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One of the things I dislike about online “communities” is that there is often a nastiness that comes along with the interaction. The fact that you don’t have to meet a person to be in a dialogue with them means that you can pretty much say what you like. The gloves are off.

One of the things I really like about online “communities” is that there is often an openness and honesty that comes along with the interaction. You find out a bit more about the real person and some friendships can be created and massively enhanced because of the interaction.

It’s an inherent contradiction that the openness of the internet allows both openness and nastiness.  The worst part of this is that people online will often make assumptions about a person’s ideas or beliefs, and act on that understanding. The reaction of others can often taint a person online, especially in the age of “search” where nothing online gets hidden.

You can’t change other people, you can only change how you react.  If you don’t like the idea of the community being that open, then don’t become a part of it. Dialoguing is sometimes useful, but there can often become a point where it just brings both down in the estimation of everyone who views the interaction.

Reputation Management is a term that has started to appear because of this openness.  I first heard it about 2 years ago in relation to online, where a person in one of my online business networks started offering a service to get a person’s Google search results changed. It meant that things that were undesirable (including negative comments) were pushed down the list and replaced with a more positive view of that person, but the negative things could not be eradicated. It’s spin for the internet generation. Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, is an interesting case of poor reputation management in the fracas with his girlfriend.  Internet spin gone wrong!

I like the idea of reputation management, but I also find it slightly disingenuous. Part of what attracts people is the “warts and all” interactivity of the net. The fact that people/companies with spare cash can in some way portray a positive view of themselves is good sense in a business world, but a person with no skeletons is much more scary than a person with a few. In my view, it’s a balancing act.

What I much prefer is to be able to find other people’s views of a person (or company). If their view of that person is positive then I am going to be more favourable to that view than of the person’s “spin”. Kind of like an Amazon rating for people.

The problem with an amazon rating is that there are many types of people on the internet. Books are different, because the content of the book means that only certain types of people are going to read it. Books on C# will be read by techies. Mills and Boon by women of a certain age.  So the ratings are going to be from people with similar interests.  People are a different matter. They are a part of different groups and have different aims.  So how do you judge their rating?

You have to find people who know that person for the same reason as you may want to. In business that’s quite simple - to use their services or find out about them as a prospective client. That’s why businesses try so hard to get testimonials from their clients. However, they control those testimonials and what you see.  You never, ever see the bad bits.

When you are in an online community with someone, you have the opportunity to find out another person’s reputation from their interactions with others. Most communities have a friends list, and you can find those connections to you.  It’s the idea behind LinkedIn, because you are constantly working through your contacts to find other contacts, a partial trust has appeared, but there’s no rating. I like this approach to a point, but it attracts the wrong type of people in my view. People with a big contact base (sales people generally) mean you end up with a bunch of people all trying to get the biggest number of contacts.

In the end, the best way to manage a business reputation is for a company is for it to be the best it can be and to be clear about what it does. The community around it will then speak out loud about it, and the nay-sayers will be available but will be just noise.  That kind of reputation, where the negative is available, but outweighed by the positive says more about that company than any kind of management of what is visible.

Lots said… need to work!  I’ll probably talk about the idea of followership in my next blog… this one’s got too long!

A twitter conversation between me and (mostly) Prokofy Neva

paul: thinking: You are a product of the communities you inhabit

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet hell no, not me : )

garethj: @pjnet Communities are defined by the people that inhabit them

paul: @garethj communities self-perpetuate types of people

paul: @Prokofy those communities may require you to be belligerent and annoying to others in the community - it’s a “type”

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet does it make you feel innovative and clever to typecast people?

paul: @Prokofy - you’re arguing my point about communities in http://www.mixedrealities.com/?p=189…

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet I simply don’t believe in prescribing Social Darwinism for others, imagining up little deterministic scenarios for “communities”

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet most of the time, there isn’t even any such thing as a “community.”

paul: @Prokofy you are the kind of person that encourages people to find out about stuff

paul: @Prokofy not sure what you’re getting at - I think you’re confusing my thoughts with something else

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet no, I’m responding directly to your your tweets. You said people r defined by communities. I say, no, they aren’t & they don’t exist.

paul: @Prokofy communities don’t exist? People are defined by the communities they inhabit - it’s a choice which communities we join

paul: @Prokofy even an anarchist is part of a community no?

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet no? I realize that’s just awfully clever, gosh, you are a product of what you rebel against but no, I’m not a social Darwinist they pretend that they create, empower, link, blah blah “communities”. They don’t. It’s a vast fiction -fake friends list isn’t a community.

paul: thinking that lots of people can’t see the other part of this twittering about

paul: @Prokofy you choose what you believe - you choose what you follow - i haven’t mentioned social darwinism at all

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet I absolutely refute any such determinist and all-encompassing notion of human nature, as “dictated by its community”

paul: @Prokofy I’m not just talking about online though - in fact, the thought came from thinking about offline communities

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet this is one of the deep, deep, corporativist, nay, fascistic fallies of Beth Noveck and Clay Shirky’s group fetishizing and groupism

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet they would have you defined online as always and everywhere “in a group” that grooms and conforms you to norms. No thanks!

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet no, you just practice it : )

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet no, that’s just your doctrine. People aren’t defined merely or even especially by communities. Many other factors are at play.

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet it’s a basic tenet of the Western liberal idea that the individual is unique and free and not subject to these restrictions

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet but I do realize that you simply don’t believe this; you may not even understand it.

paul: @Prokofy blog your thinking and I’ll comment

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet I just did : )

paul: thinking that it’s far easier to be rude and unsociable if you’re an avatar and hiding your true identity

paul: @prokofy We don’t live in isolation. We all live in communities. All different. All individual. Soc. Darwinism is about conformism - th …

paul: @prokofy link to the blog post? Haven’t yet seen it

paul: pjnet enjoying being challenged by @prokofy

I just found this a bit weird. It was an off-the-cuff thought that I was musing over, and the conversation got hijacked and rude very fast.

The conversation was interesting though. There’s a wikipedia page on Social Darwinism.

I do think however that we are changed by the communities we interact with. It’s all about which communities we choose to be a part of.  They can be big or small, and can have big or small influences. But you can’t be a part of a community without being changed in some way by it.