Community Signal

When private equity buys online community platforms, who wins? What about if those platforms were built on open source software? Does the company continue to be a good citizen of the open source community that helped build the product? History has shown us that it is often the community managers and pros who lose. They might not just lose a good platform though, they might lose their job. Lincoln Russell has an interesting perspective on this topic. He joined Vanilla Forums, an open source community software platform, as a senior developer in 2011, having already used it for a couple of years. He left the company in 2020, then the director of engineering. Lincoln has continued to use the software. Vanilla Forums was subsequently purchased by Higher Logic, a company lacking a meaningful history of open source contributions. As a matter of disclosure, both Higher Logic and Vanilla Forums are past sponsors of the show. Lincoln and I also discuss: How Vanilla Forums' open source ethos shifted over time The importance of data migration standards for community software Is community software best built by small businesses? Big Quotes Your community software provider must answer this (16:38): “The first question you should ask a [community software] vendor is: How easy is it to leave you? It's not a fun question to ask, but the answer is crucial to me. It's a deal-breaker question.” -Patrick O'Keefe Some community platforms try to lock their customer data into the platform (18:07): “When [a client is] onboarding [to new community software during the] initial year or two, they don't care about their data export. It's at the end. That's a long-term reputational issue about how people talk about their experiences. We saw that with [community software] competitors. We had some trouble with a couple of competitors in trying to get the data from them and spent way more hours than particular customers were worth – just on principle, honestly – getting the data out for them because we were so personally offended. At least I was.” -Lincoln Russell When you aren't selling community software to the people who will actually use it (20:37): “In the [community software] sales process, you identify stakeholders – people that are decision makers. A lot of the time they weren't a community manager. A lot of the time it was a director of technology, it was a CEO, or other positions, and that warps your roadmap. “When those are the people that [the] sales team [is] sitting in front of, day in and day out, and you're pitching an improved moderation queue, they want this button that does this thing. You're like, ‘But that's stupid.' But it doesn't matter. If those are the people you're selling to, [with] their own idea of community that doesn't actually align with community management because they have internal business goals, and all they want to do are check those boxes.” -Lincoln Russell Why community professionals should drive community platform choice (22:10): “Although I'd like to believe, ego-wise, that I could make a community out of whatever piece of garbage application you throw in front of me, I know the software can either help me or hurt me, and it's tough when you're making dinner with someone else's ingredients.” -Patrick O'Keefe Great ideas need great communicators (23:44): “The biggest issue with charting a course is you need a really clear vision, and you also need someone who can articulate that vision a lot, and over and over again, to the right people in the right circumstances. You need an external marketer. All of us in engineering at Vanilla [were] all introverts. None of us were going to conferences and giving talks about our vision for community software. It just wasn't in us to do that. I think we were poorer off in that we had some really good ideas, and could have shifted the conversation a bit, but we didn't put our energy there because that was a lot of energy.” -Lincoln Russell Protecting your culture makes you unique from the big social media platforms (33:43): “I think this idea of being more private and being very selective about what you present to the world, and having an internal culture that is protected from the internet – not promoted to the internet – is the future of these independent community spaces because that's the space those [bigger] platforms cannot touch.” -Lincoln Russell Community drives great software projects (37:04): “To build great software, like the great software projects that are going to outlive me, you need a community of people committed to working on them for long periods of time. [You need] to replace those people when they leave, but you have to have a system to keep that going, not just like, [we] got great five minds in a room and they did a thing, and then they cash out at the end. That's not sustainable.” -Lincoln Russell About Lincoln Russell Lincoln Russell is the vice president of engineering for uConnect, which builds virtual career centers for colleges and universities to help students get better jobs. Earlier in his career, he spent 8 and a half years at Vanilla Forums, starting as a senior developer in 2011 and leaving in 2020 as the director of engineering. Related Links Lincoln's website Higher Logic Vanilla, from Higher Logic uConnect, where Lincoln is vice president of engineering Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com WordPress.org, the home of the WordPress open source community Arlington-Based Higher Logic Acquires Montreal's Vanilla by Richard Foster for Virginia Business Nitro Porter, Lincoln's community platform migration tool Lincoln's blog post announcing Nitro Porter Matt Mecham of Invision Community Matt Mecham on Community Signal Transcript View on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. Thank you for listening.

Rebecca Newton is a legend of the online community profession. After 30 years, she has retired. But what does it mean when we retire from this work? Her career began AOL in 1994, building communities and managing a massive volunteer program. Among her numerous stops, Rebecca found a focus in child safety, leading such efforts for Sulake (the company behind Habbo Hotels and Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom), Mind Candy (Moshi Monsters), and most recently SuperAwesome, a provider of tools for safer, responsible digital engagement with young people, who was acquired by Epic Games. A program manager for community in 1997, a community director in 2001, a chief community officer in 2007: Rebecca has held all of the titles. Along the way, she has paved a path for the community profession, pushing us higher in corporate environments and creating valuable resources for us. Most notably, her 24 year stewardship of the e-mint listserv for community pros, an iconic resource that has helped countless community facilitators. After such a career, what's it like to step away from full-time work? What goes through the mind of a retiring community pro? That's what we'll discuss, plus: How do you prepare for retirement, as a community pro? What will Rebecca miss? What won't she miss? The least and most effective pieces of legislation passed during Rebecca's career Big Quotes What will Rebecca miss most about being a full-time community pro? (17:32): “I'm going to miss working with people online the most. It's a different animal than working with people offline, and I did plenty of that before I started in the online world. … Everybody thought they invented remote working. I've had remote teams since 1994, so it's not new. I'm going to really miss that because there's a special culture in the online world, as you know, that is really hard to describe, or it's hard for me to describe but is not like the offline world. It's like being in a special club, in a secret club. That's how it feels to me.” -Rebecca Newton What won't she miss? (23:07): “I won't miss … people naively thinking they know better than everybody who built the widget. I've heard the conversations. ‘Oh, they can't let go. They don't know how to let go. They don't know how to grow. They don't know how to do this.' Then I would think, ‘Okay, well, we'll see who's not growing in a year, so I'm going to go looking for another job because I know in a year this thing's not going to exist.'” -Rebecca Newton The cyclical trend of online community obsession (31:09): “I remember in 2000 when dentists were [asking], ‘Do I need an online community?' There was a trend of, “Oh, it's online community,' because of the success at AOL. I was like, ‘No. You're a dentist.'” -Rebecca Newton Overreaction from government officials who aren't active online (34:21): “I'm not saying anything about how smart [government decision makers] are, about how great their intentions were, or their abilities in the world. [But] if you're not [active online], if you're not a heavy user, if you're not in the kid's world using it, how can you possibly [make good decisions]? That's what we see in Great Britain, in the EU. Something happens to one person under 16, they want to have 27 laws about it. Because this thing happened.” -Rebecca Newton Kids want to collaborate, they want a job (38:40): “That's the biggest thing I learned about working with kids. The very first thing when they get online or game in an app, whatever it is, [they say] ‘I want a job. Can I have a job? Let's do this together. Let's do that together.'” -Rebecca Newton When legislation goes too far (39:18): “Over-regulation is detrimental. I think all it does is create a whole lot of jobs for people to do a lot of stuff that nobody's ever going to look at. That's a really rude thing for me to say, but I believe that.” -Rebecca Newton About Rebecca Newton Rebecca Newton has spent 30 years in the commercial internet industry. As head of digital trust and community, Rebecca led online community, online safety, moderation, engagement, and customer services efforts at SuperAwesome (of Epic Games) from 2015 to 2023. Prior to joining SuperAwesome, Rebecca worked at Mind Candy as the chief community & safety officer, serving over 140 million registered (young) users. From 2001 to 2007, she worked at Sulake (the company behind Habbo Hotels) as the global director of community for the world's largest teen virtual world site, spanning 24 countries. She began her online community career with America Online in 1994, where she wore many hats, and finally landed as the program manager for AOL's community leader program. Among her contributions to the discipline of online community, Rebecca co-founded VirComm, the London-based annual conference for online community professionals in 2011, and the e-mint community management listserv. She serves on boards and committees for numerous organizations, including AgeCheq, the Archewell Foundation, and DitchTheLabel.org. Related Links Rebecca's previous appearance on Community Signal Rebecca's website e-mint, a community management listserv that Rebecca has managed since 2000 AgeCheq, the Archewell Foundation, and DitchTheLabel.org, organizations that Rebecca provides guidance to eWorld, an Apple service that launched in 1994 and provided a community feature Michael Acton Smith, who was once Rebecca's boss The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, the Communications Decency Act, and Section 230, which were all pieces of legislation passed during Rebecca's career Virtual Magic Kingdom, an online game created by Disney and Sulake, where Rebecca led community and safety efforts Jenna Woodul, potentially the first person with the chief community officer title Jenna Woodul on Community Signal MIT's Scratch community, which is managed by someone that Rebecca has mentored, who was initially a member of one of the communities she was responsible for Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. Thank you for listening.

Online community consultants aren't unlike consultants for any other area of work. Some are ethical, smart, and talented, and some aren't. Consultants also don't often make great guests for the show because they view it as yet another lead generational funnel for them to shout generalities into. But hopefully an exception is this episode with community consultant Jenny Weigle. On it, we discuss how being humble is often at odds with how many consultants promote themselves, as they place a certain importance on appearing authoritative and revelatory, even if that isn't actually correct in the context of the history of this work. Can you even be a community consultant or an online community resource if you haven't taken a concept pioneered 30 years ago and thrown your logo on it? We also discuss: An update on past guest Tim McDonald's quest for a liver donor Self-promotion by community consultants Community professionals do roadshows, but are they ever invited to roadshows by other departments? Big Quotes When consultants and resources claim general concepts (3:57): “I've seen plenty of [community] consultants and resources pop up over my 25 years and throw a logo on something. The commitment curve, the activity ladder, the mountain of progression… how many different upward-facing shapes can we throw a logo on? I've seen a lot of that, and I've seen people claim something that has either been claimed decades ago or no one should be laying claim to.” -Patrick O'Keefe How much of the talk in community work is brand new? (6:01): “There are very few things that happen in our field today that make me pause and say, ‘Wow,' either to myself or out loud. When I'm putting out my materials and what I'm personally working on, I'm just doing what's top of mind and mainly it's influenced by what my clients need at the time.” -Jenny Weigle The danger AI poses to community creativity (15:19): “[With ChatGPT and similar AI tools,] I'm worried about elements of communities where creativity is usually needed. An easy example is the writing of content, the writing of posts, the writing of conversations, and how those things start. I'm worried about everyone sounding the same. I'm worried about everyone getting the same prompts. I'm worried about everyone rewriting their posts using the same tool that learns on the same data set, and will all move them closer to the same center. Ultimately, that's the death of community.” -Patrick O'Keefe Why community pros should read hospitality books (26:05): “There were so many things [that community builders can learn from the hospitality industry]. I was in awe as I turned each page of Danny Meyer's book because he paid so much attention to wanting to know his customer's preferences, their likes, dislikes, what was relevant going on in their lives at the moment, what would bring them in the door, and what would keep them from coming. These are all things that community managers are concerned about with their online communities, as well.” -Jenny Weigle About Jenny Weigle Jenny Weigle has been creating, executing, and reviewing strategies for online communities for more than 10 years. She's worked with more than 100 brands on various aspects of their community strategy and implementations, including launch, migration, programming, and planning. These brands include, Airbnb, Google, HP, Intuit, Pinterest, REI, Samsung, Sephora, Splunk, Stubhub, and Visa. When she's not geeking out on community strategy, Jenny spends time in Los Angeles with her partner, John, and stepdaughter. In her personal life, she is a proud member of a number of communities, including Southern California Gator Club, Spiritual Sisters of Los Angeles (which she founded), Oak Park LA (for CrossFit), Sofar Sounds, and D23: The Official Disney Fan Club. Related Links Jenny's website Tim McDonald on Community Signal Good news from Tim! TimsLiver.com Jenny's Substack The Hospitality Books That Made Me a Better Community Professional by Jenny Danny Meyer's book, Setting the Table TV shows that deal with hospitality and customer service: Hotel Impossible, Bar Rescue, Kitchen Nightmares, and The Profit The 2-Hour Cocktail Party by Nick Gray Be Our Guest by The Disney Institute with Theodore Kinni Jenny's Community Roadshow template Jenny on LinkedIn Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

Bodies aren't moderated equally on the internet. Content moderation efforts, especially those at large, mainstream platforms, can suffer from policy-based bias that results in moderation centering a cisgender gaze. This reinforcing of heteronormativity can leave some of your most vulnerable community members – and potential community members – feeling alienated, ostracized, and simply unwelcome. Last year, in her role as CX escalations supervisor at Grindr, Vanity Brown co-authored a whitepaper, Best Practices for Gender-Inclusive Content Moderation. Insightful, with a straight forward approach to making content moderation just a bit better, I found that it was also a validation of good, thoughtful moderation that has been going on for a long time. Vanity joins the show to talk about these efforts, which are tempered by a realistic acknowledgement of the limitations of this work, and how our need to be in other places (like app stores) can often slow down the progress we'd like to make. We also discuss: Why it's not our job to guess the gender of our members The state of AI trust and safety tools ChatGPT, Midjourney, and how much to worry about them Big Quotes How bodies are moderated differently online (2:16): “We want folks to express themselves and their sexuality joyfully, without judgment. Of course, without any harm. But what does that look like? … There traditionally are [community] guidelines for females and guidelines for males, but the world is changing and folks are becoming more in tune with who they are, and we want to be able to treat them equally and let folks, especially I emphasize our trans users, who are uploading photos … and if they are showing the top, then they're considered a woman if they have female-presenting breasts versus male. There are just a lot of nuances there that we saw as we were moderating content from a community who is very fluid with their gender expression.” -Vanity Brown When do kinks create a moderation issue? (6:38): “[Kinks vs. crimes get] sticky when the kink looks like a crime. … Everything is about sex and kinks at Grindr. With this mass of kinky stuff, which of these things are harmful? I often echo that, in my work, I'm always driven … to do no harm. At the end of the day, are we harming someone? … Do we have a responsibility to protect them and keep them safe? As we continue to build trust with the community, we have to realize that folks are adults, too.” -Vanity Brown Empathy sits at the core of good moderation (14:38): “If you can't be empathetic for the things you are not … then you're not really doing good thoughtful community moderation, trust and safety work. … Ultimately, if you want to be truly great at this work, you have to protect the people who aren't you.” -Patrick O'Keefe What can community pros learn from dating apps? (24:23): “[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 About Vanity Brown Vanity Brown is the CX escalations supervisor for Grindr, where she has worked in trust and safety for over 2 years, following more than 7 years at eHarmony. Vanity manages an escalations team of specialists devoted to handling the most complex cases that come through Grindr's support channels. Related Links Vanity on LinkedIn Grindr, where Vanity is CX escalations supervisor Best Practices for Gender-Inclusive Content Moderation whitepaper, co-authored by Alice Hunsberger, Vanity, and Lily Galib, which I found via Juliet Shen Grindr's community guidelines OpenAI's efforts to identify AI-generated text, which were only able to identify “likely” AI-written text 26% of the time, a bit more than the approximately 10% I mentioned during the show Love Light Community, a youth choir founded by Vanity, dedicated to “enriching the lives of youth and families in underserved communities through the transforming power of music and the arts” Love Light Community on Instagram Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

Safeguarding is a term used in Ireland and the United Kingdom that covers efforts to protect the health, wellbeing, and human rights of people, especially children and those who are otherwise vulnerable. At Diabetes UK, four people alternate by week as the safeguarding lead, helping to protect those that the charity comes in contact with. One of them is Josh Poncil, the online community and learning manager. Among his responsibilities is Diabetes UK's online forum. On this episode, we talk about safeguarding and knowing if you've done the right thing at the end of the day, plus: What is considered “too technical” for the average member to answer in a diabetes community? How Josh writes for a vulnerable audience Moderation decisions that could trigger a meltdown Big Quotes When veteran members go bad (18:39): “[After 25 years in content moderation,] I really believe that the most stressful situation is when an experienced member takes a turn for the worst. … It's painful because they are an example to other people in the community. Especially new members who see their posts and say, ‘That member has this number of contributions and has been in the community this long. If they [post] that and it's up still, that's probably how this community behaves.'” -Patrick O'Keefe An example of safeguarding in an online community (23:43): “I had someone on the forum saying, ‘I've just been diagnosed a couple of weeks ago. I've barely eaten.' That's like an alarm ringing bells in my head. I'll take the lead and private message them. … ‘Is everything okay? Could you please contact the helpline or tell us what's going on?' “Let's say they got back to me saying, ‘Yes, I haven't eaten anything. I don't feel well. I feel dizzy.' Then I'll contact back, ‘Do you need me to call an ambulance?' Sometimes they'll go back to me, ‘Yes, here's my address, my telephone number.' I'll ring [the emergency service] 999. I have to be careful what I say at the beginning because of my accent. I'm American, but I live in London. I have to make sure I'm not coming off as a scam. I'm calling from a charity. I have a safeguarding concern.” -Josh Poncil With safeguarding, you regularly are questioning if you did the right thing (24:53): “I've had someone on the forum saying, ‘My mom is in quite a worrying state. She's scared to go to the hospital. She's dizzy, she's not coherent. I'm scared she hasn't been testing for blood sugars.' On my end, I've contacted the daughter, ‘Please get your mom to [Accident and Emergency]. It sounds like she needs medical attention.' They've got back to me, ‘Thank you for getting in touch, but my mom didn't make it.' This affected me, and it hit me quite hard not knowing if I did the right thing. I have to just take a moment of, ‘Did I make the right choice? Is there anything else I could do at this time?'” -Josh Poncil About Josh Poncil For the last 4 years, Josh Poncil has been the online community and learning manager for Diabetes UK, after a stint at Blood Cancer UK. He went to school for creative writing and journalism, before transitioning to community by way of social media management. Related Links Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers Josh on LinkedIn Diabetes UK, where Josh is online community and learning manager Diabetes UK's online forum Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

Employee resource groups (ERGs) can do a lot to create a greater sense of belonging at your organization. But the folks who volunteer to lead these groups may find themselves in need of help when it comes to utilizing perhaps the greatest tool at their disposal: Your internal employee community platform. As a community strategist within large organizations, Lori Harrison-Smith has trained employees to help them get the most out of these platforms. She has also managed two large migrations, both from Jive, and that has led her to have a (in her words) cynical perspective on the resources made available for these migrations, by both companies and the software vendors themselves. Lori and Patrick discuss: Doing something for an employee vs. showing them how to do it themselves How much the ERG leaders she's worked with have dipped into moderation The short timeframes given to internal community migrations Big Quotes What's really driving an internal community migration deadline (22:59): “When [an internal employee community] migration is happening, [companies are often] trying to save some money while they're at it, and they've got this deadline. It's usually a contract signature that is driving that deadline. There's never enough time. It's like, ‘We need to get off of this because the contract expires in November.' It's May when we're having this conversation because that's when everybody started looking at the balance sheet.” -Lori Harrison-Smith Instead of adjustments to their platforms, vendors can push “change management” (31:52): “With the different [internal community] vendors I've worked with, I've always had great relationships with them. The people have always been great and nice, but there's just these struggles as a community manager because I'm hearing what the employees are saying. I'm hearing them talk about the pain points they're experiencing. Then you go back to the vendor, and a lot of it is, ‘Well, change management. You just got to get them used to this new system.'” -Lori Harrison-Smith The downside of big dollar value community software contracts (33:57): “Maybe [the consolidation in the community software space is] a case for lower-cost platforms and open source solutions that may seem a little harder upfront but ultimately allow you to be a little more nimble internally as opposed to the sunk cost that makes you feel like you're in a relationship you could never leave because you need to get that money back out of it.” -Patrick O'Keefe About Lori Harrison-Smith Lori Harrison-Smith's career began in advertising, where she worked as a copywriter and editor. She found her real passion, though, when she transitioned to a role where she launched and supported an 8,000-strong employee community. Since 2011, Lori has held community roles within large organizations, leading platform updates and migrations, developing content and engagement programs, advocating for user experience, and guiding and supporting employees around communication and knowledge sharing. She is currently the collaboration network manager at VMware, following community roles at Motorola Solutions and Steelcase. Related Links Lori Harrison-Smith on LinkedIn VMware, where Lori is the collaboration network manager Employee Resource Groups Create a Sense of Belonging, Foster Engagement by Stephen Miller for SHRM Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

As we celebrate Community Signal's 7th birthday, Patrick takes questions from Community Signal listeners and supporters in this first ever “Ask Patrick Anything” episode of the show. Questions include: If everything had worked with CNN+, what would community look like for the platform? Would you rather be a working community professional or a community consultant? Will we ever see community leaders in the C-suite as the norm? 2023 will be Patrick's 25th year of community work, so this is an opportunity to reflect on that passage of time. A lot has changed and, surprisingly, some things haven't. Joining Patrick to ask the questions and dig deeper is previous guest Jared Smith. They also cover: The early promise of CNN+'s Interview Club How community moderation tools have changed over the years Why community isn't special when it comes to the C-suite Big Quotes You have to commit to be successful with D2C products (11:55): “If you build interactive products and kill them after three weeks, it's hard to prove out anything. It's hard to build out loyalty. It's hard to build out a D2C product if you're not willing to commit.” -Patrick O'Keefe The magic of the unexpected in media products (13:04): “I think there is something magical that can happen when you take some of the expected nature of television or media, of what we expect is going to happen, and you throw the consumer, the community, the members, the subscribers into that. You give them the freedom to make other things happen.” -Patrick O'Keefe Operators drive moderator tool development more than platforms (22:24): “[When it comes to moderator tools], it's often the community of people who need something driving it more so than the platforms themselves.” -Patrick O'Keefe Developers still focus on the frontend more than the administrative backend (23:35): “It's a cliché to say that software developers focus on the frontend and the user experience and not so much the admin and moderation experience. That's a cliché in our business. I think that is largely the case with some exceptions. Those exceptions tend to be people who have run communities themselves or who have a really good foundational understanding of the web from being in it for so long.” -Patrick O'Keefe If you want to make a difference in moderator tooling, start with the communities that don't have money (23:58): “I get pitched by developers, and I always tell them that the way to make change in this industry is to make your product available to the people who don't have anything. The Fortune 500s of the world are always going to have money, and they're always going to have engineers. They can figure their way around problems and pay for solutions. Most communities, 99.9% of people, don't have any money. That's where you make change.” -Patrick O'Keefe Artificial intelligence isn't a moderation panacea (24:36): “If you think about it [going back 25 years], forums are not dead and the mod tools are basically the same that we had. Remove user, close thread, things like that, a lot of that stuff. It's the same. I also don't think it's a bad thing. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. One of the things about these AIs is sometimes they get it really, really wrong in really offensive ways. You still need that human element to counter that.” -Jared Smith Banning Andrew Anglin is not brave, it's obvious (27:09): “When [Elon Musk decides] to unban Andrew Anglin, who's arguably the most prominent real nazi on the internet, the founder of The Daily Stormer, the most prominent nazi publication on the internet [that makes Twitter a place I am less likely to engage]. … Andrew Anglin can join any platform I own and he'll be banned. That's not a brave thing. That's not a talking point or like, ‘Wow, that's amazing.' It's obvious. It's not an amazing thing.” -Patrick O'Keefe Hyping the chief community officer role isn't helpful (39:46): “We've seen these tweets that are like, ‘Half of the Fortune 500 will have chief community officers in the next 10 years,' or ‘10% of this or all big companies or all the Fortune 100 or the future of companies will be a chief community officer.' It's all hype. It's all nonsense. For the most part, it's to encourage hype in our industry. I don't see it as healthy. I don't see it as good. I don't see it as aspirational. I don't see those people as friends or allies of the work.” -Patrick O'Keefe Be wary of the hype (41:42): “I don't trust anyone who says chief community officers are the future of community, that there's going to be one at every big company. It's always hype. It's always because they have some financially-vested interest in community work proliferating in that way or at least sounding like your friend. They want to sound like they're in your corner or they're your ally because there is some financial incentive tied to that for them long-term.” -Patrick O'Keefe About Jared Smith Jared Smith is a manager of software engineering at BoomTown in Charleston, SC, leading engineering teams and encouraging developer career growth, including a ten-year stint working on and eventually leading a team of engineers dedicated to implementing WordPress for real estate agent websites. In addition to BoomTown, Jared runs @chswx (shorthand for Charleston Weather) and the chswx.com blog, where he writes forecasts and disseminates National Weather Service alerts for the Charleston, SC metro area. Over nearly 15 years, @chswx has emerged as a key catalyst in the weather conversation, not only acting as a conduit for sending alerts but also for receiving reports in real-time, improving situational awareness for public, media, and NWS warning forecasters alike. Related Links Jared Smith, our guest host BoomTown, where Jared is manager of software engineering Charleston Weather (including @chswx on Twitter), a project that Jared runs Wesley Faulker's appearance on Community Signal Wikipedia page for CNN+, the streaming service Patrick helped launch A clip from the Interview Club interview with Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Dr. Anthony Fauci Bassey Etim on LinkedIn, who has been on several Community Signal episodes Mastodon, free, open source decentralized social media platform Ryan Hall, a weather YouTuber Brad Williams' appearance on Community Signal Invision Community and Discourse, two community software options recommended by Patrick ChatGPT Community Signal episode covering Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter COPPA, Children's Online Privacy Protection Act DMCA, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

