MyFC’s broken windows – repairing broken functionality on a social networking site

The key to the success of MyFootballClub was always going to be control and direction of information, and I have constantly tried to promote this idea on the MyFC website and on this blog.

Many of the problems of engagement and retention that are causing panic for the Operator, Board and Club (not to mention the remaining members who really want this venture to work) come back to this issue – that our activities and information flow are not coordinated by the website.

Coming back to a previous post, All of this, for me, relates to Activity Theory, the idea that we can look at what is happening across our organisation in terms of:

• Participants – members, board, web team, club management
• The community, which all these are part of (and sub-communities)
• The rules that describe how these people take part in the community
• The divisions of labour – who does what
• The tools we use to achieve our goal

Groups – bad implementation

The MyFC Operator implemented the Group functionality in July 2008, partly as an attempt to get away from repetitive or cliquey threads in the main forums.  Unfortunately, like other aspects of the website, it wasn’t put in place with proper consideration of how it would benefit the Society, how they relate to the Soapbox and Society forums, Proposals, Votes etc.

Coming back to Activity Theory, there was no clear link between the Groups (a “tool”) and Subjects, Community and Divisions of Labour. There were no clear rules about how they should be used to achieve the Objects of the Society.

It’s no wonder then that the same debates that we’ve been having over the last year continue as ever on the forums with no resolution (and not just the controversial Pick The Team issue).  It’s no wonder that conversations persist concurrently in one or more Groups, Society and Soapbox, as well as having been assigned to Board members for action.

Getting Groups working

Here’s some suggestions for getting groups working. These could be written down as explicit guidelines but we can always just start working this way. Other elements need minor changes to the site by the Operator’s Web Team, who are paid by the Society to maintain and develop the website.

1) Cull Duplicate groups.
E.g. There are 5 groups with PTT in the title, one called “Pick the team f’christsakes” and one called “Selector Solutions”

• Solution: We make a rule that someone who creates a duplicate group is pointed in the direction of the existing group. If there is an argument for a similar group to be set up, e.g. “Pro PTT / Anti PTT”, then this shall be made when creating a group, for the Forum Team to approve.

2)Encourage more ownership and participation in the groups
Some of these have very few members, and only on has seen any activity in the last month. Despite this, there are similar threads on the Society, Football and Soapbox forums.

• Solution: Allow group moderators to send “Newsletters” to their membership, with obvious guidelines so that spamming is discouraged.
• Solution: Allow more than one forum moderator so that the group can remain active
• Solution: Allow moderators to create quick polls

3)Move emphasis from the Forums to the Groups.
There are many repetitive threads on the forums that never really resolve any of the issues they are supposed to.

• Solution: Forum Team to direct Forum threads (where appropriate) to a relevant group. e.g.
• Solution: Encourage Groups to summarise a debate or proposal from their group in the Society / Soapbox forum. Or just what they’ve been talking about recently.

4) Cull inactive groups
There are dozens of groups that have few members in, and no activity.

• Solution: Archive groups with less than 8 members
• Solution: Archive groups with no activity for 6 weeks

5) Make special website sections for Society wide interests

There are some groups that should would better serve the Society by being part of a well formed section on the site, rather than being buried within a group thread.  There are two main areas that come to mind:

Upcoming matches:
Make this a distinct section which shows the recent and upcoming games, latest updates to each match etc.

Each upcoming match has it’s own page, with match previews, Jaiku rota, Questions for Liam, fitness, away travel information, who’s attending, match representatives and a place for banter.

Previous matches show previews, photos, Liam’s feedback etc. Each of these elements are available in various unlinked places throughout the site, whereas to have them in one location would tidy things up and put them all in context.

Society:
Make this a distinct page, more like a group blog than the same, dull article system.  Use it to show recent board articles, meeting agendas and minutes, proposals, but also calls for action from the members, whether it be physical help like handing out leaflets, or expert advice from qualified members.

And of course use tags and categories to link common threads together.

6) Broken Windows
There is far too much name-calling, inappropriate or irrelevant comments that slow down the flow of a conversation and make considered debate impossible.  For too long we as a Society have not discouraged it, and the Forum Team have allowed this to continue unabated.  In fact the Operator’s Web Team themselves have been guilty on occasion, which hasn’t helped matters.

This is Broken Windows – in social behaviour this is the idea that a single broken window left unrepaired will lead to further vandalism. On a website site it’s the idea that you would write things on a forum post that you would not say to that person in a pub.  We call it “trolling” and there are various ways to deal with it.

At the least, before you hit return, read out what you’ve just typed aloud to the person next to you. If they punch you in the face then perhaps you should consider rewriting it.

A solution for web forums - thanks to Randall Munroe of xkcd.com

After all, we all have the same goal, don’t we?

The continued success of the MyFootball Club Society and Ebbsfleet United.

Goodwill Hunting

When MyFC started recruiting members before taking over Ebbsfleet United, one of the rules was that the first year of membership would commence when the club was formally taken over. Which means that on February 19th 2009, over 20,000 memberships will expire. Some have renewed their subscriptions already, but there is great uncertainty as to how many will actually commit on or before the deadline. This is a problem because the clubs budget depends on the funds that these renewals will bring in – the CEO hinted as much on a recent BBC TV Inside Out report.

