Behind the yellow spine books, television shows, movie franchises, and thirty-two computer games exists a dedicated fan base of people who adore and admire Nancy Drew: the famous, fictional, teenage detective. This fan base exists and operates on multiple popular platforms including Facebook and Twitter, but the most invested fans also flock to the message boards, a collection of forums where fans discuss all-things related to the Nancy Drew universe. Launched in 1995, HerInteractive is the creator of these message boards and the producer of all Nancy Drew PC games. As useful and entertaining as the boards can be, they are not without flaw; specifically, the boards’ current structure fails to effectively integrate and retain newcomers. Throughout this critique, I will acknowledge the HerInteractive message boards’ current strengths as an online community while also offering suggestions for how to more effectively recruit, socialize, and retain newcomers. Most of my claims and advice will be based on the book Building Successful Online Communities by Robert Kraut and Paul Resnick.

Designed for users to “get game play hints & tips and join in on fan conversations”, the message boards have been a staple of the Nancy Drew community for the past twenty years. As of March 2018, the boards have 103,077 members and 6,257,320 total posts. Throughout its existence, the message boards have undergone numerous aesthetic changes, bringing the design into modern times — a feature that makes a community more attractive. What have remained stagnant, however, are the regulations governing the boards and user behavior. While these regulations, in the past, have been effective in bringing new people into the community, they are no longer satisfactory. Of the 103,077 registered members, only 236 are currently active. Clearly, if the community wants to remain in existence, it needs to adjust and modernize how it recruits, socializes, and retains newcomers.

Successfully recruiting new members to a community is no easy feat; the number of online communities seems to be continually growing and users looking to join one have more options than ever. To be quite frank, Nancy Drew is a niche; someone who does not like Nancy Drew is not likely to join the message boards but there are certainly players of the games and fans of the franchise who are not members of the boards. That is the sector of the population that HerInteractive needs to target.

Before I offer suggestions for how HerInteractive can improve their recruitment strategies, I would like to acknowledge what the company is already doing well. Firstly, they utilize their existing members for recruitment purposes. On the homepage of the HerInteractive website, they offer users 20% off of their purchase if they share the community with their social network. Kraut and Resnick state that “recruiting new members from the social networks of current members increases the number of new members more than impersonal methods” (p. 186).

Although Alfie Kohn, an author and lecturer on parenting and education, may argue that rewards are equivalent to punishment, he also says that “rewards motivate people to get rewards.” Sharing the community with their social network and receiving a bonus (which is a one-time only deal) would likely not decrease any intrinsic motivation on behalf of the users because the task of sharing the community is separate from contributing directly to the community.

Kraut and Resnick claim that “emphasizing the number of people already participating in a community motivates more people to join them than does emphasizing the community need” (p. 192). HerInteractive makes a point to include a number of statistics (e.g. number of threads, users, active users, current people online) on the boards, highlighting the number of people who are part of the community. Why would seeing these numbers be so important for recruitment? Robert Cialdini, a professor of psychology and marketing, argues that “seeing activity on the site may also simply invoke the social proof heuristic that it is a good idea to do what others are doing” (p. 192).

In order to bring more people into the community, I would suggest HerInteractive implement a more active approach to recruitment. The Nancy Drew Games Facebook page has over 171,000 likes; at least 70,000 of those people are not on the message boards. HerInteractive should use their other platforms (which have larger followings than the boards) to bring more people to the boards. There are a few strategies they could use, as suggested by Kraut and Resnick. Firstly, the people who follow Nancy Drew on Facebook may not necessarily be looking to join an online community. Therefore, HerInteractive could create a campaign featuring a celebrity endorsement; “recruiting materials that present attractive surface features and endorsements by celebrities attracts people who are casually assessing communities” (p. 191). Someone like Lani Minella, the voice actress for Nancy Drew, would be a great candidate for this type of campaign because she is so personally connected to the franchise and most players know who she is and enjoy her work. Secondly, HerInteractive could identify “the most influential members of a community and encourage them to recruit others in their social networks” (p.188). As Cialdini suggests, we are more likely to be persuaded by people we like and people of authority. Therefore, tasking the most prominent members with recruitment could increase the number of newcomers coming into the community.

After a community recruits new members, they then need to socialize the newcomers. HerInteractive already has some structure in place which is well-suited for socialization. To begin, HerInteractive includes an entry barrier for new users; before newcomers are given full access to the forums, they must make five posts which do not violate any rules. This strategy is great for three reasons: firstly, this entry barrier “may cause those who join to be more committed to the group and contribute more to it” (p. 206). Secondly, it limits the potential damage caused by newcomers. Lastly, it forces newcomers to learn and adhere to the rules of the community.

