Behind the scenes of a community

Community. Something that I have fallen into and out of. It is somewhat about a group of people coming together, and it is somewhere that gives you a sense of belonging.

Specifically, I want to talk about online communities, or at least those that are predominantly connected by the internet. Though I've also joined a fair share of more contemporary in-person ones, such as the Scouts, and an international Buddhist organization to name a couple.

One thing about communities that fascinates me is why they form, what tools they use to communicate, the way that they self organize, and also how they stay healthy and sustainable. Have you ever been curious, with what happens behind the scenes, the things happening in the side channels away from all the chatter, all the decisions that were made in which you only get to see the end product?

The answer hopefully doesn't surprise you - it's a lot of work. And if I might add, there is often a lot of luck or serendipity involved.

More often than not, you will find that the community starts from a figurehead, or a couple of figureheads. They're the ones that come up with the initial idea, and had some spare time on their hands to create something.

In open source communities, it might be a bit of code that does something cool and is useful to lots of people. In gaming communities, it might be some fantasy world that people can immerse yourself in for hours at end. In creative content communities, it might be a video that explores some niche topic which people can relate to.

That initial concept - the spark that ignites a community - doesn't happen overnight. The figurehead(s) that make it happen typically spent years honing their craft, liked what they were doing, decided to release it out to the world (and there could be a few attempts at this), and for some reason or another, the concept caught on and became enjoyed by people all over the world.

Once the fire catches on, it needs to be tamed. And this is where the early adopters come in.

These are the people, usually a handful to a dozen or so, who help to channel the energy. Early adopters are critical people, they can really help the product to make it, or let it die a slow and agonizing death into obscurity. On one hand, you have to harness the energy of these very enthusiastic people; but on the other hand, you don't want to burn them out or bore them to death with the dullest of admin tasks.

Feedback is important, very very important! In this day and age, people want to be heard, and yes, they want to be heard fast (<24 hours), ala instant gratification. There is actually an art to providing feedback, and it helps to list down some tips:

The tone of the reply needs to be as welcoming as possible. First impressions matter, and especially to someone new, it can take a while before they form a sense of trust, so make sure that the language used is appropriate. Try and err on the side of being over dramatically nice, since attitude is something that can be hard to get across when using online communication.

Another thing I'll touch on, rather specific to online communities, is the mode of communication. There are multiple channels at play - public/private, realtime/asynchronous, recorded/temporary, etc. A good blog post I found is this - Slack vs Discord vs Discourse: The best tool for your community.

Each mode has its own 'features' and 'bugs' associated with it if you will. Sometimes, it just depends on the culture or personalities of the people starting the community. Just as there are people who share every bit about their lives publicly on social media, there are those who prefer to stay in the shadows and pop up only when necessary.

What I will say though, is that transparency can be a good thing. Obviously I'm biased towards open, but I think it really helps when newcomers to a community can see what is going on, how decisions are made, and it gives them an opportunity to find out where the weak points are. I'm always of the belief that there's something to be done, something to fix, and what better way to spread the love by showing the community your vulnerable side so that it can be addressed.

Context matters of course. As someone who has worked on 10+ year old legacy code, or systems that were designed before I was born, I know the struggle newcomers face, when they see stuff that were designed by someone else from another era. That is why it is important to have the older generation constantly train up new people, to tell them the history of a project. At the same time, newcomers shouldn't be shy to ask the hard questions, on whether there are better design practices nowadays, whether things can be done faster and better.

Once you have a community built - then what?

Let's face it, people come and go. Some people just want to keep doing what they want to do for as long as possible. But for the sake of the long term sustainability of a community, you cannot have just one person or a inner circle of people holding the keys to all the doors.

Maybe I'm on the extreme end of things, but I'm a big fan of this concept - throw people into situations they don't want to be in. For example, let people who have no leadership experience whatsover take the lead. If they're up to the challenge, you'll see them perform nicely, they'll ask lots of questions, get help when it's needed, and be really relatable to people since they're just ordinary people plucked out of thin air.

But once they're good at what they do, say after a year or so, give someone else the job! This ensures that people don't burnout or get too bored/comfortable with what they're doing, and it is good to have a pool of people who have similar experiences (leadership or otherwise) be mentors for the next cohort. Indeed, this cycling of people around different positions means that there is no single point of failure, because everyone gets the opportunity to learn and help, which keeps the community running.

If someone wants to go away for parental leave, sure, let person A cover for a while. If someone moves to a different country for a job, sure, let person B take over the task. If someone takes a wrong step and ends up in hospital, sure, let person C handle things.

The idea of a single champion that can do everything sounds nice, but doesn't last. Yes, in the beginning, when things are nice and small, you need people who can do lots of stuff. But after a while, with more people on board, there is an overhead to maintaining the community, and you don't want people stretching themselves too thin.

Also, realize that the community is not something to be taken advantage of, they are a group of people believing in a cause. Good community leaders should enable people to grow and learn from each other as much as possible.

These ideas are in no way my own, it is but something that I have picked up and learned over the years, from volunteering, working, volunteering, and working in so many different diverse communities both offline and online. No matter big or small, it is nice to have always had a sense of belonging somewhere.

So stay positive, and welcome someone into your community. It could really make someone's day!