Davyc

The group tag can be changed to whatever, but I prefer to remove it altogether and replace it with a ranking that makes them and me one of us - I have to work for my rank as does every member, but movement up the ranking system has to be realistic, raising the bar too high turns people off.  It also has to be fun and people must 'want' to see what comes next and they know they have to contribute to get that rank.
The headache side is deciding how many ranks and what to call them, but that's something that needs time and thought to execute.
I did consider, at one time, offering an Amazon voucher to the first person to achieve a higher rank, but that proved too difficult to assess.  It was a motivative idea with some kind of reward at the end for persistence of presence.  I suppose a developer could produce an app to mitigate such an idea 🙂
  

This is Episode IV btw 

Sleeker and more applicable.  Makes it easier to see where to post and what.  Great improvement.

Sleeker and more applicable.  Makes it easier to see where to post and what.  Great improvement.

One of the things that I have noticed a lot in people (this is a general observation and not limited to online experiences) is that they tend to react rather than pausing and think through an appropriate and considered response.  That is, instead of taking a step back and taking a longer look at a situation, comment, post, topic (you get the picture) there is the infallibility of people to instantly react.  It's obviously a people issue and one that has become more noticeable over a period of time.  Whether it's the pressures of modern living or something more sociologically ingrained is something that would require a far deeper exploration than a blog topic.  I've seen this 'reaction' from people who bite at the least little thing and literally go over the top without stopping to think.
This is why I'm a great advocate of understanding, compassion, empathy, and education. If we all just reacted rather than employing a little more of those traits, I mentioned, then chaos would rule.  This applies to everyone, everywhere, regardless of who you are, what you do or what you think.  All of those traits I mentioned should be the beating heart of every community, whether online or in the real world and if we all took the time to exercise a little restraint and 'think' rather than 'react' then communities would be the richer for it.
I'm not implying that we search for a utopia or nirvana community - that is a fantasy wish, but it is something we can work towards and something that is worthwhile considering. The alternative is to accept toxicity in people and believe it to be the new norm when it doesn't have to be that way, but it will be that way if we accept it and continue to react.
This article spells it out in a much more erudite way: https://zenhabits.net/respond/
 

Some people just want to see the world burn. Either as a whole right away and if not, then at the very least, one person at a time. Some people sustain themselves and define themselves on coinage and the decimation of others. For those "special people," that is what the ban button is for. It is not the cure-all for all your woes you may face running a community, and for the most determined, it may only act as a temporary relief.  That said, I do not believe there is a "magic bullet" (metaphorically speaking) of a universal nature to address all toxicity unilaterally. The best anyone one person can do is manage each person and situation on a case-by-case basis and hope for the best.  
But I do like your overall belief regarding reaching out to someone personally and trying to make a connection. The only difference I would make is beyond just sending someone a personal message (privately). I would also try to incorporate a fundamental initial olive branch publicly as a means to establish that you're making an effort within your community.  It will not only help define you as a community leader but as a respected peacemaker too.

There is one hole in this line of thought, not that I totally disagree with it, but vulnerability can lead to exploitation, so you would need to measure this with some other form of displaying firmness.  How you would do that will depend on the individual.  Some people don't like to portray vulnerability, because of the issue of potential exploitation. I would replace the word and the meaning with "understanding" and finding out what leads to the toxicity.  It's extremely easy to ignore the root of an issue and react rather than discover.
Some people are just generally nasty, that's in their nature and these kinds of people will swarm on displays of vulnerability and exploit them to the full, which will raise the toxicity levels higher. So, show some understanding, discover why and then decide on how to deal with the issue.  It may be that some people will be toxic to get attention, their rational posts may be ignored whilst their toxic ones attract attention.
I don't believe there is a one-stop-shop-solution to people's behaviour and every case needs to be measured with the right kind of response. Of course, this means that Admins and Moderators need to be more understanding of people's foibles and ways and get to the root of an issue and then sort it from there.  Many Admins and Moderators may not see this as the right approach and deal with issues differently, it's about finding out what works best for them and whether their methodology actually works in turning toxic into enjoyable.

