I admit that I haven’t paid much attention to Zillow.com’s forums feature since it was announced. I argued then that forums were a mistake, and that the design paradigm should be the weblog. There are many good reasons for this, but a very important reason is that weblogs are defensible redoubts — “for each one spot should prove beloved over all.” Internet forums, by contrast, frequently devolve into free-for-alls, Kilkenny cats’ battles survived only by the rudest, most vulgar, most odious participants.
Is this going on at Zillow.com? Ask China Moon Crowell, a Wisconsin Realtor. She posted something innocuous to a Zillow buyer’s forum and found out that she is crispy flame-bait. She has had the most vitriolic scorn heaped upon her, and she has been called a variety of incendiary names. Her initial purpose was self-promotion, surely, and this might in fact be a violation of Zillow’s rules. But if it is, her slap on the wrist was delivered with a cat o’ nine tails. At this point, China just wants to kiss Zillow goodbye, but her parting seems to be delayed by an email loop.
But, what the hey, that’s free speech, right?
Wrong.
No one has a right to free speech on another person’s property. Zillow has decent rules on bad behavior, but, from a spot check I did this morning, they’re not being enforced. This again is a curse of a forum as opposed to a more-proprietary kind of salon: The ratio of crooks to cops can be unworkably high. If the discussions on Zillow were broken up in weblogs, then each weblog “owner” could establish his or her own tolerance levels — just as I do here.
The way to think of social spaces on the web is to analogize them to social spaces in the real world. (C’mon! You can make the leap!) When you go out for a drink with friends, you go to a place where you feel comfortable. If you’re gentle, smart and prosperous, you’re not going to pick a place where Fight Club wannabes are welcome. And if Fight Club really is your favorite movie, you’re probably going to steer clear of the places serving twenty-dollar Lemon Drops.
But here’s the good part, which no one has any trouble understanding in the real world: If you act out of place in either kind of joint, they’re going to escort you to the door — possibly head first. Why? Because a business that lets people abuse its targeted patrons won’t survive.
Here’s the trouble with tolerating abusive behavior in a virtual social space: The bad people will drive out the good people. In Zillow’s case, it’s not the loss of China Moon that matters, it’s the potential loss of gentle, smart and prosperous people, who, upon encountering abusive virtual thugs, might choose to spend their finite discretionary time elsewhere.
This is reality, and the whole topic is only tangentially about Zillow.com: Every one of us already has more free content available to us than we can consume. This is why for-pay content has to be extraordinary to compete. But even free content has to offer a better pay-off to the consumer than everything else that is competing with it. When there is no shortage of places to go, the challenge for the proprietor of a virtual space is to build a place worth coming to, staying at and coming back to. Failing to exclude bad behavior effects a de facto exclusion of good behavior in due course.
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, Zillow.com
China Moon Crowell says:
Oki, (Hello,) Greg and all.
Per me:
“…Her initial purpose was self-promotion.”
Hardly; since everyone has a ‘profile’ there wasn’t a need to place a phone number and everything under the sun regarding contact info.
Sincerely, all I wanted to do was bring a particular article to peoples attention as I hadn’t really seen others write about that NY Times article specifically.
I guess the five (5) words that sunk me or made me a wearer of the scarlet letter was “I’m here to help you.” I learned awhile ago even before real estate that if you have to chase someone you’re not providing anything of value. Those who feel you have something of value to offer them will move towards you.
The way I work, which isn’t ‘traditional’ efforts, seem to work for me and those who choose to work with me.
My purpose is to ask the hard questions and to get people where they need to be, on time.
Regarding an environment like Zillow and others like it, now, I know better.
December 13, 2007 — 2:31 pm
Greg Swann says:
Fair enough. Didn’t mean to misrepresent you. Hope you can shake the experience off and drive on. It doesn’t means a thing unless you let it.
December 13, 2007 — 2:46 pm
David G from Zillow.com says:
Unfortunately, as a real estate professional, you need to understand that from a consumers’ perspective you have a commercial bias. It’s very similar to the way you guys understand my bias as a “vendor” representing Zillow. If I’ve learned one thing at Zillow (and here), it’s that when it comes to criticism online, professionals need to have a thick skin. Many of the insults that Zillow and I have personally collected here on BHB weren’t all that pretty. But I’m still here (and I still love Greg.)
