Earlier this year, I blogged about some of the ongoing debates I’ve seen regarding online communities and free speech. Some users seem to think that the right of free speech applies everywhere, when in reality, it doesn’t. In fact, the very same right of free speech that allows people to say whatever they want also allows discussion list organizers and online community owners to choose not to carry certain kinds of speech. In fact, read the user agreements of most online communities and you’ll find a whole host of prohibited speech that you might be able to say in other venues.

David helped me flesh out my original blog post into our latest column over at FastCompany.com:

Free Speech and Censorship in Online Communities

Every so often in the business-oriented online communities in which I participate, the issue of free speech and censorship comes up, usually from someone (or several someones) who is testing or pushing the envelope of the acceptable boundaries within the community — profanity, flame wars, etc.

Is free speech an absolute right within online communities? Can an online community, regardless of its size and membership requirements, establish and enforce a more restrictive code of conduct?

There is a long, well-established precedent for moderation/governance in online communities — even ones that are open to the public. Whether it has been tested for constitutional validity in court or not (and I haven’t found any court cases, but would greatly appreciate any references anyone may have), online communities have for years been in the practice of having codes of conduct that were far more restrictive than constitutional protections. Even large, open membership communities have moderators who are able to edit or delete posts and suspend or eject members who violate those codes of conduct. To say that the boundaries of constitutionally protected free speech is applicable to any privately-owned online community is to go contrary to decades of business practices.

Do blogs change this? What about sites like Gather, Ecademy or AlwaysOn, in which individual blogs are aggregated or displayed in the front page and other pages? One could make the argument that blogs are somehow different because of the fact that they are an individual voice rather than a community space. However, the aggregation of them on the front page and the nature of the threaded comments would, I think, negate any such argument. The site may call them blogs, but if they’re aggregated and allow comments, they’re still really just one big threaded discussion forum. I doubt a court would see a substantial difference simply based on the slight technical difference.

Even so, most hosting companies, including blog hosting companies, also have terms of service that are more restrictive than free speech limits, typically restricting hate speech and pornography, among other things. For example, WordPress.com prohibits the use of PayPerPost. Is that a violation of a blogger’s right to free speech?

Under the Uniform Commercial Code, we all have the right to voluntary restrict our free speech by contract, and when we join an online community we are doing just that — subject to whatever the terms of service are. In fact, the contract doesn’t even have to be explicitily signed in order to be in effect. Consider that when you walk into a theater or restaurant, you give up some of your free speech rights. Do anything that is significantly unpleasant to other patrons — talk too loudly, let your kids run wild, etc. — and you’ll be warned and eventually ejected.

Why would anyone expect an online community to be any different?

You do have the right of free speech, but the owners of a community also have the right to establish and enforce codes of conduct within the community, and be joining that community, your right of contract supercedes your right of free speech.

So when you find yourself bumping up against the boundaries of behavior in an online community, you might want to consider whether that community is really the right community for you. If so, then you can either adapt your behavior to the code of conduct or you can use persuasive means to try to change the code of conduct. But don’t make cries of “Censorship!” — you gave up that right when you joined.

It seems that on many of the networks and lists on which I participate, there’s been an issue with “negativity” lately. Many have had members leave because of the negativity that they perceive.

You know, I would never be one to come out “in defense” of negativity. It frustrates me as much as it does anyone here, and those of you who have been around a while know that I’ve dealt with more than my share of it as a moderator (going on four years as a network leader).

On the one hand, I can understand why people wouldn’t voluntarily choose to be in a place where negativity prevails.

On the other hand, I also recognize that these communities are a microcosm of the rest of the business world. Here, you can learn to deal with difficult people in a low-risk environment. In small doses, it’s almost like a training ring for dealing with difficult people face-to-face. And if you can’t deal with them here — ignore them or confront them, as appropriate — how can you expect to be able to deal with them in the real world?
(more…)

“Don’t work too hard,” wrote a colleague in an e-mail today. Was she sincere or sarcastic? I think I know (sarcastic), but I’m probably wrong.

According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I’ve only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they’ve correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time.

More at Wired News

After a decade (and for some of us, longer) online, we know all about Netiquette, right? Don’t use all caps in your subject line (or, God forbid, the body of an email message). Don’t send attachments to people who don’t know you well. Don’t we know pretty much everything there is to know about etiquette online?

