11 ms·

The “community manager” role is a fraud and a farce

131 points by Tsiolkovsky 12y ago

fennecfoxen 12y ago
TLDR: some communities are built around corporate overlords and there's a Community Manager person who tries to get them to be useful for the corporate overlords while still being generally happy. This is, like, soooo un-grass-roots and inauthentic it hurts! Somebody dial the waah-mbulance.
- ChrisPebble 12y ago
  His expectations for what a community and community manager should be are certainly set extraordinarily high: > "In summary: a 'community manager' is really an 'audience handler' .... and frankly I've run out of patience for the deception." I've never been under the delusion that community managers from WoW to Microsoft are there primarily to keep everything from spinning out of control.
corobo 12y ago
> Could you share what you read this morning that set you off? This guy makes a good point. As a side note I didn't manage to get through that, it sounded far too ranty and overused "quotation marks" in a way that made it hard to read. It is also a bit of a "giant who cares" piece really too
blueskin_ 12y ago
True, but also blindingly obvious - just see the recent reddit censorship drama.
onion2k 12y ago
I think there's an assumption that a community based around a corporation is automatically going to be used for something nefarious and underhanded. Is that definitely the case? There are corporations that have "community managers" whose job is specifically to keep the community running smoothly from the corporate side - examples being the developer community that surrounds the likes of Apple and Microsoft. That doesn't make the community any less of a real community though.
- Spooky23 12y ago
  This is a great point. There are different types of communities, and judging them isn't really a high-value pursuit. Think about things like the "SHARE" community around IBM mainframe and other products. Obviously it's in IBM's interest to have people getting together talking about doing more stuff with IBM crap... but it's very valuable for those users as well.
- hobs 12y ago
  You are not wrong, there can be (and I think it gels with his post) communities that have no management, communities that are successfully managed by someone who is paid by a private corporation, etc. The word community isnt just a gathering of people. I think the deeper point though is that this type of role can in fact have great power over the community, and that it is clear where the hand that feeds them is coming from. For example: In the SQL Server (MS) community, there are professionals that earn an "MVP" status, which is Microsoft's acknowledgement of the work and evangelism they have done in regards to the product. Recently, a guy named Brent Ozar (an MVP) called Microsoft out on some bull they were pulling, moving features to enterprise edition and limiting RAM until you went to enterprise licensing (SQL 2014). Plenty of people in the community of the same stature came out to warn him to be quiet, or to finally say something after someone with more weight brought up the issue. This kind of community management automatically sets people's biases up to not only say what the corporation is doing is right; even if they personally think otherwise they avoid speaking out about it because they would lose this shiny medal.
- touristtam 12y ago
  but the it isnt a role to manage a community as much as to manage the relation between the community and the corporation. So "community relation manager" would be more appropriate.
blowski 12y ago
Like so many things, a community manager is neither necessary nor sufficient for a good community. But it can still be a good idea to have one. Like all roles - finance manager, IT manager, HR manager, etc - just appointing one won't fix all problems, but it's a good start if you're having problems in that area and trying to fix them. Having somebody in the room that represents that business concern, and knows what they're talking about, helps.
mattzito 12y ago
This is such a non-event that it seems not even worth posting about, being in the same vein as: - gasp "Sometimes corporate-sponsored open-source developers have their corporate employers' interests at heart" - gasp "Sometimes support people toe the party line instead of telling customers really what is going on" - gasp "Sometimes marketing teams amp up new features to make them appear more important than they are" and so on and so on. Good community managers help represent the community to their employers as well as helping to coordinate the community at large. Bad community managers exploit the community as a marketing and PR channel at the expense of honest communication within the community.
- Disruptive_Dave 12y ago
  this
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  I'm not sure if it's a non-event as much as a whinge about nomenclature. I get the feeling the author would feel a lot better if we didn't use the 'community manager' euphemism and just said like 'PR' or something instead.
  - johnkpush 12y ago
    A whinge about nomenclature is what I got out of it. At SimplyBuilt we have staff members that foster communication, provide support, and delete spam/irrelevant posts. In our case (and in most cases I guess) the word 'community manager' would have a high handed sound to it, even though they are technically managing a forum.
  - mattzito 12y ago
    Community management by defintion includes "PR" in that it includes "Public Relations", but a good community manager is much more. They're often there to help facilitate conversations, user group meetings, keep the community civil, agitate for better customer support, and so on. Yes, they're cheerleaders to a certain degree, but pretty much any customer/public-facing role at a company needs to have a bit of cheerleader in them.
falcolas 12y ago
And yet, some communities do need managers. As in shepards to sort through the flock's needs, and ensure that they're being met. They also act as the public face of the company, and can be very important. As an example of a great community manager who added to the community that grew up around a corporation, see Ghostcrawler.
- Ntrails 12y ago
  I assumed initially that this was related to the PGI Transverse/MechWarrior Online debacle with the community manager who waged a war on the most vocal part of his player base (and kind of lost). It seems to me that with online games the community manager role is both very important and poorly understood. Realistically it's customer relations, PR, and so on. But MMOs are communities - and volatile ones at that. It can't be easy.
charlie_vill 12y ago
To whoever wrote this; Dude, chillax.
jmsdnns 12y ago
In a decentralized world, community management might be a core piece of marketing.
notacoward 12y ago
As someone who has worked on a project both with and without community managers, having to do some of that myself when we didn't have one, I think it's a valuable role. Does it really make sense to take developers away from development to do any of the following? * Organize meetups, hackathons, etc. * Deliver presentations and/or get not-enthusiastic developers to do so. * Initiate or sustain joint efforts with people on other projects, so they don't stagnate every time developers get distracted by other commitments. * Get all that stuff from social media into the correct channels. Most developers are not good at those things, and do not enjoy them. If your project is lucky enough to have some people who will do those things on their own time (or on company time without getting fired because they're not meeting code deadlines) then good for you. Many don't. Sure, there's always tension between community and corporate needs. Again, who would you rather have managing that tension? Some introverted developer who only sees the world through the lens of the code as its already written, or somebody with better perspective and people skills? Not every project needs a community manager. However, those that do will get one - either dedicated, or stolen from bits and pieces of other project members' time. Personally, I think it's a good thing when the project's technical leaders can shove all that other stuff onto somebody else.
