Engaging hostiles – How to deal with negative commenters
Community management is the discipline of interacting with people who are talking about your game, and an important part of this is dealing with negative comments. These situations can be potentially difficult, and your involvement even has the potential to make things worse. With this in mind, here are some tips that may help you when dealing with negative comments.
Keep your cool
It’s easy to take negative comments personally and react with a similar tone to the commenter. If you are angry, hold off replying. Antagonistic reactions will only make things worse.
Place the situation in context
Negative comments happen to everyone. It should go without saying that the most popular and successful games in the world have some people that don’t like them and are willing to say so online.
Understand who they are
Is this person a games fan or a seasoned journalist? You need to tailor your response to who you are dealing with.
Understand what they are saying
This person may genuinely have a encountered a problem with your product or service. On the other hand, they may just be making a flippant comment. When sat in front of a monitor and keyboard a lot of people will give less consideration to what they are saying. They may just be in a bad mood and need to have a rant about something.
Understand why they are saying it
Are they just having a moan, or have they actually experienced an issue? You can’t hope to make the situation better if you don’t know what has happened.
Aim to help them
If the negative commenter has a genuine issue, make it your mission to sort it out. A small token to say sorry can also go a long way. If the individual is just having a moan, also act in a positive manner. Ask them if they can provide more information so you can try to help to solve the problem. You’d be amazed at the difference this level of contact can make to individuals’ moods.
When we have been involved in community management, we have seen people go from swearing, ranting haters to massive advocates in the space of a couple of tweets. Keep the above in mind and be a force for good. If you keep your head and genuinely try to resolve the situation in a positive manner you can’t go far wrong!
Could do with some smug links to bad examples, I feel.
Another approach: let the rest of the community respond.
Especially if you’ve done a good job of establishing “community norms” and rules beforehand. I did a beta once with some clear ‘guidelines for giving great feedback’ and they also helped give permission to the community to combat trolls, etc. Eg, “It’s still a Beta: See rule #3!”
That’s a great idea Stephen. Getting to the point of a self moderating community should be a goal for anyone involved in indie games who wants to create a community around their game.