How to Handle a Crowd

This isn't a how-to book guiding you to create your perfect online community. Instead, it takes different, mostly unique, corners of the internet and tells their stories through the eyes of their respective moderators. Each chapter is dedicated to a different online platform or medium, and for the most part the stories told are unique, interesting, and engaging. I especially enjoyed the chapter dedicated to online gaming communities, as well as the chapter about Reddit moderation. These are two communities I'm fairly active in, and it was interesting to see what others had to say about it.

I think my biggest takeaway from this book about various online communities and the difficulties each face is that moderators are the unsung heroes of the digital age. Maybe that sounds grandiose, but seriously, without their unpaid, sometimes silent, unsung work, the majority of the digital communities we participate in would be significantly worse off.

I was expecting a bit more about tools these moderators use in their respective communities to keep order, or some tricks of the trade or something, but only vague mentions were given in some places. I suppose at the end of the day the only real tool a moderator has in their toolbox for moderating is a wellspring of patience.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me a digital copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.