Elon Musk's presence has loomed over Twitter since he announced plans to purchase the platform. And for these few weeks that he's been in charge, many concerns have proven to be justified. Musk laid off 3,700 employees, and then 4,400 contractors. He is firing those who are critical of him. The verification process, perhaps one of Twitter's most trusted features, has been unraveled. He's offered severance to those who don't want to be part of “extremely hardcore” Twitter. Following the results of a Twitter poll, he reinstated the account of Donald Trump, who was suspended from the platform for his role in inciting the January 6th attacks. So, what happens now? What of the many social movements that manifested on Twitter? While some movements and followings may see new manifestations on other platforms, not everything will be completely recreated. For example, as writer Jason Parham explains, “whatever the destination, Black Twitter will be increasingly difficult to recreate.” In this episode of Community Signal, Patrick speaks to three experts: Sarah T. Roberts, associate professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA, trust and safety consultant Ralph Spencer, and Omar Wasow, assistant professor in UC Berkeley's Department of Political Science and co-founder of BlackPlanet, about the current state and future of Twitter. They dissect the realities facing the platform today including content moderation, loss of institutional knowledge, and uncertainty about Twitter's infrastructure, but also emphasize the importance of Twitter as a social utility for news and more. This episode also touches on: The reality of moderating a platform like Twitter What platforms actually mean when they say they're for “free speech” How Musk tanked the value of verification on Twitter Big Quotes On the future of content moderation at Twitter (8:28): “There's no way possible with the cuts [Musk has] made that he's going to be able to do any type of content moderation. … [He] isn't going to have anybody who remotely begins to know to how to do that [legal compliance and related work].” –Ralph Spencer Sarah T. Roberts' moderation challenge for Elon Musk (11:19): “I want Elon Musk to spend one day as a frontline production content moderator, and then get back to this [Community Signal] crew about how that went. Let us know what you saw. Share with us how easy it was to stomach that. Were you able to keep up with the expected pace at Twitter? Could you … make good decisions over 90% of the time, over 1,000, 2,000 times a day? Could you do that all the while seeing animals being harmed, kids being beat on, [and] child sexual exploitation material?” –@ubiquity75 Bumper sticker wisdom doesn't make good policy (15:46): “Everything [Musk has said about free speech] has had the quality of good bumper stickers but is totally divorced from reality, and that doesn't bode well, obviously.” –@owasow The responsibility in leading a social media platform (19:41): “One thing that we are seeing in real-time [at Twitter] is what a danger there is in having one individual – especially a very privileged individual who does not live in the same social milieu as almost anyone else in the world – one very privileged individual's ability to be the arbiter of … these profoundly contested ideological notions of something like free speech which again is continually misapplied in this realm.” –@ubiquity75 Musk's peddling of conspiracy theories (20:29): “[Musk is] running around tweeting that story about Nancy Pelosi's husband, the false article about what happened between him and his attacker. What kind of example is that to set? … What it is to me is like this kid who has way too much money, and he found a new toy he wants to play with.” –Ralph Spencer Leading with humility (21:23): “[If you're running a site like Twitter,] you have to have a ‘small d' democratic personality, which is to say you really have to be comfortable with a thousand voices flourishing, a lot of them being critical of you, and that's not something that you take personally.” –@owasow There are always limits on speech (23:50): “When you declare that your product, your site, your platform, your service is a free speech zone, there is always going to be a limit on that speech. … [CSAM] is the most extreme example that we can come up with, but that is content moderation. To remove that material, to disallow it, to enforce the law means that there is a limit on speech, and there ought to be in that case. If there's a limit on speech, it is by definition not a free speech site. Then we have to ask, well, what are the limits, and who do they serve?” –@ubiquity75 “Free speech” platforms are not a thing (25:25): “When I hear people invoke free speech on a for-profit social media site, not only does that not exist today, it never has existed, and it never will exist. Let's deal with what reality is actually giving us and talk about that instead of these fantasies that actually are pretty much not good for anyone involved.” –@ubiquity75 The social weight and trust that verification brought to interactions on Twitter (32:52): “[Twitter] has outsized social impact, whether it's in the political arena, whether it's in social movements, whether it's in celebrity usage, all of these things have been true. In terms of political movements, the good, bad, the ugly. We saw an insurrection against the United States launched by the President of the United States on Twitter, so it's not all rosy, but the point is that Twitter had this outsized power and part of that could be attributed … to this verification process that let a lot of high profile folks, prominent individuals, media organizations, other kinds of people in the zeitgeist or in the public eye, engage with a certain sense of security.” –@ubiquity75 How does Twitter sustain its infrastructure amidst the mass layoffs and resignations? (39:18): “We have good reason to fear that [Twitter's] infrastructure is going to get considerably worse over time. [Musk has] fired enough of the people. … In a lot of ways, [Twitter is] like a telephone company. It's got a lot of boring infrastructure that it has to maintain so that it's reliable. [Musk has] taken a bunch of these pillars or blocks in the Jenga stack and knocked them out, and it's a lot more wobbly now.” –@owasow Musk's Twitter user experience is not the common one (48:23): “[Musk is] obsessed with bots and spam, but why is that such a compulsion for him? Well, he has 100-plus million followers, and when he looks at his replies, there's probably a lot of bots and spam there. That's not where I live because I'm a civilian. His perspective is distorted in a way partly by the investment around him but partly also by just being so way out of proportion to almost any other human on Earth.” –@owasow About Our Guests Omar Wasow is an assistant professor in UC Berkeley's Department of Political Science. His research focuses on race, politics, and statistical methods. Previously, Omar co-founded BlackPlanet, an early leading social network, and was a regular technology analyst on radio and television. He received a PhD in African American Studies, an MA in government, and an MA in statistics from Harvard University. Ralph Spencer has been working to make online spaces safer for more than 20 years, starting with his time as a club editorial specialist (message board editor) at Prodigy, and then graduating to America Online. During his time at AOL, he was in charge of all issues involving Child Sexual Abuse Material or CSAM. The evidence that Ralph and the team he worked with in AOL's legal department compiled contributed to numerous arrests and convictions of individuals for the possession and distribution of CSAM. He currently works as a freelance trust and safety consultant. Sarah T. Roberts is an associate professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA. She holds a PhD from the iSchool at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her book on commercial content moderation, Behind the Screen, was released in 2019 from the Yale University Press. She served as a consultant, too, and is featured in the award-winning documentary The Cleaners. Dr. Roberts sits on the board of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, was a 2018 Carnegie Fellow, and a 2018 recipient of the EFF Barlow Pioneer Award for her groundbreaking research on content moderation of social media. Related Links Elon Musk takes control of Twitter and immediately ousts top executives (via NPR) Omar Wasow's website Omar Wasow on Twitter BlackPlanet.com, founded by Wasow Ralph Spencer on LinkedIn Sarah T. Roberts' website Sarah T. Roberts on Twitter Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media, by Sarah T. Roberts Note from Patrick: After 5 years, this is Carol's final episode as editorial lead on Community Signal. We'll miss you, Carol! The Twitter Rules Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace by Lawrence Lessig Elon Musk says Twitter will have a ‘content moderation council' (via The Verge) Democratic U.S. senators accuse Musk of undermining Twitter, urge FTC probe (via Reuters) We got Twitter ‘verified' in minutes posing as a comedian and a senator (via The Washington Post) How Much Did Twitter's Verification Chaos Cost Insulin Maker Eli Lilly and Twitter Itself? (via Gizmodo) Patrick's (somewhat sarcastic) Twitter thread about the policies he hoped the platform would put in place to address Musk's conflicts of interest Saturday Night Live's content moderation council sketch Transcript View on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

As Zendesk's customer base and product offerings have grown, so has its community. The Zendesk community started in 2008, under the support organization, as a space for people to ask and answer questions about using the product. Since then, it has shifted departments multiple times, leading to changes in KPIs and core purpose. Nicole Saunders, the company's director of community, joins the show to explain how she has navigated these challenges. Tune in for her approach on thoughtfully managing change and expectations within your community and inside of your organization. Patrick and Nicole also discuss: Why the comments are open on Zendesk's knowledge base articles You can't tell people to contact support in Zendesk's community Handing some conversations in the community off to other teams Big Quotes Going from scrappy to resourced as your community team grows and develops (04:36): “[While community was part of the support organization,] we were functioning very scrappy, very much like a startup team within a larger organization. … Being within [the] integrated marketing organization let us connect to a lot more pieces and parts of the business, which as we built our strategy became increasingly important.” –@NicoleinMadison Participate in the community you serve (14:20): “I'm always encouraging my team to [step] out of the ticket queue on a regular basis … and just wander around [the community] and try to have that same experience as the end users to make sure we're not missing anything, make sure that the queue isn't keeping us in just a transactional space.” –@NicoleinMadison Why you can't tell people to contact support in the Zendesk community (24:58): “We were getting a lot of people that were just saying, ‘You should contact support for this,' and what it was doing was discouraging other users from jumping in and trying to help. A lot of these were questions that people could answer for one another, and … it was short-circuiting the community conversation.” –@NicoleinMadison The knowledge and value that community can offer (26:17): “You're going to gain so much more out of talking to somebody [in the community] who has done what you are trying to do, than someone who knows what functionality you should use to try to do it. Even the best support agent in the world probably hasn't done exactly the thing that you're trying to do. There's actually a real benefit to talking to other users.” –@NicoleinMadison About Nicole Saunders In over 12 years as a community professional, Nicole Saunders‘ experience has ranged from consulting to launching communities for startups to currently leading the community team at Zendesk. She's built communities across forums, social media, and offline. Her background also includes social media management, event production, communications, and freelance writing. Passionate about building community both in her work and in life, Nicole engages in several volunteer efforts, including mentoring for the Wisconsin Women's Network, singing with the Philharmonic Chorus of Madison, and teaching dance fitness classes. Related Links Nicole Saunders on LinkedIn Zendesk community Zendesk knowledge base Zendesk's community code of conduct Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

Recently, community pro Danielle Maveal joined Community Signal to discuss her experiences reporting into the product organization at Burb. In this episode, we're getting the opposite perspective from product leader Gitesh Gohel. Gitesh and Patrick worked together at CNN, where community reported into product. And while the product and community that they were building were short lived, they both speak highly of their time working together. Gitesh describes creating a team atmosphere where each individual's expertise was respected and given room to ladder into organizational goals, giving each person the opportunity to see the impact of their work. Patrick shares how this fostered trust in processes and created great experiences for the community and the brand. If you're debating a community role that reports into product, this conversation will give you insight into how that can be productive when the team has a strong foundation. Patrick and Gitesh also discuss: Gitesh's first experience managing community pros as a product leader Why community pros should be excited about reporting into product The successes and promise of CNN+'s Interview Club Big Quotes Making room for each individual's expertise within your org (11:35): “One thing which is really important, especially when it comes to collaboration, trusting each other, and being able to lean in on the skill set or experience that everyone brings to the table to accomplish a shared vision, is being able to create space and autonomy for folks to be able to do their jobs. One thing that we did at CNN, specifically working on Interview Club, was create goals which your team had by itself, but also having those goals be integrated into the success of the product itself.” –@giteshg The background of a product professional (12:54): “Most people don't train to be a product manager or to have an expertise in product development. … Most of my training came through experience. It was being part of a team who was building a product and being able to play a small role in it, being able to see what really good successful products look like, being able to see what do really healthy relationships look like across cross-functional teams.” –@giteshg Is product the right org for community? (25:42): “When you make community part of product, [you're saying] that your users are important, that the relationships that you develop with your users are important and positive, that you want to be able to not have a transactional relationship with your users, but actually one where you proactively engage, where you're proactively identifying ways in which you have your users connected.” –@giteshg Why should a community pro be excited about being part of the product org? (26:50): “[When community sits within product], in a way, you're closest to the decision maker, and I think that's important. What you are able to do is influence product strategy and how you think about what you build and who you're building for, and being able to bring the skills and expertise that you have directly into that conversation. [Product is] where you get to do the most fun stuff. It's where you get to say and explore different ideas that you want to try. It's a way in which you get the voice of the user closest to the way in which you think about what you end up doing.” –@giteshg About Gitesh Gohel Gitesh Gohel has 14 years of experience as a product leader solving user problems in the startup, consumer, media, political, and civic tech space for organizations like CNN, Tumblr, Giphy, Facebook, Jumo, and Obama 08. He is currently the VP of product for Narwhal. Related Links Gitesh Gohel on LinkedIn The Pros and Cons of Community Reporting to Product, Danielle Maveal on Community Signal Brigade Bassey Etim, who has been on multiple episodes of Community Signal Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

If you're wondering how you can more actively foster safety and belonging for LGBTQ+ folks in your online community, there's precedent to learn and borrow from. In this episode of Community Signal, we're joined by Samantha “Venia” Logan, the CEO and founder of Socially Constructed. Venia shares lessons from her decade of experience building community for LGBTQ+ individuals, which started when she began sharing her transition journey on YouTube.  Patrick and Venia discuss tools, policies, and practices that can help build queer friendly spaces over time. For example, how easy is it for someone to edit their profile information within your online community? What specific policies do you have in place to protect LGTBQ+ people? And a big one – how are others in your organization (outside of the community team) contributing to diversity and inclusion? At this point you might be asking, “how do I measure or communicate progress?” To this we ask, what are community-based outcomes that indicate someone feels safe contributing and like they belong? As Venia explains (15:23): “As a person feels more and more comfortable self-disclosing, they're going to use more organic language, they're going to talk a lot more, their rate of inclusion is going to increase, but so will the length of their posts.” Work with your community to figure out which behaviors relate to their sense of inclusion and measure those over time. Patrick and Venia also discuss: Making pronouns part of everyday conversations Twitter's policies and handling of a recent high-profile deadnaming case Being intentional about your metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) Big Quotes Make space for everyone to share their pronouns in everyday conversation (08:48): “Pronouns are not just a segment that you're going to put on your profile. … At every meeting, [if] you invite people to share their pronouns – cis, trans, doesn't matter – it essentially says, pervasively speaking, this is a queer-friendly, queer-safe space. … Oftentimes, you want to implement these rules so that you're not looking for explicit consent, you're looking for implicit acceptance.” –@SamanthaVenia Focus on tracking the behaviors that matter most to your community (14:23): “[With metrics], we need to return to a notion of simplicity, where we are recording things that people actually want us to listen to. When people engage in our online communities, they are leaving behind comments, behaviors, artifacts of conversation, and they want us to pay attention to those things, so why are we recording every single move they make in a community and not recording anything about the nature of the comment they left?” –@SamanthaVenia Perfectly accurate data reporting does not exist, instead, try replicating your results (18:06): “Instead of worrying about gross amounts of accuracy in your data … [measure] it again. The exact same thing that you did, in a second spot, in a second scope, just do it again, and again, and again. Once you repeat the same process and you have four corollary actions that are all telling you the same thing and one that's different, what is the resolution of your action? It just skyrocketed without you ever having to be accurate. Social science is not about causation, it's about enough correlation to infer causation.” –@SamanthaVenia Keep spaces safe by upholding the commitment to exclusivity (20:50): “Don't expand what's working for a safe space because keeping an exclusive space is what made that place safe. Instead, go over to the other place, reproduce your success, diversify it. The phrase that I use is ‘Don't expand, diversify.' Exclusivity breeds inclusivity.” –@SamanthaVenia If you're creating a space for everyone, you're creating a space for no one (23:56): “When you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one, and you end up having no one because no one feels particularly special, or catered to, or welcome in those spaces.” –@patrickokeefe Focus on your role of setting precedent, building momentum (24:59): “I will boil down any community management job from architect, coordinator, moderator, facilitator… it doesn't matter what you do in community. Your job is to set precedent, to do a thing, then build momentum for that thing until the community is doing it on its own.” –@SamanthaVenia About Samantha “Venia” Logan In 2010, Samantha “Venia” Logan transitioned from male to female and shared her entire 10-year journey on YouTube. Over the next decade, that decision snowballed into an active and healthy career in community management, diversity, education, and measurement in anonymous community health. In 2012, Venia founded RESCQU.NET, a nonprofit organization that simultaneously marketed to an invisible audience and catered to their anonymity. In 2017, she graduated with a degree focused on community management and became a full-stack marketer at DigitalMarketer. For the past five years, Venia has built quantitative and qualitative data measurement tools for brand communities online. Through SociallyConstructed.Online, she is committed to helping businesses build robust, self-sustainable communities. Related Links Samantha “Venia” Logan on LinkedIn Venia on YouTube Venia on Twitter RESCQU.NET SociallyConstructed.Online “3 Takeaways From a Decade Building Queer Community” 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer Chris Mercer Twitter's hateful conduct policy Socially Constructed's Discord and YouTube channel Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

Which team or leader does your community organization report into? And which would you like it to? Community teams can be successful as independent pillars or as part of other verticals, like product, ops, or marketing. In this episode of Community Signal, Danielle Maveal, the CCO (chief community officer) at Burb, shares how community professionals can be successful within a team's product organization. All reporting structures have their pros and cons, but product and community share the job of “deeply understand[ing] what the user wants and what their motivations are, and how to get them from point A to point B (2:17).” With a shared mandate, community and product teams that effectively partner can expand each other's influence and success. No matter what team you report into, creating a foundation in which all teams have respect for each other's knowledge, experience, and processes is critical to every team, the business, and the community itself. Tune in to hear how Patrick and Danielle have fostered product relationships at Burb, CNN, Lyft, and more. Danielle and Patrick also discuss: The value that community pros can bring to product teams Learning and leveraging product's processes How the OKR (objectives and key results) goal structure can be adapted by community pros Big Quotes Community can be very repetitive (7:37): “[Product] structures don't always work for a community team. Sometimes product teams are very much into launching features … and then feature usage. Community is a lot of repetitive tasks or maintenance. These things are important. It's hard to fit under almost any team actually because we do have this kind of work where mostly, especially in tech, everyone's trying to launch something and get awesome feedback on it. That's not always the case in community.” –@daniellexo Product and community can partner to expand each org's influence and success (18:16): “Having community in your product team is an opportunity for product leaders to increase their mandate and increase their influence. It's not just one way. It's not just community influencing product. It's increasing the influence of product within the wider org, too.” –@patrickokeefe Approaching your product team with community feedback (22:35): “It's really important to bring problems. Bring as much data as you can, make partners with other teams who are also getting this feedback and data. … Have as much support as you can around this problem. You can even tell stories from the community about this problem, but just don't barge in with the solution that the community wants because it's never going to get people on your side. It's not going to motivate them to want to work on that project.” –@daniellexo Maintain a bird's eye view of issues impacting your community (25:14): “Fires are burning. People are fighting. People are upset. … There's a little community [forming] that's making this thing look like an emergency, and it's not always an emergency. [It's] really important to have partnerships with other teams; data science, research, customer service, and make sure you have a really bird's eye view of a story before you go to product or engineering, trust and safety, or legal with your requests.” –@daniellexo Being on the defensive for product enhancements can rob you of creative opportunities (31:38): “When you're spending a lot of your energy, time, and mind thinking up all [the counterpoints to expected criticisms,] the defensive positions, and backing up everything you say, there's little room to come to the table with someone and actually dream up something better. Usually, you're just defending the bare minimum. If you can build that trust, and if you have a team that will trust you and work together to build that trust, you can use that time to be creative. Go leaps forward versus, ‘Ugh, we just need to maintain the status quo, so I need to fight for this one little thing.'” –@daniellexo Being a community person on a product team can make you better (32:16): “Ultimately, I think that being on a product team can make, with some exceptions, you a better community person, and a broader community person.” –@patrickokeefe About Danielle Maveal Danielle Maveal is a serial founding team member. She's been building community at Etsy, Airbnb, and Lyft for 15 years. She's the chief community officer at Burb, a messaging, automation, and CRM toolset for community builders. Danielle also coaches community professionals and runs multiple support groups for community builders. Related Links Danielle Maveal on Twitter Danielle Maveal on LinkedIn Burb Danielle's past appearance on Community Signal Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

