Being the champion in Rod Beckstrom's analogy of the decentralized organization - Bjoern Negelmann

Therefore being "relentless in promoting a new idea" (the idea of the community) and "inherently hyperactive" - Bjoern Negelmann

@brianoberkirch check out The Four Tenets of the Community Manager http://www.web-strategist.com/blog... - Jeremiah Owyang

Discussing with community leaders - Igor Poltavskiy

Community managers mediate between community members! - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Well don't community managers manage communities? - Wayne Schulz

My favorite part of the role is sifting through all the great feature requests and recommendations, getting free user feedback on how to make your product better. - Adam Darowski

http://conniebensen.com/blog... - joshuabacker

Suggest they be called something else. You don't MANAGE your community, you serve it. - shelisrael1

I like Shel's answer! ;-) - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Smartly ride herd on the cattle, the cowboys, the ponies and the coyotes--y(ou can tell I've been in Colorado too long from this answer, can't you?) - susan mernit

Shel, we agree the term isn't a good one. In my case, HR needed to have the term manager in the books for the title. We all know the real rules of engagement. - Jeremiah Owyang

Damage Control. - Geoff Schultz

Ask HR. Are they Human Managers? (well in a sense they are). By parallel the title could be Manager, Community Relations - Michael Markman

Found enough good stuff in links & commentary here & twitter to do a (gasp) blog post on this. You remember those, right? - Brian Oberkirch

Most companies I've studied are horrible at bootstrapping community. They don't know how to get one going. But they are fairly good at managing things that are already built. So, a community manager is someone who keeps an already-existing community happy. Who listens to the community and takes care of problems. Who finds new content and other things for that community, IE, who feeds that community. Here on FF we're ALL community managers due to the distributed nature of how FF works. - Robert Scoble

@Robert I couldn't agree more. Been on both ends. Was moderator for a huge board for a couple of rock stars and did exactly as you say. That community thrived because they wanted to be there. Nothing I did generated that. I only maintained it. I sure learned the difference when I tried to start communities for several other orgs! - Melanie Reed

Way back in the day I "managed" several mailing lists (I still miss majordomo, btw), most of which were very focused. It's really more like herding cats than cattle. A largely thankless job that you do because you have a passion for the topic at hand. Community managers, if up to the task, can keep the channel clear of enough noise for the community leaders' signal to get through. - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ

They hang out in the community and rep the company and its products. Apologizes if the company screws up. Encourages people to choose the company's products over the others. Helps people find the right person in the company to work with. Retains their humanity, and generally takes the customer's side whenever possible. Quits if the company acts in an unprincipled way, so they act as a guarantor of the honesty of the company. A canary in the coalmine. Best if it's the CEO of the company. - Dave Winer

We call the roll Community Gardener since they need to plant the right seeds, ensure water & sunlight and a healthy environment. That includes tending to weeds, ensuring that things that will pollute the healthy growth of the community do not take hold. - Austin Hill

The Real Community Manager is Proselytes Maker - Lora Lufark

good CM projects his passion for the subject into the primordial soup, infects people with ideas and said passion, and catalyzes community formation per se. That's the fun part. Then it's onwards to herding cats. - Michael Bravo