- levosmetalo 12y ago
  > Sure, there's always tension between community and corporate needs. Again, who would you rather have managing that tension? Some introverted developer who only sees the world through the lens of the code as its already written, or somebody with better perspective and people skills? And here we go again, someone calling all developers introverts. Could we please stop that nonsense? There are certainly some introverts between developers, but not more than in any other high skill profession.
  - Jgrubb 12y ago
    That's not how I read it at all, and I'm somewhat introverted and definitely a developer. Nonsense is taking a comment like this so personally and blowing it way out of proportion.
  - notacoward 12y ago
tpush 12y ago
He seems to be really obsessed with Canonical and its (former) Community Manager Jono Bacon.
VLM 12y ago
TLDR seems to be there is an unspoken priority between the words community and manager that is often wrong, and a hierarchy between the community and whoever pays the managers bills that is often wrong. There is also a side dish of dogfood WRT eating your own dogfood, if you insulate your coders and company from the community effectively enough, you schism the community.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
tehabe 12y ago
Why do people still use such a narrow definition of what a "manager" is? It is almost as bad as the word "politician".
joeevans1000 12y ago
I prefer the common and honest title of 'evangelist'. That title addresses all the author's concerns.
mratzloff 12y ago
I think "community liaison" would probably be a more apt title. But I think his point is that without some say in the product a community isn't a community.
- morgo 12y ago
  Totally agree. Or in some cases: Product Manager or Technology Evangelist.
rrd 12y ago
This post echos my sentiments about the Stack Exchange community managers. Stack Exchange the company doesn't want to pay for the manpower and expertise to moderate all their sites ("communities") so they hold moderator elections and get people involved with the site to do it for free. They provide these volunteers with a sense of authority and ownership over the communities, but if there's ever a disagreement between the moderators and the "community managers", guess who wins?
morgo 12y ago
I am a Community Manager (for MySQL at Oracle). I don't find anything particularly offensive with what Aaron has to say. The scenarios are certainly all possible... but I don't think I've ever seen a CM pull rank and say "I'm the manager!". I agree that CM is a terrible title because it opens up mistrust by being so nebulous. I would be happy to be called a Community Liaison (something suggested in the comments).
anotherevan 12y ago
Wow, that's a really big axe you've got against the grindstone there.
andmarios 12y ago
Since most people seem to don't know who Seigo is; Aaron was president of KDE eV for a couple years. He is one of the top KDE developers for more than a decade and one of the main architects of KDE4, Plasma and semantic-desktop, upon the principles of which many companies now build their OSes. AFAIK he is also one of the few people that actually tried to create open source hardware and not just a cheap embedded system that runs Linux with binary drivers. So he is heavily involved with one of the largest free software communities for more than a decade now and thus his opinions have a certain weight.
bikamonki 12y ago
Well put.
brm 12y ago
This has been a problem for a while, and by this I mean using the term community manager to refer to a business development, social media pr, or event planning role. There is in fact a job out there that actually entails supporting and nurturing a community and its vitally important to the health of online communities (not firms dressed up as 'communities'). The best example I can think of is the work Heather Champ did at flickr: http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Nasty-as-they-wanna-be-Policing-Flickr-com-2480224.php http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Nasty-as-they-wanna-b...
fredfoobar42 12y ago
> If your community has a "manager", it isn't being treated as a community and probably isn't a community to begin with. A better description might fall within: a) a con job where someone is attempting to get people to participate on their terms for their benefit while trying to convince them that isn't the case at all and everyone is equally in it together; b) a cult organization; c) a captive audience being actively groomed for marketing purposes ... perhaps a mix of the above. Not, however, a community. Oh, man... This has been my experience, completely. I was hired as a "Community Associate" and later promoted to "Community Lead" for a FinTech startup in NYC. "Con Job" is the perfect way to describe it. The company's idea to increase user growth was to simply BUY contact information of people in the field the product was targeted for, and add them to their MailChimp list. After getting promoted (well, after my boss was fired), I fought vociferously to end the practice, knowing it would bite them in the ass. I left in October of 2013, and I've kept an eye waiting for the other shoe to drop.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
coffeemug 12y ago
The term "community manager" is perhaps a misnomer. A better term might be "community supporter." We have a community manager/supporter at RethinkDB, and here is what Christina does: - Proactively reaches out to users to see if they need help, then connects them to the developers on the team in case they need something but haven't reached out themselves (which is surprisingly common). - Searches for meetups related to our product/company and helps meetup organizers by sending them gifts for the attendees, gives them occasional food budget, organizational advice, etc. - Organizes our own meetups and makes sure food, drinks, label printer, venue, and a million other things that go into events are all set up and ready to go for the attendees. - When she notices community members are working on related projects, she acts as a network hub and connects them to each other. - A million other things that need to get done when you have a large, distributed, non-hierarchical group of people trying to accomplish something. We use the term "community manager" because that's what the industry standardized on, but really she's not managing anything. She supports the community in every way she can, so really, she's a "community supporter". It's a vital role, and every good open-source project has someone doing the job, though they may not necessarily have an explicit title.
- coldtea 12y ago
  Yes, but then again you're not a community -- you're a company.
falsestprophet 12y ago
I think "community organizer" is a better term.

