Community Guide: Activating Lurkers

[51mon (Simon)]

Hi @Bas
Great post great topic

You express a number of similar sentiments to those I believe in. That doesn’t make either of us right I also spot a number of what I think are presumptions in what you write leading to assumptions that I think can be valuable examined and that’s why I offer the text below

I wholeheartedly support the idea that lurkers are not a problem - indeed I’ll go further and say I think use of the term lurker is - to use @HAWK 's term / concept almost a form of “microaggression!” Readers is a more ‘civilised’ respectful term to use at all times. While you strike it through at the beginning you use it repeatedly thereafter - possibly thus a subliminal creator of tone or mindset (If not in you as writer possibly in others as readers )

Some specifics:…

@Bas

With all this in mind… what can you do to turn some readers into contributors?

Recognise that when you decide to do something that pushes somebody who is quite content as a reader in the direction that you’ve decided is beneficial (Who too?) then you’re maybe increasing their discomfort which may cause their exit to somewhere less ‘expensive/painful’

@Bas

Reach out to a long-time active reader or two and ask them what’s holding them back from contributing. … tagging specific active readers

Recognise that for some you may have just increased that discomfort a notch. The phrase “holding them back” suggests that they want a behaviour and struggle to achieve it but they may have exactly the behaviour they want and far from being held back they are now being pushed over a precipice. This would be particularly true for long-term readers who would seem to have found a stable cost to value ratio that is satisfying them

Of course there are those who suffer from all the challenges you itemize such as impostor syndrome and knowledge gap, the lack of helping hand so your suggestions maybe all good for that population. Perhaps therefore you’d be better off reaching out to new ish readers EG those on their way to trust level 2, those that have already gone from 0 to 1+?

@Bas

inviting active new users to a small, private category with a few kind,

Discourse is a rich UI platform. many unannounced mechanisms to enable different facilities and many paths, not all equivalent but often ending in similar or the same places. It’s very very easy to get lost unless one invests a great deal of time.
So you’re changing the value proposition for your readers who are asking the question “what is the cost of extracting value?” And you’ve just put the visible cost up but only the speculative value to them; so now you’ve introduced the psychology of uncertainty into the equation with all the economics of regret. Generally when the price goes up volume goes down (and the expectation of the customer rise and then the equation starts to give more emphasis to the quality aspect alongside the volume aspect)

@Bas

People (in general) love being praised and complimented! … manual work and call people out.

I’m not sure that this observation is valid. Certainly (I posit) extroverts who are likely to be your writers love being praised. If there is a correlation between readers and introversion then being called out for public praise may well be a trigger for discomfort thus raises the price for consuming content / receiving value. It isn’t related to introversion then it might just be ‘laziness’ “I was getting this free of effort now I’ve got to put effort to get it I don’t want anymore at this price”

@Bas

think about what your members want out of their community.

this is a suggestion that I suggest needs guidance on how to break it down. Perhaps it’s your most valuable observation but too massive and implacable as it stands?

Maybe it should be phrased as what is the value proposition by user type? Then there are challenges with what is the typography of users, what do they see the profit equation as? Profit equals value minus cost.

One last thought I haven’t seen any discussion of in this forum and topic is private user to user communications as a channel that may be offering value whose bedrock is the public posts that’s read in public. These readers maybe a conversationalist in private either on or off your platform

2¢

[Bas (Bas van Leeuwen)]

Thank you for your comments Simon!

@51mon

While you strike it through at the beginning you use it repeatedly thereafter

In my draft I used it throughout, since the guide was started by many questions using that word. During feedback @JammyDodger was quite vocal about not using the term and I agreed with him.
You’ll note that after striking it through, I use the term only twice more, both times in “quotes”

@51mon

Recognise that when you decide to do something that pushes somebody who is quite content as a reader in the direction that you’ve decided is beneficial (Who too?) then you’re maybe increasing their discomfort which may cause their exit to somewhere less ‘expensive/painful’

Yes, we should indeed be careful not to hard-push people. But a gentle nudge here and there can be beneficial. It’s fairly similar to real life, where the balance between disturbing, ignoring or engaging with a quiet person is quite hard.