Well, maybe not. Online networking sites like LinkedIn can challenge our ideas about what constitutes white-lace-handkerchief behavior online. In fact, if we’ve learned that it’s important to be polite when using email, it’s even truer in the social networking sphere. Here are ten tips for establishing yourself as a well-mannered online networker, when using LinkedIn:

1) Create a user-friendly profile. Your LinkedIn profile is your virtual business card. Make sure that it represents you the way you want to be viewed by strangers - make that ‘people you haven’t been introduced to, yet.’ A sketchy LinkedIn profile signals that your busy day doesn’t allow you to fill in trivial details like what you’re doing now, what you’ve done in the past, or any other useful information. Such an incomplete profile won’t serve you as you network on LinkedIn, but it’s impolite as well: its message is “I’m going to use this database to find people, but I won’t bother to include enough information about myself to indicate how I might assist anyone else.” Take a few moments to fill in the gaps.

2) Invite true friends - or at least, true acquaintances - to connect. Spam is spam, and you must have a minimal level of contact with a person before inviting him or her to connect with you on LinkedIn. A contact - a less-intrusive overture than an invitation to connect - is a good way to approach people with whom you have no relationship. LinkedIn users vary in their views on how well you must know someone before connecting to him or her, but it’s inappropriate to send connection invitations to people who have never met you, heard of you, or had any inkling of your existence (unless they have indicated a desire to be approached by strangers). Think about it: if you found a person’s phone number on a scrap of paper, you wouldn’t feel that you had permission to phone him. Your possession of an email address doesn’t give you license to contact an unacquainted LinkedIn user and suggest a connection - and it’s this kind of overzealous outreach that gets users in trouble with LinkedIn, as well.

3) When you make a request, be clear about your intentions. You’ll find your LinkedIn contacts generally happy to forward your requests if you approach them politely and are clear about your goals. In the physical world, if you asked a friend to introduce you to his friend because of a mutual interest in sailing, and then actually hit the friend-of-a-friend up for a loan, you’d be viewed as a sneak. It’s no different online. If you’re job-hunting, say so. If you’re looking for investors, ditto. A wolf in sheep’s clothing soon finds his messages sitting, unforwarded, while his LinkedIn contacts wonder whether he can be trusted.

4) Reciprocity is a wonderful thing, and gratitude is key. When possible, it’s great to include in your LinkedIn outreach messages some suggestion that you’re aware of your obligations as a requester. That could mean an offer to make a useful introduction for the person who’s forwarding yours; or an offer to help in some other way; or just a heartfelt thank-you for the introduction you seek. It’s disconcerting for your first-degree forwarder to receive a slew of requests from you in one day (and this is common when one of your first-degree contacts is more-highly-connected than others) with no acknowledgement at all of the favor you’re asking. LinkedIn is no different from the ‘real’ world, in that sense: asking for an introduction is a favor, and it’s nice to show gratitude for that.

5) Pass along requests promptly, or say why you won’t. Membership in LinkedIn is a kind of agreement with the community that you intend to participate as an active node in a large and vibrant network. If people send you requests and they sit there, unforwarded and unresponded-to, for weeks, you’re not only the weak link in the system. You’re impeding someone else’s business efforts, and giving no reason for your bottleneck behavior. If you can’t forward on a request or move a communique forward, say so - and say why. LinkedIn provides a handy list of reasons for declining a request, plus an “other” option - use ‘em.

6) Avoid the boilerplate text, if you can. Of course you can. Unless you’re terribly afraid to strike out on your own with creative verbiage, please make an effort to put your own stamp on the standard invitation language that LinkedIn supplies. For instance, you could mention something impressive that you’ve heard about the person you’re contacting, or bring an old friend up quickly up to date on your doings. Using the boilerplate text shows a certain want of effort - so, even if you stick with the standard language, why not add “sorry to use the boilerplate text, but I’m not much of a wordsmith”?

7) Don’t abuse your network. Once you have cultivated a network, it’s tempting to reach out to the gang anytime you have news or a need for assistance. And LinkedIn’s functionality allows you to broadcast a note to your posse of contacts, by way of a Profile Update blast. Use these sparingly, not as a substitute for the Daily All About Me Newsletter. If you do, you may find yourself being un-connected from people who can’t manage the high volume of what’s-new-in-your-life mailings.