One of the things that I have noticed a lot in people (this is a general observation and not limited to online experiences) is that they tend to react rather than pausing and think through an appropriate and considered response.  That is, instead of taking a step back and taking a longer look at a situation, comment, post, topic (you get the picture) there is the infallibility of people to instantly react.  It's obviously a people issue and one that has become more noticeable over a period of time.  Whether it's the pressures of modern living or something more sociologically ingrained is something that would require a far deeper exploration than a blog topic.  I've seen this 'reaction' from people who bite at the least little thing and literally go over the top without stopping to think.
This is why I'm a great advocate of understanding, compassion, empathy, and education. If we all just reacted rather than employing a little more of those traits, I mentioned, then chaos would rule.  This applies to everyone, everywhere, regardless of who you are, what you do or what you think.  All of those traits I mentioned should be the beating heart of every community, whether online or in the real world and if we all took the time to exercise a little restraint and 'think' rather than 'react' then communities would be the richer for it.
I'm not implying that we search for a utopia or nirvana community - that is a fantasy wish, but it is something we can work towards and something that is worthwhile considering. The alternative is to accept toxicity in people and believe it to be the new norm when it doesn't have to be that way, but it will be that way if we accept it and continue to react.
This article spells it out in a much more erudite way: https://zenhabits.net/respond/
 

Hi Jordan & thank you for your post.
I am by profession, a psychotherapist, so I understand where you are coming from. I have seen many forums collapse, including a forum for clinical psychologists. John Suler points to something called, "the Disinhibition Effect", where anonymous users hide behind this anonymity & behave in ways they would never behave "in real life".
I don't want to turn this posts into an analysis of behaviours, but sometimes approaching someone can help. I am the Director of a support forum for people with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus & I had one very angry person write a very angry post to something I said. It's often hard to read something unpleasant, but I made contact privately and I offered validation for her feelings. The response was favourable. I did not validate the behaviour but could understand, in her context, why she felt what she did. She responded by saying this was the first time someone had taken the time to try to understand.
There are people, however, who are enraged & want to destroy anything good, including a community. Not everyone is a therapist or wants to engage with very unpleasant people. It's also a matter of time, money & competency. Contacting someone may even make the situation worse & the end result may be that the Moderator will be left with difficult and unwanted feelings.
@Davycreferred to vulnerability & often this is a hidden component which we don't see or understand. The ferocity and rage is a cover for that vulnerability, which often has nothing to do with the current situation, but from the past, which gets triggered in the present. While I have a great deal of time for Mindfulness, when this rage and vulnerability is engrained, it is not possible for that person to stop, think & not react. Compulsion control is difficult for this type of person who has been damaged, usually from a very young age & this leads to an inability to monitor one's feelings. The world is split in good and bad, an either or without a middle way.
Nevertheless, there is merit in thinking about what to do in these situations. Thank you for a thoughtful post.
 

One of the things that I have noticed a lot in people (this is a general observation and not limited to online experiences) is that they tend to react rather than pausing and think through an appropriate and considered response.  That is, instead of taking a step back and taking a longer look at a situation, comment, post, topic (you get the picture) there is the infallibility of people to instantly react.  It's obviously a people issue and one that has become more noticeable over a period of time.  Whether it's the pressures of modern living or something more sociologically ingrained is something that would require a far deeper exploration than a blog topic.  I've seen this 'reaction' from people who bite at the least little thing and literally go over the top without stopping to think.
This is why I'm a great advocate of understanding, compassion, empathy, and education. If we all just reacted rather than employing a little more of those traits, I mentioned, then chaos would rule.  This applies to everyone, everywhere, regardless of who you are, what you do or what you think.  All of those traits I mentioned should be the beating heart of every community, whether online or in the real world and if we all took the time to exercise a little restraint and 'think' rather than 'react' then communities would be the richer for it.
I'm not implying that we search for a utopia or nirvana community - that is a fantasy wish, but it is something we can work towards and something that is worthwhile considering. The alternative is to accept toxicity in people and believe it to be the new norm when it doesn't have to be that way, but it will be that way if we accept it and continue to react.
This article spells it out in a much more erudite way: https://zenhabits.net/respond/
 

There is one hole in this line of thought, not that I totally disagree with it, but vulnerability can lead to exploitation, so you would need to measure this with some other form of displaying firmness.  How you would do that will depend on the individual.  Some people don't like to portray vulnerability, because of the issue of potential exploitation. I would replace the word and the meaning with "understanding" and finding out what leads to the toxicity.  It's extremely easy to ignore the root of an issue and react rather than discover.
Some people are just generally nasty, that's in their nature and these kinds of people will swarm on displays of vulnerability and exploit them to the full, which will raise the toxicity levels higher. So, show some understanding, discover why and then decide on how to deal with the issue.  It may be that some people will be toxic to get attention, their rational posts may be ignored whilst their toxic ones attract attention.
I don't believe there is a one-stop-shop-solution to people's behaviour and every case needs to be measured with the right kind of response. Of course, this means that Admins and Moderators need to be more understanding of people's foibles and ways and get to the root of an issue and then sort it from there.  Many Admins and Moderators may not see this as the right approach and deal with issues differently, it's about finding out what works best for them and whether their methodology actually works in turning toxic into enjoyable.

