It may sound cliched to talk about the revolution

It has become cliched to talk and write about the revolution in human interaction created by new media. But the fact remains that all sorts of new relationships and interactions have become possible in the past

Online communities flourish when people gather. But attracting people with shared interests is no guarantee that the group will become a community, just as holding a party at your house doesn't automatically turn it into a memorable occasion. Like the golden moment when a group of people becomes a team with an almost audible kerCHUNK, community happens when the participants personally care about one another, and demonstrate a commitment to the group.

Alas, while you can find plenty of online conversation, there are few real communities on the Web. Even the busier Web-based discussion groups are like the waiting room at the utility company office--everyone taking a number and waiting to get his question answered, then leaving with no further thought to the other people in the room.

Creating a community online is an ability that comes to some people naturally, but it's a learnable skill. Unfortunately, nobody has taken the time to enumerate even the simplest of the rules. Here are a few words of advice about how to turn a roomful of virtual people into a community that works.

So What Is Community, Anyway?

It doesn't matter what you call it: forum, conference, bulletin board. The names have changed over the years, but the concept has never wavered: People get together to share experiences, to ask questions, or just to hang out with people who think that quilting is interesting, that Macintoshes are cool, or that it's possible to learn to write a screenplay.

If you listen to the current hype, Web portals are an example of online community. Bzzzt, wrong answer. Personalized home pages can be useful; they can link to your favorite places and collect information you've deemed nifty. But they're like painting your house. Sure, you can make the house look the way you like and plant your favorite flowers in front. But it's still just your house ... it's not a neighborhood.

An important key to any online community is the ease with which people can correspond with one another. That's why it's important to make it easy for anyone to find an interesting conversation and why the software must make it easy to dash off a response. User interfaces that slow down this process get in the way of communication; it's like making someone walk to a podium to use a microphone; only the fearless or the extremely opinionated will bother. That awkwardness is a good part of the problem with slow online interfaces and poor message-thread management, as touched upon in the Web-based discussion software review.

A successful forum is like the TV show "Cheers," where everybody knows your name. Whether they're in-person or online, communities happen when the participants begin to care about one another personally. You know that your discussion group has "made it" when participants arrange to have dinner together at COMDEX, or when several members get embroiled in an off-topic conversation about current events or which car to buy. (My husband and I once posted a message on the CompuServe Consultant's forum, saying, "Come up to our house for Labor Day weekend." Seventeen friends showed up, most of whom we'd never met before. Twelve years later, we're still friends with most of them.) Your discussion group becomes a community when people treat the forum as a place to meet their friends ... who happen to talk about quilting, computing or writing most of the time.

How do you achieve that? It takes a deft hand, and it requires a special person.

The Online Bartender

If you wanted to open a successful bar-and-grill, you'd choose the best location, you'd put the right food on the menu, and you'd furnish the place attractively. But mostly, you'd choose a great bartender.

A good bartender gets people talking. She listens well. She doesn't have to be likeable, but she does have to be "a character." When nobody is looking, she sweeps the floor and refills the pretzel bowls. When someone drinks too much, she takes away his car keys, and mediates disputes. A good bartender sets the ambiance of the place ... even if she's mostly invisible. That's the sysop's role, too.

In old BBS parlance, the term "sysop" stood for "system operator," but you can choose any term you prefer: conference moderator, sysadmin or the big cheese. The role is the same. As Greg Wolking, a longtime ZDNet sysop says, "A sysop's major role is to provide an 'anchor point' or 'sense of center' in the community. A good sysop leads by example, treating all members with courtesy and respect, and doing his best to ensure that the members of the community treat each other the same way. If you provide the right 'atmosphere,' the community will literally build itself. People will enjoy their participation in the community and, as a result, will encourage others to participate."

With a good sysop, you have 90 percent of the ingredients necessary to create a community. Community can happen without a formal moderator, but there's usually someone working behind the scenes to help things along--often as a volunteer. If you run a forum for a customer, or you establish an online discussion area for a customer, it's important to ensure that someone "owns" the place and takes responsibility for it.

That person ought to know the topic at hand (whether it's Java programming or cooking with the company's line of kitchen equipment), but that's actually less necessary than a friendly disposition that comes through in online messages. An upbeat attitude and quick-to-respond style can make participants feel like their opinions matter an awful lot, even if the sysop says, "I don't know, but I'll find out for you."

Judy Russell, sysop of the CompuServe CARS forum, points out that a sysop doesn't have to be a social butterfly, but "you should have a real presence in the conversations. People need to know you're going to be there routinely and regularly." Posting a friendly welcome to a new person, which makes the individual truly glad he posted a message, can do wonders for creating community.

It's also important to be fair in everything you do. Keep conversations civil; don't let disagreements turn into flame wars, spreading more heat than light. When tempers flare--and they will--turn them back to the topic at hand and remind people that it's OK to criticize others' opinions, but not to make personal attacks. At the very least, move the off-topic and cranky discussions to another section of the forum, where the fight can go on without disturbing everyone else.

Long-term sysop Frank Haber advises, "Seed the forum with 5 to 25 really interesting regulars. A couple of crackerjack 'practitioners' [programmers, hardware guys, whatever is apropos[ should be there frequently to impress the lurker, and perhaps argue with each other. These should not be superstars. Superstars frighten people. Better-than-journeyman quality is fine. Superstars can visit occasionally."

