Community Retention

The perspective I have on online moderation stems from experience built up from well over a decade of moderating. I’ve been involved with message boards, chat rooms, and virtual worlds…both for adults and more recently for children. There are challenges unique to each format and also similar. For me the big thing I’ve learned is how important it is to create a community. Ultimately, especially in dealing with children, we want to make sure the environment is safe and meets the standards the client requests. But moderation is far more than just that. We also should be ensuring that the players are having fun and encouraged to continue coming back. Few things are more discouraging as a moderator than seeing a player say “I’m bored!”

An online community won’t flourish unless you manage to retain that community, which can be a challenge (especially with kids). When players get bored or things become redundant, two things can happen. They leave, or they resort to causing trouble to liven things up. That’s where we have a huge responsibility to make sure things don’t become mundane. As moderators it’s important that we come up with techniques and ideas to keep virtual communities engaging and exciting. Not only does it make it more fun for users, but for us as well, since I think moderators are also vital members of the community and I think it’s important we have fun ourselves. Moderators are often viewed as basically police officers of online communities, but it’s so much more than that. It’s just as important to engage the users and create an environment that is welcoming, exciting and worth coming back to again and again.

There are several things moderators can try to keep a virtual world or community flourishing. Depending on the type of community, you can offer contests, trivia, games, themed events and other things. Put yourself in the shoes of the community members and think what you’d like to make the community grow and still be fun and exciting. It’s one thing to enforce rules but it’s just as important to make things fun and engaging. The more successful we make the community, the better it is for ALL of us!

— Laura Sperber