@51mon

Recognise that for some you may have just increased that discomfort a notch. The phrase “holding them back” suggests that they want a behaviour and struggle to achieve it but they may have exactly the behaviour they want and far from being held back they are now being pushed over a precipice. This would be particularly true for long-term readers who would seem to have found a stable cost to value ratio that is satisfying them

Of course there are those who suffer from all the challenges you itemize such as impostor syndrome and knowledge gap, the lack of helping hand so your suggestions maybe all good for that population. Perhaps therefore you’d be better off reaching out to new ish readers EG those on their way to trust level 2, those that have already gone from 0 to 1+?

Again, the balance is hard.

I like the idea of focussing on those moving towards level two (note that you cannot achieve TL2 without active participation).

---

With the rest of the comments too: I think you are making some very very valid points.
But we also shouldn’t be completely paralysed and afraid to reach out to other humans. Yes, you might cause a small bit of discomfort, but that’s life. If the intent is good, you provide a safe space to say no and you don’t keep pushing… I think it’s OK. If your personal style is different, than that is OK too.

@51mon

@Bas

think about what your members want out of their community.

this is a suggestion that I suggest needs guidance on how to break it down. Perhaps it’s your most valuable observation but too massive and implacable as it stands?

Yeah, this might warrant another full post indeed. It’s pretty much the core of what community management is: balancing your user needs with the company/orgs needs

[simon]

@51mon

I wholeheartedly support the idea that lurkers are not a problem - indeed I’ll go further and say I think use of the term lurker is - to use @HAWK 's term / concept almost a form of “microaggression!”

I agree with this. I also may be partly responsible for the use of the term - it’s used in the title of the “Most Active Lurkers” pre-installed Data Explorer query. The query is useful for identifying a trend, but its title and description make an unnecessary value judgement.

There are cases where lurking (reading) may be considered the appropriate behavior. For example, many questions have been asked and answered multiple times. Because I enjoy the interaction, I tend to give these questions full answers, but another type of response is something like “Have you tried searching for that?” This could leave a person feeling that they should have remained a lurker. On Meta I do see the community being especially welcoming for posts with the “first time” and “returning user” welcome notices though.

Another case is creating posts that could be seen to add no value to the conversation. I’m risking creating one of those here

When I was working for Discourse I loved the icebreaker topics on our internal forum. They gave me a chance to say “I am here!” at times when I didn’t have much to contribute to the more technical conversations. I wonder if more icebreaker types of topics could be created on Meta? If so, would having those topics in a category that excluded anonymous users (and indexing by search engines) lower the barrier to posting and increase the likelihood that readers of the forum would register accounts?

[anon65426961]

@simon

Another case is creating posts that could be seen to add no value to the conversation. I’m risking creating one of those here

That’s a difficult one, also entirely subjective.

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

@simon

I wonder if more icebreaker types of topics could be created on Meta?

I think this one could be, to a certain extent, considered as one:

Do you use the reaction? What does it convey to you, and what does it mean when you use it?

Just being curious. Nothing serious here is part of the available reactions on meta. While most emojis conveys obvious feelings or sentiments, or sometimes a few different but close ones, or that can easily be interpreted depending on the context, what does means to you, as a reaction?

Lounge (which doesn’t exist anymore by default in new Discourse installation) was/is also a proper category for this, with more relaxed and casual conversations, but reserved to trust level 3.

There are few TL3 on meta if we remove the staff.

I think it was discussed at some point to decrease the TL3 thresholds on meta…

@simon

When I was working for Discourse I loved the icebreaker topics on our internal forum. They gave me a chance to say “I am here!” at times when I didn’t have much to contribute to the more technical conversations.

Same here
It’s also a good context to disagree more easily with people if we’re shy.
Like, saying, “I don’t like the TV show you recommended” instead of “I don’t like the design you created”

[simon]

@Canapin

I think it was discussed at some point to decrease the TL3 thresholds on meta

I was tl2 on Meta up until earlier today. For most cases, that felt correct to me, but in terms of prompting users to create accounts and post on a Discourse site, I can see the value of having one or more categories that require >= tl0.

