Did a member ever overshare?

[JoelR]

One of the most important things you can do as a community leader is to express vulnerability. You can share your own experiences, your challenges, your hardships, and encourage others to open up as well. 

But there's a difference between vulnerability and oversharing?  Did you ever have a situation where a member overshared what is appropriate?  

I have members who reach out to me in the Contact Form about a problem, and then end up telling me their entire life story (they have cancer! their internet access is bad!). It's irrelevant to solving their problem.  

[Cedric]

36 minutes ago, JoelR said:

I have members who reach out to me in the Contact Form about a problem, and then end up telling me their entire life story (they have cancer! their internet access is bad!). It's irrelevant to solving their problem.  

Simple, it's because you're a trustworthy person and people like sharing their life story to. My advise, be respectful and have a chat. It's good for community building. It only takes a few minutes and often brings a smile to their face and have a good day. I've always been a good listener to my members and I know they appreciate a good pep talk. 

[Maria]

I think there should be a clear distinction between what you share through PM and what you share on public forums. I do not like people disclosing privately shared messages through public sharing, and I also do not like people partnering through PM. Online communities are different from social media platforms, and you are here just to share your perception on certain topics, for personal things there are social media platforms.

[JoelR]

9 hours ago, Mariya said:

I think there should be a clear distinction between what you share through PM and what you share on public forums. I do not like people disclosing privately shared messages through public sharing, and I also do not like people partnering through PM. Online communities are different from social media platforms, and you are here just to share your perception on certain topics, for personal things there are social media platforms.

It's one thing for members to share their life story via PM or a contact form (which only goes to the admins) that is limited to a small circle versus oversharing on the general forums.  

There's a behavioral problem by some members to become too invested in a forum, and they can sometimes broadcast personal information. I guess the better question is when do you, as moderators, intervene - do you just automatically edit the post and move on, or do you reach out and ask the user if they want to edit? 

[Maria]

I think editing the post to remove personal information and sending a quick note to the member who wrote the post would be the best way to handle a situation like this. Pinning your content policy and guideline topics on the top of every category can also in some way help you avoid too personal posts on public forums. 

[JoelR]

Do members ever read the pinned topics? 

This is one of the behavioral designs that I think online communities still have not addressed very well.  We expect that newbies will go out of their way to the News & Announcement board buried in our 100 categories and boards to read every single pinned topic aggregated from the last 10 years. Oh, and there are more pinned topics in other boards.

We need to be more thoughtful in our community design to push simple guidelines to users the first time they post.  

[Shortie]

There have been a few occasions as a forum leader when I have had members who trusted me enough to open up to me and tell me something that was a little too much information. 

I tend to understand that they do that because they trust me enough to be able to open up to me that way and I feel that is a good thing as a forum leader. 

I guess sometimes though we do wish it was not as TMI as some are.