Tips for sharing communities

One of the goals of yunity is to create a mapping platform which will enable the services already offered on a lot of facebook sharing groups to function with a better software, making it much more practical for its users. Of course, we encourage the development of any of these unconditional sharing groups that we do not see as competition, but rather as a common effort for a similar change with different tools, and hopefully the communities that have built on these groups will happily welcome a shift to using a new, well-designed and very functional platform - aka yunity!

There are many social platforms out there for you to implement a new sharing community in, and if you even know your way in website development you might as well want to create your own! We can nevertheless give you basic guidelines on how to create, promote and manage a facebook group of the sort. This piece of advice comes from one of our members who had a lot of success with his Share&Care group in Bamberg.

Additional resources

• Group description template
• Violation documentation template
• Commyunity FAQ

Before getting started

It would be best to first check if there already is a sharing group your for city. In Germany and Austria they are either called “Share & Care”, “Free Your Stuff” or “Verschenk’s” + the name of the city. If this is the case, experience shows that it is hard for a new group to attract a sufficient amount of members. Instead, consider becoming an administrator in one of the already existing groups. Usually the team is happy to get some help and at the same time you can introduce them to yunity.

Creating your group

If there is no group in your city and you want to start a new one: Nothing easier than that! Go to your Facebook starting page, click on “Groups” in the navigation bar on the left and then on “Create Group”.

Afterwards, type in the name of the group (e.g. Commyunity Rotterdam) and add your friends. Moreover, you can adjust the privacy settings of the group right away. It makes sense to set the to group “public” to increase the awareness. You can choose the group icon as you please. We recommend the heart, the tree or the present. Congratulations, you have now successfully created your own sharing community!

Next, you should change some of the settings:

1. Upload a photo
2. Add a group description (for example our template!)
3. Under 'edit group settings', set the following:
   1. Group Type: Support
   2. Web and Email Address: Customize address to your liking

Administration

Basically, the admin job consists of the following tasks:

• Recruiting members (only in the beginning)
• Scanning profiles and allowing new members - be sure to avoid spam bots!
• Looking through posts for rule violations and taking action if required
• Acting as contact person in case of problems
• Spreading information of general interest (pinned posts)

Depending on the size of your group, we recommend different settings and approaches:

Phase #1 - Recruiting members (0-999 members)

Privacy: Public group

Membership approval: Any member can add or approve members.

Posting permissions: Members and admins can post to the group.

Post approval: [not set]

In the beginning, it is particularly important to get people to join the group. The group starts to really work from about 500-1000 members onwards. To achieve that, you could for example post your sharing group's link with a short introductory text in other groups. If you already have some things you can share yourself, you will probably get people’s attention. In this phase, you can let everyone add members. Later on (at the latest when the first fake profiles appear), you should change the settings so that only admins can approve new members. Also, at this stage, “punishments” for rule violations can be managed quite loosely and you don’t have to react on every infringement of the group’s rules.

Phase #2 - Controlling growth (1.000-4.999 members)

Privacy: Closed group

Membership approval: Any member can add members, but an admin must approve them.

Posting permissions: Members and admins can post to the group.

Post approval: [not set]

From now on, it is recommended to change the group settings so that potential members have to be approved by admins and to check people’s profiles before letting them join. Otherwise, it is likely that you will have to deal with fake profiles posting spam. Most of the time, fake profiles can be identified easily. If it’s in Chinese language, the profile name is a mix of French and English or the person is already a member of 60-100 other groups, they are most likely fake profile. With some experience, you will recognize them easily. Also, you should change the group to “closed” at some point to protect your members’ privacy.

Apart from that, it is especially important to delete posts that don’t belong in the group as quickly as possible. It sounds trivial, but sometimes it’s not easy to decide if a post belongs in the group or not. Also, you should be aware that members might not be happy with your choices even if they reflect the group’s rules. In this case, it is important to always keep calm and friendly, even if members start grumbling. It also helps if you can provide links to other groups that deal with housing, jobs, buying and selling, etc. This way, most problems can be solved quite well. If push comes to shove, you can still remove members from the group.

From now on, you should definitely start documenting rule violations. This helps a lot with legitimizing your measures and identifying repeat offenders. This is best done by using an online document, like GoogleDoc, so your fellow admins can keep up-to-date as well. A template for this can be found here. For this size of group, a team of 3-4 admins is perfect.

Phase #3 - Managing the crowd (5.000-∞)

Privacy: Closed group

Membership approval: Any member can add members, but an admin must approve them.

Posting permissions: Members and admins can post to the group.

Post approval: All group posts must be approved by an admin.

Congratulations, your group now belongs to the biggest of its kind! To stay on top of things, it makes sense to change the settings so that all posts must be approved by an admin. It may sound like more work, but it actually saves you time because you don’t have to read through every post to find rule violations. With an admin team of 5-7 people, a group of this size can be managed easily and posts usually don’t have to wait long for approval. If you haven’t done so already, now would also be the time to create standard messages for standard problems that you can simply copy and paste in order to avoid having to type the same message over and over again.

In addition, you should now think about outsourcing questions regarding information into an own group. This prevents the active sharing from being pushed to the background.

How to deal with rule violations

Be friendly but firm when it comes to the “unconditional” part of the sharing. Certainly, you don’t want to upset your members, but posts that go against the rules always have an effect on other people's perception of the group as well and should be deleted as quickly as possible. Here’s how to best go about this:

1. Delete the post.
2. Send a message to the member and explain why the post was deleted (see message templates).
3. Add an entry in the violation documentation (in the cloud, e.g. GoogleDoc).
4. If necessary, remove or block the member from the group.

As a rule of thumb for dealing with repeat offenders, you can keep in mind the following:

• 1st violation = explain the rules and delete the post,
• 2nd violation = remove member but allow them to join again,
• 3rd violation = remove and block member.

Depending on the situation, you should also trust you instincts. All admin rules should be seen as non-obligatory guidelines and can be managed stricter or looser according to the specific case. Good judgement is crucial for the question of how to deal with problematic members and undesired posts.

As a last piece of advice, two things should always be kept in mind:

1. Shitstorms are poison for the group spirit! If you encounter insults and personal attacks do not shy away from immediate expulsion. In some cases, a permanent block is recommended as well.
2. Don’t feed the trolls! Occasionally, there might be members who purposely provoke irrational arguments. Do not engage them in conversation but simply expel them from the group.

Internal rules for special cases

This is an example of how Share & Care Bamberg decided to settle its internal rules. Your admin board should decide together on which posts they would consider positive, tolerable or simply unacceptable.

Ready to write a new chapter of sharing history? – Then let’s go! If you have any additional questions, write us!

You can also check out our Commyunity FAQs!