[51mon (Simon)]

@simon

I also may be partly responsible for the use of the term - it’s used in the title of the “Most Active Lurkers” pre-installed Data Explorer query

This is what I’ve tried to explore in posts that attempt to show behaviours are based on perception of acceptability and that in turn is generated by the choice of language Which in turn rest upon…

@simon

where lurking (reading)

I posit as a description of behaviour "lurking” is acceptable while to label someone as a “lurker” undesirable

@simon

response is something like “Have you tried searching for that?” This

Would “you’ll find useful stuff if you use the above & search XYZ…” be a response without the negative?

@simon

I’m risking creating one of those here

I disagree (Or maybe I think the risk is the price of opportunity); breakthrough follows most often from the unforseen serendipity of emergence - that comes from diversity - so your creating the circumstances for a very high value contribution, but generally they have a low probability of occurrence because the high probability will have already been found easily!

@simon

icebreaker topics

I agree they’re important. On the community where I’m TL3 there are many threads entitled " forum games:…”. I have them all set to ignore because I don’t need them but I recognise that to form community requires people with diversity of personality, background, needs, etc. contribution to the community is richer for having a variety that comes from participation of people who have that need or just enjoy what for me is burning time without value. We are all different, and embracing difference gives us all more value - I think this spirit of community - does anybody else have an opinion?

@Canapin

There are few TL3 on meta

I hold out no hope of acquiring TL3 here because there are so many people active in many topics & topics active so that the amount of time to meet the threshold criteria will decrease the value I get here to near zero. The criteria are valid for a small community not one with topics of little interest EG such as the software maintenance dis-interests of somebody (me) who has a largely sociological interest in digital community mores.

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

@51mon

I hold out no hope of acquiring TL3 here because

Well, I’m TL3 I reckon, and I’m not that active. Sure, I read a lot, but it is not so time demanding.

I don’t need or use tools of TL3. So for me trust levels are actually quite meaningless and as a system it is ”just” a gatekeeper or guard dog. And… most of people world wide think that way and that’s why TLs are a weak incentive. Sure, I can be wrong too. But I’m not

But I am not a lurker. That is question of personality but matter of climate of forum too. Few toxic persons and I’m out really fast. For me this is just another part of my own time, and I’m too old to waste it.

But… now we are back to ice breakers and so on. I can’t give any CSS tips. I can’t code. So I’m writing more or less just meta’ish content, some times even on topic. That happends because here is room for me. If here house rules would be similar than in StackOverflow I would be 100% pure lurker and there would be no chance to convert me to even semi-active writer.

Global forums have another speed bump and it is language barrier. As everyone sees, at least native english speakers, I just don’t care how badly I misuse prepositions or doing grammatical errors^[1] but it is just me. Others can be very shy using strange language, even with translators, and they will choose to keep theirs fingers out of keyboard.

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1. english is an awful language; Yoda was 1000 years old jedimaster, but even he couldn’t learn english ↩︎

[JammyDodger]

@simon

I agree with this. I also may be partly responsible for the use of the term - it’s used in the title of the “Most Active Lurkers” pre-installed Data Explorer query. The query is useful for identifying a trend, but its title and description make an unnecessary value judgement.

I don’t think you should take all the blame. One of the things that came up when we were discussing whether ‘lurkers’ should be included as a term or if we should try and retire it altogether was that it’s such a recognisable term, and leaving it out may make this guide (and the accompanying blog) less discoverable, and therefore less useful.

Personally though, I think if we can move away from the term and reframe the dynamic I’d be much happier.

[simon]

@51mon

Would “you’ll find useful stuff if you use the above & search XYZ…” be a response without the negative?

That would be a good response. What I was trying to point out is that there’s an aspect of forum culture that discourages posting.

At its worst, people who are new to a forum’s domain are considered to be “newbies.” A typical response to their questions is essentially “RTFM.” So one thing that may discourage people from posting in a community is fear of being shot down for asking “dumb” questions. At its best, this harsh aspect of forum culture encourages people to think before posting a question.

There’s a similar issue with posting replies. If someone’s replies are repeatedly ignored, or answered in a highly critical manner, they’re likely to stop posting on the forum. I know this from personal experience. On a music related forum, a reply I was especially proud of was criticized by one of a forum’s prominent members. After having posted daily for a year, I never posted again. 10 years later, I still go back to the forum from time to time when I think it might have information I’m looking for. I’m not saying my reaction was rational - just that it’s easy to forget that people have varying levels of sensitivity. One bad experience can turn a super-user into a lurker.

