Communities, and how to run one that lasts
How to find a community worth joining, what the three privacy settings actually mean, and - if you start one - the four things that decide whether it is still alive in six months.
What you will learn
- How to find communities that are actually active, before you join
- What Public, Private and Hidden change about who can find you
- How to set one up so the right people join and the wrong ones do not
- What each role can do, and who you should make a moderator
What a community is for#
A community is a room with a subject. The main feed is everyone talking about everything; a community is the people who care about one thing, with their own posts, their own rules and their own moderators. If you have ever watched a WhatsApp group with four hundred people in it stop being useful, this is the shape that fixes it.
Finding one worth joining#
Search by name or topic, or browse by category. Before you join, the things worth looking at are on the community page itself.
- Member count tells you the size; post frequency tells you whether anyone is still here
- Top contributors show you whether it is a conversation or one person broadcasting
- The rules are published before you join, so you know what the room is for
- Some communities ask you a question or two before letting you in - answer them properly, a moderator reads them
Tip
A community with 2,000 members and four posts a month is worse than one with 60 members and four posts a week. Look at the activity, not the headcount.
The three privacy settings#
You choose this when you create the community, and it decides two separate things: who can find it, and how someone gets in.
| Setting | Who can find it | How you get in |
|---|---|---|
| Public | Anyone, through search | Join instantly, no approval |
| Private | Anyone, through search - they can see it exists and what it is about, but not the posts | Ask to join; a moderator approves or declines |
| Hidden | Nobody. It does not appear in search at all | Only through an invite link |
Good to know
Communities are free. There is no paid tier and no paywalled community - the paid side of the platform is event ticketing, which is a different thing entirely.
Channels: the thing that makes it scale#
A community can be split into channels, the way you would split a Slack workspace. One channel for introductions, one for jobs, one for the thing everyone actually argues about. Each has its own feed, and you can reorder them so the important one is at the top.
- Post into a specific channel rather than one undifferentiated stream
- People follow the channels they care about and skip the rest
- Reorder them as the community changes - the order is not fixed at creation
Do not start with eight channels
A new community with eight empty channels looks abandoned. Start with one, and add a channel when a topic is genuinely crowding out the others - which is a good problem and you will notice it happening.
Deciding who gets in#
Two tools, and they solve different problems. Both are set in the community's settings.
- Join questions - one or more questions someone answers before a moderator sees their request. The single most effective filter there is: people who will not answer a question will not post either
- Membership rules - the conditions you set for who belongs here
- Written rules - published on the community page, so a moderator removing a post can point at the line it broke instead of arguing
- Invite links - for bringing in people directly, and the only way into a Hidden community
The four roles#
Roles stack: every admin can do what a moderator can, every moderator can do what a member can.
| Role | What it can do |
|---|---|
| Owner | Everything, plus transfer the community to somebody else or delete it. There is one. |
| Admin | Manage members, moderate posts, change settings and channels. |
| Moderator | Work the approval queue, handle reports, remove posts, ban members. |
| Member | Post, comment, take part. |
Appoint a moderator before you need one
The moment a community needs moderation is never a moment you have time to go and set it up. Two moderators in different timezones is the usual advice, and it is right.
Moderating it#
Nothing here is automatic - a person reviews things, and the record of what they did is kept. That is deliberate: an automated filter that removes the wrong post loses you a member and you never find out why.
- A moderation queue holding posts waiting on approval, if you have turned approval on
- Reported posts, with what was done about each one
- Act on several at once rather than one at a time when something floods in
- Ban a member, with a ban log recording who and when
- An activity log covering everything moderators have done
Knowing whether it is working#
Five things are measured, and they answer different questions. Growth tells you whether people are arriving; retention tells you whether they stay, which is the one that actually matters.
- Growth - members joining over time
- Retention - how many are still here a month later
- Engagement - how much of the community is taking part rather than reading
- Contributors - who is carrying it, and whether that is one person
- Content - what is being posted, and how often
Tip
If contributors shows two or three names doing everything, the community is those people rather than a community, and it ends when they get busy. That is the number to watch first.