Do you manage an international community? How do you thoughtfully foster community across different continents, languages, and norms? Mercedes Oppon-Kusi, the community manager for Europe for the International Legal Technology Association, is working to do just that for their community of technology pros working at law firms. With ILTA originating in the U.S., Mercedes shares the differences in behaviors between U.S. and Europe-based community members, and how she has approached expanding the European chapter to include more countries. Her strategy comes back to advice that's helpful no matter what stage your community is at: Overcome your biases as a community professional. Take time to learn the interests and challenges that impact your community members and scale thoughtfully. As Mercedes puts it, “[It's] about building that practical knowledge of the market, and then figuring out where to go first.” Plus: How to help community members break through the “I don't have enough time” barrier Why U.S. members are more engaged than their European counterparts In-person events that help members feel bought-in to the ILTA community Big Quotes How ILTA community members help each other grow (6:45): “You have the people that have been there and done it, you have people that are looking to branch into it, and you have the people that want to grow in it. That's what our communities do. They help our members learn how to become better than they are.” –@M4Mercedes Tech pros at U.S. law firms are more likely to share experiences (7:38): “[With] our membership pool in the U.S., you will not struggle to get a big firm to share. They're proud of it. They're like, ‘We've done this so well because we're amazing, and this is how we did it,' but in the UK, they're decidedly more reserved. It's very hard to get the big firms to share about anything. I don't know what it is, but it does seem like people are nervous because they do not want to be seen as bragging, so it differs according to the geographies. It's not really by firm size.” –@M4Mercedes Localizing matters to your community members (19:07): “A lot of our 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.” –@M4Mercedes Growing the ILTA community and reaching new members (24:25): “The challenge is finding your first [community members] that are going to be your champions. Once you have that, they're usually a good insight into the networks and what topics exist, and they're really good at introducing you to other individuals that might have similar interests.” –@M4Mercedes About Mercedes Oppon-Kusi Mercedes Oppon-Kusi is the community manager for Europe for the International Legal Technology Association, a community for technology pros working at law firms. Related Links Mercedes Oppon-Kusi on LinkedIn International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) The Chatham House Rule Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

WordPress, the popular open source CMS, powers a reported 43%+ of the web, including this site. It is backed by a global community of contributors who volunteer their time in all sorts of ways, from code to documentation to training. But did you know that many of the project's biggest contributors are sponsored by their employer to provide that time? As we discussed with Brad Williams of WebDevStudios, the success of WordPress has created an economy around the software, growing and launching many businesses that serve the needs of its users, from personal blogs to major corporations. And one of the way those companies give back is through these sponsorships. No company is more tied to WordPress than Automattic, the owners of WordPress.com, which was founded by the co-founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg. Hugh Lashbrooke is the head of community education at Automattic, which sponsors him for 40 hours a week, primarily to contribute to WordPress' training team. Hugh joins us on this episode to give us an inside look at these sponsorship arrangements and how they influence WordPress team dynamics. Plus: What happens when a company stops sponsoring an employee to contribute to WordPress? The flexibility you need to work with volunteers on such a massive project “Public by default” as a standard of work Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes How sponsored contributors bolstered WordPress' training team (6:49): “[After COVID struck, the community team] realized that people weren't getting the training they normally get at events. … It started off as an informal conversation with the existing training team, which wasn't huge in terms of numbers. … We came together and now, we have this platform called Learn WordPress, which is where all of this content is housed. The idea for Learn WordPress existed in the training team before but because they were a small team … they didn't have the resources to really get that going like they wanted. When we came on board, and because we are sponsored volunteers and we have more time and access to more resources, we were able to help them do more and now, we're working alongside them very closely to make the platform better.” –@hlashbrooke Automattic can't track the financial impact of contributors they sponsor (21:16): “As WordPress improves, and becomes more popular, that helps Automattic improve profits and revenue. In our division, we don't track financial ROI at all. We don't have anything to track in that sense, so we don't. But our work in the open source project does benefit Automattic financially. … As people get better with WordPress and WordPress becomes more popular, easier to use, and more well-known, Automattic's business grows.” –@hlashbrooke COVID led to volunteer drop-off (27:18): “COVID had a big impact on [volunteers dropping off]. The lockdown, everyone being at home, and just the general stress of what's going on in the world. As we got to mid-to-late 2020, and then going all through 2021 and even now, a big dip in contributors. People weren't as committed as they were before. People who said they would be committed, they just slowly disappeared. There was just a trend that we saw, and it was very clearly because of the response to everything going on and the world being so stressful.” –@hlashbrooke Allowing people to weigh-in can slow things down, but increase long-term engagement (35:40): “If you make a decision about how we're going to lay out the homepage of something, for example, if we say, ‘This is what we do' and we do it, then people look at it like, ‘Oh, okay.' If you've had 15 people in the community contribute their voice to it and give their input on it, they'll be more interested, and they might be more interested in contributing further because they're like, ‘Oh, my voice actually matters, so I want to contribute more.' Sure, it makes things take longer, but it means they generally stick around for longer because they can see the impact and the effect of their input.” –@hlashbrooke About Hugh Lashbrooke Hugh Lashbrooke is a long-time community builder, currently serving as head of community education for the WordPress open source project, sponsored by Automattic. He leads a team that is building and managing an education program for the WordPress community. Related Links Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform Hugh's website Automattic, where Hugh is head of community education, sponsored to spend 40 hours per week contributing to WordPress Brad Williams of WebDevStudios on Community Signal Learn WordPress, an educational resource that Hugh's team works on A Dedicated Volunteer Program for the Training Team by Hugh, covering the “faculty program” idea Exploring WordPress Certifications by Hugh Hugh on Twitter Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

As the former director of community for HuffPost, where he led the management of an active, massive comment section, Tim McDonald has had a unique vantage point to the mass closure of news media comment sections. Patrick and Tim go in depth on that topic on this episode. Toward the end, Tim shares what he believes will be his greatest community ROI story: He has stage IV colon cancer and is in need of a liver donor and could get a lot closer with your help.  Please visit TimsLiver.com for more info. Plus: Why Tim believes he doesn't make a good soccer referee – or content moderator Keeping track of your community wins – both qualitative and quantitative Leveraging relationships with influential community members to get your message across, rather than being the face of the community yourself Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes You can't make everyone happy in moderation (10:56): “I would hate it when there was a close call [as a soccer referee] because I knew in my head what the call was but I knew if I looked at it objectively from one team's viewpoint and from the other team's viewpoint, half were going to be happy with me, half were going to be upset with me, and I wanted to make everybody happy. You can't do that in comment moderation, and you can't do that being a referee.” –@tamcdonald Allowing influential members to do the talking (11:34): “I didn't need to get into the [HuffPost] community and be the face of the community. I could just have relationships with about a dozen of our community members who were very well respected and let them do the talking. But in exchange, I would take phone calls from them at home, at night, on the weekends. I would listen to them, I would understand what they were going through, but I would also be able to convey what, from a company standpoint, we were trying to achieve. When I did that, they started understanding.” –@tamcdonald If we aren't going to invest in it, why spend so much effort? (19:08): “My very last day [at HuffPost was] when we pushed the button and [switched to Facebook Comments]. Everybody looked at me like I was crazy, but I just told everybody, ‘I've come up with solutions. I've come up with options. Nobody wants to pay for this. If we can't invest in it, and we're not willing to invest in it, and we're not going to generate any revenue off of it, why are we supporting it?' That was the end of it. Obviously, they still had comments. They still do have comments, but it's nothing to what it was back when I was at HuffPost.” –@tamcdonald Document your community wins (22:53): “The subscriber growth of The New York Times is often cited … by media folks and executives as an example of the D2C model, but I think people would do well to remember that The New York Times never closed their comments. … People want that success of, ‘Look at all the people they have paying for news,' but they don't necessarily want to do that work that is moderating comments for 20 years to build a section that is befitting of The New York Times.” –@patrickokeefe Document your community wins (30:02): “We say [document your wins], but we don't necessarily always talk about the process through which we capture that, and so it fails. … If it's easy and it's comprehensive, then you're going to do it. Whereas if it's manual and it's slow, not only are you not going to do it, but when you don't do it, you're going to not be able to access that information as easily.” –@patrickokeefe Generous giving is the greatest community ROI (34:16): “When I find [a liver] donor through [the communities] I've built up over the years, that is going to be the greatest ROI because I don't think there's a price that we can put on our lives, and I don't think there's a price that we can put on the amount of giving that that would take from another human being.” –@tamcdonald About Tim McDonald Tim McDonald is the community account manager for HomeRoom.club. He is the former director of community at HuffPost, founder of My Community Manager, and director of communications for Social Media Club Chicago. Tim works with organizations and individuals who are stuck to get them unstuck. He helps people connect with their voice and stories. He is also a speaker and facilitates workshops. Recognizing how fear held him back, he has changed his relationship with fear and has used it to get unstuck and end a 17-year marriage, meet his life partner, move to a new city, twice, leave a toxic job, and currently looks at having stage IV metastasized colon cancer as a gift. Tim is in search of a liver donor with surgery planned around September 2022. If you think this could be you, please visit TimsLiver.com for more info. Related Links Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform Tim McDonald on Twitter Visit TimsLiver.com to help Tim find a liver donor HomeRoom.club My Community Manager Social Media Club Bassey Etim, many time guest on Community Signal When You Need Community To Save Your Life: The Story of Tim McDonald, by listener and Patreon supporter Jenny Weigle Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

What are the reasons why you would voluntarily end the interview process for a community role? If you give it some thought, you'll probably come up with some! Ryan Arsenault and Patrick share real stories from their careers, giving the reasons why they decided against continuing to interview with certain companies, including some you've heard of. This leads to a conversation on the community opportunists, and how Web3 and NFT projects often fit into this category. What does it mean for your career if a rug pull happens on your NFT project? What responsibility do community industry players have in hyping these projects? After they remove the .eth from their handle, who is left holding the bag? Patrick and Ryan also discuss: The simple question Patrick asks recruiters to understand if what they are building is a community Using “community” as a manipulation tactic Why Web3 hype feels different from Web2 hype Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform.     Big Quotes A case where Ryan ended the interview for a community role (1:39): “[I have become] more experienced in identifying the red flags that might not set me up for success in [a community] role. … In one interview, the platform was purchased already. No community goals in mind. No strategy. How do you know if the platform is even going to meet your needs if you don't know what you need the community for yet?” –@RyanArsenault Does the community talk to each other? (10:48): “I got to talking with the [recruiter for a community role], and I realized something. I said, ‘Let me stop you for a second. These people that are in this community, do they talk to one another?' She said, ‘No.' I said, ‘Oh okay, I understand. I have to say I don't think I'm right for this.' … That's just a different role from what I do.” –@patrickokeefe Does buying an NFT make it a community? (12:35): “To me, the concept of buying an NFT, and then you're part of a Discord community, doesn't make it a community. A community's built on trust and moderation.” –@RyanArsenault Using “community” to keep people from leaving an NFT project (16:51): “When there's a rug pull … whatever they were thinking they would get out of this NFT project, it's gone now, or there's almost no chance. To use the term ‘community' as a way to try to make people feel better or to ensure they stay bought in with that project and don't sell … it feels incredibly manipulative. … ‘We're part of this community, we're all in this together, hold on for dear life, we're all going to make it,' all that stuff. It's all just social manipulation that's been going on forever.” –@patrickokeefe   About Ryan Arsenault Ryan Arsenault has been fascinated by the power of community as a member of online forums for two decades. He has managed communities for over 7 years, building strategy and scaling super user and advocacy programs, while establishing trust and lasting relationships. He has worked in pre- and post-IPO companies, and won a 2018 TheCR Connect Award for Best Recognition + Reward Program (for Mimecast community). Related Links Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform Ryan Arsenault on Twitter Intuit's TurboTax, where Ryan is a contact community manager “I worked at Vistaprint – maybe you've heard of them?,” via Patrick Jacob Silverman on Community Signal Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

Is speaking one-on-one with your community members part of your community strategy? For Tosin Abari, when building paid professional communities, it's an integral part. His phone calls with community members provide an opportunity to reset the tone and remind each member of what they can learn, share, and achieve with their fellow community members. Through this work, Tosin often finds that these one-on-one conversations with community members translate into their first forum post, or later down the line, becoming a community ambassador. What personal touches help you form deeper connections with your community members? Where'd this strategy come from? Tosin has also worked as a director of player development Vanderbilt University's football team. He explains how his work building relationships with students and their parents, helping them start off on this new chapter of their lives, prepared him for work in community management.  Patrick and Tosin also discuss: Tosin's background in football Why Tosin started taking phone calls with members without mentioning it to Patrick, his manager at the time Where we focus our efforts in a world without vanity metrics Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes Helping members see the potential in the community (10:22): “There's so many people out there that have the same struggles that you do, or maybe something that you've conquered, and you have expertise that you can share with someone else. … [Each community member has] an opportunity to make a difference, or have someone else make a difference in their lives. They can make something beautiful happen.” -Tosin Abari Having phone calls with members (12:35): “Most places I've been at, they're like, ‘No, we don't have time [for phone calls with members].' … We have X amount of members, we just got to do what we got to do through email orientation, and they'll figure it out. That always gnawed at me a little bit, because these people are paying X amount of dollars for a membership, and we want to give them the best experience of their life. … [These one-on-one calls can help] other people feel like they're not isolated, that they're in a place that holds space for them.” -Tosin Abari Giving each member the space to feel heard (18:06): “I don't know how many times I've gotten nasty emails [and] I'm like, ‘Oh my God, this is going to be a very contentious call.' I let them talk [and] by the end of the conversation, they're like, ‘Thank you for having this call with me. You calmed me down, and I feel so much better.' It was just because they just wanted to be heard.” -Tosin Abari Owning your work with your manager (25:50): “Never let [your manager] be surprised by bad news. If there is bad news, [they] should hear it from you first, before anyone else. Don't let [them] be surprised, because if [they are] surprised, it's going to make matters worse. … You should be the person who delivers the message.” –@patrickokeefe   About Tosin Abari Tosin Abari (he/him/his) is a former collegiate football administrator turned motivated community manager and social media aficionado. With over 10 years of experience in community management and memberships, as well as front-end and back-end social media management, Tosin is extremely passionate in bringing people together with the goal of fostering authentic community. Related Links Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform Tosin Abari on LinkedIn Photos of Patrick's son, Patrick James Kindred Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

Which community leaders helped you grow as a professional? Who in the industry do you study from or reference? On the last episode of Community Signal, our guest Mohamed Mohammed mentioned how his former manager, Joe Pishgar, helped him feel welcome in the industry. “You belong here” were Joe's encouraging words to Mohamed, and this phrase signifies an ethos that Joe brings to his role as chief community officer for VerticalScope. Managing an organization of 27 full-time community pros, 30 contracted admins, and over 10,000 volunteer moderators across 1,200 sites, Joe understands the necessity of scale and delegation, but also realizes that delegating is not always as simple as it sounds. “There's competing thoughts in your head that surround the force of delegating. On the one hand, you don't have enough time to do it all. The time you spend in operational or in tactical, you're not spending at the strategic, and no one else is going to spend time at the strategic level.” (13:18) Joe also explains that by delegating and creating space, we give our team members the opportunity to grow and experience community management for themselves.  How have leaders made space for you to grow as a community professional and how can you create that space for others? Joe and Patrick also discuss: The difference between having community volunteers and exploiting them The ebb and flow of hiring booms in the community industry Unifying strategy in an organization with multiple stakeholders and individual contributors Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes Giving your team the space to grow (03:48): “Give [your team] as much space as possible within the quantity of trust that you can hand them, let them complete those tasks, learn the discipline, and develop in the discipline so that they develop that confidence. It comes with getting it right, having space to get it right, but also making sure that you as supervisor [are] around for when they bump into those really tricky questions.” –@Pishgar Autonomy will help newer recruits to develop their confidence as community managers (14:45): “If your name, clout, expertise, background, and experience is required for every single decision, you're in trouble. Then you've got a bunch of people who are basically your eyes and ears out there who aren't really taking things off of your plate as much as they need to be or as much as you need them to. … Sometimes you have to go hands-off, even if it means embracing that fear that it's not going to get done 100% to your spec.” –@Pishgar What drives your sense of fulfillment as a community manager? (17:15): “When I know that communities under my wing are growing, that I'm helping to make the world a better place, one individual forum member at a time, because they got an answer to their question, or they felt like they belonged, or there was something that they were shopping for that they got word of mouth on through a post that they found on one of our forums and they were only able to do that because the place was kept civil, that to me is fulfilling. That is my life work.” –@Pishgar About Joe Pishgar Joe Pishgar joined VerticalScope as its chief community officer in 2020. Joe is an 18+ year veteran of online community management. Prior to joining VerticalScope, he served as vice president Global Communities at Future plc, where he launched communities for PC Gamer, Space.com, Live Science, What Hi-Fi, and more. Previously, he served as director of community for Purch Inc., where he built the communities for Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, and AnandTech. Related Links Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform Joe Pishgar on Twitter Joe Pishgar on LinkedIn Joe Pishgar's website VerticalScope Mohamed Mohammed on Community Signal Joe King on Community Signal Joe and Patrick shoutout the following community professionals: Rebecca Newton, Linda Carlson, Sanya Weathers, Valerie Massey, Troy Hewitt, and Gail Ann Williams Rebecca Newton on Community Signal Gail Ann Williams on Community Signal Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

This conversation with Mohamed Mohammed, a community manager and a PhD student studying deepfakes, is timely. Just last week, a deepfake emerged attempting to spread misinformation that the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, was announcing surrender to Russia's invasion. In that situation, preparation and rapid response helped minimize the spread of misinformation. So, what's your community strategy against deepfakes? Mohamed recommends starting with learning from the information and experts in our field. He also shares an important reminder: As community professionals, while we may want to prevent all harms from happening, we simply can't. However, we can minimize the harm that's caused, and we can educate our community members to identify and flag suspicious behaviors. Just as many platforms adjusted their community guidelines and enforcement rubrics to prevent the spread of misinformation, deepfakes represent a new area for us to learn about and help our communities adapt. Mohamed and Patrick also discuss: Why science denial is banned in the Space.com community What good governance on deepfakes might look like Mohamed's PhD on deepfakes Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes Ground your moderation in your guidelines (6:13): “There was no way to not iterate our [community] policies when the world shut down because of a global pandemic, when flat Earth or conspiracy theories found their way to the forums. When these things happen, you have to make changes. Otherwise … we look shadowy. We start banning content or removing forum posts simply because we think it's a bad thing. Even if everyone agrees with us, the perception is so important. The perception that we're consistent within the scope of our guidelines is massive to being able to, for lack of a better term, keep the peace.” –@MMohammed_Comms If your community has the same problems as a big social media platform, why should people stick around? (9:24): “If you're not consistent [in your community moderation,] and if you happen to have the same problems as bigger platforms, then what's the difference? Why am I investing all of this time as a user into this forum of yours when all of my efforts are being met with inconsistent approaches to keeping the place safe?” –@MMohammed_Comms Antagonizing people to engage (11:30): “I don't think it's a coincidence that [the antagonistic content we discourage as forum managers] is the same thing a brand whose KPI is engagement on Twitter will post just to get engagement and to antagonize someone into giving the rapid-fire answers that get people. Nothing brings engagement on a place and an echo chamber quite like a divisive question. We're trying to be the opposite.” –@MMohammed_Comms In the words of Sam Gregory, “Prepare, don't panic” (40:48): “Don't get scared about this apocalyptic vision of deep fakes … [just] read as much as you can about them. I know it's going to sound scary, but the more you understand them, the more you get comfortable with the fact that tools are advancing.” –@MMohammed_Comms Shoutout to the supportive managers out there (46:01): “Having a [supportive] manager is to me the difference between having this long career that can be fulfilling and rewarding and can help you feel better about yourself versus something where you have to build this foundation all by yourself.” –@MMohammed_Comms About Mohamed Mohammed Mohamed Mohammed is a community manager at Future Plc, managing forums for brands such as PC Gamer and Space.com. He is also a PhD candidate at the QUEX Institute, researching the platform governance of deepfakes. Related Links Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform Mohamed Mohammed on LinkedIn Mohamed Mohammed on Twitter A Zelensky Deepfake Was Quickly Defeated. The Next One Might Not Be, via WIRED Future PLC PC Gamer Space.com QUEX Institute Amanda Petersen on Community Signal Truepic Communications Decency Act Sam Gregory of the WITNESS Media Lab Joe Pishgar Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

Online communities are can be essential for people impacted by illness. For those directly affected, their families, and support systems, these communities can provide a much needed place to share experiences, to vent, and to learn about different symptoms, treatments, and the intricacies of navigating the healthcare system. For our guest, Amanda Petersen, Planet Cancer provided such a community as she fought breast cancer in her early twenties. Amanda has since continued to be an active contributor and moderator in online spaces dedicated to providing a safe and functional community for cancer survivors. In this conversation, she talks about the role that Planet Cancer played in her life in addition to why she felt motivated to start participating in r/breastcancer. The community exists and is functional because of its people –– people like Amanda that help to moderate the space and people that are looking to connect with others and find support in their journeys. Whether a moderator takes a break or community members sadly pass away or move on, the rules that they have created and the space that they've fostered will continue to provide a meaningful community for cancer survivors. Amanda and Patrick also discuss: Rules that are representative of the community they serve and protect The emotional labor of managing a community of care How Planet Cancer helped Amanda through her own journey with cancer Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes What makes a space for cancer survivors not functional? (12:27): “[After you have been in the] support community space for so long, there are certain things that you start IDing [that indicate] this is no longer a functional space for survivors. People flooding it when they're concerned about having cancer, while totally legitimate, will drive away your survivors. People asking for donation requests will drive away your survivors. People asking for research requests will drive away your survivors.” –@amandarhiann The important roles of active moderators in a subreddit (15:46): “Unless the moderators are paying attention, Reddit can be a very unsafe place for many reasons. With strong moderator teams, it can be a safe place of healing.” –@amandarhiann Why r/breastcancer does not allow pre-diagnosis posts (19:13): “Don't take advice about your health from someone at a grocery store, [and that also] applies to Reddit. [People] need to go to their doctor, and there are tons of pre-diagnosis resources out there that aren't going to force people who are actively going through treatment to answer questions they shouldn't have to answer.” –@amandarhiann The emotional tax of research requests for cancer survivors (21:04): “[r/breastcancer] is a place for helping people navigate the complexities of breast cancer. It's not a place to help other people do their jobs better. Sure, if you want to come and read [or] do text analysis on Reddit, go ahead, it's all public, but don't harm the people that we're trying to help, even inadvertently.” –@amandarhiann About Amanda Petersen Amanda Petersen is the program manager for community operations at MURAL. Prior to working in community, Amanda spent ten years of her career helping people who used challenging behaviors to communicate complex needs. In tandem, she moderated and managed online support communities for young adults with cancer. Related Links Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform Amanda Petersen on Twitter MURAL Community r/breastcancer Planet Cancer First Descents American Cancer Society Young Survival Coalition Breast Cancer Research Foundation Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