Possibly this issue is something to be especially aware of in the age of AI. The other day I was feeling impatient and Googled “how many cm is 104hp?” The top response on Google took me to a forum thread where the reply was just a link to another thread on that forum. The first response in that thread told me to do some math, the second response told me to “Google it.” So I fired up ChatGPT. It was happy to answer the question. If online communities want to attract active users, they need to be aware that they’re now competing with friendly bots that are often able to answer basic questions related to a forum’s domain.

@JammyDodger

I don’t think you should take all the blame.

I don’t I was just remembering how that term got introduced into the Discourse lexicon.

[Ed_S]

@51mon

On the community where I’m TL3 there are many threads entitled " forum games:…”

I’d be interested to know what’s in those icebreaker threads.

[51mon (Simon)]

Several follow the same theme - name a place starting with the next letter of the alphabet. Name a vegetable, TV show etc. Pictures & ‘cheating’ are rife / encouraged. When took part I used to try to find entries containing a z or x or w.

They do provide a low friction, lo barrier that gives opportunity for edit, give recv likes etc

[51mon (Simon)]

Hi bas

I’m replying in email because I never earned that badge on any discourse forum so I’m using this as a learning op. not obvious how to do things like quote - the normal UI coding for me reduces fluency

I pretty much agreed with everything in your first post, AND more so with your reply. I definitely agree it’s a balancing act.
A constant theme for me is that the culture we live in dictates the words and mental models that we use as a result constrain our thinking. Then others reading have a different understanding.
You’re ref to “holding back” may have been an example of a ‘loaded’ sentence with connotations you did not mean.

I definitely didn’t notice your qualification of lurker on subsequent uses. This may be because I use speech marks (") to quote something said by others whereas to signal that a word or phrase should be interpreted differently from normal I would use a single quote (').
This may be something that was in vogue when I was taught English, it may be something that varies by nationality etc. It’s a potential disconnect.

You say this is equal to real life and I agree but in face to face life there is fluidity established through personal choices & feedback cycles whereas here we are constrained by the software that has design paradigms embedded in the operation that came from those mental models and constrained by our vocabulary when one is trying to create a certain environment

So it’s a good point you make about trust level 2 only being achievable with posting! Maybe there should be more than one route to TL2 (&3) because currently the bias would say ** it’s a numbers game not quality!!** there maybe users who never publish who gain enormous value but they give back elsewhere outside a forum - but that must be undetectable and unrewardable?

Some users may generate a small number of highly valuable posts. Uses that generate lots of posts with no valid content might be a positive for community sustainment?

Isn’t there something in the mechanics of ignoring or blocking a member to flag to admin if enough people block them? Maybe they should be an equivalent for ratio of posts to likes? That would have to be 'moderated’ by an average of how generous people are with giving likes (I’m sure we all know people who never give any!)

Re the poss post/ topic on “core of balancing…” would you like to Collab on an attempt?

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

@Jagster

And… most of people world wide think that way

@simon

What I was trying to point out is that there’s an aspect of forum culture that discourages posting.

Those are often interesting points that lack data to back up claims. It surely is very difficult to gather reliable data, but a lot of people have opinions (myself included) purely based on feelings or experiences that can’t or shouldn’t be stretched up to be considered as “true”.
I’ve said or thought many things that I claimed or was persuaded were true until I figured out there weren’t, or I changed my mind after some experience (which doesn’t mean I went from wrong to right; it could be the opposite).
Notice how my last sentence is a good example of the first one.

About your quote, simon, I recognize some carefulness in your wording, though, and you state it’s one aspect of (implicitly) many others.

Also, as a reader only on many community platforms, where I sometimes communicate exclusively by PMs, I dislike the term “lurker” very much. Not posting doesn’t mean you’re not producing content that will benefit the forum. For example, you can share the content you learned on a forum with another community and link back to the forum. Or just talk about the forum. Or just use the knowledge you gathered to use them in whatever project you have.

It’s in the evening and I’m very tired so I hope my post makes sense.

[packman (Chris McMahon)]

@51mon

This may be something that was in vogue when I was taught English, it may be something that varies by nationality etc. It’s a potential disconnect.

