I spent four years running what became the BBC's most successful online community, and in doing so, I became an expert in running online communities. Here are some examples of my online community experience:
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h2g2: I was headhunted in 1999 to join h2g2, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as Editor. I was in charge of the content and community areas, and in the case of the latter we found that there were no text books on how to run successful communities; we were genuinely making it up as we went along. The site grew from strength to strength, eventually catching the eye of the Director of BBC New Media, who bought the site and my team at the start of 2001. This clearly meant we'd got it right, and the fact that h2g2 quickly became the BBC's most successful online community proved the point.
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DNA: When h2g2 moved into the BBC, we immediately went about storming the castle from the inside. We split off the technology and community knowledge into a new project called DNA, of which I became Editor. I created a new DNA-powered site, the DNA Hub, and set about documenting this knowledge. The DNA Knowledge Base contains articles on all sorts of subjects, from building online communities and making communities sticky to technical details of how DNA works. DNA is now used to power all the BBC's message boards, so DNA has become the success we always intended it to be.
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Moderation: Before the BBC bought h2g2, it was only moderated reactively (i.e. when someone told us about problem content). The BBC wanted a full moderation system building, so I sat down with the development team and built a specification for the moderation tools (and the same tools are in use today to moderate all the BBC's message boards). I formulated a set of house rules, which were subsequently adopted by the rest of the BBC, and wrote help pages on topics like defamation and intellectual property that the BBC lawyers still point people towards as excellent explanations of the subject. As a result, I know an awful lot about moderation of online communities.
I put my money where my mouth is by hosting my own Guestbook, where I always answer every query with as much politeness as I can muster, even when the poster is a troll. The result is a healthy and popular forum.