China, you and I have hashed this out at AR but given your comment above I have to set the record straight again. The thread you started leads with the pitch that “all real estate is local” and goes on to declare it a great time to buy in your part of Wisconsin. Whether or not that’s true is unfortunately immaterial; this message will be received as spam by 99 out of 100 consumers who hear it. There are hundreds of consumers on Zillow posting questions about their challenges with either selling their home or deciding whether to buy. If you intend to help, the right place to start is by answering their questions.
If you read the thread, you’ll note that China first receives some useful (albeit direct) feedback about how to productively approach this forum without spamming anyone. It was only when China decided to attack her critics and their personal morals that their criticism in turn became personal. You should also note that much of the critical feedback China received was from Realtors who feel quite at home on Zillow Discussions.
Moderating online communities is hard work and. I am accused of over-moderating about as often as I am accused of under-moderating. The fact that that feedback is evenly mixed tells me know that we’ve struck a great balance.
It’s impossible for a community’s moderators to read 100% of the posted content in real time. We rely on users flagging bad behavior. Interestingly, despite all the buzz about this thread today, Zillow moderators didn’t receive a single flag about it.
Greg –
I’m quite convinced that vigilante moderation is not the solution either – in fact, it was part of the problem in this case. We have an upcoming systemic solution that will allow users to publicly flag bad behavior by rating comments. I’m hopeful that this will reduce the arguments and insults and more importantly, give the lookie-loo’s on the sidelines a much needed voice.
I obviously respect and am listening to your suggestion to give every Zillow user a blog. Naturally, we’ve given a lot of thought to this. We should get on the phone sometime and discuss your suggestion further but in the meantime, I would really appreciate it if you could point to a single social network where “in world” blogs have succeeded so I can get a feel for why you believe this is such a great opportunity. Would you, for example, abandon BHB for a blog on Zillow?
December 13, 2007 — 4:34 pm
Marston Myers says:
I stumbled across that neck of the woods yesterday and decided to risk it and jump in. I left two or three responses that actually drew some agreement from the “Doomers”. Blogging on the Zillow forum is like walking into a biker bar and ordering a cosmopolitan. No matter what you say, someone will call you on it. You just need to remember where you are and what your audience is and wear your leathers!
I answer questions on Trulia for my area, read BHB religiously, browse AR for good info and will (now) occasionally lurk on Zillow just to check the mood of the crowd. If I made one point last night on Zillow it was that all Realtors are not the same and many of us want to change our industry for the better. Hence my passion for BHB. Thanks Greg!
December 13, 2007 — 5:06 pm
Greg Swann says:
> Moderating online communities is hard work and. I am accused of over-moderating about as often as I am accused of under-moderating. The fact that that feedback is evenly mixed tells me know that we’ve struck a great balance.
What it tells you, if anything, is that the people you’re hearing from haven’t run away, at least not yet. You know nothing about the people you’re not hearing from, which could be 95+%. The real concern would be, are the people you want to talk to being repelled by the repulsive people you have failed to exclude? That’s the point of this post.
> It’s impossible for a community’s moderators to read 100% of the posted content in real time.
Which is why building in roles for self-selected volunteer middle-managers makes sense. I said this in July.
> I obviously respect and am listening to your suggestion to give every Zillow user a blog.
I said nothing about “every Zillow user.” That would be dumb. You make it available as an option to those who want it. Then the conversations take place where people feel at home, with one or more proprietors per weblog to keep the place feeling like home for its users. Just like here. Just like every successful weblog.
Do you understand how much sticker that would be than what you have?
> I would really appreciate it if you could point to a single social network where “in world” blogs have succeeded so I can get a feel for why you believe this is such a great opportunity.
ActiveRain, for goodness’ sakes. I’m sure there are others, and the whole SMM world is full of analogous realms.
> Would you, for example, abandon BHB for a blog on Zillow?
No, but I have talked to you about efforts we plan to undertake to enhance Zillow’s content as a way of building our own brand. That is what this would be, except you would surrender control to individuals to do as they choose.
Let me give you a software design paradigm for 2008: Empower end-users. The more control you give them, the more content they will build for you, which you can then expose over and over again to the more passive people, in turn selling all of them to advertisers.