When someone opens the boards, there is a banner on the top of the page directing people to the FAQ; outlining all of the rules governing the boards, the FAQ gives users an easy way to read and learn the guidelines. In addition to the FAQ, there is a forum open for any member, new or old, to ask any questions they may have about the rules. In general, HerInteractive is very transparent with the rules and gives numerous opportunities for users to learn them, thus limiting the amount of rule-breaking and vandalism on the boards. All of this is significant because it is essential for communities to provide “potential new members with an accurate and complete picture of what the members’ experience will be once they join [increasing] the fit of those who join” (p. 199).

Although it is great that HerInteractive makes the boards’ rules so visible, it is a bit intense to expect users to make no violations, especially considering that there are over twenty-four explicit rules. While some rules, like no posting of external web links, are relatively straightforward, there are other rules, like no chatting, which may be more confusing for a newcomer to understand. In other words, mistakes, where a new user will violate a rule, are inevitable. I do not take issue with correcting the mistakes of newcomers; however, I do take issue with how HerInteractive currently handles these behavioral corrections.

The boards operate on an infraction system; the rules state the following:

“If a user violates a rule, they will be given one (1) warning. If the incident occurs again, infraction points will be given by a moderator. Infractions point will stay on your account and accumulate until they expire. You may post inquiries about your warning/infraction in the “Warning/Infraction Grievance” (WIG) board.”

Different types of infractions have different levels of infraction points; the more intense the violation, the more infraction points it carries. When a user accumulates five infraction points, they get banned from the boards for one week; ten points results in a two-week ban and fifteen points results in a one-month ban. Speaking from personal experience, receiving an infraction can be devastating, especially as a newcomer.

There are people who would argue that newcomers just need to “RTFM”, but I think we should cut newcomers some slack. In the study, Effects of Peer Feedback on Contribution: A Field Experiment in Wikipedia, results showed that directive and negative feedback reduced newcomers’ general motivation to contribute to Wikipedia. I believe that a similar thing has happened on the Nancy Drew message boards; receiving an infraction may make newcomers feel unwelcome, thereby reducing their commitment to the community. To remedy this, I would suggest the following to HerInteractive; there may be room to implement a feature (like a pop-up) which will warn a user when they are about to break a rule. As Kraut and Resnick suggest, “offering people reminders at the point of an action that may violate norms reduces the number of offenses” (p. 150). Additionally, I would recommend HerInteractive allow users to fix their mistakes. “Giving people the option of undoing their offending action without leaving a trace of it also helps people save face” (p. 153). As it stands now, users receive an infraction and that’s the end of it; they can ask questions about it on the WIG board or try to appeal it, but both of those processes are quite public. Being able to deal with the infraction privately will help newcomers eliminate any shame or embarrassment they may have felt and renew their commitment to the community.

In order to retain newcomers, the Nancy Drew message boards must foster a sense of commitment to the community. The boards are, in some ways, very effective at cultivating commitment, but there is always room for improvement. Most people who use the Nancy Drew boards likely feel a sense of identity-based commitment: “a feeling of being part of the community and helping fulfill its mission” (p. 79). At its core, the boards offer a platform for Nancy Drew fans to exist, discussing all things relating to the teen detective; it would be surprising to find someone on the boards who is not passionate or connected to the Nancy Drew brand.

One of the boards’ rules is no off-topic conversation. In other words, everything discussed on the boards has to somehow relate to Nancy Drew, unifying members’ interest in and purpose within the community. Kraut and Resnick argue that “diversity of members’ interest in an online community can drive away members, especially those with identity-based commitment” (p. 99). Keeping the conversations on the board to a singular topic which all members are interested in increases members’ commitment to the community.

I would theorize that the Nancy Drew boards have so few active members nowadays because it is very difficult to develop bonds-based commitment: “feeling close to individual members of the group” (p. 79). In addition to no off-topic conversation, there are strict rules including: no revealing of personal information, no e-mail addresses, no chatting. Kraut and Resnick make many claims that suggest how rules such as these can limit bonds-based commitment; not allowing opportunities for personal conversation, self-disclosure, highlighting interpersonal similarity, and off-topic communication all reduce bonds-based commitment. In many ways, the rules limit the possibilities for interaction, driving away members who feel their behavior constrained by such strictness. I would advise HerInteractive to revisit these rules and loosen them a bit, allowing for more opportunities for interpersonal interaction between members. Even just adding a forum for off-topic conversation could make a huge difference.

The Nancy Drew message boards: what once was a thriving community with thousands of active users interacting with one another has morphed into a communication wasteland. Activity nowadays is at a minimum; in order for the community to encounter a resurgence, passive, stubborn, and rigid tactics must be traded for active, flexible, and open approaches to recruitment, socialization, and retainment of newcomers. It is not that the fans are any less enthusiastic about the community; the community simply has not aged and adapted along with the fans. If they want fans to return to the platform, HerInteractive needs to assess its current status as a platform for communication and consider making compromises in order to make the rules of the community more compatible with the needs of its members.