As community leaders, we're responsible for people. The people in our communities and the people that serve them. In this episode, Chris Catania, head of community at Esri, shares how he approaches planning for growth and specialization for his community organization, for his people, and for his own role. Chris is currently hiring for three roles, a community operations manager, a community manager for engagement and content, and a community manager for ArcGIS Ideas. Chris shares the responsibilities and scope for each of these roles, in addition to the challenges and advantages of hiring right now. In addition to the effects of the “great resignation,” as specialization and scope of responsibility within the community industry grows, so does the need to be clear in our job listings, success metrics, and paths to growth. Chris and Patrick also discuss: The role specializations and career paths that Chris is charting for his team and himself Hiring for specializations within community Communicating your team's value to other execs (and around the dinner table) Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes Esri's community team is two sides of the house (1:49): “[Our community team has] a structure where we have two halves. I've been using the analogy of a house: Two sides of the house. … An operational side, community ops, and on the other side we have community experience and programs.” –@chriscatania The current landscape for job applicants and hiring managers (4:31): “There's a multi-layer effect that's going on in the job market where you have the Great Resignation going on … [and] then you have this other layer that has emerged over the last five years where you have this proliferation of community jobs.” –@chriscatania All job candidates have areas where they need help (10:20): “Having been in the community industry for a while, [I've been able to] get a good idea of all the different paths that you can take. … [This is] influencing how we are approaching the strategy of the hiring process, and knowing that there's not one person out there that is going to do everything that we [need a given] role to do.” –@chriscatania Planning for your team's growth (24:46): “I started really looking at our new org structure for the community team early last year because I saw the team was growing, … individually and as a team. I saw the community industry starting to advance … people coming into it were really accelerating. I looked at my team, and [said], ‘Okay, I need to think about promotions. I need to think about their path.'” –@chriscatania Planting the seeds to grow and promote your team (25:33): “As I have meetings with my boss about our team and what our team is doing, I plant seeds with them. ‘Look what this person's doing.' Because I've seen that work with executives over the years of trying to get buy-in incrementally, just walking in and boom, put down the plan. I like to plant seeds. I like to make a case over time so that when you go for the ask [to grow or promote], it's like, ‘Yes, you got it.'” –@chriscatania Giving out skimpy raises will often lose you money (28:41): “I've worked at places where I'd have to grind out an $8,000 raise to go with a promotion for someone who's been there five years. I was like, ‘They need $10,000.' ‘You can have $8,000.' That $2,000 in our pocket, it's worth nothing. That $2,000 in their pocket is worth something, because if we lose that person, the amount of time that I'm going to have to spend training, interviewing, we're going to lose way more than that, in my time and in our company's time.” –@patrickokeefe About Chris Catania For more than 20 years, Chris Catania has developed a versatile array of skills and experiences in strategic communication, community management, customer experience, global business strategy and emerging media production. He is a dedicated community and collaboration leader, who always thinks “people first, technology next,” and uses his passion for emerging community and communication strategies to drive measurable business results and design meaningful experiences for employee and customer audiences. Chris is currently the head of community at Esri. Related Links Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform Chris' website Chris on Twitter Esri community ArcGIS Ideas Chris is hiring a community manager, ArcGIS Ideas, a community manager, engagement and content, and a community operations manager Patrick is hiring community moderators on his team at CNN+ Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

By now, even if you're not super well-versed in the terminology of Web3, you've probably encountered some of the conversation around its relationship with community. Like with any innovation or change in technology, there can and should be conversations about how Web3 will empower communities. However, we should also ask questions and think about how such change will impact communities, whether they embrace Web3 or not. For example, as Patrick and our guest, staff writer with The New Republic, Jacob Silverman discuss, NFTs may be empowering some artists, but for the DeviantArt community, it's another way that they're seeing their art exploited. And even for NFTs that are becoming ubiquitous, like Bored Apes Yacht Club, how much of the conversation or credit is given back to the artists? This conversation will give you a great primer on Web3 terminology, but perhaps more importantly, it will equip you with questions and examples to understand the true role of community in the current iteration of Web3. Jacob and Patrick also discuss: The basics of Web3, including cryptocurrency, NFTs, and DAOs Reasons why Web3 may not be as egalitarian as it seems Why celebrity cryptocurrency clubs of today may not have the same permanence as online fan clubs that already exist Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes Misuse of community in Web3 (1:35): “In Web3 … there's a lot of use of this idea of community, but honestly, I find it's often disingenuous when it's coming from say a DAO that controls $300 million dollars worth of cryptocurrency or a crypto startup that has a lot of venture capitalist financing, and it has its own crypto token and an exchange. There's just this appeal to this idea of community within Web3 that, if it were coming from a more traditional corporate setting, would ring very false to people.” –@SilvermanJacob Disguising Web3 under the term “community” may get people to look past the risks (4:24): “[The use of ‘community' in Web3] obscures the idea that these are, first and foremost, financial relationships, that there's a lot of risk involved, and that the power relations may not be as egalitarian as the word ‘community' implies.” –@SilvermanJacob The supposed Bored Ape Yacht Club community (4:58): “[Bored Ape Yacht Club] is a billion-dollar company that employs several dozen people, is very well connected in Hollywood, whose own financial transactions and behaviors deserve some scrutiny. … If you just call it a community, you're not going to really think about that. You're not going to think about where are the conflicts of interests, who's driving these markets, and what kind of power do I have as a member of the supposed community?” –@SilvermanJacob What protections will Web3 offer for artists? (11:24): “OpenSea, for example, does not seem to be built to support artists and incentivize the small craftsmen type. Instead, OpenSea is meant to attract as many people as possible to mint NFTs, and it has very few guards against copyright theft.” –@SilvermanJacob The utility of NFTs (45:00): “Maybe the utility of [NFTs] will grow, but right now you're buying into a very hollow idea of community and connection for the promise of future rewards. Whether those rewards will even be worth it is an open question.” –@SilvermanJacob The potential impermanence of NFTs (47:32): “There's going to be some equivalent of link rot with NFTs and with some of these online communities. They're going to break apart. They're not going to be necessarily sustainable or haven't proven themselves sustainable over the long haul, whereas the Dave Matthews Band message board that my college roommate used to post on is probably still around.” –@SilvermanJacob About Jacob Silverman Jacob Silverman is a staff writer with The New Republic. He's the author of Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection, and is currently working on a book with Ben McKenzie about crypto and fraud. Related Links Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform Jacob's website The New Republic, where Jacob is a staff writer Jacob Silverman on Twitter Jacob's tweet that inspired this episode Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection Bored Ape Yacht Club DeviantArt Protect DeviantArt Protect: 80,000 NFT Alerts Sent Here's How DeviantArt Executives Are Tackling Theft and the Future of NFTs, via Gizmodo Jacob on CNBC and CNN Sam Bankman-Fried CZ Binance Ross Ulbricht NFT Collection Raises Over $6 Million in Ethereum, Free Ross DAO Wins Auction, via Bitcoin.com What exactly is the Jodorowsky's Dune crypto collective trying to make, anyway? via The Verge Communities, Associations, and DAOs, written by Marjorie Anderson From a Meme to $47 Million: ConstitutionDAO, Crypto, and the Future of Crowdfunding, via The Verge Blockchain bridge Wormhole confirms that exploiter stole $320 million worth of crypto assets, via TechCrunch Which celebrity has the saddest NFT?, via Slate Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

When was the last time that you trusted your community with the responsibility of collaboration? In this episode of Community Signal, Matt Leacock shares lessons he's learned while designing popular collaborative board games like Pandemic, Pandemic Legacy, and Forbidden Island. Matt also discusses how he leans on the board game community for his own games. In the pre-launch stages, he has rallied supporters to pre-order his games and prove demand. In the development stages, he's openly shared rules documents, inviting feedback from fans. After a game launches, he also discusses the role that players have when it comes to helping one another as questions and loopholes arise. Having a shared goal –– winning the game –– is perhaps what motivates players to come together at all stages of the game's development. Knowing that your community members also have a shared purpose or goal, are there ways that you could trust them with collaboration opportunities that could lead to positive outcomes for everyone? That's winning!  Matt and Patrick also discuss: Competition within collaborative games Establishing norms within games and communities The importance of establishing straightforward nomenclature Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes Trust as an integral part of cooperative game design (6:54): “In a cooperative game, you can guide people along. You're all working toward the same goal, so you can help each other out as you go along. I think that does help build trust. Having that common goal really helps. The opposite is true with semi-cooperative ones, or even the ones with the hidden traitor. Most of the game is really about social reduction and trying to guess what people's agendas are.” –@mattleacock Getting buy-in on community norms outside of the context of guidelines infractions (8:45): “To the extent that people can understand what the norms are before they exhibit the behavior the better. … It's not just, ‘Here's the rules. Follow them.' It's, ‘Here's the intent of the community [and] where we want to go, so that's why we have these rules.'” –@mattleacock Board game communities step in when players need help (13:43): “I lean on BoardGameGeek pretty heavily because there's so many rules questions about so many of the games. Some of them are quite simple and very easy to monitor. Especially when the game is released, I want to make sure that no one's found any loophole or has any big questions. I look at those [communities] pretty carefully after release.” –@mattleacock Trusting your community with collaboration (18:52): “We put the rules [for Thunderbirds] up online … in Google Doc format and invited people to edit, which was this leap of faith. People would see the text, and they could make suggestions right in the text. I would obviously monitor this stuff and pull out any abusive language. I was really impressed at how just meeting people with good faith, how far that went, and how much buy-in that created.” –@mattleacock The upsides and potential pitfalls of crowdfunding (20:25): “There are certain advantages of trying to get buy-in [for your board game] from the community, where you're listening to them and understanding what's important. If that's taken too far, then you get perhaps people that feel entitled to tell you exactly what they want and expect it.” –@mattleacock About Matt Leacock Matt Leacock has been designing board games full-time since 2014. He is best known for his cooperative titles, Pandemic, Pandemic Legacy, and Forbidden Island, and he has designed and developed over two dozen titles for the international market. He is currently working on Daybreak, a game about taking on the climate crisis. His games have won many awards including four nominations for Spiel des Jahres and the Sonderpreis in 2018. In a prior life, he was a user experience designer at Apple, Netscape, AOL, Yahoo, and the chief designer at Sococo. Related Links Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform Matt Leacock's website Jonathan Bailey, formerly on Community Signal (three times) Board Game Arena BoardGameGeek Stats on Kickstarter's categories, including games Daybreak Overview in 7 Minutes Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

What metrics and indicators of success are you, your colleagues, and community excited about for 2022? Whether you're hoping to better demonstrate the impact of the community on your business' bottom line, foster safer experiences for your members across the communities they are part of, or want to focus on establishing better boundaries for you and your team, this conversation with Jessica Folsom, lead community manager at ZeniMax Online Studios, may provide some inspiration. Even without perfect end-to-end campaign attribution, Jessica discusses the impact of being a participant in the Elder Scrolls Online community and how certain attributes may lead to different outcomes for community members and for the overall community. For example, Elder Scrolls Online players may participate in official forums, they may be content creators, they may stream the game, or participate in player-run communities on Discord or Reddit. Jessica and her team have learned that the players that can find their connection to the community retain better and drive investment in the game, too. With such an expansive group of players, Jessica also has to be prepared to help community members deal with toxic behaviors outside of immediate Elder Scrolls Online spaces. While it can often feel like we can't do much in these circumstances, Jessica explains how she listens, offers guidance on how to block and report the behavior on these parallel platforms, and in some cases, contact local authorities. Do you have a plan for helping your community members handle toxicity on other platforms?  Jessica and Patrick also discuss: How Jessica's team sets success metrics Helping community managers prevent burnout Why community members are not your friends Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes How community connection contributes to retention and growth (8:20): “People who are in guilds, for instance, tend to be much more invested overall in [Elder Scrolls Online]. Not only do they tend to spend more but they also contribute more to the community, which is immensely valuable, to community growth and health. … [Content creators] tend to also be very, very valuable, and not only from a monetary perspective but just what they give to the community. They give us our community culture. They're the backbone of it.” –@JessFolsom How guilds unlock connection to Elder Scrolls Online (9:40): “Guilds [drive] all of the positive things that we want. Players can be in five different guilds. Usually, if they find at least one, they find that community that they really want to be a part of … this is cliché, but it's about the people. If you find a group of people that you're really invested in, you then enjoy the game more, you spend more time, you invest more in the content, [and] you invest more in the monetary side of things as well.” –@JessFolsom Helping community managers prevent burnout (11:24): “It's okay to shut things down at the end of your day. Don't look at the forums, don't look at email. If somebody needs to get a hold of you for an emergency, they will, but take your time to decompress, live your life, enjoy your hobbies, your family, your free time, and you'll come back better to do your job the next day.” –@JessFolsom Helping players deal with toxic behavior in parallel challenges (26:44): “[When our players are getting harassed or being targeted with toxicity in parallel channels], we try to educate players on what they can do and how they can use those tools. How do they block players? How do they use two-factor authentication if their account got hacked? How do they report really awful comments or activity on the various different channels, using the channels' methods of reporting that they have available to them? Then in extreme cases … we will work with that player to educate them on all the different things that they could do by delaying their stream. For instance, if they're getting stream sniped, [everything from] putting a delay on their stream to contacting local authorities.” –@JessFolsom Why there is no official Elder Scrolls Online Discord (26:44): “I know a lot of smaller studios really like Discord but with a community our size, the amount of moderation that we would need, we've got a player base of, I think we recently said 12 million or something like that, it's not realistic to have a Discord community that we run. If we run a community, and it's an official community, there is an expectation that we are able to maintain a certain level of protection, professionalism, and rules that I don't think we can.” –@JessFolsom About Jessica Folsom Jessica Folsom has been working with gaming communities for 16 years and is currently the lead community manager at ZeniMax Online Studios. She has been working with the Elder Scrolls Online community for about nine and a half years. Jessica got her start in the video games industry in 1999 as a customer support representative at Nintendo of America in Washington state, where she is originally from. After about eight years there, she left and spent time at numerous studios, including NCSOFT, Trion, Mythic, EA BioWare, Big Huge Games, and 38 Studios. Related Links Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform Jessica Folsom on Twitter Jessica Folsom on LinkedIn ZeniMax Online Studios The Elder Scrolls Online community Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

Do you have a 60-second pitch for your community? In this episode of Community Signal, Colleen Young, community director for Mayo Clinic, raises the challenge of being able to deliver a concise and impactful pitch to other leaders at the nonprofit. “I'm just imagining finding myself in the elevator with this leader by happenstance and being able to finally say something just in two floors that we have. It's really hard to be able to know what is going to motivate them to be excited about the community. I'm really struggling with that,” explains Young. Many, if not all of us, have been in a situation like this, whether we were helping to onboard a new leader or in an impromptu meeting.  This conversation is a bit longer than 60 seconds, but in it, Colleen delivers a very compelling case for Mayo Clinic Connect. The community's moderation practices and active participation makes it less of a haven for misinformation. And when misinformation does appear, expert testimonials and active participants within the community help inform and correct. The community also comes together to help people understand their options for care and to manage their symptoms. “Peer support can better health outcomes,” says Young. The community also has a direct impact on Mayo Clinic's livelihood – as it can be a direct driver of appointment bookings and visits. So, the next time you're thinking about how to pitch your community to another colleague, think about the value that it brings to your members and how that value leads to positive outcomes for the business. And as Patrick says, don't be afraid to ask for more time to advocate for the community and your work! Colleen and Patrick also discuss: Why Mayo Clinic Connect measures appointments as a metric Has medical misinformation actually gotten worse over the last 15 years? Developing your 60-second community pitch Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes How Mayo Clinic Connect approaches misinformation (3:07): “There's a lot of misinformation that's not with malintent. That's the part [where] I think online communities can do a lot of good, in that sometimes it's just misunderstandings, and the self-correcting nature of online communities in health is really quite amazing if you have a healthy, active community.” –@colleen_young Patient connection can improve health outcomes (14:14): “On the patient portal, patients are reporting how they're managing the side effects of cancer treatment. If they're severe, they get triaged to a nurse. If they're moderate-to-mild, they get triaged, as a prescription, to the community because they know through community support that they can help manage those side effects. That is the clinicians really giving a hat tip to the community, knowing that peer support can better health outcomes.” –@colleen_young On launching a community strictly for research (16:28): “[There have been] researchers really interested in peer support online, so they would create a community in order to study the community. … It was terribly frightening, I have to tell you. They were creating these communities, bringing people together somehow … [and] when the grant was over, pulling the plug. They had managed to connect some people and essentially left them high and dry.” –@colleen_young About Colleen Young Colleen Young is an online community strategist, recognized for her expertise in building online health communities. Clients include Mayo Clinic, College of Family Physicians Canada, Canadian Virtual Hospice, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health, Hjernerystelsesforeningen Denmark, EURODIS, and more. As community director for Mayo Clinic Connect, a virtual community connecting patients with each other and to Mayo Clinic medical expertise, Colleen believes online connectivity is arguably the most exciting innovation of the patient-led health era. As a tenacious connector of patients, Colleen demonstrates how an active community, strategically managed, can re-imagine health care and improve health outcomes. Related Links Sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform Colleen Young on LinkedIn Mayo Clinic Mayo Clinic News Network Mayo Clinic Connect Medicine 2.0 Priscilla McClay on Community Signal Sue Ryder Online Bereavement Support Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

Are you able to step away from your community for days at a time? When you return, are your team and the community still running smoothly? If you answered yes to these questions, then congratulations! Whether it's documentation, systems, or setting proper expectations with your boss and colleagues, those boundaries and structure are crucial, not just for yourself, but for the people around you and the community itself.  Our guest, Allison Able, senior manager of community at Sisense, explains that creating and upholding these boundaries is a constant work in progress. “There's great power in … being able to step away and have things go okay. That speaks well for you if that's the community you build, that it doesn't need you to exist,” explains Patrick. Having a supportive team goes a long way in setting work-life boundaries, so fittingly, Allison explains what her approach will be to building the community team at Sisense and why their community is currently in beta. Allison and Patrick also discuss: Adding the community content manager role to the community team How to embody healthy boundaries for you and your team The right order of community programs for Sisense Community Signal's sixth anniversary –– thank you listeners, supporters, and guests! Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community. Big Quotes Don't blame the tools (7:52): “Email is only bad if you send bad emails. Notifications are only bad if you send bad notifications.” –@patrickokeefe Do your community's emails and notifications have intention and value? (15:09): “Community is a give-and-take relationship in a lot of ways. If I am going to reach out to you [via email], I want to … provide an asset that's going to enhance your professional life and make your job or your product experience easier.” –@_aable_ Having a dog has helped Allison identify better work boundaries (24:45): “I'm one of those people that adopted a dog in COVID and having a pup who I love and adore, [and] doesn't go according to your schedule, it has been a great learning experience for me to really shut that computer or walk away [to] spend time with that dog. He has to walk, he has to eat. He has to do all of these things. That's been helpful [in achieving a healthy work-life balance].” –@_aable_ Setting and embodying healthy work-life boundaries (27:45): “I know there's an email in my inbox I could probably respond to, but then the next day happens, and did the world end? No, and the community's still going and thriving. That's something that I've found comfort in.” –@_aable_ About Allison Able A former teacher turned community manager, Allison Able can trace her community-building ways back to high school, where she was the leader of multiple clubs. When she moved into education, it was shocking to her that teachers did not network. In response, Allison recruited a committee of teachers and developed a partnership with a local teaching college to launch the Teacher Leadership Network. TLN is still in existence today and has gathered thousands of local educators at all levels for networking events, webinars, conferences, and more. When it came time to start a new career chapter, by a stroke of luck, she came across a job posting for a community manager role at Higher Logic, where she successfully built and launched over 25 communities for a variety of association and corporate customers, developed full-scale engagement programs and successfully revitalized several dormant communities. Additionally, she led a team of community managers to scale and grow one of the largest global enterprise communities. Today, she is the senior manager of community at Sisense, where she recently launched Sisense Community beta. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Allison Able on Twitter Sisense Sisense Community beta Alex Witkowski on Community Signal Higher Logic Heather McNair Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

Earlier this month, blogging pioneer Jason Kottke tweeted that “social media would be a better place to connect with people if the folks building and using these services had spent formative time on and taken inspiration from Flickr and MetaFilter instead of 4chan and Reddit. Gardening vs. waste management.” That tweet spoke to Patrick who retweeted it, and that retweet elicited a reply from Lydia Fiedler, community manager for Splitcoaststampers, leading to this episode of the podcast. What do your community members want out of their community? Are you tending a garden that is actively growing toward those goals? Or are you tolerating noise and managing waste that gets in the way? Having a clear sense of what brings the community together helps Lydia Fiedler keep conversations on track, set expectations for community members, and come up with inspiring challenges. If you're planning programming for the coming year or just in a creative rut with your own work, this conversation with Patrick and Lydia offers some great inspiration that can help you create great experiences that will bring your members together and enable them reach their own goals.  Lydia and Patrick also discuss: Operating in the “gray areas” of community management Features that people clamor for on social media platforms that hosted online communities offer routinely How challenges align with the Splitcoaststampers community's goal of becoming better artists and crafters Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community. Big Quotes Being comfortable with making judgement calls for your community (5:15): “If you have a community that you're taking care of, and there's something that maybe doesn't exactly violate the letter of one of your guidelines, you have to be able to make the judgment call that you still don't want it in your community. Then you have to be able to communicate that, ‘I'm a human being, and I make judgment calls. I do it to preserve the culture of this community.'” –@understandblue Fostering Splitcoaststampers' spirit of creativity (9:28): “The most important thing that you have is the definition of what you want out of your community. That's your little seed that you're going to protect. I'm in a creative industry, and so the cultural little seed that I have to protect with everything in my online communities is people's ability to feel creative.” –@understandblue Cultivating a community of gardeners (13:05): “When you have a really good, strong community culture, … the people that love what you're building, they help you take out the trash. They don't want it there anymore than you do, and you know you have a good thing going when you have people helping you with the trash.” –@understandblue About Lydia Fiedler Lydia Fiedler is the community manager of Splitcoaststampers, where she has been for 11 years. Lydia has been creating art for nearly 40 years and creating online content for about 20. Crafting spaces that feel friendly and welcoming is her mission, whether at work teaching online, or engaging in social media. She also spent 20 years in the construction industry as an HR director and marketing director, and has worked in software development and at great startups in the Austin, Texas area, but the art industry has been her home for more than a decade. Lydia lives in Austin with her husband and two feline overlords, Maddie and Splotchy. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Carol Benovic-Bradley, Community Signal's editorial lead, who has been working on the show for four years now! (added by Patrick) Understand Blue, Lydia's website Splitcoaststampers Twitter Blue Jason Kottke's tweet about “gardening vs. waste management” Derek Powazek on Community Signal Heather Champ on Community Signal Matthew Haughey on Community Signal Splitcoaststampers gallery Falliday Fest Challenge Forum Lydia on YouTube Lydia on Instagram Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