131 points by Tsiolkovsky 12y ago

TLDR: some communities are built around corporate overlords and there's a Community Manager person who tries to get them to be useful for the corporate overlords while still being generally happy. This is, like, soooo un-grass-roots and inauthentic it hurts! Somebody dial the waah-mbulance.

ChrisPebble 12y ago
His expectations for what a community and community manager should be are certainly set extraordinarily high: > "In summary: a 'community manager' is really an 'audience handler' .... and frankly I've run out of patience for the deception." I've never been under the delusion that community managers from WoW to Microsoft are there primarily to keep everything from spinning out of control.

corobo 12y ago

> Could you share what you read this morning that set you off? This guy makes a good point. As a side note I didn't manage to get through that, it sounded far too ranty and overused "quotation marks" in a way that made it hard to read. It is also a bit of a "giant who cares" piece really too

blueskin_ 12y ago

True, but also blindingly obvious - just see the recent reddit censorship drama.

onion2k 12y ago

I think there's an assumption that a community based around a corporation is automatically going to be used for something nefarious and underhanded. Is that definitely the case? There are corporations that have "community managers" whose job is specifically to keep the community running smoothly from the corporate side - examples being the developer community that surrounds the likes of Apple and Microsoft. That doesn't make the community any less of a real community though.

Spooky23 12y ago
This is a great point. There are different types of communities, and judging them isn't really a high-value pursuit. Think about things like the "SHARE" community around IBM mainframe and other products. Obviously it's in IBM's interest to have people getting together talking about doing more stuff with IBM crap... but it's very valuable for those users as well.
hobs 12y ago
You are not wrong, there can be (and I think it gels with his post) communities that have no management, communities that are successfully managed by someone who is paid by a private corporation, etc. The word community isnt just a gathering of people. I think the deeper point though is that this type of role can in fact have great power over the community, and that it is clear where the hand that feeds them is coming from. For example: In the SQL Server (MS) community, there are professionals that earn an "MVP" status, which is Microsoft's acknowledgement of the work and evangelism they have done in regards to the product. Recently, a guy named Brent Ozar (an MVP) called Microsoft out on some bull they were pulling, moving features to enterprise edition and limiting RAM until you went to enterprise licensing (SQL 2014). Plenty of people in the community of the same stature came out to warn him to be quiet, or to finally say something after someone with more weight brought up the issue. This kind of community management automatically sets people's biases up to not only say what the corporation is doing is right; even if they personally think otherwise they avoid speaking out about it because they would lose this shiny medal.
touristtam 12y ago
but the it isnt a role to manage a community as much as to manage the relation between the community and the corporation. So "community relation manager" would be more appropriate.

