10 years of Community Signal! Thank you to everyone who has supported the show.
Community Signal
@communitysignal.bsky.social
162 followers 82 following 298 posts
A podcast for online community professionals, hosted by @patrickokeefe.bsky.social. communitysignal.com
![“A lot of [ILTA's] material has the word attorney, which doesn’t exist in the UK. We have solicitors and barristers. … There are little tweaks around the material and our language that we’ve had to do in order to localize what we’re providing to [the UK] region. … It’s a big deal to people.” –Mercedes Oppon-Kusi, Former Community Manager, International Legal Technology Association](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreid7svlowy4teuz5bj5qzj7zmmdeb3zeb5bl47ke2shp36qcwhd2pq)
![“I think part of providing a good experience is less hurdles to jump over. If you have an open community, then people can find [your] content because it’s indexed by external search engines. Not only that, but if they just visit your community, they can poke around and read the content without feeling like they’re trapped into [creating an account]. Some people don’t want to do that. My theory is if you have a good community site that is easy and people like to use, people are going to be more willing to create a meaningful membership in that community.” -Matt Nevill, Former Customer Community Manager, Agilent Technologies](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreifizq5is3gid2rv2howbnq6hgqy2jodycujeke6hmrfit46vi6eyi)
![“So much of what [the researchers] did to try to prevent harm was to say ‘comments like this happen all the time online, we don’t think that it’s going to cause individual trauma.’ We kind of dispute that because some of the comments are [you] pretending to be a trauma counselor and maybe that could actually cause some harm. … I don’t think they thought enough about community impact until after the community screamed ‘ouch.'” -Logan MacGregor, Moderator (Volunteer), r/changemyview](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreiewxwzewwtxmctkqdff7flavtekdbjtb7fxt7nsve62a6djhngbey)
![“[I asked a room full of senior staff at PMI,] ‘Can anyone tell me what community is?’ The answers that I got were webinars, articles, blogs, and virtual events. I thought to myself, ‘Oh my word, everyone thinks we’re just content.’ We’re not. That is not what community is. It really got me thinking that maybe we are not having the right conversations with people within the organization. … If staff doesn’t know what community is, then how do we really know that our members know how to utilize it and what it is?” -Marjorie Anderson (Quote From 2017), Former Project Manager, Digital Communities, Project Management Institute](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreibo5t5h3qofayzlmneicostdvwnfszkzshmotfsogig7ridjf2lgi)
![“From my perspective, I think the things that we wanted the most [from the researchers were] an apology and a promise not to publish. The second was really important because we were concerned that if this was published in a peer-review journal … if it was elevated to a prominent journal, that our community, which is supposed to be a protected human space, would now become just another sandbox for researchers. We felt very strongly that it should not be published. … Unfortunately, it didn’t land well.” -Logan MacGregor, Moderator (Volunteer), r/changemyview](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreie7x4b2q6e5hyuhsmrmajwiwdfp5qhkrhvbjzkseospnp6czyopfu)
![“When I left [my first job in gaming], I realized that the amount of fear and anxiety that I was living with every day was crippling. … Then I left, and I realized that it was never about the job in terms of what I was doing, it was about the job in terms of what I had. I was so scared to lose it that I didn’t have the confidence that I used to have. … It took leaving to get where I am now.” –Joe King, Associate Community Manager, Sony Interactive Entertainment; Consultant, Joe King Consulting](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreieosuaygm434s3yafhpcoervkayarv7vxagbwtkqvtwfgqca24tre)
![“The domination of the major [social media] platforms isn’t infinite. It’s going to end one day. It’s our responsibility to think about what we are going to build in its place.” –Bassey Etim, Senior Director - Content Strategy, Pluralsight; Former Community Editor, The New York Times](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreid4vf6c7sqc7d36ikucp3vqk3oztd3v2yg2lxcrod4epmnrljvdsy)
![“[Community, moderation, trust, and safety pros] can learn from dating apps on the level of how personal and sensitive dating apps are in the content you’re sending back and forth. Folks using dating apps, a lot of times their heartstrings are attached, and their heartstrings are attached on a dating app, but not necessarily Amazon or shopping at Macy’s. … It’s just important to look at folks with a microscope and treat them with kindness as those in dating apps hopefully are doing when they’re handling their customers.” -Vanity Brown, CX Escalations Manager, Grindr](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreigdqwozfurqewsy6n7hxjn463q6rmwj65g64drzlwwighberp3fnu)
![“People will sometimes ask me if they should start a community [related to their passion]. My answer is usually that if you start the community, you’ll still talk about that passion but you’ll have a whole new passion that’ll suck up your time. That passion is community management. It takes you away from that hobby, that love, that passion, and puts you into that seat where you have to maintain the environment so that other people can have that same passion that you once had and hopefully still do.” –Patrick O'Keefe, Host, Community Signal; Author, Managing Online Forums; Ex-CNN Community and Interactive Product](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreiadcjjqjapix6idpohxwzar23vuyrxhy7ewndwko6wcwovq2xlep4)
