Key Tips
- Get to know the people involved to understand the source of conflict.
- Reach out privately to the people involved in a conflict situation and remind them of the rules.
- Help them understand how they can positively contribute to the community.
Privately message members who are involved in conflict to understand their motivations.
Experienced admins recommend privately reaching out to members involved in conflict situations (whether the conflict occured in a community chat or on your group's feed). In a Messenger conversation, you can explain any rules the member may have broken and how they can positively contribute in the future.
Sometimes a community member may just be having a bad day, or maybe their tone was misunderstood. As community admin Joelle told us: “You can't really read tone online. People get misunderstood all the time. Some people don't write as well as other people, or can't convey their feelings as well as other people, and it can come off wrong.” Talking with members individually helps you understand where they're coming from and helps them recover from conflict.
Taking the time to have a private conversation can make members feel heard and respected. Many admins told us that after a private conversation, people have returned to the community as valuable and supportive members.
Audio transcript
“One of the ways that I deal with conflict, I prefer the approach of where you talk to them in private, you reach out to them, and say: 'Hey, you know, remember this rule,' and they're usually very understanding. You never know what this person has gone through, they might just be angry in general, they're not angry at you, so you want to treat them with a positive approach. Maybe they just had an off day. So you have to be a little forgiving.
It's very important to speak to the people involved in the conflict directly, individually and privately, but then also come out and let the community know we're making sure that this conflict doesn't balloon into something that it doesn't have to be, and that we're going to be there to make sure that the community stays on a positive path.” - Joelle, Community Admin