While good in theory, this doesn't work at scale, isn't transparent, and doesn't promote accountability. IPS has much room for improvement here in surfacing the built in support request functionality for use between members and moderators/staff. We've done this through customization on our community and I think focusing on the places in IPS where members have touchpoints with staff would reveal a number of opportunities to improve that engagement.
Think about reporting content (one way communication), the warning system (one way communication), and what's available to converse with members from a team standpoint that offers two-way back and forth.
A notable gap, that we could speak to in depth about.

There is one hole in this line of thought, not that I totally disagree with it, but vulnerability can lead to exploitation, so you would need to measure this with some other form of displaying firmness.  How you would do that will depend on the individual.  Some people don't like to portray vulnerability, because of the issue of potential exploitation. I would replace the word and the meaning with "understanding" and finding out what leads to the toxicity.  It's extremely easy to ignore the root of an issue and react rather than discover.
Some people are just generally nasty, that's in their nature and these kinds of people will swarm on displays of vulnerability and exploit them to the full, which will raise the toxicity levels higher. So, show some understanding, discover why and then decide on how to deal with the issue.  It may be that some people will be toxic to get attention, their rational posts may be ignored whilst their toxic ones attract attention.
I don't believe there is a one-stop-shop-solution to people's behaviour and every case needs to be measured with the right kind of response. Of course, this means that Admins and Moderators need to be more understanding of people's foibles and ways and get to the root of an issue and then sort it from there.  Many Admins and Moderators may not see this as the right approach and deal with issues differently, it's about finding out what works best for them and whether their methodology actually works in turning toxic into enjoyable.

There is one hole in this line of thought, not that I totally disagree with it, but vulnerability can lead to exploitation, so you would need to measure this with some other form of displaying firmness.  How you would do that will depend on the individual.  Some people don't like to portray vulnerability, because of the issue of potential exploitation. I would replace the word and the meaning with "understanding" and finding out what leads to the toxicity.  It's extremely easy to ignore the root of an issue and react rather than discover.
Some people are just generally nasty, that's in their nature and these kinds of people will swarm on displays of vulnerability and exploit them to the full, which will raise the toxicity levels higher. So, show some understanding, discover why and then decide on how to deal with the issue.  It may be that some people will be toxic to get attention, their rational posts may be ignored whilst their toxic ones attract attention.
I don't believe there is a one-stop-shop-solution to people's behaviour and every case needs to be measured with the right kind of response. Of course, this means that Admins and Moderators need to be more understanding of people's foibles and ways and get to the root of an issue and then sort it from there.  Many Admins and Moderators may not see this as the right approach and deal with issues differently, it's about finding out what works best for them and whether their methodology actually works in turning toxic into enjoyable.

There is one hole in this line of thought, not that I totally disagree with it, but vulnerability can lead to exploitation, so you would need to measure this with some other form of displaying firmness.  How you would do that will depend on the individual.  Some people don't like to portray vulnerability, because of the issue of potential exploitation. I would replace the word and the meaning with "understanding" and finding out what leads to the toxicity.  It's extremely easy to ignore the root of an issue and react rather than discover.
Some people are just generally nasty, that's in their nature and these kinds of people will swarm on displays of vulnerability and exploit them to the full, which will raise the toxicity levels higher. So, show some understanding, discover why and then decide on how to deal with the issue.  It may be that some people will be toxic to get attention, their rational posts may be ignored whilst their toxic ones attract attention.
I don't believe there is a one-stop-shop-solution to people's behaviour and every case needs to be measured with the right kind of response. Of course, this means that Admins and Moderators need to be more understanding of people's foibles and ways and get to the root of an issue and then sort it from there.  Many Admins and Moderators may not see this as the right approach and deal with issues differently, it's about finding out what works best for them and whether their methodology actually works in turning toxic into enjoyable.

Hi Joel!

I struggled with a single title to encapsulate Jordan's role within Invision Community.

In terms of Jordan's presence on this forum, then Community Advocate is a fair fit, but even that doesn't cover everything.

Our community is more than just this forum of course. There are (neglected) social channels, email communications with customers, face to face conversations with enterprise customers and so on.

To break down the excellent points in your post:

How will he triage, prioritize, and escalate client feedback to the IPS team, all of whom can and do visit the forums themselves?
This is really the core reason we're now hiring more non-development roles and roles that don't directly tie into pure technical support. We're growing as a company and part of this growth means that we have to put focus on other areas. Our development team do and will continue to interact with the forums but they have less time to collate and manage feedback, complaints and so on. Having a single person to collect all that information, break it down and then feed it to the team to be planned into future releases makes sense.