If you threw a random group of people together, united primarily by a shared educational goal that they can accomplish with or without the group, and had two weeks to build a sense of community among them, what would you do? That's what Alex Witkowski spends time thinking about. He's the community lead for Section4, which offers business courses they call sprints. These sprints are typically around two weeks long and then the experience is over – if you want it to be. If you don't want it to be, you can continue to benefit from and collaborate with the students that took the same course. Alex oversees a team of four community managers that guides this growing number or cohorts and hopes to bring then together through an upcoming alumni membership program. He also believes that cohort-based communities often exploit community rather than build it. We chat about that, plus: Alex's transition from English teacher to community pro and the condescension he felt when making the move How he determines when a community manager simply has too many cohorts Why Slack may not be the right tool for their alumni product Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community. Big Quotes Checking your assumptions when interviewing job candidates (05:02): “I'm doing a lot of interviewing, I'm doing a lot of hiring, and I'm trying to be hyper cognizant of everything in an interview process [that] is an assumption. … I've been trying to be really aware of making assumptions and holding people back from opportunities, just because I'm assuming they won't be able to make [a specific] change.” –@HeyLifeboat The Section4 community helps students apply course knowledge in the real world (10:55): “I'm really hoping to build the continuing community around this idea of application. We all have this shared language, we all have these concepts, and I often think about it as the marriage of: We can offer the book smarts, the community is where the street smarts comes in. … We can't give you every answer for what this looks like in a B2B SaaS context in our two-week course, but we can connect you to people who can engage in discussion with how they're thinking about applying it to a B2B SaaS context.” –@HeyLifeboat Section4's community managers focus on bringing humanness to the community (17:11): “I've taken other online courses before, [and] I couldn't name one person at the company. I've never interacted with anyone. I didn't feel a connection to them. I felt the connection to the course, but [at Section4], I feel like there's a connection to our ethos, which has been really exciting.” –@HeyLifeboat Section4's community managers focus on bringing humanness to the community (31:14): “Oftentimes the self-promoters are some of the loudest, nastiest people that you have in professional groups. They are the ones who respond most offensively when challenged on it. They will attack the community manager, or they will say, ‘Of course, I'm not doing that. This is relevant! You're going to kill the community! The community's never been the same since Patrick took over!' This is all stuff that you have to hear and deal with. Those are some of the worst folks in professional circles, but yet, if you let them do it because it's easier in the moment to not take their abuse, it is its own insidious thing that infects the space.” –@patrickokeefe What does community-based learning actually mean? (54:57): “As someone who taught for six years, there's an art to education, and throwing out a bunch of articles or a handful of videos and then dumping people in the space together and hoping that something happens, that's not education. I think that's where the word ‘community,'  to me, feels exploitative. Just because there are other people here doesn't mean it's a community.” –@HeyLifeboat About Alex Witkowski Alex Witkowski is a former high school English teacher who left the profession when he found out that he could take the best part of his job – nurturing community – and do it full time. Since leaving teaching, he has worked in the non-profit and educational technology space, helping a variety of communities including global volunteers, college students, college professors, and business professionals make valuable connections and memories. He is currently the community lead at Section4, which aims to make MBA-quality education more affordable and accessible through interactive, community-based courses led by the world's top business professors. In his spare time, he watches countless independent movies, makes themed mixtapes, and walks everywhere. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Alex on Twitter Section4, the business education provider where Alex is community lead Prof. Scott Galloway, the founder of Section4 Patrick's new job: Community lead at CNN+ Bassey Etim‘s previous appearances on Community Signal: #4, #123, #145, and #160 Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

If you work in content moderation or with a team that specializes in content moderation, then you know that the fight against child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is a challenging one. The New York Times reported that in 2018, technology companies reported a record 45 million online photos and videos of child sexual abuse. Ralph Spencer, our guest for this episode, has been working to make online spaces safer and combatting CSAM for more than 20 years, including as a technical investigator at AOL. Ralph describes how when he first started at AOL, in the mid-'90s, the work of finding and reviewing CSAM was largely manual. His team depended on community reports and all of the content was manually reviewed. Eventually, this manual review led to the creation of AOL's Image Detection Filtering Process (IDFP), which reduced the need to manually review the actual content of CSAM. Working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), law enforcement, and a coalition of other companies, Ralph shares how he saw his own team's work evolve, what he considered his own metrics of success when it comes to this work, and the challenges that he sees for today's platforms. The tools, vocabulary, and affordances for professionals working to make the internet safer have all improved greatly, but in this episode, Patrick and Ralph discuss the areas that need continued improvement. They discuss Section 230 and what considerations should be made if it were to be amended. Ralph explains that when he worked at AOL, the service surpassed six million users. As of last year, Facebook had 2.8 billion monthly active users. With a user base that large and a monopoly on how many people communicate, what will the future hold for how children, workers, and others that use them are kept safe on such platforms? Ralph and Patrick also discuss: Ralph's history fighting CSAM at AOL, both manually and with detection tools Apple's announcement to scan iCloud photos for NCMEC database matches How Ralph and other professionals dealing with CSAM protect their own health and well-being Why Facebook is calling for new or revised internet laws to govern its own platform Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community. Big Quotes How Ralph fell into trust and safety work (20:23): “[Living in the same apartment building as a little girl who was abused] was a motivational factor [in doing trust and safety work]. I felt it was a situation where, while I did basically all I could in that situation, I [also] didn't do enough. When this [job] came along … I saw it as an opportunity. If I couldn't make the situation that I was dealing with in real life correct, then maybe I can do something to make a situation for one of these kids in these [CSAM] pictures a little bit better.” –Ralph Spencer Coping with having to routinely view CSAM (21:07): “I developed a way of dealing with [having to view CSAM]. I'd leave work and try not to think about it. When we were still doing this as a team … everybody at AOL generally got 45 minutes to an hour for lunch. We'd take two-hour lunches, go out, walk around. We did team days before people really started doing them. We went downtown in DC one day and went to the art gallery. The logic for that was like, you see ugly stuff every day, let's go look at some stuff that has cultural value or has some beauty to it, and we'll stop and have lunch at a nice restaurant.” –Ralph Spencer How organizations work with NCMEC and law enforcement to report CSAM (28:32): “[When our filtering tech] catches something that it sees in the [CSAM] database, it packages a report which includes the image, the email that the image was attached to, and a very small amount of identifying information. The report is then automatically sent to [the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children]. NCMEC looks at it, decides if it's something that they can run with, and if it is … they send the report to law enforcement in [the correct] jurisdiction.” –Ralph Spencer When “Ralph caught a fed” (37:37): “We caught the guy who was running the Miami office of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. He was sending [CSAM]. … That one set me back a little bit. … I remember asking the guy who started the team that I was on, who went on to become an expert witness. He worked in the legal department, and his job basically was to go around the country and testify at all the trials explaining how the technology that caught these images worked. I said, ‘I got an email about this guy from ICE down in Florida, was that us?' He's like, ‘Yes, that was you.'” –Ralph Spencer Facebook's multiple lines of communication offer multiple avenues for content violations (45:08): “Zuckerberg is running around talking about how he's trying to get the world closer together by communicating and increasing the lines of communication. A lot of these lines just lead to destructive ends.” –Ralph Spencer About Ralph Spencer Ralph Spencer has been working to make online spaces safer for more than 20 years, starting with his time as a club editorial specialist (message board editor) at Prodigy and then graduating to America Online. He's wrestled with some of the most challenging material on the internet. During his time at AOL, Ralph was a terms of service representative, a graphic analyst, and a case investigator before landing his final position as a technical investigator. In that position, he was in charge of dealing with all issues involving child sexual abuse material (CSAM), then referred to as “illegal images” by the company. Ralph oversaw the daily operation of the automated processes used to scan AOL member email for these images and the reporting pf these incidents to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) which, ultimately, sent these reports to the appropriate law enforcement agencies. The evidence that Ralph, and the team he worked with in AOL's legal department, compiled contributed to numerous arrests and convictions of individuals for the possession and distribution of CSAM. He currently lives in the Washington, DC area and works as a freelance trust and safety consultant. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Ralph Spencer on LinkedIn National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) Andrew Vachss Apple's extended protections for children Derek Powazek on Community Signal Derek's thread regarding Apple's announcement The Internet Is Overrun With Images of Child Sexual Abuse. What Went Wrong? (the New York Times) The Facebook Files (the Wall Street Journal) Jeff Horwitz on Community Signal Sophie Zhang on Community Signal The Facebook Whistleblower, Frances Haugen, Says She Wants to Fix the Company, Not Harm It (the Wall Street Journal) Facebook's Zuckerberg defends encryption, despite child safety concerns (Reuters) aol.com by Kara Swisher Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

As community practitioners, we often serve communities that we don't necessarily belong to. But how would you approach designing a community platform, events, and policies for a demographic that you don't belong to? Alexa Wahr, the COO of Revel, a community for women over 40, says that she and her co-founder build by putting their community first. “We absolutely listen to our members. We don't try to pretend like we know what exactly our members are going through or what it's like to be a woman in their life. That doesn't mean that we can't help to build the community and build the tools that help them connect.” In this episode of Community Signal, Alexa shares how the policies that govern the platform, Revel's approach to safety during the pandemic, and Revel's acquisition of The Woolfer, are all grounded in putting their members' needs, safety, and experiences first. Alexa also discusses how Revel, an in-person events-based community, shifted entirely to virtual events in light of the pandemic. Through this model, Revel members have continued to have meaningful interactions, build friendships, and support one another through COVID-19. Alexa and Patrick also discuss: How Revel is encouraging their event hosts to stay safe now that in-person events have resumed Revel's plans to introduce paid events into their community The differences between the Revel and Woolfer communities and how they're balancing the needs for both Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community. Big Quotes Building the Revel community with member needs first (5:10): “We don't try to pretend like we know what exactly our members are going through or what it's like to be a woman in their life. That doesn't mean that we can't help to build the community and build the tools that help them connect.” –@alexawahr Virtual events are impactful and here to stay (12:20): “We've seen that over [virtual meetings], you can actually form really deep connections. We now have members who have formed really great friendships across the country. Can't wait to travel to meet one another. … [I'm] happy to say that virtual events are definitely here to stay. We have yet to see what the final balance of in-person versus virtual events will be at scale, but certainly, a large percentage of our events will continue to be virtual.” –@alexawahr Fostering the events that Revel members want (14:50): “If our members start to perceive that going to a Revel event is being pushed products or services in a sneaky way, they simply won't come back. We take it very seriously and really err on the side of our members first and our hosts secondary when it comes to violations like that.” –@alexawahr On the future of Revel (24:40): “[Revel is] a community for women over 40. The community shares that identity and we're about making connections, finding friendships, supporting one another, and really bringing light to women in midlife and all of the amazing things that they're doing. That doesn't mean that women within the community don't have their own interests, feelings, and identities and allowing every woman over 40 to join Revel, but then find her niche, her group within the community, is also something that we think will be a big part of what Revel is and [we're] excited to build that out.” –@alexawahr About Alexa Wahr Alexa Wahr is the co-founder and COO of Revel Gatherings. Previously, Alexa was a senior director in operations at health insurance startup Bright Health. Prior to Bright Health, Alexa worked in strategy and business development for Target and was an healthcare investment banking analyst at Piper Jaffray. Alexa has a BBA from Emory University and a MBA from Harvard Business School. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Alexa Wahr on Twitter Revel Gatherings Nina Collins, founder of The Woolfer Nina Collins on Community Signal: Moving a Community for Women Over 40 From Facebook Groups to a Paid Subscription App and Building Inclusive Communities, Workplaces, and an Inclusive Profession Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

How did the pandemic impact your relationships with your healthcare providers? Did telehealth enable you to continue seeing or connecting with your providers to receive the care that you needed? In this episode of Community Signal, Denzil Coleman, a telehealth coordinator, developing and maintaining digital health interventions at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Center for Telehealth, discusses how the adoption of telehealth interactions and practices during the pandemic may lead to continued and more long-term improvements and efficiencies in our healthcare system. Denzil explains that telehealth is “anything where healthcare is being impacted by a patient and an actor that are not in the same location. That includes a video, that includes transmissions of information, asynchronous messaging, [and] remote patient monitoring.” Telehealth can create efficiencies for both patients and providers –– giving patients flexibility to see their providers without the burden of travel and with the option to invite more caregivers into these interactions. Whereas in the past, patients may have received pamphlets with details about in-person support groups or other care options, today there are online communities and support groups and insurance companies themselves even offer telehealth options. With these options come more opportunities for patients to be more engaged in the care that they receive and for providers to thoughtfully care for patients. Denzil and Patrick also discuss how: COVID, the shifting landscape of the healthcare profession, and the fact that folks are living longer, healthier lives all impacts the healthcare system The flexibility of telehealth allows a patient's support system to become more involved in their care Creating efficiencies in the healthcare system should not equate to patients receiving less care Value-based care could resemble a community-like investment in overall care Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community. Big Quotes What exactly is telehealth? (2:01): “To put it simply, telehealth is … anything where healthcare is being impacted by a patient and an actor that are not in the same location. That includes a video, that includes transmissions of information, asynchronous messaging, [and] remote patient monitoring.” –@denzilcoleman How the pandemic is leading to wider adoption of teleheath interactions (4:55): “Even at the Center for Telehealth at MUSC, where I work, we saw a very significant uptick in telehealth interactions of all kinds since the start of the pandemic, just because pretty much every interaction had to take place that way for patient safety. The forced adoption of the time of the emergency is really what prompted it, but we'll take it because as people are getting more comfortable with these modalities, we're able to push digital health forward a lot quicker.” –@denzilcoleman Online communities can help keep patients engaged in their own care (8:10): “A lot of times, you may give an intervention or a plan of care in which the patient is not fully engaged. Having them as part of one of these [online] communities where they feel supported, encouraged to take part and advocate for their own care, and share experiences, it keeps them engaged. It keeps their focus on their health and on getting better.” –@denzilcoleman Healthcare optimization could lead to online communities (22:51): “[Healthcare optimization means] expanding the reach of what we already do, expanding the reach of providers who are overwhelmed, overworked, and facing a mushrooming population of people who are living longer, healthier lives. Which is great, but at the same time, we are having less and less people graduate from medical school becoming doctors. Of course, those are being supplemented by what we refer to as mid-level providers and a large increase of people becoming physician assistants and nurse practitioners, which is also great, but our providers aren't matching the rate of individuals surviving. We have to create the efficiencies. We have no choice. We have to use technology to do the best we can, and online communities are part of that.” –@denzilcoleman Efficiencies in the healthcare ecosystem do not mean a reduction in care (30:05): “Some [existing healthcare practices] aren't necessary, don't add value, or may even be wasteful. … Imagine if you're with a provider, and you've had a long-term condition over the past 30 years. The last 15 of them, you saw your provider every three months, no matter what. Now, in 2021, your provider tells you, ‘I'm only going to see you in person maybe one time a year instead of four, but you're going to come see me in person. I'm going to do an exam, then I'm going to have a little remote monitoring on a monthly basis. Then we're going to do a three-month video-only checkup. Then we're going to do something in six months.' You only come to the clinic and get an exam the one time. It's not because we don't want to care for you. It's because we want to create efficiencies for everyone in the healthcare ecosystem.” –@denzilcoleman About Denzil Coleman Denzil Coleman has served as a telehealth coordinator, developing and maintaining digital health interventions at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Center for Telehealth since 2017. He holds a Master of Science in Health Information Technology and is completing a Doctor of Education in Educational Practice and Innovation, both from The University of South Carolina. Denzil has worked in healthcare for nearly two decades including stints at Roper Saint Francis and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He also lectures in and facilitates healthcare management and technology education programs in the United States, United Kingdom, and India. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Denzil Coleman on Twitter MUSC Health Center for Telehealth The American Telemedicine Association Alzheimer's Society Serena Snoad on Community Signal Community Signal episode about strategies used by anti-vax influencers Dr. Kelli Garber and Dr. Ragan Dubose-Morris, who Denzil works with at MUSC Dr. David Valentine, who Denzil shouted out Dr. Panos Constantinides, who has mentored Denzil Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

In between his three albums, rapper Asher Roth has released several mixtapes, including 2011's Pabst & Jazz and his The Greenhouse Effect series. The third entry in that series, The Greenhouse Effect Vol. 3, hit streaming services on September 3, 2021. But there's something about his latest mixtape that makes it unique from every album, EP, and mixtape he's released so far: It was a collaboration with his online community of fans and supporters. As Asher contemplated making music during the COVID-19 pandemic, he came up with an idea: What if The Greenhouse Effect Vol. 3 was “entirely produced by fan/friend/follower submissions?” He set up a Discord, and off they went. He'd post acapellas – audio clips of only his vocals – and community members would produce song submissions, which Asher would review live on Twitch. The project would adopt a narrative story, adding guest verses from the community, too. With the mixtape out, Asher stops by to talk about the collaborative process behind the release, the tools he used, and the community building lessons he learned along the way. One of the great things about this story is that the creation of this mixtape has helped birth an active online community, which Asher hopes will foster further collaborations between members. Asher and Patrick also discuss: How guardrails help encourage sustained creativity Why Discord? Now that it has achieved its first big goal, what's next for the community? Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community. Big Quotes Why the RetroHash Discord might put a cap on member count (10:42): “With these [major social media] platforms, they've grown so big. They're almost essentially black holes eating themselves. It's really hard for you to garner any attention without being extremely controversial. … Getting away from the biggest, best, largest, and fastest, and just concentrating on who's really paying attention and who cares seems to be working [for the RetroHash Discord]. Keeping it to a volume that is adaptable and able to move with the times is important.” –@asherroth When you're starting an online community, it's easy to get discouraged by the big numbers of other platforms (13:22): “When you look at YouTube views, if that gets sucked up into the right portal, you're talking about hundreds of millions of views, if not a billion. When you're comparing your online community to something like that, of course you're going to be like, ‘This is never going to work.' … [But] if you think about it in real world numbers, if you're doing a show, and there are 1,500 people there, that's a lot of people. … [Conversion and retention rates are the] kinds of things I'm a little bit more interested in than the grand scheme, final tally. Those numbers are being a little bit gamed.” –@asherroth When you're starting an online community, it's easy to get discouraged by the big numbers of other platforms (25:01): “The easiest way to integrate other artists [into the creation of The Greenhouse Effect, Vol. 3] was to give them challenges, give them direction, and give them a role instead of just leaving it open for interpretation because that allowed me to really filter down who did this challenge the best.” –@asherroth When you're starting an online community, it's easy to get discouraged by the big numbers of other platforms (37:33): “[On the RetroHash Discord], I would love to start to focus on specific artists. Artist development has always been something that I've been fond of. It's kind of disappeared. The music industry is pretty vigilant about getting young talent. You have a lot of these kids who are getting into the game at 16, 17, 18, 19 years old. They're pretty green and naïve to the ways. I've always been more than happy to be somebody that says, ‘Look out for this. If you see this, this is what this means,' etc. [We can use] the Discord to focus on artists and use the producers, tools, and people who are there to help.” –@asherroth About Asher Roth Asher Roth is a rapper who first achieved mainstream success with his international hit, “I Love College,” and his debut album, 2009's Asleep in the Bread Aisle. His most recent album, Flowers on the Weekend, was released in 2020. Between his albums, Asher produced a run of critically-acclaimed mixtapes, including 2011's Pabst & Jazz, and his The Greenhouse Effect series. The latest edition in that series, The Greenhouse Effect Vol. 3, available on September 3, 2021, came together through an online collaboration with fans and supporters during the COVID-19 pandemic. Asher releases projects online under the brand RetroHash. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community RetroHash, Asher's website The Greenhouse Effect Vol. 3, Asher's latest mixtape, created through collaboration with his community of fans and supporters Asher's Discord server Sunflower Philly, “a community-based, nonprofit organization focused on providing access to art, music & sustainable resources through a curated series of events and programs in North Philadelphia,” that Asher is creative director of Asher on Instagram Asher on Twitter Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

What moderation tactics have you used or seen as a mechanism to curtail the spread of misinformation in communities and on social media platforms? Word detection, link blocking, and digital stickers promoting legitimate information sources may immediately come to mind. But what would happen if you ran your moderation tools against URLs shared in link-in-bio services used in your community? Or what if you learned that folks on your platform were using specific codewords to circumvent word detection? Or posting screenshots of misinformation rather than using plain-text? People are getting creative with how they share all types of information online, misinformation included. Are our moderation strategies keeping up? In this discussion, Patrick chats with Joseph Schafer, an undergraduate student of Computer Science and Ethics at the University of Washington and Rachel Moran, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public. They discuss their research and how anti-vaccine advocates are circumventing content moderation efforts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and large social networks. Some of their findings might surprise you! For example, specific folk theories have emerged that define how some believe social platforms and algorithms work to moderate their content and conversations. And whether these theories are true or not, the strategies forming around them do seem to help people keep questionable content up long enough for researchers to come across it. So, where do we start? How can we detect misinformation if people are using codewords like pizza or Moana to get around our tools and teams? There may not be precise solutions here just yet, but Rachel and Joseph both offer ideas to help us down the right path, which starts with deciding that the engagement that brews around misinformation is not safe for the long-term health of your community. Among our topics: Why Linktree needs community guidelines and how link-in-bio sites have become a vector for misinformation The folk theories that are informing how we perceive and operate around social media algorithms Adapting your moderation strategies to better find misinformation Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community. Big Quotes Using lexical variation to circumvent moderation filters (2:45): “They found this big group of people who were using ‘dancing' or other kinds of verbs to mean getting the vaccine. Complete replacement of the word [vaccine]. You wouldn't know that that meant vaccination unless you were a member of that community and had the institutional knowledge that comes with being a member. We see [lexical variation] on a spectrum.” –@rachelemoran Emojis, code words, and symbols can form the insider language of a community (3:08): “We see ‘v@ccine' where the A is an @ sign or people using the vaccine emoji rather than using the word at all. They believe that if they put that instead of spelling out vaccine, … they'll avoid being caught up in the algorithmic moderation that happens on platforms.” –@rachelemoran Misinformation finds a hiding place in link-in-bios (5:05): “There's a variety of ways that you can … get around [link blocks]. One might be, for example, using a screenshot of an article or something that is vaccine misinformation, rather than putting in the text of the misinformation directly. … There's also various websites like URL shorteners or URL compilers, or even just a Word document … that is filled with links to sites that maybe these major platforms are moderating and blocking.” –@joey__schafer Using vaccination promotion tools to promote anti-vaccine content (10:56): “[On Instagram stories, you can use] that little sticker that says, ‘Let's get vaccinated.' Then Instagram collates those of your friends that have [used that] sticker … and it goes at the top of your [stories section]. … [We're seeing people] put a sticker over the top of that sticker or they are like, ‘Let's not get vaccinated.'” –@rachelemoran The engagement surrounding misinformation isn't good for the long-term health of your community or your business (32:06): “Part of the problem with misinformation is that it's really engaging. When you're making money off of engagement, there's only so far you're going to go to take down misinformation without going too far into your bottom line. … I feel like there is a tide-turning moment happening where the bigger platforms are realizing that misinformation is a vulnerability that degrades the product that can have economic disadvantages.” –@rachelemoran About Joseph Schafer and Rachel Moran Joseph Schafer is a fourth-year undergraduate student at the University of Washington, studying Computer Science and Ethics. He has also worked as a research assistant for the university's Center for an Informed Public since January of 2020, studying various forms of online misinformation and disinformation. Joseph hopes to pursue graduate school in information science, in order to understand how misinformation takes advantage of recently developed socio-technical systems, like social media, to influence our society. Rachel Moran is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public. Moran received her doctoral degree from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Her research explores the role of trust in digital information environments and is particularly concerned with how trust is implicated in the spread of mis- and dis-information. Her research has been published in academic journals and been covered by the New York Times, Vox, Vice, and others. She was also an affiliate fellow at George Washington University's Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics and UNC Chapel Hills' Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Joseph Schafer on Twitter Joseph Schafer's website Rachel Moran on Twitter University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public Content moderation avoidance strategies, via The Virality Project Anti-vaccine groups changing into ‘dance parties' on Facebook to avoid detection, via NBC News Linktree's community guidelines First I “like” it, then I hide it: Folk Theories of Social Feeds Dr. Jennifer Beckett on Community Signal A top spreader of coronavirus misinformation says he will delete his posts after 48 hours, via the New York Times Election Integrity Partnership, which Joseph and Rachel both worked on Jay Rosen on Community Signal Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

