How to Kill A Community

With all of the fantastic platforms popping up to increase communication with your community – including what might just be the next thing to transform the Church called ShadeTree (http://getshadetree.com/) it is important that we first understand what will Kill an online community fast.  While many folks are offering solutions on how to grow your community from 100-500% … what they are not teaching is the simple rules to keep folks engaged.

So if you want to kill your online community – just follow these simple tasks to the letter.

1. Don’t Moderate. If you consider everything that someone says to be sacred and worth something – then good speech has lessened worth.   People hate hearing arguments online – (believe me I have been party to just a few – even instigated some…).   Allowing folks to show their ignorance, stupidity, hatred, lack of a controlled tongue, etc… only will cause those who want to follow a good source of information to run quickly away from your community…  But it’s okay the advertisers will continue to visit and post…
2. Allow Spam Through. I love reading all the notes about a Bridge in Brooklyn I can buy, the church or ministry that does not really exist but needs my hard earned money, etc…   By allowing these guys -even if they are well written spam, to sit and spend time on your site – anything you do want to have traction will not…  What you are selling or offering has no value in the miry of spam … AND other spammers will take note and begin to target your site as well- after all they are happy to have a new community to go and bug – even if it’s dying.
3. Force Signup. There are a ton of useful services like Gravatar, OpenID and others..   While its okay to moderate – one should never have to create an account, upload a picture, create a username, etc.    After all, People love belonging… and your club is better than the rest … RIGHT?
4. Random Junk from Around the Web. Go around and make sure you pounce your URL all over another persons blog, their dig posts, Delicious links -and of course – Let us not forget the holy grail of the web… SlashDot.   After all it will get you more traffic…
5. Design Like a highschool girls bedroom . BUTTONS BUTTONS BUTTONS, STICKERS STICKERS and… you guessed it – MORE STICKERS.   Make sure you offer every single possible login system such as twitter, openID, google friend, AOL, yahoo, Facebook, and… of course MySPACE – because we all know your space is the new MySpace.    eople love visiting a site where they can’t navigate … . It needs plenty of Buttons.  People love options after all.