![“Of course, sometimes there are people who pop in and give unsolicited advice on these [handbag authentication] requests. We don’t mean to sound ungrateful by any means. We love anybody contributing to the community and giving their time and their effort and their energy, but you’ve got to get it right. The group of authenticators, they’re a very proud and very particular bunch. If there are newbies coming in and starting to authenticate, they will flag it to us as admins and say, ‘Hey, this person doesn’t really qualify to be an authenticator. Would you mind sending them a message and let them know that we’ve got this covered?'” -Vlad Dusil, COO and Co-Founder, PurseBlog](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreicudtdwo2szoplj2y234xvuakshgp57yopoyczf43rguolosglauq)
![“Is this person helping the community or hurting the community? If they’re hurting the community, can you define what it is that they are doing that hurts the community? [Is it] written into the community guidelines?” –Wesley Faulkner, Former Senior Community Manager, NAMER, Amazon Web Services](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreiayiw6epedmcmohnnswi7ma23e3xofomwru4gruvxcyxehi3jnmlu)
![“[When I started building INmobile,] I didn’t know anything about running an online community. I was pulled from Yankee Group where I was a wireless industry expert, to run this community, because I was a knowledge expert. The idea was they’ll come talk to me. They didn’t come talk to me. They came and talked to each other.” -Adam Zawel, Community Program Leadership, Georgian](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreiha45htw6l34t677fdbyvqvmhan7qprs4xzfukt5qjd4rhbkm4ktq)
![“[At some point, vBulletin wasn’t giving developers] the tools that they need. That’s the thing a lot of software companies forget. Who do you have to make happy first? The developers and the designers. ... The developers are the ones who actually go out there and build those tools. And the developers are what make your community sustainable and powerful and a place where people will sometimes come to your platform just because of these certain features and tools. And I feel like [vBulletin] didn’t listen to what the developers were needing but other platforms were, and it wasn’t even a hard decision for a lot of people [to leave them].” -Mike Creuzer, Chief Executive Officer, Audentio](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreigzc5vw4zousc2kfobs63etda2c3ksbnuhvnloi3n2jlpakh3ve6u)
![“[If you’re worried about starting a community in a crowded niche,] go to your regular supermarket and see how many soft drinks there are. You can look at the same for communities, how many communities for kittens are there? I’m sure you can make a new community for kittens that is very relevant to the people that you invite. It’s all about finding your niche. Finding something that’s relevant to people. Finding those couple of people around you that find it relevant so you’re not on your own. There’s always a place to start something new. You just have to do it really well.” -Kirsten Wagenaar, Community Consultant and Trainer, Sense of Community](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreiegil672scyatjyi7gvhi6jnwipb27fttxzb4o67tdqgz5s3ashuq)
![“[When I joined CustomMade,] there was no code of conduct, in terms of how to act on the platform. Rather than send them down from the mountain top, I created a process where the makers themselves created those rules. There were some emails. There were some surveys. Some of the more experienced makers, I spoke with them on the phone personally. We basically got feedback on what we thought should be part of that code of conduct. It came from them, not from us.” -Dave Cayem, Head of Forum Moderation, TripAdvisor; Formerly Delphi Forums, CustomMade, Booster](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreigopnr6hkg2j22ioxysjavbinzfmojhqsvevau6ulrhvyv3kryrtu)
![“During the Black Lives Matter protests … I’m really paraphrasing here but [a prominent white man in the community industry] effectively said community is going to be the solution to discrimination such as racism. I actually just responded to him and said, ‘It’s also the thing that’s currently perpetuating it.’ It’s part of the problem, because community [is] effectively groups. The most extreme example is the KKK meets up every week. That’s a community. There are absolutely extreme right-wing versions of communities that exist. Just because we don’t acknowledge them or may not see them in our everyday lives, they are still communities. We have to understand the power that community has –– good or bad.” –Faisa Mohamed, Co-Founder, Somalis in Tech; Formerly Global Technical Community Manager, Bumble Inc.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreid6y3f4kdrwuet3xjkyudeczif7mx54cl4yzlndw2iirapnae2bnu)
![“If you would send me into the desert with one metric to rule them all, [active members] would be the one. How many members do you have, and do they keep coming back? Are they active? Do you manage to draw more people? If that number goes down, there’s something wrong. The problem is, it’s a bit of a lagging metric, so it’s probably that something went wrong a couple months ago. But still, it’s a very, very strong indicator that something is amiss, or if it keeps rising, it’s a very strong indicator that something is going well.” -Bas van Leeuwen, Customer Success Manager, Discourse](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreidpe6dkyisdjos4l7viapzjm66e53avmn5pblbkslcj6iiiu5wc3y)
![“I think a more productive way of approaching the [online abuse] conversation, at least right now, is not say, ‘How can we engineer our way out of this? How can we create technology to get us out of this?’ It’s encouraging communities to grow healthy patterns and healthy ways and encouraging resilience among more marginalized members of communities who are marginalized for discriminatory type reasons, not because they should be marginalized because they’re terrible.” –Emily Temple-Wood, Co-Founder, WikiProject Women Scientists; 2016 Wikipedian of the Year](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreialrt4gy434xta6aynoqtw732tic4l36n3ghhucr4i267jnybchwq)