I think this discussion has a lot to do with what happens when a community member dies. On a basic level: this is about how one defines who a member of the community is. And how one decides how well-known someone is within the community. For years, I’ve been claiming that the functional definition of fame is “more people know me than I know”.

Rituals are important: and they are very significant around both entry and exit for a community. Growing communities have a lot more people coming in than leaving; entry rituals are thus often neglected, as it’s really easy to succumb to “welcoming fatigue”. Some people will leave the community without any obvious reason. Some die.

I think having rituals for entry and exit makes a community stronger. And I have strong views about just how big a community can be before it loses the status of being a community — it’s somewhere in the low thousands. Beyond that, it becomes a confederacy at best.

However, these entrance rituals (for a large brand-oriented community, anyway) can cause smaller membership numbers and can be counter-productive to the business goals of the community. There are some models that work, but they are few and far between. Most open, public communities are like any other social group — participants make themselves known through their own words, and build a reputation for themselves.

However, none of that really has to do with what happens when a community member dies. The more well-known the member, the more outpouring of emotion there will be. Companies that have communities, and even the people who run those communities, may not understand the depth of those emotions or what to do about/with them. This is another subject where the community manager must ride the fine line between “It’s my community because it’s my job and it has our brand on it” and “it’s your community because we gave it to you when we opened the doors”. This post was intended to be helpful to those community managers who may not have any idea what to do (or may have thought to do the wrong thing) when it happens in their community.

Thanks for reading –

Kellie

I think there are parallel patterns that need similar attention, which often fall into the “everyone knows that!” bin, in the same way that appropriate grieving rituals do.

Bringing in a new person works better when there are rituals. And these rituals (IMO, even if not formal) require the new member to do something that is symbolic of becoming part of the community. In my online experience — where I’ve felt people in the community showed me how I could help — I’ve become part of the community. Other places, I’m still pretty much a watcher.

Acknowledging when a person in the community has a “life event” — a birth, a death in the family, a marriage, any of the major stress items that have been listed in too many places: that too (IME) makes a very large difference in whether the people hanging around feel part of a community or a faceless pawn in the crowd.

Community grows, again from my viewpoint, when someone seen as part of the community reaches out to say to someone else “You’re part of our community and you’re welcome here.” The unspoken part: “Warts, kinks and all. You, as you, are welcome here”. That doesn’t mean that violating the community agreements is okay — within the community, agreements are important. Critically important.

And we grow as a community when we find out where those agreements haven’t yet become explicit. And then make them explicit for the future, without blame for what’s happened before, as long as what was done was done with some kind of assumption of goodwill and a minimal amount of malice.