I think you may be from the same era as me, but I think you’re trying to fight a battle you’re highly likely to lose. I was taught that spelling mattered and grammar mattered and that the choice of particular words mattered. If I wrote something with spelling and grammar mistakes, or just something that the teacher thought was cr*p then I’d probably get a blackboard eraser thrown at me at high velocity.

Nowadays my teenage step-son tells me that I speak and write in ‘old people language’ and I know for sure that he talks and writes unintelligible gibberish most of the time. I discuss journalistic standards with my mid-20’s sons and decry the inability of ‘journalists’ to spell or use common grammar or write headlines that make sense without having to read them 20 times. They tell me not to worry, the people aren’t journalists, they’re digital copywriters who’s entire being exists to generate copy as quickly as possible to draw clicks from people to make their digital empire appear at the top of the click tables. Apparently using spelling or grammar checkers slows the whole process down too much.

In a world that has evolved since the fountain pen on paper, and succint and easily understandable phone calls on very expensive phone systems (if you even had a phone) that we grew up in, the subtleties of single vs double quotes and nuances about whether some words are slightly more offensive than others is long lost on many of the online population.

In summary, if it behaves like a lurker and it doesn’t write like an active participant then it’s a lurker - whatever other words you choose to represent them instead. If you call them a ‘non-active participant’, most readers will translate it in their head to read ‘lurker’ and not worry one iota about the use of the ‘L’ word.

[simon]

@Canapin

Those are often interesting points that lack data to back up claims. It surely is very difficult to gather reliable data,

I’m not sure how difficult it would be to find examples of the behavior I’m describing, but it wouldn’t be appropriate to use Meta as the source of those examples. I prefer to highlight what’s going right in this community. My sense is that the community has become more welcoming to new users over time.

[packman (Chris McMahon)]

@simon

My sense is that the community has become more welcoming to new users over time.

I don’t know what things were like in the past as I only migrated my forum to Discourse in March, but I have never felt awkward when using Meta nor encountered any toxic behaviour that has put me off posting.

In contrast, I’ve found all participants friendly, encouraging and most of all very helpful to everyone. In fact what I see on Meta every day convinces me more and more that choosing to use Discourse was the right decision.

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

@Canapin

that lack data to back up claims

Of course because it is pure mission impossible to gather straight numerical metrics what coders would like to work with

But still… with hard enough experience opinions can be as good as, or even better, than hard measurements. Not too often, but sometimes.

But even here where almost everyone is ”data oriented” one way or another gamification or quantity-before-quality prizes - what TL de facto is - doesn’t increase activity. Well, you guys know very well better than I what metrics are, so I’m just guessing.

So, we have difficult aspects here. One is cultural differences (you know - why vs can you open your motives a bit more ) where small talk societes seems to write/create more than those where is wider private space. I can understand much better american forum culture than brasilian one.

Second is nature of a forum. Kind of poetry vs. support/QA. In which direction that affects… well, it depends. You can’t get any wider help here if you are just reader.

My very weak point is we all are doing here very spesific rules in very wide world. My views reflects all the time finnish mentality, of course. But is it so much different than so called global system, aka. american way? There is some differences like badges - those are pure waste of time here in northern Europe in general, but can and will work somewhere else. But those are pennies. All forums, no matter where, are struggling with too big group of lurkers and too few valuable actives.

That’s why we have this topic. Tools of higher TL, badges, chat priviledges, high value content, non-toxic environment… any of those aren’t worked good enough ever.

My opinion is we can’t change that. It comes from humanity itself, how people act. We should live with it and play that numbers game. If percent gang is (and will) creating most of content and all others are consuming that… is it actually bad thing?

And there is one quite funny, or sad, detail left. Admins. They are doing plans and solutions where lurkers will change to active ones. But admins are quite often part of those most laziest ones, master class lurkers If an admin doesn’t want to participate why should others be more keener?

[simon]

@Jagster

If an admin doesn’t want to participate why should others be more keener?

This is an important point. Meta does exceptionally well at this: https://meta.discourse.org/u?order=post_count&period=all

[Ed_S]

(Might be worth noting that in the usual lifecycle of non-commercial forums, the founder(s) will be admin(s) but may have become inactive: there might still be active management, by other admins or by moderators, or just active longer term members.)