When was the last time you mandated that your community, moderation, trust, and safety colleagues schedule time for out of queue activities? When was the last time you led by example and took a break or participated in other wellness activities before you felt burnout? What was the last tool your product team built to help foster resiliency for your moderators? While we can't mitigate all burnout, in this episode, Patrick and our guest, Adelin Cai, discuss how employee resiliency programs and policies can help you create an all-around safer environment for your colleagues and teams. Tools like well-defined queues and changing the presentation of harmful content are also potential product solutions that can foster resiliency from a workflow perspective. With experience in policy, trust, and safety leadership for Pinterest, Twitter, and Google, Adelin also shares her approach for thinking about the metrics that matter. Spoiler: Metrics that revolve around quantity, like number of cases closed, or even quality, like CSAT, may not always equate to success or reflect the health of your community. Adelin also discusses working collaboratively with product and engineering teams to ensure that there's transparency about what is being built and launched and what community behaviors or metrics should be monitored to indicate performance and to influence the further direction of the product. Among our other topics: The baseline for an employee resilience program What an ideal work relationship with product and engineering looks like How to reallocate resources and budget to prioritize essential moderation, trust, and safety work Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community. Big Quotes All content moderation can contribute to stress (02:54): “[For the] folks reviewing content, are there little interventions that could take place to eliminate the strain or the stress that people are going through as they're looking at content? We think about this usually in the context of the worst of the worst content, the most violent content, but there are many little things in the course of doing trust and safety work that could accumulate, and stress is cumulative.” –@adelin Product improvements that can foster resiliency for moderation teams (10:55): “It could be as simple as having different queues for different types of content that people are going to look at and then rotating people through the different queues. … If you have someone looking at really, really horrible child sexual exploitation content all day, that's not a healthy place for them to be in. They should be able to rotate out to a different queue.” –@adelin Building relationships could lead to building better tools (38:01): “Make friends with your product team; make friends with the engineers because that just opens the door to having a conversation about how difficult it is when X, Y, and Z doesn't work right. I've also [asked engineers to] shadow this team for ten minutes and [then they] see how inefficient the product tooling is.” –@adelin About Adelin Cai Adelin Cai is an online content policy and tech operations expert who's spent the last decade working with and leading teams responsible for product policies and their enforcement. As Pinterest's former head of policy, Adelin led the team that developed the company's principles and core values around content moderation, covering a range of issues from hateful speech to medical (mis)information to dank memes. Prior to Pinterest, she ran Twitter's Legal Ads Policy team, guiding policy and operations for Twitter's self-serve and international advertising products. Adelin Cai is also a co-founder of the Trust & Safety Professional Association (TSPA) and the affiliated Trust & Safety Foundation (TSF). She currently serves as TSPA's board chair. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Adelin Cai on LinkedIn Adelin Cai on Twitter Sidequest Trust & Safety Professional Association Trust & Safety Foundation Patrick and Adelin discuss the following Sidequest guides: Employee resilience program recommendations Building a Trust and Safety mindset Policy development and launch checklist Wikimedia health metrics Sin Eaters Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

May 21st, 2021 marked 20 years since the launch of KarateForums.com. In this episode of Community Signal, Patrick speaks with five forum members that have been on KarateForums.com for nearly 65 years, collectively. Together, they discuss what keeps them coming back to the community as members, moderators, and martial artists.  While each member brings different experiences and background to the community, Bob, Brian, Danielle, Devin, and Noah all cite the quality of the interactions that they've had in the community and how it has brought out their skills as community members, teachers, and students of the martial arts. Those interactions helped these folks launch their own martial arts schools, grow as martial artists, and pay it forward to hundreds of thousands of other folks seeking out knowledge. Whether you're listening to this episode with 20 years of community management experience or you're working on approaching that milestone, a few things emerge as truths from this episode –– that it's not the size of a community that matters, but the level of care that you find there. That community members can go from the verge of being banned to becoming model community members, if given the chance. That communities thrive when they help their members achieve their goals and pay it forward to others. Whether this is your first year as a community manager or your twentieth, we hope that you find these lessons and stories helpful. And here's to another 20 years of KarateForums.com!  They also discuss: The benefits of your members joining other communities How KarateForums.com helped each guest find confidence, friends, and more Why Devin describes KarateForums.com as charitable Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community. Big Quotes Martial arts instructors have been shaped by KarateForums.com (07:06): “If we talk about my martial arts career, [KarateForums.com] really shaped … how I approach teaching other people. I obviously went to university; after that, I got a job. KarateForums.com has probably been with me for all of my life-defining moments.” -Danielle Williams How Danielle's needs as a community member have evolved since she first joined the community (08:09): “[When I] initially [joined KarateForums.com], I probably would have been talking about techniques, or training methods, or thinking about it as an individual. Now, I come back and a lot of my conversations are, as an instructor, how can I do this? How can I change this? How can I help my own students?” -Danielle Williams Why Danielle continues to be a moderator after so many years (12:46): “If you get benefits from something, then you need to give back. I've been able to take so much from [KarateForums.com]. The experience of others and just having that sounding board, a community to come back to, and just have a chat. I'd classify a lot of the members of KarateForums.com … as friends now. I've taken a lot, so for me, it's really important to be able to give back and help chaperone the community forwards.” -Danielle Williams What makes KarateForums.com feel like home (17:50): “KarateForums.com is the melting pot for both martial artists and non-martial artists alike, to get together, as a cohesive whole, to discuss a plethora of topics in a safe, fun, and informative atmosphere. … There's a unique and unbreakable camaraderie that I've found that makes KarateForums.com a place that we call home.” -Robert “Bob” Mitcham Different perspectives on KarateForums.com bring value to all members (33:48): “Being able to talk with so many people with different perspectives in a positive, constructive manner just added to what I could take back to my classes, or when I go read another book, and think about it from my perspective or a perspective that somebody posted on a thread.” -Brian Walker When an online community stops you from regressing in your martial art (41:58): “[After moving to area where I didn't have a dojo, KarateForums.com allowed me to] stay connected, so that when I did go back to a place where I had a dojo, it wasn't starting from scratch. I felt like I had that continuity the entire time I was away. It also gave me things to work on, on my own. Something that I thought was interesting was I actually made progress. When I went back to my dojo, I actually went up a rank rather than regressing, which most people would expect to do after two years away. … It was unexpected.” -Devin Van Curen Quality of interactions goes a long way for any community (43:28): “The moderators are very invested in [KarateForums.com]. The standards are much higher for interaction, for being charitable, for staying on topic. That really changes the quality of the interactions, even though it might not be as active as the larger forums on the larger websites, the quality is much higher.” -Devin Van Curen It can take time to appreciate how a community is moderated (51:00): “[That I became a moderator] is actually an interesting twist because when I first joined [KarateForums.com], my initial thought was, ‘Oh man, this is really strictly moderated,' in comparison to all the other forums that were basically a free-for-all. At first, I actually felt a little stifled. … Over the first couple of years that I was there, it became apparent to me that it was the one forum that I had found that, while it may not be the busiest – there's not constant activity flooding threads with posts – the conversations that were there didn't devolve into nonsense all the time. It stayed on topic. It stayed respectful and beneficial. Whereas a lot of the other communities that I was a part of, somebody would post what was a legitimate question, somebody would answer with some snide remark, and then you'd get three pages of responses just building off of the snide remark.” –@nmlegel Giving back as a moderator and community member (52:10): “I really value the level of moderation [on KarateForums.com] and so when the opportunity was presented for me to join the moderation team, I thought that was a good opportunity for me to give back in a sense of helping to preserve that … general feeling that if you start a conversation or join a conversation there, that you will be able to engage in a conversation that is respectful and on-topic, and not just a free-for-all.” –@nmlegel About Our Guests For this episode, we're joined by five members of KarateForums.com. In order of appearance, this includes: Danielle Williams, a KarateForums.com member for over 14 years. If you're ever in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, visit Danielle's school, Nuneaton Taekwon-Do. Robert “Bob” Mitcham, a martial artist for more than 50 years, who has been a member of KarateForums.com for over 13 years. In support of Bob and those fighting cancer, please support Cancer Treatment Centers of America. Brian Walker, who has more posts on KarateForums.com than any other contributor and has been a member for over 15 years. Devin Van Curen, a member of KarateForums.com for 12 years. Noah Legel, who has been a member of KarateForums.com for over a decade. Visit Noah's Karate Obsession and find it on Facebook and Instagram. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community KarateForums.com Nuneaton Taekwon-Do, Danielle's martial arts school Cancer Treatment Centers of America Podcamp Topeka, where Brian and Patrick met in-person Waza Wednesday, featuring Noah Karate Obession, Noah's website Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

For this episode of Community Signal, we're joined by community professionals Jenn Hudnet, Lana Lee, and Phoebe Venkat. They candidly share stories about the impact of racism and stereotypes against Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders in their own lives, in the workplace, and in the communities they manage. Jenn, Lana, and Phoebe each had stories to share about their families, the circumstances that brought them to the United States, the racism and discrimination they faced, and the shared generational trauma they're working through together. “We have to look forward. We've got to acknowledge some of the wrongs that happened to our parents, relatives, and friends in the past. It's very difficult to do. We're doing it, but it definitely takes a community of community to get that done,” shared Phoebe (7:47). There's also a discussion around the work that companies and colleagues must do to maintain safe workplaces and communities. “Your intention might not always be to hurt or harm someone or to make fun of someone, but the impact is still there. Being able to understand the impact that our words and actions have on others is important [as well as] being able to acknowledge the impact that it might have on somebody. I think microaggressions are something that I've even had to learn to recognize because I've just internalized them and accepted them over the years of being here,” said Jenn (21:12). And there's an important reminder in this episode to see your colleagues and community members as individuals. Individuals that might have a bad day, that might make mistakes, or that might be comforted just by your presence. “Sometimes we hear stories of people. [Maybe] they posted a really good picture one day and then the next day they're feeling down. … As a community manager, [it's really important to] take time to read and understand where people are coming from,” explains Lana (49:46). We're thankful to Jenn, Lana, and Phoebe for sharing with us. May this conversation lead to safer communities, neighborhoods, workplaces, and personal boundaries. Lana, Jenn, Patrick, and Phoebe also discuss: The model minority myth and the harm it causes Recognizing emotional labor and setting boundaries There are no growth hacks when it comes to helping your community members feel safe Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community. Big Quotes Moving forward through generational trauma (8:03): “It's interesting for us as the children because it's very painful to come to terms with [the trauma that] our parents have experienced and even to help them understand. There's so much that they've just accepted as part of life, racism, and pain that they just endure because they are so strong based on the past that they've endured. Part of that is also embracing that pain and helping them to embrace it and moving forward with them.” –@jenntothechen The ripple effects of the model minority myth (12:51): “If we're treated better because we're Asians or Pacific Islanders, we're seen as the ‘teacher's pet.' Of course, it does definitely have advantages, but do you want advantages that come at the expense of other people's suffering?” -@pheebkat Your presence can mean a lot to someone going through difficult times (14:26): “It's important for people to know that [you're there for them], even though they may not need you at the time. You give someone a gift of presence, just being around them, knowing that someone's there to support them.” –@lanalyzer314 Breaking the model minority myth (18:06): “With the model minority myth, a lot of us have just been taught to embrace that culture of silence, of not rocking the boat or causing any conflict. I think one thing that I've come to terms with is that it is okay to speak up. Obviously, to do it in a respectful way, to be mindful of a different perspective, but to not be afraid to speak up when you notice something that bothers you, when you notice underrepresentation of a certain culture, and to embrace that. Being able to do that actually really empowers you as a person and also builds community as you bring more light to different issues that people might not be considering.” –@jenntothechen Think of the impact of your actions, not just your intentions (21:13): “Your intention might not always be to hurt or harm someone or to make fun of someone, but the impact is still there. Being able to understand the impact that our words and actions have on others is important [as well as] being able to acknowledge the impact that it might have on somebody.” –@jenntothechen Recognizing the emotion labor that we carry (28:18): “The [definition of emotional labor that] I've adopted is the labor [that's] not on your job description. You get hired to be a community manager or accountant or whatever you are, and then you end up taking care of the community around you, your colleagues, making sure they're okay, [and] volunteering at affinity group events.” –@pheebkat Prioritizing ourselves matters just as much as prioritizing our communities (32:16): “I struggle with where I want to take on more and do more and constantly think about what my community members need, but I know that if I don't take care of myself first, I'm not going to be able to do that.” –@lanalyzer314 To build a safe community, start small (44:58): “When you're building online communities, sometimes it's harder to get to the heart of others. You're building a community at scale, you're trying to make sure that things can work for many, but in terms of making sure people feel safe – feel heard – some of that work does need to be one-to-one or with a small group.” –@pheebkat   About Our Guests Jenn Hudnet is a community manager at Salesforce. Jenn has joined us on Community Signal twice in the past, once in 2018 and once in 2017. She has previously held roles at Lithium Technologies, Google, Procore Technologies, and Intuit. Lana Lee is a senior community manager and strategist at Zuora. She graduated from UC Berkeley in civil engineering and then went to USC, where she got a music degree in oboe performance and Masters in civil engineering. After 15 years as a civil and structural engineer and a career as a web developer, Lana transitioned to community management. Lana was also our guest for the most listened to episode of Community Signal in 2018. Visit her blog, Tales of a Community Manager or her Netflixionados, Primers and Hulu-ites meetup group for more from Lana. Phoebe Venkat is a director of community for TripActions. She has more than 10 years of experience in community strategy and building. Her expertise also includes communications, marketing, leadership, and operations in several industries. Phoebe's greatest inspiration is her mother, Hanna, who taught her the value of connection and belonging. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community The long history of racism against Asian Americans in the U.S., via PBS News Hour The Subtle Asian Traits group What Is the Model Minority Myth?, via Learning for Justice The Complex History—and Ongoing Realities—of the “Model Minority” Stereotype, via Goop Asian Americans: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver LinkedIn to pay its ERG leaders, via Axios How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie 6 Charts That Dismantle The Trope Of Asian Americans As A Model Minority, via NPR Key facts about Asian Americans, a diverse and growing population, via Pew Research Center Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

Crisis Text Line offers free, 24/7 support via text message to anyone facing a mental health crisis. Some organizations partner with Crisis Text Line to develop co-branded text lines for their community, but starting today, you can make Crisis Text Line part of your policy and response strategy if anyone in your community or on your team shares or shows signs that they're experiencing a mental health crisis. The other part of your response strategy leverages a skill that you likely practice everyday –– empathy. Becka Ross, the chief program officer at Crisis Text Line, reminds us that “anybody can be empathetic. When somebody is expressing or showing signs of mental illness, it's not the expectation that somebody steps up into a role of a psychotherapist or a doctor or any other mental health professional, but all humans can be empathetic to one another.” Crisis Text Line is powered by a team of 39,000 volunteers. Their community, training, and volunteer opportunities call on people from all walks of life to work together to help those facing mental health dilemmas. In our discussion with Becka, you'll learn not only how the team supports one another through community, but also how you can do the same for your own community members and the people you care about. Becka and Patrick discuss: How Crisis Text Line partners with organizations and offers itself as a resource to anyone in need Forming a mental health crisis policy for your community Using machine learning to respond quickest to those most at risk Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community. Big Quotes An example of how Crisis Text Line partners with other organizations (03:12): “The state of Ohio's mental health and addiction services [have] a keyword that they share with their residents [who text it] to our crisis line, linked with our trained crisis counselors, who support the residents in crisis. We provide the state of Ohio with anonymized and aggregated trends about how their constituents are using our service, which, in turn, can help them to create better policies, more services, and support in specific areas.” –Becka Ross Establish a mental health crisis policy to support your team and community (08:29): “It's a great idea to have a [mental health crisis] policy in place before you need it so that you can have something to fall back on. It can be alarming or even scary to hear somebody else say they want to hurt themselves or somebody else. Having a policy that's written before you're in that situation can be helpful in ensuring that you can offer support in a meaningful way.” –Becka Ross Reacting with empathy makes a difference (09:30): “Anybody can be empathetic. When somebody is expressing or showing signs of mental illness, it's not the expectation that somebody steps up into a role of a psychotherapist or a doctor or any other mental health professional, but all humans can be empathetic to one another.” –Becka Ross Reacting with empathy makes a difference (09:30): “One of the bravest things you could do as a human is reach out to somebody who you feel like is struggling and just ask if they're okay.” –Becka Ross How Crisis Text Line reaches those at the most risk within 24 seconds (19:30): “We have a machine learning algorithm that triages our incoming conversations based on risk. We are able to respond to the highest-need texters the quickest. On average, [we get to them] within 24 seconds.” –Becka Ross Boundaries on the Crisis Text Line team and how the team members support one another (20:50): “We're not therapists. We're not doing clinical long-term work. We're short-term, helping somebody get to a calm state, and then offering resources. Our supervisors are there for … in-the-moment support if it's needed. If things escalate [or] if we hear about abuse or any other high-risk situation, then our staff intervene and really support volunteers so they're not alone.” –Becka Ross About Becka Ross Becka Ross is a licensed clinical social worker with over 15 years experience in mental health, working in direct practice as a psychotherapist, managing a residential program for young men transitioning to adulthood, providing teletherapy in a medical setting and currently the chief program officer at Crisis Text Line; free, 24/7 crisis support through a text based service. Becka is a passionate advocate for access to quality mental health and suicide prevention. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Becka Ross on LinkedIn Crisis Text Line The Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services Crisis Text Line partnership LivingWorks Start Suicide Prevention training The Jason Foundation Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

Last month, Sophie Zhang, a former data scientist at Facebook, went public as a whistleblower drawing attention to how the company delayed action against or outright ignored manipulation of it's platform by autocratic leaders and global governments to the detriment of the people of those countries. All work, including community management, requires trade-offs, areas of focus, and prioritization. Our teams and resources allow us to increase our areas of focus and more consistently foster the interactions that our communities exist for. But for an organization with the staff and resources of Facebook, you'd expect the trade-offs to be few and far between, and the areas of focus to be vast – covering the areas of the platform prone to abuse just as much as areas that foster healthy interactions. But for Facebook, Sophie describes how, at least internally, those lines between healthy interactions and “inauthentic interactions” surfaced potential conflicts of interest, slowness to take action, and a tendency to focus on some countries more than others. When we're prioritizing what to work on or how to foster our communities, we may reference company values or internal OKRs. But for community professionals, there's also the question of how does this preserve the safety of the community and those in it? How is Facebook scaling to protect the political safety of its members? Or perhaps a better question is, does it even think it has the responsibility to do so? As Sophie says, “it's important to remember that, at the end of the day, Facebook is a company. Its goal is to make money. It's not focused on saving the world or fixing the product. I think it's important to be cynically realistic about the matter.” Sophie and Patrick discuss: Manipulation so brazen that the government actors didn't even bother to hide it The real-world implications that “inauthentic behavior” on Facebook has had for Azerbaijan, Honduras, India, and other countries How Facebook differentiates and actions inauthentic profiles and pages Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it's only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community. Big Quotes The unbelievable size of the Azerbaijan government's fake comment operation (13:33): “I'm going to give you a number that was very shocking. This Azerbaijan [Facebook manipulation] network, it comprised 3% of all comments by [Facebook Pages] on other pages through the entire world. … Azerbaijan is, of course, a tiny country. Somewhere at Facebook, I'm sure there was a team whose [goal] was to make page activity go up, and they were congratulating themselves on the comment numbers.” –@szhang_ds Repetitive content can be totally normal (16:41): “It can be suspicious if everyone is saying the same thing at the same time, but there can also be completely legitimate reasons. … For instance, … Facebook [once] blocked [people saying] ‘Happy Thanksgiving.' Because, ‘Oh my God, everyone's saying ‘Happy Thanksgiving,' there has to be something weird going on.' … At a company the size of Facebook, most enforcement is automated.” –@szhang_ds Facebook isn't altruistic in nature (20:15): “It's important to remember that, at the end of the day, Facebook is a company. Its goal is to make money. It's not focused on saving the world or fixing the product.” –@szhang_ds Facebook's actions are driven by outside pressure (21:04): “Most of Facebook's investigations on coordinated, inauthentic behavior come in response to outside reports. What I mean by that is NGOs doing investigations, news organizations giving reports, opposition groups complaining, etc. When there is an outside figure that's feeding this to Facebook, that's someone outside the company who can put pressure on Facebook, who can say, ‘If you're not going to do anything about this, we're going to the New York Times and tell them you don't care about our country. What do you think about that?' Then suddenly, Facebook will decide to get their act together.” –@szhang_ds How Facebook ignored a network of accounts tied a member of parliament (25:16): “In India, when I found a network of fake accounts that were supporting a political figure, we had gotten sign off to take it down, but suddenly, we realized the account was directly tied to and likely run by that political figure. This was a member of the Indian Parliament; he or someone close to him was happily running several dozen fake accounts to support himself. After that, suddenly everything stopped because I asked repeatedly for a decision, even if they said, ‘No.' … The result was always silence. … “When this keeps going on, when you're already in a conversation with them and you're talking about A and they ignore you when you bring up B, then it's very clear that something is going on. They still have plausible deniability that maybe everyone just didn't hear. I was very upset about this case. To me, it made no sense that the politician [being] tied to a network of fake accounts was reason to stop. It was more reason to take action. If he complained, what was he going to do? Complain to the press, ‘Hey, Facebook took down my fake accounts?'” –@szhang_ds Facebook's half-hearted efforts in Azerbaijan and Honduras (28:47): “In Honduras and Azerbaijan [after Facebook took action against manipulation], they came back immediately and did it again, and Facebook didn't stop them. It's still going down in Azerbaijan. The analogy I'm going to use is that, suppose the punishment for robbing a bank is that you have your bank robbery tools confiscated, and there's a press release, ‘This person robbed the bank, they shouldn't do it.' Someone robs a bank, because the tool was confiscated, they use the money to buy more bank robbery tools and rob the bank again. This seems like an absurd example, but it's what's going on at Facebook.” –@szhang_ds Autocratic leaders don't care about Facebook's press releases (29:20): “The idea of publicizing [abuse of Facebook through press releases] is to embarrass people. The president of Honduras sent soldiers into the streets to shoot civilian protesters in 2019, after the police went on strike and refused. Basically, his brother was sentenced to jail by American courts for helping his brother smuggle drugs and take bribes from El Chapo. This is a man who's incapable of embarrassment. In Azerbaijan, in 2013, they accidentally released election results the day before the actual election, true story, which was shocking. Compared to that, what's [a press release] going to do to them?” –@szhang_ds Facebook's statements skirt around the actual issue (37:16): “Suppose your spouse asks you, ‘Did you do the dishes last night?' You respond by saying, ‘I always prioritize doing the dishes. I work hard on doing the dishes every time so that we can have clean dishes. Food left on dishes is disgusting.' That might all be true but you did not actually answer the question, which is, ‘Did you do the dishes last night?' That's the typical response that Facebook gives, and if you look at the [Guardian] article, that's essentially what they're doing. Because they're not denying what I'm saying. They can't deny what I'm saying because they know I'm telling the truth.” –@szhang_ds Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Sophie Zhang on Twitter How Facebook let fake engagement distort global politics: a whistleblower's account (via The Guardian) “I Have Blood on My Hands”: A Whistleblower Says Facebook Ignored Global Political Manipulation (via Buzzfeed) Facebook planned to remove fake accounts in India – until it realized a BJP politician was involved (via The Guardian) Sophie's Reddit AMA Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

