After nine years and three months, today is my last day at AOL. It's been a wild ride, lots of fun, and a tremendous learning experience. Besides working with such great folks, where else could one have the opportunity to run such a large community operation and get to know some of the most interesting, savvy, and committed community members in the world? I will miss you, more than you know.

But... other opportunities, both personal and professional have been calling and the time is right for me to move on.

My AOL e-mail box will not work after today, so if you want to stay in touch, feel free to write to NYMeng@aol.com. You can also keep track of my daily activities by reading Hummingbird Mind.

Before you ask what I'll do with myself, I have some plans. Here's just a short list:

* Sleep
* Exercise
* Read
* Play with my new granddaughter
* Fish with my father
* Walk the beach
* Focus on the youth oriented non profit I started last year with some other parents
* Take many road trips
* Complete a book I've been writing

That's just a start. I plan to take off at least a month before starting some consulting work I've been offered.

I'll also still visit AOL communities, so if you see me online, feel free to ping me.

It's not goodbye, it's so long and see you soon.

-Nancie

P.S. Be good!

My last entry promised a series of posts about items on the MESH Team's to-do-list. Let me climb over the 800 pound elephant sitting between us to say that layoffs and reorganizations have eaten up a lot of everyone's time for the last two weeks. To add to the headaches, there's been some mutating virus (of the physical kind) that slowed many of us down. But, we've rallied and we're back. So, let me give you an update on the items that lead our task list:

I knew I hadn't posted an entry here for a while; but, I completely lost track of how long it had been (shame on me). In fairness, the team and I have been pretty busy.

In August, two days after my last entry, other members of my team and I headed on a whirlwind tour to meet with two of the groups who support our moderation and enforcement activities. For those of you who do not know, we have a 24/7 operation supported by people in the Philippines, India and all over the United States. In September, the folks located in the U.S. came to Dulles. All these meetings were a way to introduce the new Moderation, Enforcement, Safety and Help (MESH) team, what we do, how we do it, and to tap the wisdom of the crowd about ways to do what we do better.

It would be hard for anyone who read, heard or watched the news during the past year to remain unaware that AOL's business strategy changed. One thing that has not changed, despite some user's comments to the contrary, is the importance of Community. It has always been and will remain core to AOL's business. Our Communities are an important part of the new strategy. Toward that end, the MESH team has three main areas of responsibility:

* Member Experience in our community spaces

* Enforcement of Terms of Service, Community Guidelines, Product Guidelines and Community Standards

* Communication with our community members about all of the above

While carrying on the day-to-day operations, we've spent considerable time this past quarter analyzing what we do and how we do it in the context of changing business strategies. Mostly, we've focused on how to make improvements. Your e-mail, instant messages, message board posts and comments in our blogs made you part of the process, too.

Curious about the first items on our to-do list? Check out just some of the things we identified and have begun to work on already:

* Smarter moderation and enforcement tools to help us move more quickly through your "Report This" or "Notify AOL" notifications. These will have more efficient features for cross-referencing and actioning "bad players" on our network

* Easy to understand community standards that lay out our policies related to community violations and the related penalties

* New training for our teams

* Clear channels for user feedback and escalations

* Frequent and ongoing communication with users

* Developing closer communication channels and relationships with product owners to whom we raise your requests for features.

This entry is the first in a series (and I hope, an ongoing discussion with you all) about all of this.

Symantec's Security Response Weblog published A Brief History of Phishing: Part I on Friday. The first article of the two part series contains interesting info about this automated method used by the unscrupulous to trick us into divulging personal and private information. This data can be used to steal our money and identities.

Phishing has been around since the mid-1990s and, early on, AOL members were part of one of the biggest pools of victims targeted by rather unsophisticated phishers. The authors point out that "AOL took the phishing problem seriously and... implemented numerous effective measures." They also state that the numbers of phishing expedition e-mails AOL account holders receive today are "relatively small."

I know that though I still receive requests to update my billing information from time to time on both my paid personal and employee AOL accounts, the number of attempts have diminished.

The authors refer to phishing today as an emerging technology organized by business-oriented professionals. They posit that those of us familiar with the early forms of phishing may have been lulled into a false sense of security, which new methods exploit.

Check out the articles -- the second part will be published on Monday. While the first article baited the hook with tasty tidbits about how phishing has evolved over the years into big business, I'm hoping Part II will contain information about how we can avoid getting reeled in by professional phishers.

Via mediabistro.com, washingtonpost.com and other sites, we see that Google plans to roll out a new comments feature on its main page news articles. It allows those covered in a story to submit comments, which will be featured next to the article.

The Google News Blog states, "We're excited about the possibilities of this new feature and we hope you are too, so if you've been covered in a news article please send us your comments and we'll work with you to post it on Google News."

At first glance this seemed like a pretty neat use of an in-line comments feature for an online news community.

Disclaimer: In-line comments are not my first choice of community experience for News Communities, though I do see them as an additional feature that can be used. More on that in another entry.

Though commenting can be a community offering, Google is not providing one, because users can't participate in the conversation. They can only read what Google publishes and what the parties concerned say about what was published... that is, if we see all the comments. Still, allowing the subjects of stories to comment does add value to the user experience.