So whilst there are various issues that the Society is dealing with (not least how to deal with dissenting views, and others that I’ve commented on previously) the Operator has a new campaign to get people to commit. They have asked all members to signal their renewal intentions, and whether they will be purchasing gift memberships for christmas, perhaps donating a little more to the club kind sir?

I’m not sure at how this information can be considered representative, as it doesn’t seem to take into account the thousands who really don’t care any more. I said on the forums after the first couple of days: “by the end of next week the figures you have will be pretty much all your going to get”, and sure enough, for the last few days, there has been little increase in the number of respondents, which is now at about the same level as recent Society vote turnouts. I.e. everyone who was ever going to respond has done so, so their response should in no way be extrapolated to the rest of the 28,000 people who haven’t replied.

New Research

This report from Forrester Research could be far more useful, not just at estimating likely renewals but as a guide to work out how better to engage the different “kinds” of community participants.

It suggests that users of social websites like MyFC can be categorised by the extent to which they participate online and can be described by the following activity profiles:

• Creators – write articles, create social content, upload images etc
• Critics – respond to articles and forum posts, add to Wikis etc
• Collectors – organise content for themselves and others
• Joiners – join social networks and maintain their online identity / profile
• Spectators – read articles, watch videos etc but otherwise do not contribute.
• Inactives – neither create nor consume social content.

Clearly these categories are not all discrete as some participants may be both creators and critics, for example.

They also report significant differences in patterns of activity between different age groups, gender groups and nationalities. This is demonstrated with the profiling tool.

Data from Forrester Research Technographics® surveys, 2008. For further details on the Social Technographics profile, see groundswell.forrester.com.

A quick glance to me suggests that things may not be as bad as some of the more skeptical members make out, and reinforces my belief that the “Target” survey does not truly reflect likely member participation. This data seems to suggest that a website where 40-65% of the membership are either inactive or only spectators is not unusual.

My hope is that the Society Board and the Operator will at least consider this research along with their own demographic data, and use it to make better estimates about the renewals strategy and website development.

Activity Theory & MyFC

This is something I posted to a MyFC forum thread that had been going on for some time.  Another member made a comment that such a dull, non-football discussion had gone on for 18 pages.  It was a good opener for me to make some comments that had been floating round my head for some time.

Diagram of Extended Activity System

There are clear problems with this Society, which underpin any activity that leads it towards achieving its goals. We have to get these in order if we are to do the work we need, e.g. sorting out the finances, recruitment, or other club business. I see 3 main problems: the tools that we use, the rules that govern the community, and the division of labour within the community.

I’m citing Extended Activity Theory here, something I’ve been studying recently. I think it offers useful insights into where things don’t work and more importantly: how we can fix them.

TOOLS
Tools are: the website, forum, mailshots, wiki, podcast, matchday programme, chatroom, API, team selector, translation team, board blogs, twitter/jaiku match updates, tags, PM, video – anything we use to transmit or accumulate knowledge throughout the society.

“Tools shape the way human beings interact with reality and reflect the experiences of other people who have tried to solve similar problems at an earlier time and invented/modified the tool to make it more efficient. This experience is accumulated in the properties of tools as well as in the knowledge of how the tool should be used. “

“Tools are created and transformed during the development of the activity itself and carry with them a particular culture – the historical remnants from that development. The use of tools is a means for the accumulation and transmission of social knowledge. It influences the nature, not only of external behavior, but also of the mental functioning of individuals.”

The tools we use are not well integrated and need reviewing – they do not adequately assist in the accumulation and transmission of social knowledge. I.e. match updates, board updates, finance information, board activities, calls for help etc. These are not well organised and this is why a lot of people feel they cannot engage with the society and the club.

Many elements (forums, for example) do not reflect the experience and best practice of many succesful online communities, and have not been allowed to adapt and change as the Society has developed. They way that the forum is managed, for example, is one reason that many people have ended up posting on other sites.

RULES
“Rules – conventions, the code and guidelines for activities and behaviors in the system.”

These are not well defined. Hence this thread has extended to 18 pages. This doesn’t just apply to forum discipline, it refers to the board, how often and by what means to they communicate with members. The relationship between the Operator and the Society. The CEO and Chairman. etc. These all need to be clearly defined and stored in a place so that all particpants in the Society know what’s going on. How many times did we see a new member join and not have any clue about what was going on and who did what? Why else did we have hundreds of people put themselves up for the Society board, and then so many drop out?

DIVISION OF LABOUR
Division of labor – social strata, hierarchical structure of activity, the balance of activities among different people and artifacts in the system.

Again, these need to be well defined, and obviously relate to the rule and tools. Remember the Members’ skills database? Could have been really useful in handing mini tasks to members, especially coupled with a “call for action” list. Here, we need to define what needs doing, perhaps assigning board members to manage aspects of it and the assignment of tasks. Again, we might need to be careful when dealing with sensetive information, but this is where rules come in.

We also need to recognise and accept the diverse interests, experience and skills of members, and not be dismissive if some members are interested only in matchday activity, but not the politics of the Society. And vice versa. We should be confident that they can discuss and investigate these subjects, report back to the Society in general and produce an action plan we can make a decision on.

Summary
We need to get the Operator to review and integrate the tools our Society uses. We also need to define more clearly the Division of Labour and Roles and Responsibilities of the board, web team, forum team, CEO etc, and the rules that they should adhere to. If we sort this out, the society can thrive, engagement will improve, and the financial, footballing or other challenges can be met head on, as a diverse but united body of people with the same object.