Wednesday 22nd July 2009 by Elena Goodrum

A couple of Saturdays ago, a Facebook contact for one of our communities picked up the phone and dialled me – the Community Manager. He had the wrong number, but the number was for one of my colleagues who delivered the message that this person was very insistent about speaking to me, called back a few times, and seemed to be saying some strange things. Eventually, he stopped – and we removed the erroneously placed phone number from our Facebook page.  Since then, the 'naming issue' has become one of our hottest topics here at SiftGroups, namely – when it is appropriate to use real names, and how to look after the safety of community members and employees when bullying or stalking issues arise.

Real name or pseudonym?

Every community is different, and this goes without saying. For some of our communities, the Community Manager and other community employees will use their real names while the members of the community are permitted to use pseudonyms. For communities covering health and well-being issues, it is sometimes better to allow our community members to use pseudonyms.  This can provide a level of freedom for people to feel comfortable with their online identity and say what they want, particularly in light of the sensitive nature of some of the conversations. But for members of staff and community managers, a real name is important because we need to be real people who they can contact.

For other communities, such as professional member bodies, we want our members to use real names because people are engaging in professional activities together, and a real name makes people accountable in a different way than if they were using pseudonyms. It also means that you’re more likely to get an accurate profile and a real photo for the profile, which is ideal when you want to know who you’re networking with – and key for profiling your community members. That said we still allow the option for community members to edit their display name to a pseudonym (or what's often called a 'username' online).

For both examples above, an important part of establishing an online community is to actually meet members and establish a real connection with them.  Part of the basis of creating your online community is to have these ‘real life’ meetings to help establish relationships and hold them together. It’s better to have real names for this purpose, otherwise it could get very tricky!

Privacy & safety

Let’s add another layer – the right to privacy and safety for your community members and employees.

I am no stranger to online stalking.  Every so often I get an email from my 'stalker', no matter how many times I change the location and profile name of my various social media outlets. It’s very disturbing to receive an email from someone who has just finished looking through all of your photos and then expresses their opinions about your life, particularly if it is someone who has behaved in a threatening way in the past.  Though the two situations are unrelated, my first thoughts when the Facebook contact rang up my colleague was that I’d been found once again.

I admit that I struggled with the idea of presenting my full and real name to the world when I took the role of Community Manager at SiftGroups. I suddenly felt exposed - my real life would be visible and my work would no longer be completely private. I eventually came to terms with this by accepting that I mustn’t live my life in fear, and I should feel free to live my life as I wish.

The internet is a public space, with information publically viewable to all.  The fact is, whether we like it or not – and whether we know it or not - strangers can and do see our information.

As individuals, the best thing we can do to help maintain our privacy is to ensure that our personal information is locked down and viewable only to our friends and family (via privacy control settings available on most websites). Flipping that the other way around, we should ensure that the information we decide to share publically is information we are comfortable with strangers seeing.

If you are looking after a community which requires real names, you may at some point discover that one of your members has been using a pseudonym. I would urge you to have a friendly and open conversation with them about this, as you never know what circumstances he or she may be experiencing.

Likewise - we should also be sensitive to the fact that our community industry colleagues may have a very good reason for using a pseudonym at work and be open to the idea of letting them assume this identity while on the job.

Setting up your community

It’s important not to overreact and remember that your own community may never have any stalking or bullying.  If you decide to implement a policy of using pseudonyms simply out of fear that bullying or stalking may happen, this would be the backward approach.

From the outset of your community, we encourage you to create a system of moderation and a respectful culture backed up by house rules to help minimise the chance of them happening rather than anticipating them – in other words, start from a point of trust and then respond to any issues as and when they arise.

If you keep a healthy watch on things, and let changes unfold from the ground up as a response to a genuine need – then you will have a healthier take on possible issues and a better feeling overall for the community; that you are listening and responding to their needs in the most appropriate way.