiar, that’s Twitter-speak for wrote) “slickiris Intends to make at least one random act of kindness today” I happened to see her statement and it reminded me to do an act of kindness myself that day, which I did. I really believe that’s all it takes, a gentle reminder, so that’s what I’m doing here. Reminding you to do an act of compassion, and today, when you do it I want you to think about a boy named Nick Snow who testified in Washington and Sacramento, even though he was gravely ill, to get legislation passed to help families of children dealing with life-threatening illnesses. You can read Nick’s touching story on the CHPCC website.

    And finally, I also encourage you to go to iSpotcompassion and donate a 5spot to CHPCC in Nick’s honor. That’s all we’re asking (although, of course, giving more is just fine too!). Remember how Obama raised so much money asking for a little from a lot of us? It adds up quick when a lot of us donate. And there’s no finer organization then Children’s Hospice and Palliative Care Coalition, I’ve witnessed firsthand how effective this organization is.

    Whatever you do, think about compassion: spot it, do it, live it. We can change the world with our little acts of kindness and compassion.

    Posted on January 19, 2009 – 2:22 pm by Amie Forest in Quiddities & tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

    © 2008 Quiddities