If you were designing a curriculum to teach undergrads about community management, what would you cover? Georgina Donahue’s approach in designing such a curriculum for a course at the University of Massachusetts was grounded not only in her experience as a community professional but also in her understanding that as a professor, she was instructing a community of students getting ready to enter the workforce. “Think about the experience of … an undergraduate right now. … How do you really use that course to make your students ready for the workforce and appealing to a hiring manager?” Similar to designing a curriculum, think of the different strengths that your colleagues bring to your community team and efforts. What are the career trajectories that speak to their strengths, interests, and your community’s needs? Patrick and Georgina discuss two potential roles, community data analyst and community platform architect, that we may start to see more as community teams scale. While community professionals are often tasked with wearing many hats (and can excel while doing so), as our profession matures, the opportunities ahead will offer continued growth, potential for specialization, and more focused roles to serve our communities and community teams. Georgina and Patrick discuss: The curriculum of Georgina’s community management course at UMass Lowell Community paths outside of management for community pros Why you get lifetime access to the Pragmatic Alumni Community after taking a course at Pragmatic Institute Why you’re doing yourself a disservice if you label community as an underdog Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.     Big Quotes Designing a community management curriculum for undergrads (01:18): “Think about the experience of what it’s like to be an undergraduate right now. Think about being a senior in college. … How do you help them compete against the oxymoron of this is your first job, it’s entry-level, but we also expect you to have X number of years of experience? How do you use that course to make your students ready for the workforce and appealing to a hiring manager?” –Georgina Donahue The importance of community during the pandemic (06:50): “We made the decision [to go to a single, lifetime membership fee because] that not only were people more in need of a space to be with their cohort, their fellow alumni, more than ever, but this was not the time to charge people for it. [The pandemic] was the time to really have their back, create a lifetime relationship, and make sure that we were creating the largest access possible and establishing a culture of trust, support, and dynamic lifetime learning.” –Georgina Donahue Where do community underdog narratives come from? (14:31): “I do think narratives [about community being the underdog] sometimes come from people who want to profit from us as community pros. Some resources that sell services to us have a vested interest in being holders of the answers.” –@patrickokeefe Don’t sell yourself short by telling everyone that you’re an “underdog” (18:09): “If you’ve got the opportunity to be the expert voice on community in an organization [where] they don’t really know that much about it, and you’re the one that gets to pave that new path, why would you poison your own well by telling a single soul that community’s an underdog? Or that community is often misunderstood or undervalued? Tell your own self-fulfilling prophecy and really, really lean hard on the strategic value at a leadership level.” –Georgina Donahue The person leading the community team doesn’t need to be the one responsible for community tech (26:24): “Frankly, I don’t want the person that is leading my community team to be the same person that is like, ‘I just completely overhauled and structured our community platform.’ Those are two different spaces, and if we don’t find a way to support the hands-on individual contributor expertise, we’re really going to lose out because we’re going to disincentivize anyone from developing that deep knowledge.” –Georgina Donahue What could a community business analyst do? (28:33): “I see a community business analyst as somebody that would be able to look at a bird’s-eye view [of the community] and be able to prioritize and say, what is serving us today? What could we remove off the [team’s] plate? What is the biggest add?” –Georgina Donahue   About Georgina Donahue Georgina Donahue is a strategic community leader with a knack for using community to amplify organizational objectives, an aptitude for internal evangelism, and a passion for deep community member engagement. She currently runs the Pragmatic Alumni Community a community of practice for product managers at Pragmatic Institute and spends a lot of time thinking about how businesses can deliver human authenticity to their customers online. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Georgina Donahue on LinkedIn Pragmatic Institute The Pragmatic Alumni Community UserOnboard Samuel Hulick on Community Signal Samuel’s Super Mario graphic Chris Brogan on Community Signal Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

Lee Felsenstein’s work in tech and social organizing led to the creation of the Community Memory project, the first publicly available social media system and public computerized bulletin board system. Mr. Felsenstein was also a founding member of the Homebrew Computer Club, and he helped develop the personal computer. So, what was the first publicly accessible computerized bulletin board like? Mr. Felsenstein was less concerned with metrics around volume and recalls more specifically the diversity of interactions that happened through Community Memory. “We found somebody who did some typewriter graphics on it, [using] the teletype to laboriously draw a picture of a sailboat. That was not anticipated. We found all manner of people asking questions and giving answers to questions.” (Go to 7:07 in the discussion to hear more.) Mr. Felsentein also describes in great detail how he helped onboard people to Community Memory. Psychedelic posters, a cardboard box covering, and a person that stood near the terminal at all times who served as a promoter, tech support, and a bodyguard all helped people walking by Community Memory in its first home, a record store, use a virtual bulletin board for the first time. There are many takeaways from this episode of Community Signal, but let’s start with one –– Community Memory’s approach to onboarding and tech education helped many take their first steps with computers and with virtual message boards. How can we carry this example forward, when for a lot of us, access to the internet comes by way of our mobile devises. Mr. Felsenstein is thinking about this and other community builders should, too. Mr. Felsenstein and Patrick also discuss: The Free Speech Movement of the ’60s The origin and story of Community Memory Lee’s involvement with The WELL Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community. Big Quotes How would people react to a computer popping up in their record store in 1973? (5:25): “I thought we would have to [physically] defend the [Community Memory] machine. How dare you bring a computer into our record store? I like to say that we opened the door to cyberspace and determined that it was hospitable territory. Of course, it took more to open the door than just a greeting.” –@lfelsenstein Who were the Community Memory early adopters? (6:27): “We saw a much broader diversity of uses [on Community Memory] than we had anticipated. We thought that there would be three categories: Jobs, cars, and housing. The first thing that happened, as far as I can tell, is that the traffic from the musicians’ paper bulletin board moved over to the machine. … The musicians were making their living from this and so they were very quick to recognize a better technology for what they needed.” –@lfelsenstein The first question seeded on Community Memory (8:05): “We seeded the [Community Memory] system with a question, ‘Where could you get good bagels in the Bay area?’ … We got three answers; two of which were the expected lists of places where you could get bagels. The third was the kicker. That one said, if you call the following phone number and ask for the following name, an ex-bagel maker will teach you how to make bagels. This was validation of the concept of a learning exchange.” –@lfelsenstein The tragedy of the commons (13:53): “Those who talk about the tragedy of the commons are blowing hot air, as far as I’m concerned, because they’re talking about a commons without regulation. Well, that’s a tragedy waiting to happen. Then they say any concept of commons is therefore illegitimate because it will obviously turn into a tragedy and fail. Well, no, the commons in which you do not have regulation will [fail]. We’ve seen a lot of this happen on online applications.” –@lfelsenstein Moderation as a practice (19:32): “Having no gatekeepers [in a digital space] is a bad idea. We pretty much are all seeing what that results in. You have to work out how to involve the consent of the user in the gatekeeping process. You can’t just say, ‘Here is the gatekeeper.'” –@lfelsenstein Facebook and the papyrus scroll method (34:11): “I think Facebook is a regression. I have to keep tearing myself away from it because it’s designed and built to feed the addiction of novelty. We need a lot more than novelty in organizing human society or software advancement.” –@lfelsenstein About Lee Felsenstein Lee Felsenstein has been both a witness and active participant in numerous historically significant moments for social justice and technology. In addition to his work on Community Memory, he was one of the original members of the Homebrew Computer Club, designed the first mass-produced portable computer, the Osborne 1, as well as numerous other examples of pioneering computing technology, and advising in the creation of The WELL, one of the most popular examples of an early online community. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Lee Felsenstein’s website Lee Felsenstein’s Patreon Lee Felsenstein on Wikipedia Community Memory Community Memory overviews and promotional material Resource One: Technology for the People newsletter Artists and Hackers: Community Memory and the Computing Counterculture Community Memory: Precedents in Social Media and Movements Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, by Steven Levy The Homebrew Computer Club The WELL Deschooling Society, by Ivan Illich Free Speech Movement Archive Gail Ann Williams on Community Signal Howard Rheingold on Community Signal The Virtual Community, by Howard Rheingold Big Sky Telegraph Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

The Zombies game mode within the popular Call of Duty video game franchise has created a massive community of fans and players who not only play and connect with the developers, but with each other as they try to discover every aspect of each piece of content released for the game. In two versions of the game, they are even able to create their own content that can be played and shared online with other players. This ability to co-create and remix is the focus of this episode, as it leads to the game being more valuable to all parties, from the game publisher that owns the franchise to the player who plays alone.  But you don’t need to be a fan of Call of Duty: Zombies or even video games in general to take community learnings from this conversation. MrRoflWaffles is a YouTuber and streamer that has grown his channel to over 1.7 million subscribers and 400 million views. His audience comes to his channel to partake in all things Call of Duty: Zombies –– whether it’s the latest news from Activision or deep dives on Easter eggs. In talking with Patrick, MrRoflWaffles explains how mod tools, which allow you to create new content for the game, and Easter eggs keep Zombies fresh, interesting, and challenging to both expert players and folks that are new to the game. He also shares his “hungry player theory” –– a theory that even as game studios release more content for their games, players are always hungry for more. And while it’s not possible for game studios to constantly release new content, mod tools put the power of game creation directly in the hands of the community. What tools and tailored experiences can you offer to your community members? MrRoflWaffles and Patrick discuss: Extending the play life of your game and your community by giving your members tools to create The importance of communicating through game dev challenges How mod tools can alleviate pressure from game studios and developers Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community. Big Quotes How mod tools have created an endless Zombies experience (10:52): “I’m very close with a number of developers that have made [Zombies] maps or contributed to making maps over the years. Some of the things they have been able to create are so unbelievably unique. It means that a player today can think they know the bounds of what’s possible in Zombies and then they can dip into the customs community a bit and their minds will be totally blown because it doesn’t even feel like [Call of Duty] anymore.” –@MrRoflWaffles A game with custom content never gets stale (16:33): “As a [content] creator, [the mods community] fills a gap in a really powerful way that just makes my life easier because things are more dynamic and more fresh. They don’t get so stale so quickly with [the ability to create] customs.” –@MrRoflWaffles Custom content provides breathing room for game studios and a creative outlet for community members (19:32): “Games take a long time to develop and updates take time to develop. The devs cannot keep pace with the appetite of the people playing the games these days. They just cannot do it. Having an extra pool of [custom content] to dip into at any time is incredible from a creator perspective and from a fan perspective, too.” –@MrRoflWaffles Custom maps provides an experience for every level of Zombie player (26:17): “Treyarch is making [the official Call of Duty: Zombies] maps for everyone. Whereas the custom map maker, they can decide [to] target the top 1% of players, the most hardcore Easter egg experience possible, and then deliver, [which means] that community is spoken to and has the experience they want. Or, they could make them with no Easter eggs if they see fit. Then the more casual fans can jump in as well.” –@MrRoflWaffles “Hungry player theory” and gamers’ needs for more content (30:13): “[Explaining the hungry player theory]: I think people just get hungrier and hungrier and each new map satisfies them less and less and less. Even though in the exact moment of its release, it’s great, you end up with something that then just makes people want more and more and more and more and it spirals out of control a little bit.” –@MrRoflWaffles Open communication is imperative for any community (36:11): “[As a game developer], making sure that you stay involved in the conversation and bring the community with you as you fix [bugs and problems], and you’re honest about things when they don’t go so well is, in my opinion, a really big asset for any team that is trying to make a game or build any kind of community with any kind of product.” –@MrRoflWaffles About MrRoflWaffles MrRoflWaffles, Milo, is a YouTuber and streamer based out of London, UK. He started his current YouTube channel in 2009, while in secondary school, and today has over 1.7 million subscribers and over 400 million lifetime views. MrRoflWaffles is very interested in the wider workings of the creator economy, game development, digital culture, and the intersection of all of the above. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community MrRoflWaffles on Twitter MrRoflWaffles on YouTube MrRoflWaffles YouTube playlist explaining the Zombies storyline Treyarch, the creators of the Zombies game mode NoahJ456 on YouTube This Zombies Mode Was Designed to Fail… Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

In addition to practicing community management as a profession, many of the listeners, guests, and even members of the team behind Community Signal, manage communities part-time. These might be communities that align with our personal passions or hobbies or communities that exist specifically to help ourselves and others grow. That is exactly the mission of Muslamic Makers. Co-founded by Arfah Farooq, who joins us for this episode, Muslamic Makers is a community of Muslim changemakers who work in the tech industry. This April marks the fifth birthday of Muslamic Makers and Arfah discusses how the community has grown during that time and how she sees it growing into the future. Muslamic Makers takes pride in offering thoughtful programming that is largely free to its community, and Arfah shares how she and her team are thoughtfully working to keep it that way. Tech companies want access to diverse communities when it comes to hiring and in exchange for sponsorship opportunities, the Muslamic Makers community offers them just that. Arfah also discusses the importance of documenting the processes that keep the community running, so that the community can continue running, whether she’s managing the day-to-day or not. It’s always refreshing to hear that the practices that keep our “professional” communities healthy and well-managed are the same practices that we should try applying to our own personal communities, too. Arfah and Patrick also discuss: Keeping a community independent, self-sustaining, and affordable to its members Adapting and enforcing your community’s Code of Conduct as you grow How the pandemic has helped the Muslamic Makers community grow beyond its roots in London This episode is the first that we’ve released since the devastating shooting that left eight people in Atlanta dead, including six Asian women. Their names were Daoyou Feng, Hyun Jung Grant, Soon Chung Park, Suncha Kim, Yong Ae Yue, and Xiaojie Tan. The other two people who were killed were Delaina Ashley Yaun and Paul Andre Michels. One man, Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, was seriously injured. As a team, we’ve reflected on how our work in communities matters when it comes to stopping hate. As Patrick says in this episode, “when we educate ourselves about what anti-Asian hatred looks like and we take action against it, we are part of the solution.” Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community. Big Quotes Growing Muslamic Makers into a self-sustaining community: “Where I think self-sustainability [for Muslamic Makers] comes from is sponsorships with tech companies because tech companies want access to diverse talent. They want to advertise to a diverse pool.” –@Arf_22 Our communities are bigger than our individual selves: “[When asking for money to sustain a community], speak from the heart, and let people know your intentions are right and you are just thinking about this community existing beyond yourself. [Muslamic Makers] is part of my legacy, but at the same time, especially in Islam as well, it’s the whole thing of, if I die tomorrow, this thing is going to carry on. It’s going to keep bringing goodness in the world.” –@Arf_22 How the pandemic helped the Muslamic Makers community grow beyond London: “Because we the founders were in London … [Muslamic Makers was] very London-centric. … The beauty of actually being forced online [because of the pandemic], in a sense, has meant that all our events are online, which has meant that we’ve had people dialing in from the other side of the world. That global community has definitely grown a lot.” –@Arf_22 About Arfah Farooq Arfah Farooq is a lifelong community builder, from shaping the regeneration of East London after the 2012 Olympics to building resilience in young people as a youth trustee for a charity. She accidentally co-founded a startup called Discoverables after an initial Design Council grant in 2012. This catapulted her into technology, which led her to co-found Muslamic Makers, a community for Muslims who upscale and pioneer tech in 2016. Arfah is a 2017 fellow of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and has been awarded a prestigious fellowship exploring Muslim women in technology in the USA, UAE, and Pakistan, where she vlogged her travels and brought back her expertise to help businesses. For her day job, Arfah works in government where she managed an internal community of 1,500-plus product and delivery managers across the UK government and now leads the No.10 Innovation Fellowship program. She is also an Angel investor in startups as part of the Aida Ventures Angels program to invest in underrepresented talent. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Arfah Farooq’s website Arfah on Twitter Discoverables Muslamic Makers No.10 Innovation Fellowship program Aida Ventures Angels program Celebrating five years of Muslamic Makers Creative Mornings Muslamic Makers 2016-2021 Impact Report Faisa Mohamed, co-founder of Somalis in Tech, joined us on Community Signal Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

The field of community management is buzzing. We have more tools available to us than ever before and an abundance of communities and resources to connect us with fellow professionals who know our work and want to share knowledge. But what goes into creating inclusive, diverse, and truly open and welcoming spaces for community professionals? Who is given a platform to share knowledge? In this conversation with Faisa Mohamed, co-founder of Somalis in Tech, we broach this topic and how Faisa and her team approached launching Somali Women in Tech. On paper, the approach may sound simple –– Faisa made sure that that the Somalis in Tech team was onboard with the mission and purpose of Somali Women in Tech. “If you ask the other team members what Somali Women in Tech is, including the male members who are not in this group, they’re going to know exactly what it is and can tell you exactly what it is because they are fully aware of it.” (Head to 25:06 to pick up at this part of the conversation.) But in practice, we’ve seen that’s not a priority for all communities. In the case of Somali Women in Tech, Faisa provides an example of how building community with diversity, equity, and inclusion as important values from day one leads to more successful communities, both from an internal and external perspective. So –– how are you creating space and opportunity for others in the community industry? To what standards do you hold the communities that you build and that you’re part of? We’re always interested in hearing from you, so if there’s something you’ve tried or learned from recently, let us know.  Faisa and Patrick also discuss: Reading between the lines of community job descriptions Gatekeeping in the community management industry Being “intentional” in inclusion efforts Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.     Big Quotes How inclusive and open are communities for community pros? (14:36): “With each [community professional] group and clique, you’re going to hear more buzzwords, and you’re going to hear more excluding language. People are going to plug into resources and share resources more privately as you become more within communities. [But that’s] just not how I came to be in this profession. I came into this profession through exposure to communities, people wanting to help you and that natural curiosity.” –@faisatweets When you story isn’t told (22:48): “As a woman of many intersections, being a Black Muslim, child of immigrants, eldest daughter … navigating communities with these intersections, you often see the gaps of which your experience has not been acknowledged or thought about. Actually, this has been something I’ve faced mostly in women communities. Communities with the focus for women have often been one type of narrative. I feel, too many times, my story has not been told.” –@faisatweets Getting internal stakeholders on the same page about building diverse communities (25:06): “I often find projects with an aim of inclusivity or diversity are personal or side projects that don’t get a lot of visibility. I can’t be the only one championing this. It has to be the entire team. If you ask the other team members, what Somali Women in Tech is, including the male members who are not in this group, they’re going to know exactly what it is and can tell you exactly what it is because they are fully aware of it.” –@faisatweets Community is not a cure-all (39:40): “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.” –@faisatweets About Faisa Mohamed Faisa Mohamed (she/her) is a community consultant, builder, nurturer, and manager with an interest in product. Faisa previously worked at Bumble and Peanut and is now a contractor at Facebook working on their developer community program, Developer Circles. Faisa is also the co-founder of Somalis in Tech, a community organization increasing the visibility and representation of Somali talent in the tech industry. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Faisa Mohamed on LinkedIn Faisa on Twitter Somalis in Tech Facebook Developer Circles Marjorie Anderson of Community by Association Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

What would happen if you woke up tomorrow and couldn’t share any news articles on Facebook? How would that impact the communities that you manage or the way you share information with family and friends? What if this ban included  information provided by emergency services agencies for things like natural disasters, wildfires, and domestic violence? This situation is not a hypothetical one for Australian users of Facebook. Just last week, after Facebook failed to make an agreement to pay Australian news organizations for linking to their content, the company issued a ban that prevents sharing Australian or international news content on the platform. In this episode, Patrick talks to Dr. Jennifer Beckett, a lecturer in media and communications at the University of Melbourne, about the immediate ramifications that this has had and what it might mean for communities on Facebook moving forward. Dr. Beckett’s work also has a focus in the mental health of digital workers, given the prevalence of moderation-related work, no matter what the job title. As our field expands, Dr. Beckett points to the need for visibility and protection for the people who do this work. Dr. Beckett and Patrick discuss: The well-being of content moderators and what some organizations are doing to protect their well-being The legal environment for community builders in Australia The need for better communication about the “toxicity” of communities Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.     Big Quotes Facebook has issued a broad ban of news and essential information for its Australian users (4:53): “Facebook has used a really broad definition of what news is. They’ve blocked our Bureau of Meteorology, several emergency services, [and] Queensland Fire & Safety. … That’s problematic because there’s actually floods happening in Queensland at the moment. They’re using the platform to get really vital and immediate emergency information out. The domestic violence government support pages, they’ve all gone down. It’s really, really problematic.” –@JenniferBeckett How Facebook’s ban of news in Australia may encourage misinformation and disinformation (6:42): “[This ban is] going to allow for a lot of non-news organizations to spread a lot of disinformation and misinformation because there’ll be nothing to curb that misinformation or disinformation in a community. If I’m running a community and somebody starts spouting QAnon conspiracy theories in my group, I’ve actually got no ability to now post fact-based, fact-checked news articles that debunk those conspiracy theories.” –@JenniferBeckett Healthy communities can still be toxic to others (11:38): “The thing that makes [groups like the Proud Boys] so dangerous is, internally, they’re super healthy. They’re not toxic to their own members. They’re toxic to everyone else.” –@JenniferBeckett Moderation isn’t about perfection (24:23): “Moderation is an effort that requires a lot of care, thought, and time. Even when you do your best, you’re not perfection.” –@patrickokeefe When your job responsibilities undermine your personal identity (42:05): “Have you ever had to moderate content [or leave up content] that goes against your sense of self-identity and safety? I’m thinking about people of color and First Nations people, anybody in a minority group who’s doing this job, who suddenly has to remain professional while people are actually questioning their right to exist in many cases. Living in this constant state of cognitive dissonance can actually have physical ramifications, as well.” –@JenniferBeckett   About Dr. Jennifer Beckett Dr. Jennifer Beckett is a lecturer in Media and Communications at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She researches online governance and the mental health of digital workers and teaches a Masters level subject in community management. Before heading back to academia, she worked as an online and social media producer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Dr. Jennifer Beckett on Twitter Dr. Beckett’s University of Melbourne profile The Australian Broadcasting Corporation Facebook will block Australian users and publishers from sharing news links in response to new bill (via The Verge) The Betoota Advocate, a satirical site that was blocked as part of Facebook’s ban on news Venessa Paech on Community Signal Australian Community Managers Community Signal Episode About Section 230 A Community Management Perspective on the Violentacrez/Reddit Troll Story, an article about Reddit’s past, by Patrick Australia’s Criminal Code Amendment (Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material) Act Sarah Roberts, UCLA Arlie Russell Hochschild Quiip launches industry-first resilience training in response to overwork and burnout Dr. Beckett acknowledges that her research is done on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

