Lurking is your Friend

Funny thing about the Internet... it gives people the capacity, but not necessarily the ability, to act as a better, idealized version of themselves in "real life". Similarly, companies can put forth, with minimal effort, a professional persona that highlights their strengths while minimizing their weaknesses... that is, up to the point where they decide to run their own blogs and/or forums.

Case in point, that old navy buddy of mine I mentioned last post (his name's Dave, by the way)... he loves a decades-old tabletop strategy game called Star Fleet Battles, or SFB for short. Apparently, he had a question about handling all the assorted paper bits such a game entails in the modern-day electronic world, and posted it on the company's forums. One thing leads to another, and now he's of the mindset to never deal with the game or the company ever again... because of the behavior of one of the designers of the game on the thread he started.

Now, in all honesty, I didn't see the drama unfold. I liked SFB well enough back in the 80s and 90s, but it's a time-consuming game in a fast-paced world. As such, I don't monitor their message boards or any such. But, on the one hand, I have Dave, who has his weaknesses, but vindictiveness and bile generally aren't among them... and on the other hand, there's the designer in question, who deleted posts and threads, rather than simply locking them out like many companies would (Blizzard Entertainment, of World of Warcraft fame, comes to mind), and looks to have pursued the fight to the comments area of Dave's blog (I can't swear to that, but the posts certainly have that flavor to them). Based on that, I'm quite likely to take Dave's point of view of the events as they occurred, because he's not acting like a nutcase with things to hide.

Lessons to be learned from this: If your company has the need to deal with a forum to please its consumer base, get some professionals to manage it for you. Better on top of that would be to have a third party run the actual forum for you, so you are neither tempted to do irrational things in a fit of pique nor capable of being credibly blamed of doing just so when you haven't.

As for me, I'll do like I always do... if I'm on any message boards, I'll ask the other users for answers if I need them, otherwise I'll lurk in the shadows and watch the flamefests unfold from there.