But the other end of this is to empower both active and passive users to find what they want while avoiding what they don’t want. Weblogs are a perfect way of satisfying all kinds of people without dissatisfying any of them.
I should talk about this in a much larger context, because Zillow gets it about half-way, where Trulia gets it almost not at all. A successful Web 2.0 platform works because the universe of possible actions is larger than can be planned for or anticipated by the designers — IOW, it is a true universe and not just a goofy state machine. Software, a true application, can and should be used for things the designer is sure are impossible. If it can’t, it’s not an app, it’s just a utility.
But: There’s more. A Web 2.0 business is a sim of a real world business, not a for-pay elaboration on dumb-ass DARPAnet rules. Inclusion and exclusion are essential elements of business — again, the point of this post — and applying Usenet-style rules is a mistake. In Usenet the assholes always chase the decent people away. In important respects this is why there are weblogs, even though — even with RSS — they’re inherently less efficient and less convenient than NNTP.
As a matter of policy, I think Zillow.com too often acts to the frustration of its own commercial objectives.
December 13, 2007 — 5:19 pm
Todd Carpenter says:
IMO, allowing one user to relate China’s name to that of an Escort on Craig’s list is an example of under-moderation to say the least.
DavidG, why don’t you just let the originating poster moderate their own discussion threads. If Cabin Fever or one of the other trolls doesn’t like it, they can go start their own thread.
December 13, 2007 — 7:55 pm
Brian Brady says:
“DavidG, why don’t you just let the originating poster moderate their own discussion threads”
Damn, Todd. First the YSP banishment and now this. You’re on fire.
David G, I think Todd’s on to something here. Commercial messages will be easily “sniffed out” by the community. While China may be under-experienced in dealing with detractors, the end result was far from desirable.
I’ll quote you, David G; “the community can police itself”; let them by giving the poster the power to moderate.
We ALL make mistakes, online and offline; we needn’t suffer, in perpetuity, for some rational afterthought.
December 14, 2007 — 1:17 am
Darren Kittleson says:
wow, talk about the need for high “emotional resilence”. Zillow would be great training ground for an agent to thicken their skin. Seems like the “bubbleheads” have found their home. Thanks for making us aware of it.
December 14, 2007 — 8:19 am
David G from Zillow.com says:
Todd and Brian –
A forum is slightly different to a blog. Forum threads don’t belong to the first poster like a blog post does. Letting the poster moderate their own thread would not solve for spam. By the time you delete content from a public conversation, the battle has been lost; it’s a lose/lose scenario.
We are soon going to be enabling voting on Discussion comments and threads. I’m confident that this will prove to be an effective feedback loop for setting the right tone in these discussions – it’s certainly a more transparent and effective mechanism that users to delete each others comments.
December 14, 2007 — 10:12 am
Chuchundra says:
David, you really need to separate out the bubble/market talk from the rest of the RE discussions. Make it its own sub-category under Real Estate and brutally enforce keeping bubbleheads vs optimists discussions in there.
December 14, 2007 — 4:00 pm
China Moon Crowell says:
…The point of my ‘Real Estate is Local’ post under Buyers on the Zillow board was meant for the Waunakee WI area hence is why I placed that in my sentence. Because I misplaced the thread under U.S. versus Waunakee, someone could have showed me the door to the correct area…
I had no idea my posting mistake would have me receiving threats, hate mail and derogatory photos of mens genitalia. Comparing the three, the size of the comment posts win; hands down.
December 14, 2007 — 10:01 pm
Chuchundra says:
So China, let me get this straight. You spammed the Zillow forums without taking the time to familiarize yourself with how they worked. When people pointed out your errors your got all huffy and stomped off.
Obviously nothing excuses other people’s bad behavior, but you should take responsibility for your own mistakes and own up to them.
Back in the day, when I first started posting to Usenet, every time I made a new post my newsreader would tell me:
Maybe Zillow needs a similar message
December 15, 2007 — 9:05 am
Chris says:
Wow what a lame forum, I have better things to do then to waste my time listening to buyers/sellers whine.
Excuse me I have to go buy some discount building lots.
December 15, 2007 — 6:26 pm