Newsletter or Web site interaction

Depends...

Take this site as an example, there have been some posts that the moderators have either removed or edited to make appropriate to the rules set forth. Does your HOA have the time to ACTIVELY monitor such a site...?

Also, you need to be aware that you are creating a forum where you will get the good with the bad, and will NEVER satisfy everyone.

As it will be "official" you want to also make sure that comments from the board, are factual and in accordance with the governing documents. You are allowed to make mistakes, but having them on a website just adds more fuel to challenges from membership.

It would be my position to have both a newsletter, and a website, but strict rules of ownership of both. If the HOA is publishing balanced and fair articles and information, most likely you will not be challenged by members, and this can be a great tool for communications. The moment you have some power hungry person, or a person with a "non-community" agenda, you are going to need to address the messages that may or may not appear as a result.

As you may know, HOATalk was built by Community123.com, a provider of community websites. So, we can tell you what works for our customers.

First, all our websites have the forums in a private, members-only area. You don't want your internal discussions viewable by the public for various reasons including liability.

We offer many flavors of forum depending on the board's wishes. The most open version works like this: It's private and any member may post messages that are then emailed to the other members (to encourage participation). This approach works very well for many of our customers and the emails coming from the forum make for very fast neighbor-to-neighbor communication. For example, we see real community building conversations like finding lost pets, grafetti clean up, theft/crime alerts, suggesting service companies, etc.

Now an open forum that emails all members is a great communication platform, but carries the real possibility that some member will post something inappropriate or you will get too many negative posts, driving away members from the site (anyone can unsubscribe at any time). In these cases, our customers can turn on a feature called 'moderation'. This means that no message will appear on the site until it is approved by a moderator. Our service emails the moderators every time they need to approve a message, so they don't have to check the site.

Using moderation assumes you have multiple people willing to approve messages quickly.

Now with all that said, Community123.com recently adopted another flavor of forum as our standard: Online Suggestion Box. This feature facilitates communication between the Board and the community and does not email all community members with messages. It's now our standard due to board concerns on member-posted messages being emailed to everyone. This works well to allow the board to get feedback and post replies.

Community forums are a powerful tool to open up the communication channels and there are many options. The bottom line: (1) Keep them private; (2) Establish posting policies; (3) Be ready to take the good with the bad and realize that much of what you get will be problems, not praise. If the board views the negative feedback as gaining insight into the community, it will prevent board frustration. The board can't fix problems they don't know about, so from that point of view some negative postings are good for the community.

I thought the post by HOA talk laid out the pros and cons of various message board options very well.

I was a little confused by the online suggestion box. Are you saying the standard now is one where the homeowners cannot communicate with each other, just mail in suggestions to the board? Are those suggestions viewable by all, even though everyone is not notified? If it is strictly one way communication why don't homeowners just email the board. I guess I don't understand how you have this set up, and the thinking behind it.

Thanks for the explanation of the suggestion box. I liked having a video -- we had thought of making a video that we distributed to our new homeowners to get them acclimated to association living. Anyhow, it is a good idea, I would love to see it.

I checked out the demo site, which I had been to before, but as I wasn't a member (and apparently the username for here doesn't work) I couldn't really access the suggestion box/video and see how that is set up.

You actually can see the video and suggestion box on our demo site. You don't need to login.

Just visit demo.community123.com and click the Suggestion Box icon on the far right. There is a link to the video in the text by 'Learn More'. You can also go straight to the video under Association...Owner's Educational Video on the blue menu bar at the top of the screen.