Keep conversations focused. Move off-topic messages to a chat section. When an on-topic thread branches, change the subject title. But let the chat section be for real chat. Don't discourage people from talking about their lives, cats, kids, cars, etc. People are more than just customers.

Sysoping requires a certain amount of housekeeping, but doing it diligently can pay off. Archive discussions that you know will happen again and again, and turn them into FAQ files that new users can be referred to. When a forum participant invents a good answer (whether it's a software utility for the tech support forum or a recipe that uses the company's products), encourage him to share it--and announce the new arrival to forum participants, either in the message area or on the entry Web site.

Such freebies are incredibly remunerative, because they give happy customers a reason to return to the site often. And, when the happy customers are downloading the new file, they're also likely to notice that another customer has a problem to which they just-so-happen to know the answer. Not only is the assisted customer more pleased, but such community activity has a positive effect on marketing, as well. A forum full of happy customers appeals to lurkers who are trying to decide between one brand and another; it's like word-of-mouth recommendations from strangers.

Word of mouth? That sounds a lot like marketing. And in a forum that's devoted to technical support, for computer-related or other products, that's certainly true. In fact, managing technical-support forums raises a whole host of other issues.

Running A Technical-Support Forum That Works

First, I must warn you: Your marketing department is going to be scared of an online forum that lets--gasp--actual users talk to one another! Horrors! They might say bad things about the product, and then where would we be?

The best part of an online technical-support forum is that it lets users cut through the marketing noise and find out what works and what doesn't. If the Turbo feature doesn't work, letting customer post public messages about their problems with it will make the fact undeniably evident. On the other hand, customers can often find a fix by comparing notes, discovering that Turbo mode works fine with some video cards--the sort of solution that would have taken the in-house staff weeks to discover.

And yes, as marketing people will worry: Competitors will snoop. It's a fact of life.

Nonetheless, you can reassure marketing that online support is cost effective (on both per-call and time-based employee utilization). Customers are more satisfied, because they have no hold time or long-distance charges. Forums provide a "paper" message trail for problems that require several tries at a solution, and it has easy management supervision. A junior tech, with backstage help, can do the work of a tech-support manager, and users who help each other don't require any staff intervention.

But from the sysop point of view, you must give users a reason to prefer this low-cost channel to the phone.

Sysop Frank Haber points out, "What most companies don't appreciate is that a Forum is much more than a line of customers asking questions in isolation from each other. It's an interactive environment. Inevitably, experienced users will chime in with their own angle on a problem. Whether you want it or not, there will be discussions of competitive products, even comparisons. There's no reason to be frightened of this; correctly handled, such discussions can be real assets to the company. The key is to have sufficient staff to be able to respond quickly and intelligently, even if an answer isn't fully ready at that instant. The customer must feel that his problem is being handled speedily and well."

Technical-support forums usually have one staff member who's dedicated to the job, at least on a dependably erratic basis (such as reliably checking for messages three times a day). This is an excellent role for an off-site staffer or a reseller/consultant who knows the product line well, as long as there's quick response from on-site company personnel.

Most online technical-support forums also find it advantageous to appoint a "volunteer team" of company friends. Borland started the practice several years ago with "Team Borland." Team members are unpaid but are given special recognition in other ways. These people would typically be in the forum anyway, as dedicated users who like and depend on the product. Team members get liberal free product, plus the occasional T-shirt and access to company insiders. More importantly to the team members, the role carries prestige in the online world, and in certain segments of the corporate world.

Haber adds, "In the 'tech support' genre, it helps to have a staff with the technical depth to assist users as much as possible, but there's more to it than just raw knowledge. The most important quality for staffers is humility: the ability to keep in mind that there is no such thing as a stupid question. In those cases where you're not sure of a solution or just plain have no idea what the solution is, have the honesty to say so." A staff honest enough to admit that they don't know all of the answers all of the time will encourage those in the community that do know the answers to come forward and participate.

A good support staff also has the wisdom to listen to what the membership says and be open to learning new things from the "rank and file" instead of acting only as a source of information. Haber insists, "A good sysop does far more than just give people the right answers. In the sense of the community as a whole, I'd even go as far as to say that 'providing answers' is perhaps the least important of the tasks a sysop performs."

If the marketing department does pay attention, the user feedback can provide tremendous feedback about what's important to customers. Many years ago, WordPerfect Corp. essentially designed WordPerfect 5.1 online. Top executive Pete Petersen dribbled out plans for feature enhancements and asked the community, "Is this what you'd like? Or should we do it another way?" Not only did the software reflect what end users wanted (and the product's success showed it), but the company also generated unmatched customer loyalty, because Pete made it clear to each user that his opinions mattered.

In technical-support forums, many people only show up when they need a problem solved. However, some of them stick around out of curiosity, and they soon discover the unique sense of accomplishment and pride that results from participating in discussions and helping out their fellow members. Eventually, you'll develop a "core membership" that may even eclipse the staff in its ability to help those in need.

It's not always easy to create an online community. But the rewards--loyal users and useful feedback--are worth it.

Esther Schindler managed the ZDNet Executives Online forum when it generated 1,500-2,000 messages per week. She has been a sysop on CompuServe since the early '90s, was senior ZDNet sysop on the short-lived AT&T Interchange, was a Fidonet conference moderator, is active in Usenet and mailing list discussions, and spends most of her day online. Esther knows she ought to have a real life, but she hasn't figured out from where to download it.