What are the topics of discussion that you would expect to come across in a weather community? Storms, climate change, and forecast accuracy are part of the conversation. As a community strategist at Weather Underground, Michelle Schlachta also encountered stories of people that experienced traumatic weather-related events and sought the community out for education and healing. Those are connections and healing that you can’t build through Google results or a weather forecast app. Patrick and Michelle discuss how Weather Underground provided a platform for weather experts through its blogging community and how new members with questions and less expertise about weather were welcomed into the community. In addition to sharing her experiences at Weather Underground, Splunk, and YouTube –– Michelle discusses something that a lot of us can probably relate to right now –– the isolation of working from home during the pandemic. There are no quick solutions for that but she does offer a reminder that “we’re all going through it together.” If you’d like to share how you’re coping with the isolation of the pandemic, please leave us a comment or write to us. Michelle and Patrick discuss: How veteran members help enforce community guidelines and conversation norms Communicating change to our communities Sensitivity around dramatic weather events that can lead to the loss of life Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.     Big Quotes The Weather Underground community offers an opportunity to heal through education (8:45): “If you’ve had a traumatic weather-based event happen in your life, maybe learning as much as you possibly can about weather or that particular storm that you witnessed and experienced, it might make you feel like you have more of a sense of control over it and over healing from that traumatic event.” –Michelle Schlachta Community results over Google results (16:21): “New users [joined Weather Underground] because they wanted to learn from experts. They wanted to learn information they couldn’t really learn by Googling and searching on the internet. They wanted to have and observe conversation about weather so that they can learn, too, and who better are you going to learn from but an expert? We had all the top weather expert conversationalists on our site.” –Michelle Schlachta Dealing with climate science denial (17:33): “[When it came to climate change denial at Weather Underground], some of the developers and meteorologists came together to figure out how do we set the stage for other people? Therefore, we could point to that information on the company stance so that when people were trolling or we weren’t sure if they were trolling, we could be like, ‘Look, this is what we think climate change is and climate denial. You know what side we’re on. Depending on which side you’re on, you’re either welcome or not.'” –Michelle Schlachta Communicating change to communities (21:54): “Part of my job was helping the community understand that the people [at YouTube], behind building these products they were using, really did care about [them], they did care what they wanted, and they did want to give them what they wanted while still fulfilling business needs. That’s a pretty delicate, difficult balance.” –Michelle Schlachta   About Michelle Schlachta Michelle Schlachta is the community content manager for Splunk, and has previously worked in community at IBM, Weather Underground, The Weather Company, and Google, YouTube, and CNET. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Michelle Schlachta on LinkedIn Splunk Weather Underground The YouTube Partner Program How Content ID works on YouTube An Update On Our View Counts Why You Need to Find a Work Crew The Splunk blog Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

If you have ever used Google to look up a restaurant you wanted to eat at or to research before visiting someplace new to you, you’ve probably depended on information contributed by a Local Guide. Traci Cappiello is the program manager at Google that makes sure those Local Guides feel engaged and empowered to provide helpful information to the world. With 100 million people who have contributed through the Local Guides initiative, Traci and her 12 member team focus on the one-to-many interactions that happen on Local Guides Connect, the dedicated community space for those contributors. That includes creating online and in-person experiences that reward, uplift, and encourage the Local Guides. Traci shares the team’s approach to this work and some of the checks and balances in place to make sure that all of the content shared by Local Guides is trustworthy and accurate.  Traci and Patrick discuss: How the Local Guides met the challenge of sharing accessibility information on Google The tools and teammates that support the Local Guide community What’s the difference between a Local Guide and just someone posting reviews on Google? Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community and Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community.     Big Quotes What’s the difference between a Local Guide and someone who writes Google reviews? (8:31): Anyone can be a local guide. You don’t have to jump through any hoops. You literally just go to g.co/localguides and sign up for it. If you are already a Google Maps contributor, it will say, ‘Hey, do you want to join the Local Guides Program?’ The difference between a Local Guide designation on a review and a non-local guide is simply that this person has taken the step to say, ‘Hey, I want to be a part of this. I want to be a part of something different.'” –@JumpingTraci The biggest obstacle to contributing as a Local Guide (14:50): “People don’t realize they’re violating our policies until they’ve already violated. Oftentimes, there’ll be folks who aren’t really malicious. There’s a small handful of people that can be malicious, at times at least, … but I really think that for the most part it’s just [a] knowledge [gap].” –@JumpingTraci Tailoring content to Google’s community and needs (32:22): “We encourage people to share original content that is tailored for the platform itself. There’s nothing wrong with excerpting. If you’ve already created a guide to 10 top places to go to in New York City; feel free to paste it over. If the crux of your posts or the intention is to just promote yourself, we’re not here for that.” –@JumpingTraci   About Traci Cappiello Traci Cappiello joined Google in 2012, working on what is now Local Guides, a program for the passionate Google Maps contributors helping the world to find the places worth discovering. Over the years, Traci has gone from managing hyperlocal activities to managing social channels with over one million followers to now focusing on designing delightful community experiences for her fellow Local Guides. Traci’s current focus is engaging, connecting, and empowering this nearly 100 million strong community. She manages the community forum, Local Guides Connect, as well as leading community support operations and Connect Live, the team’s annual event for top community members. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community Traci Cappiello on LinkedIn Traci on Twitter Local Guides Connect Traci’s call to Local Guides to help share accessibility information on Google Meet the Guiding Stars of the Local Guides community Khoros and contractors from Grazitti help power the Local Guides community Connect Live Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

If you were building a community product, how would you start? Who would you choose as your first hire? What efforts would you make to ensure that the product is inclusive, safe, and well-moderated? In this episode of Community Signal, we’re joined by Danielle Maveal to do a deep-dive on audio-first platforms and specifically, Clubhouse. While every platform and community has moderation issues to work through, Clubhouse has made headlines and Twitter rounds for the lax moderation that has brought anti-Semitism, misogyny, and misinformation to the “stage” on the app. In this discussion, Danielle and Patrick discuss how other audio-first platforms have approached trust and safety and what steps they would take to scale the teams, communities, and norms that power them. And while they acknowledge that not every conversation or connection that happens on the platform is bad, they offer a reminder that we can all do something to hold platforms accountable. The members and the content that we allow on our platforms dictate the culture that permeates in our communities. If there’s one thing that Clubhouse proves, it’s that there is still room for platforms that are built with safety and inclusivity in mind from day one.  Danielle and Patrick discuss: The current landscape of audio-first communities How they would scale a team and membership base of a community product Why community guidelines, enforcement, and tools matter from day one Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community and Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community. Big Quotes Community governance influences the culture of our communities (8:05): “I haven’t heard about anyone being removed from [Clubhouse]. I’m sure there have been some, but there’s no transparency. When is someone banned, or when are they muted? What if they are a repeat offender? What happens then? There’s no discussion of that happening publicly so [Clubhouse] feels like a brand new territory for these scammers to go and chat.” –@daniellexo Not all audio-first platforms are terrible (14:55): “[At Clubhouse], I didn’t see a key community or trust and safety hire very early on to set the norms. I’m on two other audio apps with absolutely no problems. [Space and Quilt]. They’re smaller, they’re growing at a smaller rate, but they have key community hires there. The social norms that are being developed are just completely different.” –@daniellexo How do we make people care about trust and safety issues? (17:29): “I’ll have a conversation with someone who is a very reasonable person, and we’ll talk about Clubhouse, and all the issues that have been raised. Then I’ll see them ask for an invite. My mind is blown. We are not learning from lessons of the past. How do we make people care?” –@daniellexo The value that Clubhouse members bring to the stage (24:35): “[Clubhouse] creators who are now put into these moderator and facilitator roles; they’re going to make the founders and investors rich. [Clubhouse] invites are positioned like a gift, but really [users are] creating the experiences that draw in hundreds of listeners, thousands in some cases, and they get absolutely nothing for it.” –@daniellexo Scaling your moderation efforts with your community is a must (34:30): “Being able to shut down a bad thing while it’s happening [on an audio-first platform] is important and if you can’t do that, maybe it’s a clue that you shouldn’t be doing this. … Taking care of a call two days later is not going to be a workable solution to stopping bad things.” –@patrickokeefe Building a community for the long haul, not for short term vitality (38:00): “One thing I would focus on is really keeping the testing pool super small. Trusted people only, no invites, or very few and I would know who’s coming in the door. I wouldn’t be allowing more people in the door until I was ready to be responsive to live reports, so that I can come out very strongly against bad behavior.” –@patrickokeefe About Danielle Maveal Danielle Maveal has 15 years of experience launching, growing, and supporting brand and marketplace communities. She was on the founding team at Etsy and BarkBox and since has worked at Airbnb and Lyft. She’s now moving from building community teams and programs to building community products. Related Links Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Clubhouse Clubhouse on Twitter Danielle Maveal’s website and Substack, Community Feelings Exclusive Social Media App ‘Clubhouse’ Had an Anti-Semitic Meltdown Over Yom Kippur, by Yair Rosenburg Jewish “Control” of the Federal Reserve: A Classic Antisemitic Myth, via ADL “You become hostage to their worldview”: The murky world of moderation on Clubhouse, a playground for the elite, via Vanity Fair Kia Richards, product compliance manager at Square, on Clubhouse’s disinformation problem Taylor Lorenz, journalist at the New York Times, documents Clubhouse’s moderation issues Other audio-first platforms referenced in this show include Airtime, Space, and Quilt Heather Merrick, director of customer support at Airtime, on Community Signal Tracy Chou, CEO at Block Party Wesley Faulkner on Community Signal Ustream Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

There are many different categories of diversity and, as community practitioners, continuously learning about them and questioning our assumptions will only help us build more inclusive communities. In this episode of Community Signal, we’re joined by Wesley Faulkner, a DevRel advocate at Daily, who also advocates for neurodiversity. Wesley and Patrick discuss several ways in which we can build for inclusivity within our products, communities, and teams, all through the lens of specific real-world situations. For example, if we approached writing job descriptions with inclusivity, would terms like “rock star” and “extrovert” still make their way into job descriptions? How can career tracks that account for the different skills and ambitions of the community managers on our teams create more inclusive games, communities, and more? As Wesley says in this conversation, “constraints makes things better. Some people think that if you do accessibility, that you’re restricting the creativity of the medium, but … when you make [things accessible from] the beginning, it actually can make things better for everyone.” Take the example that Wesley shares about sidewalks. When sidewalks were redesigned to include ramps for people that use wheelchairs, this also made it “easier for people who are running and jogging on the sidewalk, people who had strollers, [and] for little kids so they would trip less.” How can designing your community with inclusion in mind aid your community members and colleagues?   Patrick and Wesley discuss: Designing for neurodiverse communities Coaching your community members to be positive contributors Managing community managers with different skills and ambitions Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community and Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community.     Big Quotes Designing your community with accessibility for neurodivergent members in mind (08:27): “In terms of tools [to accommodate neurodivergent people], one easy trick I learned is that if you can navigate the community just with your keyboard, you’re hitting a good 80% to 90% of … use cases in terms of accessibility.” –@wesley83 Accessible communities make for more inclusive communities (12:16): “Constraints makes things better. Some people think that if you do accessibility, that you’re restricting the creativity of the medium, but constraints actually can make things so much more elegant. When you make [things accessible from] the beginning, it actually can make things better for everyone.” –@wesley83 Make the implicit of your community explicit (21:09): “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?” –@wesley83 Codifying what it means to be a positive community contributor (24:02): “Moderation is education. You’re telling people how to be the best member they can be in the community. If you’re going to do that, then you have to codify what that is.” –@patrickokeefe About Wesley Faulkner Wesley Faulkner is a developer advocate for Daily, a 1-click video chat API. He’s previously spent time in developer advocacy or community at IBM, Atlassian, and LiveWorld. Wesley is also the co-host of the Community Pulse podcast, and an advocate for neurodiversity. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community Wesley Faulkner on Twitter Daily Community Pulse podcast Wesley on his journey through DevRel Neurodiversity as defined by Merriam-Webster Cyberpunk 2077 sequences may cause seizures (via Polygon) Americans with Disabilities Act Cindy Au’s tweets about one stereotype and unfortunate job requirement in the community industry The Other Diversity: Neurodiversity (via Maggie McGary) Wesley recommends Brené Brown and the Different Minds podcast Special thanks to Carrie Melissa Jones and Maggie McGary for their input on this episode Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

This episode marks 5 years of Community Signal! If you tune in, you’ll hear Patrick share a thank you for the incredible guests and collaborators that have helped get us here, in addition to the sponsors and Patreon supporters that have generously supported this work. We’re proud to share the stories and learnings of our peers in the community industry and Patrick, Karn, and myself look forward to speaking to more of you! If you ever have feedback on the show or want to suggest a guest, we’d love to hear from you. Please drop us a line, even if it’s just to let us know that you’re listening. Around this time last year, the burgeoning online community behind the American Society of Safety Professionals was beginning to discuss COVID-19. As the pandemic made its way across the globe, Ashleigh Brookshaw, the manager of community engagement at the ASSP, adapted to make sure that the community was positioned as a core part of the society’s online experience. In this discussion, Ashleigh talks us through the launch of ASSP’s online community and how leaders within the ASSP were vital to its construction and launch. By leveraging the experience and insight of the safety professionals that were already members of the society, Ashleigh was able to ensure that the community was easy to use and navigate from a technical perspective and also seeded with content and voices that would welcome a diverse membership. This is a common thread throughout the interview  – the ASSP empowers its leaders and community members to lead much of the programming, discussion, and community moderation. Ashleigh shares the insights and UX considerations that she has implemented to power this community. Patrick and Ashleigh also discuss: How the ASSP is thinking about the future of the safety profession and why DEI is important to that vision Managing a community of safety experts during a pandemic The code of conduct and motivations that encourage community members to keep conversations professional Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community and Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community. Big Quotes COVID-19 has demonstrated the use-case for the ASSP community (4:15): “As you take a look at the maturation rate of community, that first year, year and a half, two years, is in my opinion, very, very critical in order to build the user adoption and behaviors that you want to see for long-term sustained engagement. The good thing about COVID-19, and I always like to try to pull the positive little nuggets where I can, is that our organization has really stepped up in terms of integrating online community more holistically and strategically at the front end, to service our members.” -Ashleigh Brookshaw Community segmentation drives the ASSP user experience (18:47): “[Our community is integrated] with our membership database, which [drives our segmentation]. Every single block on [a given community] page is controlled by [that] member segmentation, which can serve dual purposes. If I’m just a regular member and I’m curious about what this group is doing, I can go take a look. If I’m a member of that group, I’m invited deeper into the conversation.” -Ashleigh Brookshaw But segmentation can sometimes be harmful (22:53): “People sometimes want segmentation in a way that won’t actually work well for the wider organization. They will segment themselves off into a corner and then wonder why no one sees what they post. … Then they wonder, they complain, ‘I posted this [with segmentation that allows me to reach] seven people out of a 7,000 member org, why didn’t I get any replies? Why doesn’t anyone care about me?'” –@patrickokeefe Empowering community-led moderation (35:00): “ASSP, as an organization, has a professional code of conduct. If a member is not acting in accordance with the mission and the vision of that particular group and [not] helping [to] advance the society as a whole, there’s going to be [an] ethics review by that professional code of conduct committee.” -Ashleigh Brookshaw About Ashleigh Brookshaw Ashleigh Brookshaw is an accomplished community strategist, who has worked with both internal and external audiences for a variety of organizations including nonprofits like Chicago Gateway Green, Fortune 500 companies like Allstate Insurance, and professional associations like the American Society of Safety Professionals. She is also the chief innovation officer of C2M Digital, a consulting services firm headquartered in historic downtown Oak Park, IL. Related Links Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Ashleigh Brookshaw on LinkedIn American Society of Safety Professionals It’s my (Carol’s) three year anniversary with Community Signal! Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (1911) Triangle: Remembering The Fire The Higher Logic Super Forum ASSP’s Common Interest Groups ASSP’s Professional Code of Conduct Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

In this episode of Community Signal, Patrick talks to four past guests of the show, Paula Rosenberg, Tim Courtney, Scott Moore, and Daniel Marotta, who are all looking for new full-time career opportunities. We’re hoping that by tapping into the collective power of our listeners, we can help them find their next big thing. We’ve never done this before, and here’s how you can help: First, we hope that you’ll take the time to hear their stories and the work that they’re proud to have been part of. After doing so, if you know someone who has an opportunity that matches with their expertise, please connect with them through LinkedIn or reach out to us, and we’ll gladly make a connection. More than just links to job postings or job boards, we are trying to make direct, helpful connections to people who are hiring where one of these pros would be a great fit. And even if you don’t know someone who is hiring, if you’re willing, we’d love for you to spread the word about this episode.  With each guest, Patrick dives into the following three questions. Have you reflected on these points recently? How would you summarize your experience? What’s an accomplishment from your career that you’re really proud of? What type of job are you looking for, including title, level, department, industry? Where do you think you’ll be happiest? Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community and Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community.   Big Quotes On working across customer success, customer marketing, and community management (3:20): “[Working on different teams that touch community and] trying these different areas out [has allowed me to] see where my passions and my niche really are. … No matter what role [you have], you go on to understand each of those worlds and how those roles work because you’re going to need to collaborate with those different teams no matter what your lane is.” –@NYC_Paula Creating experiences that reward users of all skill levels (11:25): “For every user, whether they succeed or not, we built a program [through LEGO IDEAS] that systematically treated everyone with respect and dignity, and also taught the organization how to systematically handle consumer feedback and consumer input, [in a way] that’s coming from a real place of passion.” –@timcourtney Community management is above all else, about putting people first (18:23) “Of all the lessons I’ve learned, everything that I do, whether it’s community guidelines, whether it’s social design and technology, or whether it’s actually sitting down and talking with community members, it’s always about putting that group of people first.” –@scottmoore Using data to explain the business impact of community (32:05): “We found out that people in the [Penn Foster] community are vested, and they want to do well. They were taking more exams. They weren’t defaulting on their tuition. They were actually paying more month-to-month on their tuition. We’re finding value for the customer, but we’re also solving a business goal, and that’s top line revenue.” –@MassMarotta   About Our Guests Paula Rosenberg has worked in community management, customer success, community events, and customer marketing. Her former employers include Vimeo, VHX, Quirky, and POGO Events. She’s also been a contributor to the WeSupport newsletter since 2016. Tim Courtney is a customer experience, crowdsourcing, and community leader who built the LEGO IDEAS crowdsourcing platform from pilot to over 1 million users. Scott Moore has over 25 years of experience helping organizations large and small build solid and successful, connected communities. This includes Digital Promise Global, Answers.com, Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, Communities.com, and Fujitsu. Daniel Marotta is a community management veteran with over 12 years of experience. You can most often find him fine-tuning content and engagement strategies to continuously improve the customer experience. He previously worked at Penn Foster. Related Links Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community Paula Rosenberg on LinkedIn Paula Rosenberg’s portfolio of published works Paula Rosenberg on Community Signal: How to Transition a Community Team After You Acquire Their Company Tim Courtney on LinkedIn The LEGO IDEAS community Tim Courtney on Community Signal: LEGO IDEAS and the Building Blocks of a Successful Crowdsourcing Community Scott Moore on LinkedIn Scott Moore on Twitter Scott Moore on Community Signal: Threats to Section 230 Threaten the Very Existence of Our Communities, Threats to Section 230 Should Unleash the Political Power of Community Professionals, Facebook Doesn’t Protect Black Children, But They Did Add “Community” to Their Mission Statement, So…, Ending the Millennial Conversation, Customer Experience Insurance and Other Short Stories, Retaining Talented Community Pros and What Makes a Great Boss? (3 Years of Community Signal), and Learning from Theme Park Design Daniel Marotta on LinkedIn Daniel Marotta on Community Signal: Students Who Use the Community Pass More Exams – and Pay More Tuition Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

As classrooms have gone virtual and people are spending more time online, Duolingo has seen an influx of students and educators on their platform. Luckily, Duolingo has a structured ambassador program to help those new users find their way and achieve their language learning and teaching goals. Kevin Reaves, a community support specialist at Duolingo, talks extensively about who these ambassadors are, what motivates them, and how they exhibit ownership in areas from forum moderation to event management, course creation, and more. Their program has thousands of volunteer ambassadors and with that, quality assurance protocols to ensure that everyone is advancing Duolingo’s mission of bringing free language education to the world. Patrick and Kevin discuss: The structure of Duolingo’s ambassador program How Duolingo empowers and rewards superusers Ensuring quality in community-authored courses Their “dream” community features and tools Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsors: Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community and Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community. Big Quotes Rewarding power users with insider features (7:48): “Some people have 900+ day streaks, 2,000 day streaks [on Duolingo]. Those people are amazing. They really put forth the effort to learn. We try to reward that as much as we can [with special extras].” –@Ksquall1 Language learning brings families closer (11:43): “We have warm stories [from the Duolingp community]. ‘I can now communicate with my grandma using her native language.’ … It really goes to show a lot of what language learning as a whole can do for people.” –@Ksquall1 Course health as an indicator for community health (25:47): “[We want] at least 90% of our courses [to be] active at any given time. If we notice that a course is inactive… we check in with the team and say, ‘Are there any blockers? … Is there something that we can do to help in the building of this course?’” –@Ksquall1 Taking care of yourself as a volunteer or community professional (44:15): “The impact of seeing [self-harm and] abuse, it can wear on the body a bit. It can wear on you emotionally, and that’s why it’s important to take that break, get yourself a drink of water, walk around a bit … lean on each other and give each other advice, because [that] goes a long way.” –@Ksquall1 About Kevin Reaves Kevin Reaves has been working in community management for 7 years and, since late 2017, he’s been a contractor at Duolingo as a community support specialist. Previously, he spent time at Space Ape Games, Enthusiast Gaming, and The Huffington Post. Related Links Sponsor: Localist, plan, promote, and measure events for your community Sponsor: Vanilla, a one-stop-shop for online community Kevin Reaves on LinkedIn Duolingo Duolingo’s Global Ambassador program Trump will lose special Twitter protections in January (via Reuters) Duolingo Incubator How Community Software Can Use Forensic Science to Identify Bad Members Censor Block and the Most Efficient Use of Your Forums’ Word Censor Feature Sarah Hawk, VP of Community at Discourse on Community Signal Paul Bradley, manager of strategic services at Higher Logic, on Community Signal Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.