Running online communities will often feel like parenting. You have to settle disputes, ask your members to behave and even punish them when necessary. There is just no way around it. If many people get together in one place, there will be conflicts. And as community owner, you have no choice to step in, even though it will often feel like you will be the ‘bad guy’ no matter what. If you don’t step it, your members will complain about that and things will probably escalate. And if you do step in, at least some of your members will complain about the moderator actions, because they are directed at them. But you can at least try to minimize the problems around conflict in online communities. And you do that with good terms of service and actions based on them. In this article, I am explaining my strategies for dealing with conflict in online communities, which I developed and tested for over 20 years.
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