The real value of any community, whether it is forum, social media or bloghosting community, is determined by its members. The members’ activity is a key factor of the community growth and development, therefore, an administrator should inspire it in every possible way. All the community members may be nominally divided into several types each possessing its special behavioral features. Armed with such knowledge, the administrator can line up the most effective policy of treating different types of community members.

Expert
Expert is a community member professionally trained on the subject discussed in the community who enjoys sharing his knowledge with people. Such members are the most valuable type of participants. The professional expert thoroughly enlighted upon the subject discussed is a real discovery for any community as this is namely his good counsel that will be searched by a considerable part of community members.

The administrator should find the ways of “domesticating” the expert in the community. This can be perfectly done by means of awarding him moderator status or by offering him to join the group of selected members as well as by awarding him special individual status. And, of course, it is necessary to support such a member during all the internal community conflicts. It is also a good idea to make friends with the expert or even promote your friendship financially.

Always keep in mind: experts are the major tidbit of your community and, what is more, they are perfectly monetized asset.

Community patriot
Patriot is a person practically living in the community. He regularly adds his own posts as well as comments to all the published posts. As a rule, the patriot brings in the community all his friends and organizes extensive campaigns on involving all his acquaintances in it. He also initiates the offline meetings of community members. In fact, he does much for the sake of the community subsistence and development. If the expert pool is a community nerve centre, then patriot pool is its heart thanks to which community functions.

It is very important to achieve patriots’ allegiance: it calls for the same strategy that was described for experts. In this case, the patriot’s recognition and exceptionally regardful treatment by administration are the obligatory keystones to success.

A gentle reader
Any community is greatly dominated by readers. They regularly read the published materials, but still very seldom add comments to them and almost never write their own posts.

Some may consider the reader’s conduct somewhat “freeloading” – they join the community only to get something with no barter. However, in practice the things are quite different – the reader is a valuable member at least due to the fact that he himself is interested in both the community and the materials published there.

A restless oppositionist
The restless oppositionist is a user having his own viewpoint on each and every issue. Moreover, his opinion always dramatically differs from the majority stand. He is always out of mainstream and is proud of it. His desire to oppose “black” vs. “white” usually represents the way of his personality manifestation and self-actualization.

The main advantage of such user is that he is highly active and, as a rule, seeks to state his views on practically every issue. Besides, the oppositionist is always ready to passionately persist in his opinion, thus triggering the other users’ activity. This is precisely why, in general, “the restless oppositionist” may be useful for the community. However, the administrator should always watch him and stop his “opposition” from blowing out of admitted limits.

Flooder
He is a simple babbler. He interferes into absolutely all the forums discussions, enjoys writing on unrelated items, completely sidetracking the post. When flooder has no more things to say he writes some flood like “Coool!”, “Write eelse” or at least “+1”. To say the truth, 90 per cent of all flooder comments are simple trash. His seemingly innocent tattling washes out the entire informational value of the community, sidetracking the really important discussions.

The administrator should treat flooder hard, first warning him and, if it does not work, coming to punishment.

Rioter
Rioter is the most disruptive member of the community. He joins the community not to get or share some information but to actualize his own ambitions.

His true to type scenario is: up to a certain moment he more or less actively takes part in the community life. Then he usually finds some lame excuse to peak on some administrative action and overblow a slander story out of it. His star act is working as an eye-opener writing something like: “The site administration hinders community development, deletes its best members and, what is more, receives money for it from XXX.”

The administrator should keep rioters under strict control, immediately responding to any sedition. Such members are potentially hazardous for the very fact of the community existence. Sometimes, community can even win from having some shocks but, however, it is still worth remembering that after each more or less serious “riot” certain part of users just leave it. Moreover, dramatically serious and deep conflict may even split the community into several groups, and there are no any guarantees that the company of users you will still administrate after it will be the major “fragment” of the former community.

Pseudo-expert
Pseudo-expert is a member willing to exhibit his high proficiency in the subject discussed being not actually the real specialist in the sphere. Pseudo-expert can talk nonsense in so confidential manner that many community members believe him. He also have a knack for passionate arguing his own viewpoint disregarding any arguments.

Remember, that in fact pseudo-expert just tricks you and the whole community. And only administrator can shut him out. The pseudo-expert should be hard and reasonably faced down every time he starts writing statements contrary to existing facts. I strongly recommend you not to get into an argument with him (in this case pseudo-expert’s obstinacy will be hard to conquer), but to immediately provide a link to a competent source confirming your viewpoint.

Ghost members
And, of course, the given typology cannot be complete without the so-called “ghost members”, the participants represented in practically all the communities. According to the definition, ghost members are users who, being registered in the community, do not enter it and do not read the published posts. Perhaps, they even do not remember that someday they were registered in the community.

Sometimes, “ghost members” originate from formerly active members who by this or that reason lost their interest to the community. Sometimes, such members are “dead” since the very moment of registration.

There are also some communities which in itself suggest the idea of ghost members’ emergence. For example, they include such communities as “Polybag Slapping Lovers”. As a rule, on receiving an invitation to join such community, the user gladly joins it because he is exactly the lover of polybag slapping. However, there are very few topics for effective discussion in such a community, and that is why the majority of users never enters this forum again but does not part with it as well because they still enjoy slapping polybags.

Basically, “ghost members” make neither any benefit nor any harm to the community. It is no use to delete them from the community members list for two basic reasons. First of all, only few communities possess technical capabilities of exact detection of such users. Then, there is always hypothetical probability that such user may reanimate his community activities. So, there is no use of elaborating and following the well-defined strategy in respect of “ghost members”.

To sum everything up, let us emphasize that the professional community manager should know the key members of the administered community and choose the most effective strategy of treating the representatives of the given types.