Kane

One of the things that I have in my mind regarding community is developing a dedicated marketplace. I plan on introducing forum currency that users can earn through forum activities or buying from real money and use the forum currency to buy and sell services and products. I also plan not allowing users or sellers to withdraw form currency for real cash. These days I am looking for community software that has the kind of marketplace addon that I want. I will look into IPS.

This reminds me of what my father told me when I was a kid. He said, "Son, you have two ears but just one mouth, which means you need to listen more and speak less." Even though I am quite impatient about listening, especially to the people who are ignorant, who are pretending, who are superfluous, I always try to listen and gain valuable insights. If you run a community, you need to have good ears so that you can make proper decisions.

Listening is very important. You gain knowledge only when you listen. You will learn only when you listen. If you do not listen, you will not be able to learn. Therefore, your road to learn something begins by listening to someone. As a community leader and manager, you need to listen to your staff and users so that you can gain valuable insights. Every people have something to teach to others, you can learn from everyone irrespective of their educational background.

I remember one story from a Buddha. In the story, the Buddha says, you need to impart knowledge only to those who are capable of understanding it, you need to see the eligibility criteria of the receiver of your knowledge. This story can be implied in online communities as well. If you do not build community where most users are not interested in your niche, there is no way you could make them participate in the community.

Transparency is very important to build a thriving community. You need to have transparent rules, if you reward users, you need to be very transparent, if you penalize someone, you need to transparent on why you penalized him. If you are not transparent, you will be unable to build an active community. Users do not like to hang out in communities where the decisions and actions are not transparent.

Starting a community is just like sowing a seed. Growing the community is just like watering the seed, adding fertilizer to the soil, weeding unwanted plants, etc. Just like you need to tend the plan to grow it healthily and give you fruits, you need to tend your community to grow it into a thriving community. Just like some seeds are faulty and might never grow or grow into a feeble plant, not all community ideas can be successful. Therefore, it is very important to work on the right idea just like choosing the right seed.

While there is a limit on classroom learning, learning from real world never stops. While you learn vocation skills through classroom learning, you will learn survival skills from the real world environment. If you are not open to learn, and if you do not learn there is no way you would be able to progress in your life.

I think you can have tolls, spammers, and scammers in your community, but I believe mobs are less common in communities. In fact I have not seen mobs in any community I have visited. Trolls, spammers and scammers are individuals, however, mobs are group of people and I do not thing people create groups as mobs and invade forums.

If you are running a community, you need to build a user base. While building user base you should try to build user base from the people who are actually interested in what you have to offer, not just the random person. If you can build user base from the people who are genuinely interested in your niche, only then you can leverage your user base and have a high conversion or build a thriving community.

These days, emotional health is given as much priority as the mental health and physical health. Just like your body and brain needs to function properly, your emotions also need to function properly for you to become a healthy individual. Emotional health means you manage your emotions properly. Anger is a common emotion, if you can manage your anger, you are emotionally intelligent, however, if you burst out, you are not managing your anger properly and you are not emotionally health, thus, you are not emotionally intelligent.

From a system of self governance where everyone is a leader/master, we are moving into a space where we are making our leaders heroes and we are worshiping our hero. Hero worship is getting very popular. I never believed in a leadership, I always believed in collective leadership but sadly this is just a fantasy. One of the most dangerous things that is happening in our society is the leaders are becoming authoritarian.

Out of all these quotes, I really liked the one form Margaret Thatcher and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The quotes appear to contradicts each other but I believe they both tell the same thing in quite different ways. These quotes show different aspects of the same reality.

Here are three things that I want to tell to my younger self 1. Learn public speaking 2. Learn graphic designing and video making 3. Learn programming If I had built these three skills in my young age, I would have become very successful in life. A lot of people tell me, I can still learn these skills but sadly, in the time when most of us are mainly geared towards making money, we do not have time to learn.

You will have to fist identify what are the things you like. If you can identify these things, you can use these things as a motivation and get inspired. For instance, money can be one of the things you like. In that case, you can think about how much money you can make doing certain things, which can motivate you. You need to develop your interest to become motivated.

When it comes to organization, I am very poor at it. Before I go to bed, I create a to do list for the next day. I plan the day in advance but sadly I cannot follow the to do list and I always miss something or I always fail to do things that I should have done it. You need to be disciplined to become well organized, sadly the most difficult thing in the world is self discipline.