jeff atwood - how to talk so your community will listen and listen so your community will talk
TRANSCRIPT
How to Talk So Your Community Will Listen and
Listen So Your Community Will Talk Jeff Atwood
codinghorror.com stackexchange.com
discourse.org
The Stack Overflow Trilogy
May 2009 Aug 2009 July 2008
March 2009
June 2009 We violate the first rule of Fight Club
July 2010 We allow creaMon of sites by voMng
This site is all about geNng answers. It’s not a discussion forum. There’s no chit-‐chat.
“InnovaMon is not about saying yes to everything. It's about saying NO to all but the most crucial features.” – Steve Jobs
Can you say NO to your users? (in a nice, educaMonal way of course.) If not, then you have a problem.
February 2012
Why are these Stack Exchange sites failing? • look at this cool LEGO thing I built! • buy and sell rare LEGO kits to each other, people who get it
• share an interesMng LEGO story • ask about the best ways to build LEGO • ask about the best places to find LEGO • hanging out and talking about non-‐LEGO stuff with other LEGO enthusiasts
We'd love to get your expert advice on our thing. I probably don't use your thing. Even if I tried your thing out and I gave you my so-‐called Expert advice, how would it ma_er?
Why are you asking me? Why don't you ask your community what they think of your thing?
And if you don't have a community of users and customers around your thing, well, there's your problem right there.
Go fix that.
A`er spending four solid years thinking of discussion as the established corrupt empire, and Stack Exchange as the scrappy rebel alliance, I began to wonder – what would it feel like to change sides? What if I became a champion of random, arbitrary discussion, of the very kind that I'd spent four years designing against and constantly lecturing users on the evil of?
You need a tool to listen to your…
Audience Fans
Customers Patrons Users Friends Creators
I already built an X-‐Wing; could I build a be_er Tie Fighter?
What is efficiency? When was the last Mme you got a useful search page hit on: -‐ A chat log? -‐ A forum? -‐ A blog? -‐ The Facebooks or The Twi_ers? -‐ Stack Exchange?
How much of the content being produced results in useful arMfacts to other folks that show up as search page results? -‐ The Facebooks or The Twi_ers: almost never -‐ Chat log: 0.01% -‐ Forum: 1-‐2% -‐ Blog: 5% -‐ Stack Exchange: 10% or more
Of course, uMlity to others may not be the goal…
Stack is a Scalpel
Discourse is a table knife
Stack Exchange:
Is this useful? Discourse:
Is this illegal?
Stack Exchange is a system of “no”. This strictness and discipline reliably produces amazing learning arMfacts. A strongly curated and moderated system. Discourse is a system of “yes”. It’s free! More fun, more social, more engaging, but at a cost: efficiency goes way, way down.
… and the emperor was PLEASED
I could never give you Stack Exchange. It’s not open source. And even if I did, you’d probably cut yourself (and your users). Discourse is an open source system of rainbows: it is free, easy to install, has far fewer rules, and designed to work as a fundamental building block of community for all online groups, from Mny to huge.
We want to bring the same innovaMon to forums that we brought to Q&A with Stack Exchange. But a system of opinions is a very different beast. It is far more subtle. Biggest difference? You can’t vote an opinion up or down.
There is no “reputaMon system” in Discourse. Your opinion about the coolest X-‐Man is no more valid than mine, nor does it make you more “expert”. btw Wolverine obvs
There is a trust system. It’s just not as visible. (IntenMonally.)
We want Discourse to funcMon and have an “immune system” even in the absence of any formal moderators. We believe, strongly, that healthy forum communiMes must push out spammers, bad actors, and those who are cruel.
Turns out for opinion communiMes, being there and reading a lot of the content is crucial to the early trust levels.
They can get to trust level 1 by... • entering at least 5 topics • reading at least 50 posts • spend a total of 10 minutes reading posts
On Stack Exchange, civility is mandatory at all Mmes, and frequent incivility is a bannable offense. But kindness is irrelevant: either the facts and science and data support your posiMon, or they do not. On Discourse, you won’t o`en be able to fall back on facts and science and data for opinions – so kindness to your fellow users, and how you treat them, is how you will be judged.
The enemy is no longer popularity, but cruelty, trolling, and to a lesser extent, being too off-‐topic.
It should also be FUN
Imagine a party for doctors.
“Can you look at this mole on my arm?”
Discourse is just a baby; launched Feb 5 2013. WordPress is our spirit animal. We want to do for Forums exactly what WordPress did for Blogs. But we’re WordPress in 2006!