blowski 12y ago

Like so many things, a community manager is neither necessary nor sufficient for a good community. But it can still be a good idea to have one. Like all roles - finance manager, IT manager, HR manager, etc - just appointing one won't fix all problems, but it's a good start if you're having problems in that area and trying to fix them. Having somebody in the room that represents that business concern, and knows what they're talking about, helps.

mattzito 12y ago

This is such a non-event that it seems not even worth posting about, being in the same vein as: - gasp "Sometimes corporate-sponsored open-source developers have their corporate employers' interests at heart" - gasp "Sometimes support people toe the party line instead of telling customers really what is going on" - gasp "Sometimes marketing teams amp up new features to make them appear more important than they are" and so on and so on. Good community managers help represent the community to their employers as well as helping to coordinate the community at large. Bad community managers exploit the community as a marketing and PR channel at the expense of honest communication within the community.

Disruptive_Dave 12y ago
this
madeofpalk 12y ago
I'm not sure if it's a non-event as much as a whinge about nomenclature. I get the feeling the author would feel a lot better if we didn't use the 'community manager' euphemism and just said like 'PR' or something instead.
- johnkpush 12y ago
  A whinge about nomenclature is what I got out of it. At SimplyBuilt we have staff members that foster communication, provide support, and delete spam/irrelevant posts. In our case (and in most cases I guess) the word 'community manager' would have a high handed sound to it, even though they are technically managing a forum.
- mattzito 12y ago
  Community management by defintion includes "PR" in that it includes "Public Relations", but a good community manager is much more. They're often there to help facilitate conversations, user group meetings, keep the community civil, agitate for better customer support, and so on. Yes, they're cheerleaders to a certain degree, but pretty much any customer/public-facing role at a company needs to have a bit of cheerleader in them.

falcolas 12y ago

And yet, some communities do need managers. As in shepards to sort through the flock's needs, and ensure that they're being met. They also act as the public face of the company, and can be very important. As an example of a great community manager who added to the community that grew up around a corporation, see Ghostcrawler.

Ntrails 12y ago
I assumed initially that this was related to the PGI Transverse/MechWarrior Online debacle with the community manager who waged a war on the most vocal part of his player base (and kind of lost). It seems to me that with online games the community manager role is both very important and poorly understood. Realistically it's customer relations, PR, and so on. But MMOs are communities - and volatile ones at that. It can't be easy.

charlie_vill 12y ago

To whoever wrote this; Dude, chillax.

jmsdnns 12y ago

In a decentralized world, community management might be a core piece of marketing.

notacoward 12y ago

As someone who has worked on a project both with and without community managers, having to do some of that myself when we didn't have one, I think it's a valuable role. Does it really make sense to take developers away from development to do any of the following? * Organize meetups, hackathons, etc. * Deliver presentations and/or get not-enthusiastic developers to do so. * Initiate or sustain joint efforts with people on other projects, so they don't stagnate every time developers get distracted by other commitments. * Get all that stuff from social media into the correct channels. Most developers are not good at those things, and do not enjoy them. If your project is lucky enough to have some people who will do those things on their own time (or on company time without getting fired because they're not meeting code deadlines) then good for you. Many don't. Sure, there's always tension between community and corporate needs. Again, who would you rather have managing that tension? Some introverted developer who only sees the world through the lens of the code as its already written, or somebody with better perspective and people skills? Not every project needs a community manager. However, those that do will get one - either dedicated, or stolen from bits and pieces of other project members' time. Personally, I think it's a good thing when the project's technical leaders can shove all that other stuff onto somebody else.

levosmetalo 12y ago
> Sure, there's always tension between community and corporate needs. Again, who would you rather have managing that tension? Some introverted developer who only sees the world through the lens of the code as its already written, or somebody with better perspective and people skills? And here we go again, someone calling all developers introverts. Could we please stop that nonsense? There are certainly some introverts between developers, but not more than in any other high skill profession.
- Jgrubb 12y ago
  That's not how I read it at all, and I'm somewhat introverted and definitely a developer. Nonsense is taking a comment like this so personally and blowing it way out of proportion.
- notacoward 12y ago

tpush 12y ago

He seems to be really obsessed with Canonical and its (former) Community Manager Jono Bacon.