8) Don’t invent history to acquire colleagues. LinkedIn allows you to find former workmates at any company that has employed you, without being connected to them otherwise. Finding a colleague match only requires that you and another person worked at the same organization during the same time period. So, as tempting as it may be to make connection with people who worked in various appealing companies over the years, if you invent a work history in order to do that, you’re going to Hell. Perhaps that is overstated, but if you falsify your employment history on LinkedIn in order to create colleague-links with people you haven’t actually worked with, it’s an abuse of the LinkedIn system and the trust of the LinkedIn community.

9) Play by the rules. There are a number of ways to misuse LinkedIn in such a way as to convey the message, “I don’t care about the long-term health of this network or the company that built it - this is All About Me.” Including your email address in your LinkedIn name, for instance, makes a fee-for-use service like InMail superfluous for someone who wants to reach you, which is (if nothing else) exceedingly rude, seein’ as how LinkedIn provides the basic functionality to users at no charge. Unless you want to broadcast the message, “I don’t care whether LinkedIn can optimize its revenue strategy or not - I’m gonna optimize my connect rate,” you might consider rethinking your Me First approach.

10) Value relationships over transactions. As in physical-world networking, valuing people for their intrinsic worth over the business transactions they enable is key. No less than in middle school, ‘users’ are never welcome company for long. “Ka-ching” networking - the kind of outreach that signals “Say, you could make me a buck today” is unseemly and unfortunate. LinkedIn is a fabulous tool that enables connectors and influencers to help other people and achieve their own goals, too - and it’s great when we keep those priorities in balance.

Happy networking!

On a recent discussion on Ryze, John Veitch observed:

Those who think of Ryze as a place to “advertise” are not networking effectively. The advertising networks are popular, (lots of posts) but they are ineffective (very low readership).

Jill Slack-Henry replied with the following story that I think beautifully and articulately illustrates the all-too-common problem of people not understanding the difference between advertising and networking, and not understanding why the advertising approach doesn’t work in online communities:

I’ve seen the same thing happen with a few Yahoo Groups that I joined long ago.

Here’s an example.

One of the Yahoo Groups is for work-at-home moms. The group goes along with a web site that is set up to get leaders across the states to volunteer and they set up meetings in their towns. The meetings are meant to get the business owners together to get to know each other and have a presentation each month on something business-related that will help the business owners out. It’s not meant to be a time for folks to get together and try to recruit everyone to join their MLM, for example.

It’s a great idea to have these little groups across the country. The main web site gets some traffic, and interested folks are able to look up their city and see if there’s a group where the live. If so, they can visit. If not, they can start one without having to pay fees to the mother ship.

OK, back to the Yahoo Group.

Rather than using the Yahoo Group as a way to continue the dialogue, keep members pumped, point them to helpful articles or statistics or message board posts that would benefit these moms as they build their businesses, would you like to guess what the main activity of the Yahoo Group has become?

Ads are allowed on Tuesdays, so the only time there is ever any activity at all is when we’re bombarded with ads once a week.

That’s it.

Nothing helpful at all.

What’s crazy about this is these moms aren’t bothering to target their messages. The folks in the Yahoo Group already have a business. They’re already working on something. They’ve already invested money, time, energy, etc., into whatever they’re doing.

Spamming the group once a week isn’t going to make someone say, “Wow! Look at this! If I pay $100 by this deadline, I’ll get $15 worth of free candles. I’m going to chuck this business that I’ve been working on for five years and grab those candles. Yippeeeeee!”

They’re preaching to the choir. It’s a lazy way to go. If these moms seriously want to sign up more folks in their business, they need to get out there and find people who are interested in business but haven’t made a decision yet.

Of course, there are exceptions. Maybe someone is already in a business but they’re not happy with it. Maybe someone would like to add another biz to the mix — possibly a business that complements what they’re already doing.

But, for the most part, the Yahoo Group that I’m talking about (and I’m sure there are other similar examples) is full of moms who want to sign up more people under them in their MLM and that’s that.

What a waste!

I’m active in other message forums and Yahoo Groups where ideas are constantly being exchanged. There’s always a conversation going on. People are even willing to help out their competitors in some cases because it’s a way to help build their entire industry.
…
If your sole purpose is to advertise your business, people will see right through it. What works better is to use the old “Pay it forward” approach.

