Very interesting, didnt know what to expect. Moderators need a profile raise or probably this online, zoom era will give them one. The book had many examples of different communties and the role of the moderators in their size and action.

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.

How to Handle a Crowd focuses on how to manage online communities and audiences, from an expert in digital strategist. I really appreciated this book diving into the topic of how to be a successful moderator, in a sea of books about how to grow your online audience. Too often, the sole focus of content creators and marketers is growth, at the expense of quality engagement online. Anika instead takes a refreshing perspective of how to manage these spaces, so that they are productive platforms. I really enjoyed the book!

A seminal book on how to lead and manage online communities, so members feel safe and welcome but at the same time present their different perspectives on sensitive topics. This book is important because social media has proliferated to a point where we all are part of numerous online communities and the numbers only look to grow larger.

The anonymity of social media seems to encourage rude behavior, and attract others who feel validated in the safety of numbers. Fake profiles make trolling even easier. It is too easy for some negative elements to make a large number of genuine members feel unsafe. So, the role of moderators (official or not) becomes crucial.

This book is an excellent resource for teachers engaging students in online learning communities, community and brand managers (meetups, software, real estate), Q&A sites and many other groups. Brand managers can use this book to shape their customers' conversations online.

This book is almost similar to the classic book "Crucial conversations" but instead of 1-on-1, this book allows leaders to control and shape conversations at scale. The only minor flaw I felt was that individual chapters should have a summary section at the end, so novice moderators can use it as a checklist. The last chapter does this task, but having them under each chapter would make the book perfect.