VLM 12y ago

TLDR seems to be there is an unspoken priority between the words community and manager that is often wrong, and a hierarchy between the community and whoever pays the managers bills that is often wrong. There is also a side dish of dogfood WRT eating your own dogfood, if you insulate your coders and company from the community effectively enough, you schism the community.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

tehabe 12y ago

Why do people still use such a narrow definition of what a "manager" is? It is almost as bad as the word "politician".

joeevans1000 12y ago

I prefer the common and honest title of 'evangelist'. That title addresses all the author's concerns.

mratzloff 12y ago

I think "community liaison" would probably be a more apt title. But I think his point is that without some say in the product a community isn't a community.

morgo 12y ago
Totally agree. Or in some cases: Product Manager or Technology Evangelist.

rrd 12y ago

This post echos my sentiments about the Stack Exchange community managers. Stack Exchange the company doesn't want to pay for the manpower and expertise to moderate all their sites ("communities") so they hold moderator elections and get people involved with the site to do it for free. They provide these volunteers with a sense of authority and ownership over the communities, but if there's ever a disagreement between the moderators and the "community managers", guess who wins?

morgo 12y ago

I am a Community Manager (for MySQL at Oracle). I don't find anything particularly offensive with what Aaron has to say. The scenarios are certainly all possible... but I don't think I've ever seen a CM pull rank and say "I'm the manager!". I agree that CM is a terrible title because it opens up mistrust by being so nebulous. I would be happy to be called a Community Liaison (something suggested in the comments).

anotherevan 12y ago

Wow, that's a really big axe you've got against the grindstone there.

andmarios 12y ago

Since most people seem to don't know who Seigo is; Aaron was president of KDE eV for a couple years. He is one of the top KDE developers for more than a decade and one of the main architects of KDE4, Plasma and semantic-desktop, upon the principles of which many companies now build their OSes. AFAIK he is also one of the few people that actually tried to create open source hardware and not just a cheap embedded system that runs Linux with binary drivers. So he is heavily involved with one of the largest free software communities for more than a decade now and thus his opinions have a certain weight.

bikamonki 12y ago

Well put.

brm 12y ago

This has been a problem for a while, and by this I mean using the term community manager to refer to a business development, social media pr, or event planning role. There is in fact a job out there that actually entails supporting and nurturing a community and its vitally important to the health of online communities (not firms dressed up as 'communities'). The best example I can think of is the work Heather Champ did at flickr: http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Nasty-as-they-wanna-be-Policing-Flickr-com-2480224.php http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Nasty-as-they-wanna-b...

fredfoobar42 12y ago

> If your community has a "manager", it isn't being treated as a community and probably isn't a community to begin with. A better description might fall within: a) a con job where someone is attempting to get people to participate on their terms for their benefit while trying to convince them that isn't the case at all and everyone is equally in it together; b) a cult organization; c) a captive audience being actively groomed for marketing purposes ... perhaps a mix of the above. Not, however, a community. Oh, man... This has been my experience, completely. I was hired as a "Community Associate" and later promoted to "Community Lead" for a FinTech startup in NYC. "Con Job" is the perfect way to describe it. The company's idea to increase user growth was to simply BUY contact information of people in the field the product was targeted for, and add them to their MailChimp list. After getting promoted (well, after my boss was fired), I fought vociferously to end the practice, knowing it would bite them in the ass. I left in October of 2013, and I've kept an eye waiting for the other shoe to drop.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

coffeemug 12y ago

The term "community manager" is perhaps a misnomer. A better term might be "community supporter." We have a community manager/supporter at RethinkDB, and here is what Christina does: - Proactively reaches out to users to see if they need help, then connects them to the developers on the team in case they need something but haven't reached out themselves (which is surprisingly common). - Searches for meetups related to our product/company and helps meetup organizers by sending them gifts for the attendees, gives them occasional food budget, organizational advice, etc. - Organizes our own meetups and makes sure food, drinks, label printer, venue, and a million other things that go into events are all set up and ready to go for the attendees. - When she notices community members are working on related projects, she acts as a network hub and connects them to each other. - A million other things that need to get done when you have a large, distributed, non-hierarchical group of people trying to accomplish something. We use the term "community manager" because that's what the industry standardized on, but really she's not managing anything. She supports the community in every way she can, so really, she's a "community supporter". It's a vital role, and every good open-source project has someone doing the job, though they may not necessarily have an explicit title.

coldtea 12y ago
Yes, but then again you're not a community -- you're a company.

falsestprophet 12y ago

I think "community organizer" is a better term.