(Reprinted with permission)

Jill is a busy lady: a freelance journalist and regular contributing writer for Springfield Business Journal; owner of a lawn greetings rental service, AGreetingYard.com; co-administrator for the International Lawn Greetings Association; and working toward a master of arts in writing popular fiction at Seton Hill University. She also blogs at agreetingyard.blogspot.com.

People like Jill couldn’t care less about hearing about another business opportunity. They’re looking for ways to save time, cut costs, attract more business and make more money. If your product or service helps her do that, once you get to know her, she might be interested in what you have to offer. But the relationship has to come first, and it has to be based on helping each other accomplish your goals. Who knows - you might even learn a thing or two from her, as well. :-)

Recently, a relatively new Ecademy member posted an article from my About Entrepreneurs site in his blog without a link and proper attribution. I don’t believe that he was trying to claim authorship or doing anything malicious, but he caught some pretty heavy flak about it, both from current and former Ecademists. What he did was “wrong”, but unfortunately all too common, not because people are willfully stealing intellectual property, but because they don’t know any better.

That may seem shocking to those of you who know (or think you know) the proper care and handling of copyrighted material, but in a discussion about the topic on a couple of Ryze networks, I learned that a common sentiment about articles on the Internet was, “Spreading the articles around just helps promote them. Why wouldn’t someone want their articles posted in discussion forums and blogs, assuming proper credit is given? It’s doing them a service.”

Here’s what I wrote in response to the blog in question about blogs, forums and copyright, with a few additional thoughts and resources. Please take a read. Even if you think you know all about copyright and blogs, there might be a thing or two you hadn’t considered.

Blogs posts are copyrighted by default. The #1 rule to remember is that, by default, posts to a blog (or to a discussion forum, for that matter) are copyrighted material, and the author owns the copyright. Just because it’s “public” doesn’t mean it’s “public domain”. That means that it is subject to all the restrictions on copyrighted work, i.e., it can’t be freely copied and used even with proper credit without either a) the permission of the author or b) within the context of “fair use”. The owners of the site, e.g., Ecademy, may also have rights to use it as part of the user agreement, but no one else does.

Fair use is a concept that allows limited use of copyrighted material, generally for the purposes of criticism, education, satire, etc. And no the “education” umbrella doesn’t allow you to use works in their entirety. There are no hard-and-fast guidelines as to where the line is drawn, but using a work in its entirety is never allowed, whether it’s a four-line poem or a four-page article. Similarly, an entire chapter from a book would also be a copyright violation. You can use excerpts, but not “complete” anythings: chapters, articles, posts, poems, etc. You can see a quick summary of “fair use” at the U.S. Government Copyright Office or get more in-depth information at the Stanford Copyright & Fair Use Center

There are exceptions. Sometimes, bloggers or article writers make things available for use in their entirety. This may be done through an express permission statement in the byline of the article or on the blog site’s footer, something to the effect of “This article may be reproduced in its entirety so long as this resource block is kept intact and included in the article.” Many people now use a Creative Commons license of some type to permit broader use than allowed by copyright, but still under the control of the creator.

Don’t make assumptions. You can’t assume that you know what the allowable use is of a particular post or article. For example, the content I post on Entrepreneurs.About.com is all copyrighted and may not be reposted without permission. On the other hand, what we post on TheVirtualHandshake.com is under a Creative Commons license and can be freely reposted with proper attribution and a link. Why the difference, you ask? Simple economics. On About.com, the revenue model is advertising-based, and I get paid based upon page views. Post the content elsewhere and I don’t get paid on it, at all. On TheVirtualHandshake.com, it’s all about positioning ourselves and promoting the book. Post the content wherever you want — if it’s any good, it eventually drives people back to us for the book and maybe more.

Proper respect for intellectual property = good networking. Good networking means learning about other people’s business. For those of us who write professionally, our content is our product. Learning about our business means learning how to properly refer people to us, just as it would for anyone else. The simplest solution is to always use an excerpt and a link, never content in its entirety. That will pretty much always constitute fair use, and will always be appreciated by the content creator.

This is not the first time this has happened to me, as you might imagine. I always approach it as a networker, not a litigant. “Are you aware that this is copyrighted material and may not be re-posted in its entirety, even with proper attribution? I’d be happy for you to use a short excerpt and a link. Please edit it as soon as possible and inform me when you have made the correction.”

Think win-win.

And besides, if anyone were ever stupid enough to persist in violating my copyright, I’m sure the attorneys at About.com’s new owners would handle it quite effectively. :-)

UPDATE: The Electronic Frontier Foundation provides some great legal resources for bloggers, including Bloggers’ FAQ - Intellectual Property.