A closer look reveals this to be an online version of 'Letters to the Editor' with which we're familiar in print journalism and other media. People mentioned or affected by a story can write to the outlet to counter or commend the article and the editors decide what gets published. We all know a lot of Letters to the Editor never hit the page.

I wondered whether Google was going to set guidelines around submissions, so I followed the Send Us Your Comments link and read through the FAQs. There one sees that the News team at Google provides the following statement:

"We may not be able to respond to or publish all comments submitted but we'll try to be in touch with you and we may include your comments in future stories in which you are mentioned."

Kind of broad... am I the only one wondering what guidelines will be used to determine what comments make it through? Stating how they plan to choose which comments get published and some examples of which ones won't, would enhance the user experience. It would also help those submitting comments be more successful in having their's published.

What do you think about Google's new feature? Should all online News outlets allow subjects to submit their side of the story? Should users be able to comment, too? What do you think of comments in general?

Thanks to Will Kern for his 15Meanings blog post on Being Transparent. As corporate bloggers, my team talks about the ups and downs of transparency a lot. As Will states, "It seems easy enough, but is is harder than one might think." (In the spirit of transparency and full disclosure, Will is a colleague and Senior Product Manager here at AOL).

I wager that most corporate bloggers believe that the benefits for the company and the consumer outweigh the problems in most instances. But, the downside is worth thinking about.

Like Will, my team and I will answer any questions as long as we've got the information and are "in a position to give it to you." Please note the key phrases here:

* If we have the information
* If we are in a position to give it to you

On topics over which we have input or control, we're comfortable with being as transparent as possible. And, thankfully, many individuals and groups outside of MESH at AOL keep us informed by reaching out. That enables us to share upcoming changes, new features or other news you all may find useful or even essential.

But, my team's willingness to be up-front and serve as "messaging central" for other groups can make it hard for our customers to know when we're talking just about our areas of responsibilities and when we're just the messengers for others. You know what they do with messengers, right?

Here are some of the realities we work under (and I don't think we're unique):

* Dependencies: Remember the people I mentioned who keep us in the loop? A lot of others don't. People are very busy and in a huge organization it can be hard to know who to involve and when. That's a challenge we can continue to work on.
* Surprises: Sometimes we are as surprised as our customers are. How many times has one of our community users written to say, "What happened to [insert feature here]?" or "Did you know that [insert product here] isn't working?" or "When did they roll out the new version of [insert product here]?" only to have one of us respond, "I don't know. We'll look into it."
* Proprietary Info: Sometimes there are business reasons why we do not or cannot share something.

In the situations I've outline, individuals on my team are often accused of lying, stupidity or not caring. We roll with the punches in those situations because it comes with the territory of customer service. And, we know, especially in the area of community, that people are passionate about their interests and their friends online.

A challenge for us and others is to take employees whose main jobs do not involve customer interaction or messaging and convince them of the value of talking with users early and often. There is always the issue of time. There is also the concern about the potential for negative customer feedback.

This is a big question we'll revisit time and again. For now, what would you identify as the biggest obstacle to corporate transparency?

A slew of "join my network" requests hit my e-mail box this week. It prompted a personal OMIGAWD moment, when I realized that people had actually viewed my many online profiles. I had to ask myself: What do my AIMPage, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn pages say about me?"

Since my work involves online communities and social networks, I joined all of the major social networking sites to learn about them. Because playing in my social networks is a bit like taking a bus driver's holiday, my profiles and networks suffer from deferred maintenance.

Social networks require that their members create, maintain, and facilitate connections. For those too busy or introverted like me, social networking can be... well... work. Hard work.

Still, whether we like it or not, our public profiles reflect on our professional lives. I decided to take an "objective" look at my own and evaluate my online self. It wasn't pretty. I found consistent themes that ran through my social networking attempts -- a virtual list of mortal sins for people who run communities:

* Lack of quality content
* Absence of engaging widgets
* A failure to respond to comments or requests in a timely manner
* A general lack of attention to my online presence

The worst part, for me, is that others (even those who know me well) might get the wrong impressions about my professionalism or dedication to my 'craft.' The state of my LinkedIn profile makes it look as though I don't care about my resume, professional connections or future employment potential.

* Note to everyone who has asked for a job recommendation: I'm so sorry, but I just saw your requests. Yes, even the one from last January. Recommendations coming soon. If you're in a hurry, please Instant Message or e-mail me.

* Note to anyone who would like to give me a job recommendation: Please feel free. I'll never ask because I'm afraid I'll make you uncomfortable and/or that you will say no.

* Note to anyone who has not been asked to join my network: I really want you to join, but I won't ask because I'm just afraid you won't; but, feel free to ask me to join yours. I join everything.

This exercise led me to think: if I didn't work here, would I have joined any of these networks? How should we balance work-related social networking with personal social networks? Can one be a social networking professional without participating fully in virtual networks? How do the most effective among us handle all this? Am I the only one who worries about this? Am I so busy answering all these questions I can't find time to participate. Should my efforts to downsize my off-line life extend to my online life was well?

What condition are your online profiles in? Take a look and let me know. Are you happy with them?