Accountability in the hands of the community

FeelGoodTrader wants to build a better way to buy and sell stuff online, where trust in the community is gained by allowing users to hold each other equally accountable.

In episode #62 of This Week in Startups, the CEO of Lunch.com, J.R. Johnson, briefly touches on anonymity vs. accountability, and how he thinks anonymity isn't always what it's cracked up to be. We also posted briefly on the topic of anonymity vs. accountability in a previous post.

So, let's talk about accountability, and why it makes for a stronger community when the power is in the hands of the individual.

Community Members

For the sake of argument, let's talk about three archetypes of community members: The Sheriff, The Outlaw, and The Citizen.

The Sheriff relies on the establishment of rules, and the enforcement of those rules. The Sheriff is motivated by orderly conduct, and people falling into a particular way of living. Communities that are run by Sheriffs are have a long list of rules, and are tightly moderated. The Sheriff creates accountability, and they want everyone to get along. 

The Outlaw relies on the establishment of rules as well so that he can purposely break them. The Outlaw is motivated by the fame and attention that is gained from breaking the rules. Communities run by Outlaws are often wide open, and often have the feeling that they are decaying. The dedicated members consider this the cost of freedom of expression, however, and let it be. The Outlaw ignores accountability, and they don't care if anyone is working together.

The Citizen wants a balance between the two so that order doesn't turn to oppression, and disorder doesn't turn to anarchy. From the Citizen's point of view, the value of the Sheriff is stability and an establishment of a social norm, while the value of The Outlaw is change and the inspiration to reinvent and revolutionize.

When building a functional community, it's important that the leaders be Citizens themselves, playing the role of the Sheriff when building a platform through which the other Citizens can interact, and playing the role of the Outlaw when getting the community involved in matters of freedom and expression (not to mention thinking of ways to prevent the outlaws from running the place).

When Citizens hold each other accountable

When citizens have the ability to hold each other accountable the motivations for sheriffs and outlaws lessens considerably. That is, the sheriffs of the site don't need to be overbearing controllers of everything, and the outlaw members don't feel the need to constantly shake everything up.

As it turns out, giving accountability to the citizens is actually pretty easy. You simply give the Citizens the ability to filter the flow of information that comes to them. This way, if someone is being a jerk you can ignore or block them. On the other hand, if they're adding value then you can promote and follow them. These actions then become the seeds of recommendations and reputation within a community, the connections between the citizens, which defines the community itself.

Giving the citizens power to hold each other accountable is preferable to the other two extremes. When things go well the people using a community site feel like they can move about unrestricted, and when things go poorly (a bunch of outlaws show up and try to ruin your day) you can simply ignore/block them, their power is stunted, and you didn't have to go get the attention of the Sheriff just to get something done.

Trust

Accountability leads to the building of trust, and a lot of this just comes down to building a better way for people to model that trust online. We don't want to make it easier for people to be conned, in fact quite the opposite. We just want to make it possible for people to form trust relationships with others online in a way that strikes that balance between stability, and flexibility.

This is the central idea that FeelGoodTrader is about. It's the "feel good" part of the site, and what makes us different than anything else out there.

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