A tactical guide to kickstarting a community

> At the start, having just two channels was fantastic. First, it reduced the community ghost town effect by concentrating all activity into those two places.

I'm surprised to hear people keep re-learning this lesson. Back when web forums were popular, this was basically the one big mistake I kept seeing people make. Way too much compartmentalization.

> After [being shown a project in private] a few times, I proposed a new channel: [...] We didn’t try to force the community’s hand.

I think this could and should be generalized into "Avoid surprises". Communities generally do not react well to change with no announcement. Even if you know that a measure is strictly necessary (e.g. because your platform provider changed its terms of service in an impactful way), first give a heads up before you make a change. It goes a long way for public opinion. It's tempting not to, especially as time goes on and you feel like you have people's trust, but it's essential to ask first wherever possible.

Re: A tactical guide to kickstarting a community

#6

Post by neatze » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 7:52 PM UTC

someproduct wrote: post #2

Author of the post here. Happy to answer any questions!

Thanks for article, really helpful read.

When slack was created how many users joined on the first day, what was total number of users in ~3 month ?

Re: A tactical guide to kickstarting a community

#7

Post by tinkertamper » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 7:58 PM UTC

rdpintqogeogsaa wrote: post #5

Lovely post that matches many of my experiences (admittedly with communities not directly related to a product). A few notes of my own: > At the start, having just two channels was fantastic. First, it reduced the community ghost town effect by concentrating all activity into those two places. I'm surprised to hear people keep re-learning this lesson. Back when web forums were popular, this was basically the one big…

> I'm surprised to hear people keep re-learning this lesson. Back when web forums were popular, this was basically the one big mistake I kept seeing people make. Way too much compartmentalization.

Ahh yes, the “General” section of phpBB. To be fair though a whole generation as come online since then, that never had an opportunity to learn for themselves yet. The internet itself moving away from small niche sites/forums to subreddits/groups/categories under big monoliths.

Re: A tactical guide to kickstarting a community

#8

Post by someproduct » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 8:25 PM UTC

rdpintqogeogsaa wrote: post #5

Lovely post that matches many of my experiences (admittedly with communities not directly related to a product). A few notes of my own: > At the start, having just two channels was fantastic. First, it reduced the community ghost town effect by concentrating all activity into those two places. I'm surprised to hear people keep re-learning this lesson. Back when web forums were popular, this was basically the one big…

> I think this could and should be generalized into "Avoid surprises"

Great way of putting it. When we were considering moving our community from Slack to Discord[1], we actually did a Request for Comment[2] laying-out our rationale, and asked for comments on the doc. I think this went a long way towards building trust and buy-in around big community decisions.

1. https://orbit.love/blog/how-to-migrate-a-community-from-slac...

2. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PFHhZyyYmiIHNufYpS6fX7gU...

Re: A tactical guide to kickstarting a community

#9

Post by someproduct » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 8:49 PM UTC

neatze wrote: post #6

someproduct wrote: post #2

Author of the post here. Happy to answer any questions!

Thanks for article, really helpful read. When slack was created how many users joined on the first day, what was total number of users in ~3 month ?

First day? Maybe 5 people we harangued into joining?

As for the first three months, it depends on when we start counting (I'd say May represented the first month we actually started working on community deliberately), but had 59 by end of July.

You can see the growth curve here: https://res.cloudinary.com/dzello/image/upload/v1615409348/s...

Re: A tactical guide to kickstarting a community

#10

Post by neatze » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 10:21 PM UTC

someproduct wrote: post #9

neatze wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for article, really helpful read. When slack was created how many users joined on the first day, what was total number of users in ~3 month ?

First day? Maybe 5 people we harangued into joining? As for the first three months, it depends on when we start counting (I'd say May represented the first month we actually started working on community deliberately), but had 59 by end of July. You can see the growth curve here: https://res.cloudinary.com/dzello/image/upload/v1615409348/s...

This is exactly what I was looking for as reference point, thank you!