I’m a regular reader of SellingPower.com’s newsletters — great content for anyone in any kind of sales role, including small business owners. This week, my laptop is in the shop, so I’m operating 100% from the web — I have no Outlook.

So SellingPower’s latest newsletter came through to me as text-only, and isn’t very readable. OK… I expect that. What I didn’t expect was this:

Having trouble viewing this? Go Here.

Yup - just like that. No hyperlink. It’s plain text. “Go Here.”

Hello?!?!? If I’m having trouble viewing it, it probably means I’m seeing text-only, not HTML. You need to give me a URL, not a hyperlink, because, well… I’m having trouble viewing this!

The bigger lesson here is just a reminder that not everyone is always able to view HTML e-mails. I’m not suggesting that means you should switch to text-only e-mail, but if it’s a critical communication going out to a lot of people, make sure it degrades cleanly so that all recipients can use it.

Replying to all e-mail messages and private messages from online networks within 24-48 hours is a nice ideal. Actually, replying to all of them eventually is a nice ideal. But it’s simply not always possible.

Unfortunately, when people don’t get a response, sometimes they feel that:
a) they’re being personally slighted or the recipient is mad at them
b) that the recipient is simply being rude
c) that the recipient poorly organized

None of the above are true for me, as I’m sure is the case for many other people. If I don’t reply, I’m not rude, mad at you, or disorganized — I’m just very, very busy.

This is a general issue — I’m just using myself as an example. For the month of August, for example, I’m booked 18 full days at clients.

That means my typical day consists of:
- 10 hours at the client (including travel time & lunch)
- 1 hour prep for the next day at the client
- 4 hours personal time (meals, hygiene, exercise, family, relaxation/entertainment)
- 1-2 hours on my About.com work (average)
- In the remaining 7-8 hours a day, I have to work on marketing The Virtual Handshake, handle my e-mail and online communities, and sleep.

That gives me around 1-2 hours a day to handle all my correspondence and online communities. When I got home tonight, I had 254 messages, of which 108 are NOT bulk mail. I can cut that down to less than 100 in just a couple of minutes, but even that, at an average of 1-2 minutes per message, is more than I have time to handle right now.

Not everyone is this busy with their work, but a lot of people are. What I see all too often in online networking communities is a lack of empathy/respect for that fact. It’s not entirely a case of “haves” vs. “have-nots” — there are a lot of successful people with plenty of time on their hands, too.

So, if you have time on your hands, enjoy it. Be glad you do. But please be respectful of the time of those who don’t, and don’t take it personally or hold it against them when they don’t have time for you. It’s no reflection on you, or even on your relationship with them. Sometimes people are just really, really busy. I am!

There seems to have been a surge of highly emotional debates on several of the networks I’m on lately, including my own Virtual Handshake Network on Ryze. I expect this on, say, Slashdot or other topical networks where people are anonymous, but it really surprises me that people engage in this in a business networking context. No one looks their best when they’re bickering.

There are two simple principles of netiquette that you can use to help prevent escalation of these conversations into flame wars:

1. Presume good intent. What is the best possible way the other person could mean by what they said? If your initial reaction to what somebody says is negative, pause. Take a deep breath. Try to detach from your own personal context and put yourself in their context. What might they have meant by that? Maybe you’re misinterpreting what they’re saying.

So pick the best possible meaning, and respond to that. What’s the worst that can happen? They correct you and say, “No, I really meant…”? On the other hand, if you respond to your negative reaction, the worst possible thing is that an escalation begins — a vicious circle. Sound familiar?

You’re never backed into a corner online. Take the time to cool off and re-think it before you reply.

2. Don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t say in person. Would you say it to their face at a networking event? If not, then why would you say it here? Don’t think that the relationships here are any less important, the feelings any less real, etc. And don’t think it won’t have any impact on your business.

No one looks good when they get emotional in an argument, even when they’re right. Does it reflect better on you to be right? Or to be someone who’s easy to get along with?

I’m not saying people shouldn’t voice their opinions, or debate their differences of opinion, but not at the expense of their relationships and even their reputation.

Think about it… would you want to do business with someone who was always right but always arguing about it to show how right they are? (unless they’re a trial lawyer, of course, in which case that’s a very desirable trait)