What are the parameters for clients to help highlight and channel our feedback in an effective manner?
Sometimes feedback is quite formal "I want this feature". Sometimes it's a complaint "I can't seem to get this to work" and sometimes it's just in conversations.

We do very well in collecting feedback from enterprise clients. We get a lot via email. We also get a lot with regular calls but we've become less adept at collecting feedback from this forum.
Jordan will be a familiar face that people can speak to. Clients don't need to do anything special to get his attention. He'll go through feedback and make sure that everyone gets a reply and everyone gets heard.
And finally, as a community advocate, what does he actually advocate?
As part of our growth, it's very easy when planning development to overlook some suggestions. I want Jordan to be a champion for our customers and represent them in our team meetings.
Invision has attempted multiple community engagement tactics over the years.
Yes indeed. We always look for ways to improve. We can create effective strategy but without the required person-power, it stalls quickly. Making new hires in these areas will help us move forwards.
To be blunt and on behalf of all of your retail clients, we don't need a Community Advocate to post memes.
I will defend Jordan's right to bear memes and emoji. If you are judging him based on his output so far, that is unfair. He's settling into his role after a fairly intense week of onboarding within our team.

We need a Community Advocate with the power to deliver and communicate on meaningful actions to drive our communities forward.
Couldn't agree more. Jordan is an experienced community owner who has achieved excellent growth over multiple platforms (including his own Invision Community, Twitter, Instagram, etc). Jordan is an excellent communicator with a very open and friendly personality. I want him to have freedom to learn more about our customers and make more meaningful connections to get richer feedback that we can use when planning future releases.
 

Congratulations, I've just browsed your site and watched some of your YT videos - you are the perfect fit for this community and for Invision to drive it forward.  I look forward to your interaction with us on here and I may be asking you about YT more as a friend of mine, who lives in the USA, and myself are about to launch onto the YT platform soon.
All the best 🙂
 

This all looks amazing and so much neater, but there is one thing that really bugs me a lot - it's probably the designer in me - is the inconsistency of the side bar top alignment; see below:

The gap between the top of the sidebar and the topic header.
Yet here it is aligned perfectly:

I presume there is a reason for this, or is it an oversight?
I don't mean to be picky as you've done a fantastic job on the update, but this one little niggle is a bug for me lol

This all looks amazing and so much neater, but there is one thing that really bugs me a lot - it's probably the designer in me - is the inconsistency of the side bar top alignment; see below:

The gap between the top of the sidebar and the topic header.
Yet here it is aligned perfectly:

I presume there is a reason for this, or is it an oversight?
I don't mean to be picky as you've done a fantastic job on the update, but this one little niggle is a bug for me lol

This all looks amazing and so much neater, but there is one thing that really bugs me a lot - it's probably the designer in me - is the inconsistency of the side bar top alignment; see below:

The gap between the top of the sidebar and the topic header.
Yet here it is aligned perfectly:

I presume there is a reason for this, or is it an oversight?
I don't mean to be picky as you've done a fantastic job on the update, but this one little niggle is a bug for me lol

This all looks amazing and so much neater, but there is one thing that really bugs me a lot - it's probably the designer in me - is the inconsistency of the side bar top alignment; see below:

The gap between the top of the sidebar and the topic header.
Yet here it is aligned perfectly:

I presume there is a reason for this, or is it an oversight?
I don't mean to be picky as you've done a fantastic job on the update, but this one little niggle is a bug for me lol

This all looks amazing and so much neater, but there is one thing that really bugs me a lot - it's probably the designer in me - is the inconsistency of the side bar top alignment; see below:

The gap between the top of the sidebar and the topic header.
Yet here it is aligned perfectly:

I presume there is a reason for this, or is it an oversight?
I don't mean to be picky as you've done a fantastic job on the update, but this one little niggle is a bug for me lol

This all looks amazing and so much neater, but there is one thing that really bugs me a lot - it's probably the designer in me - is the inconsistency of the side bar top alignment; see below:

The gap between the top of the sidebar and the topic header.
Yet here it is aligned perfectly:

I presume there is a reason for this, or is it an oversight?
I don't mean to be picky as you've done a fantastic job on the update, but this one little niggle is a bug for me lol

This all looks amazing and so much neater, but there is one thing that really bugs me a lot - it's probably the designer in me - is the inconsistency of the side bar top alignment; see below:

The gap between the top of the sidebar and the topic header.
Yet here it is aligned perfectly:

I presume there is a reason for this, or is it an oversight?
I don't mean to be picky as you've done a fantastic job on the update, but this one little niggle is a bug for me lol

Good spot - that happens because on the invisible widget container above the main content. We’ll figure out a solution 🤞