How I created a thriving network on Ning!

[Col]

Hi everyone,

Because Ning has taken the EXCELLENT step of setting up this network for NC's, I thought I would relate the amazing experience that creating a network on Ning has been for me! You might find something here that's helpful, or interesting, or you may not. Either way, I think the Ning team deserve the good vibes now that they have rediscovered their relationship with us NC's!!

Some background - I love racing go karts. Have done for many years and am employed in the industry. I used to spend an inordinate amount of time on the most popular forum (UBB software based) for the Australian karting community. Then, one day for whatever reason, the forum creator removed the site, no explanation, no nothing, it just vanished!

The only other forum existing on the web was run by a highly unethical character, well known for distorting the truth to suit his own economic health, and thus I decided I'd create a forum.

I'd read up a fair bit about UBB stuff, when a friend mentioned Ning.

"It's like your own mini facebook", he said.

Sounded good to me, so I created Kartbook! Not the most creative name in the world, but it works :)

I had two goals for Kartbook:
1. That people would behave in a civil, friendly and hopefully FUN manner. (Something which had not generally been the case on the previous forums).
2. That the truth, no matter who it did or didn't suit for it to be known, would be allowed to be published, and remain unmoderated.

I did a few things that have made it remarkably easy to achieve my goals.
1. I asked EVERYBODY to use their real name, and politely enforced it.
2. I created a short and sweet set of guidelines that basically said "no bullying, no spam, no worries".
3. I refused to delete ANYTHING that didn't contravene those guidelines, even if the person who posted it asked me to!

The result has been truly, truly incredible. There are 6000 licenced kart racers in Australia. There are 1700 members on my network, and we receive pretty regular visits from about 10,000 unique computers. The average visit lasts ten minutes. The average visitor returns five times a week.

If someone signs in with a "handle" instead of their real name, they get howled out of the place by the members themselves faster than you could imagine. I ask one or two people a month to update their profile with their real name, the rest of them get sorted out by the existing members :)

If someone bullies someone else, I get private messages, emails, facebook messages, and in one extreme case three phone calls, all within a minute of the inappropriate post being made.

We see intelligent, sometimes heated but always fair, discussion about a huge range of topics relating to karting, and best of all, the majority of the membership THINK before posting a message!

Why?

Because whatever they say, it's got their name right next to it, and they KNOW it's going to stay there, even if they regret it after a cooling off period. Early in the piece, a few people made harsh or stupid comments, thinking it would remain on the site for five minutes (long enough for their target to see it), and then be removed before the whole of the karting community and industry could see them behaving childishly... those few people were mistaken! Lots of people therefore saw the negative effects of "opening mouth before engaging brain", and it now happens VERY rarely! Strange as it may seem, by REFUSING to moderate in all but the most extreme cases, I've made the NEED for moderation almost disappear altogether!

Obviously this works in my case, because the karting community is a fairly tight one, and having one's name dragged through the mud in full view of your friends and acquaintances is much worse than having an anonymous fight on the internet!

One major issue that we found had to be overcome was the forum software allowing the thread-creator to moderate the thread with as much power as the NC. In one case, we had one of our less scrupulous members delete anything and everything he didn't personally agree with in a thread he had created. I don't believe that the thread creator, or the network creator for that matter, OWNS a discussion in the forum. Each discussion is owned partly by every contributor, and no-one should have the power to moderate other people's opinion.

This particular episode occurred back in the "Get Satisfaction" days (which I found to be highly unsatisfying!), so in lieu of a solution from Ning, the solution we came up with was to use CSS to hide all the moderation tools from the thread creators. This also means that on the rare occasion that I DO need to moderate a thread, I need to un-hide the moderation tools, but that's not a big deal.

The success of my network came as an almost complete surprise, and it is now "the hub" of Australian karting on the internet. As a result, I upgraded my account with ning to remove the ads, and started an online shop supplying kart parts to the Australian market. This too has been a great success and, while only three weeks old, looks likely to become my primary source of income by Christmas.

I'd like to say thanks, to the whole Ning team, for an amazing experience that I could not have achieved without your help. I'd also like to congratulate you on the development of this Creators network. I feel that it's a sign you're willing to listen to us, and work with us, and I think you'll find us much more appreciative and supportive of your efforts, now that we're given the opportunity.

Cheers,
Col.

[Jen]

Very interesting, and the most intriguing comment to me is:
..."by REFUSING to moderate in all but the most extreme cases, I've made the NEED for moderation almost disappear altogether!"
Who da thunk it? ;-)

Nice post, thanks for sharing.
Best,
Jen

[Tom]

Thanks for sharing your story!

Very motivating.

How did you set up your online shop? Is it in the notes or pages features or is it a completely different site linked from your network?

[Col]

Thanks everybody!

The online shop is a separate site, linked from the ads section on the network. I made no secret of the fact that it's run by me, the NC of Kartbook, and a lot of people are giving the online shop a chance because they appreciate the effort that was put into creating Kartbook.

[Tom]

Thanks for the info. Hopefully the Notes or Pages features will improve to the point where it will be easier to build storefronts in the same network with the same domain name.

[Laura]

This is so great to hear Col, thanks for sharing your experience!
Laura

[Travis]

This was an awesome story! Thanks so much for sharing it with us, and a huge congratulations on your success!! :)

[Lester Unega Waya]

Good for you.
But the rest of us could not do that now because we do not have a way to invite people to our site.
We could do what you have done but not have the members to achieve any results.
I wish you the best for the future.

[Lester Unega Waya]

Phil.
All my friends on facebook, all forty of them, know about my networks.
On Ning, I have nearly a thousand.
Even if I knew all their email addresses, would you know how long it
would take to enter 1000 e mail addresses into the invite box.
When we had the invite facility, I could notify nearly a 1000 members in about 30 seconds.

[Lester Unega Waya]

Phil.
Everyone seems to have missed the point.
I have about a thousand friends on Ning.
About two thirds of those are on networks I am on.
The remainder are uncontactable other than the cross ning invite
because they have gone to networks I am not on.
Those I have on networks I created amounts to about a hundred or so.
If someone I am friends with joins your network and I invite that friend to join
me on a network I created, that is not using your network to poach.
The thing is I wouldn't know that one of my friends is on your network.
The invite is inviting friends across ning, not from a particular network.
Also friends who receive invites are not being invited off your site.
If they leave it is because they choose to, not because they have been invited to.
But this is what has caused the problem in the first place.
Some creators don't want their members joining other sites, so they got the invite removed.
I am not complaining I cannot get members, I am complaining I cannot invite friends.
There's a difference.
If any friend didn't want any invites they would have said, and only one ever did say.
Since the withdrawal of the invite, people have been joining sites to invite people
to their sites.
Removing the invite just created another problem.
Saying that cross ning inviting is borderline spamming, it is no more spamming
than you sending your friends Christmas cards at Christmas.
That could be construde as spamming.
Being against inviting friends is as you would say being borderline anti social.

[Terry Calhoun]

Hear, hear. I have 149 unanswered invites to groups on my own largest network that I don't have time to cope with. Just had to chastise a new member whose first post was about how his network was so much better than mine. Sorry, that's spamming, especially when the #1 rule of my network, clearly posted, is "Behave as though everyone in here is your friend." (Which includes me.)

[Lester Unega Waya]

Terry.
I would have told him to clear off back to his then.
He wouldn't like it if you went to his house and told him
your house is better than his.

[Lester Unega Waya]

Terry and Phil.
With invites you don't want, you could just ignore them.