Community Curation

For those who do not know me, I am Naomi and my pronouns are she/her. I am a Developer Experience Engineer at Deepgram, with a heavy focus on community tooling and infrastructure, and the Community Manager at freeCodeCamp. I have a strong background in community building and community management. This post explains how you can build an inclusive and welcoming community for all of your users.

Why Is Creating Inclusive Online Spaces So Important?

People of marginalised identities continue to face discrimination in professional environments, both online and in person. These barriers increase the friction they encounter when trying to succeed in our industry. By creating safe spaces for people regardless of their identity, we can help remove some of those barriers and build a healthier culture.

Online platforms such as Discord or Reddit also offer a certain level of pseudo-anonymity. This means that a medium like a Discord server can provide a space where people can safely explore their identity. The encouraging community at TweetShift helped me find my own identity and determine my path toward happiness in life.

The impact that the LGBT community has on our industry is often understated. Roughly 3% of our industry's workforce actively identify as LGBT, but 46% of the people who would identify as LGBT do not feel safe to do so. This means that the figure could be as high as 6%. By cultivating inclusive and public tech spaces, we open doors for the future generation of developers. LGBT people who are looking for mentors or role models "like themselves" can find those people and engage with them in a safe community.

How Can I Create an Inclusive Community?

There are several things you can do.

The first example is specific to Discord. You can provide pronoun roles that members select to state how they wish to be addressed. There are two key components to this. First, in every community I run, I make these roles mandatory. This removes the assumption that only LGBT people would select pronouns. When this is the standard for everyone, people are no longer "outing themselves" just for selecting a role. Second, it is important to provide a decent range of options. Too often, I see roles limited to "she/her", "he/him", and "they/them". As the LGBT community grows, we continue to see people using pronouns such as "it/its", or neopronouns such as "fae/faer" or "ze/zyr". Offering roles to cover your community's less common pronouns creates a more welcoming space. For people who use neopronouns that you do not have a role for, an "ask my pronouns" or "I use neopronouns" role can help.

Your next task is to create community policies, such as a Code of Conduct, that specifically enforce an inclusive environment. For example, my community's Code of Conduct includes wording that prohibits challenging or questioning someone's identity (such as "those aren't real pronouns"), and prohibits debates about the rights of marginalised communities (such as "trans people don't need to use the restroom they identify with"). If you are interested, I can help you write your own Code of Conduct.

These policies are meaningless if they are not enforced. When you enforce them, you must be aware of how your enforcement decision might appear to the community. For example, if someone uses a slur, then tries to justify it as "I was just joking", it may seem tempting to let them off with a warning. In such a case, I would immediately ban the user from the community. This sets the precedent for the other members that toxic behaviour will not be tolerated, even as a "joke".

You also need to be aware of your own language choices. As a community leader, you need to set the example for the rest of your members. Important considerations include being aware of people's pronouns, avoiding language like "cr*zy" that might seem acceptable but has a history of being used to harm people, and carrying yourself in a way that demonstrates how you want your members to interact. You may also want to avoid phrases like "Hey guys", which implicitly assume that "male" is the default gender.

Finally, space must be made for people who are uninformed rather than bigoted. Someone who comes in and comments that trans people should not have bathroom access is bigoted. Someone who comes in and asks why the bathroom legislation seems like "such a big deal" might be uninformed. Creating a space where people can ask questions and become educated will empower them to become positive allies, or even discover their own identity.

How Does This Help My Business or Organisation?

One of the biggest benefits of curating these communities is that you can avoid negative optics. For example, consider Hyprland. For those who are not familiar, Hyprland is a window manager for Linux that gained considerable popularity for the feature set it offers.

However, the community around this application has a very bad history of bigotry and harassment of marginalised people.

The negative optics became so bad that the Arch Linux Discord community had to explicitly ban discussions about the controversy. Every time Hyprland was mentioned, it turned into "YOU USE THAT? DO YOU HATE LGBT PEOPLE??". This is not a phrase you want people to use when describing your organisation.

On the other hand, you can also gain positive word of mouth advertising. Members of marginalised identities who feel safe in your community are much more likely to become evangelists. A queer person who has a better experience with your community than with a competitor's community, as an example, will tend to recommend your products first, because they felt safe in your space. They may do so even if your product seems inferior to the competitor's to them.

This can also lead to new talent for your teams. When marginalised people feel safe in your public communities, the impression can be created that your internal spaces and teams are also safe. This means that LGBT people might be more likely to apply to work for you when you have a healthier community.

All of these create opportunities for revenue. Whether you are driving sales and conversions by providing comfortable opportunities for users to explore your product, or capturing new talent that other companies might miss out on, you can use your community health to create growth for your organisation.

Who Can Help With This?

First, your community leaders are the most important champions here. When your leaders conduct themselves in a way that embodies the inclusive environment you want for your community, you set the standard for engagement which your community members will follow.

Your community members can also help. By following the guidelines you have established and ensuring their behaviour is in line with those guidelines, they can contribute to the well-being of the community. It does not stop there. When a community is truly successful at inclusion, members will help inform each other about opportunities to improve and grow.

Everyone can help with this. Even people who are not actively part of your community can still be valuable sources of information and opportunities for growth.

This brings me to my final point:

Always Keep an Open Mind

None of us will have all of the answers. That is simply impossible. Even as someone who lives these experiences daily, I do not have all of the answers. It is important that we allow ourselves the space to be wrong, the opportunity to improve, and the ability to handle our missteps with grace.

I look forward to seeing the positive impact you will have on your communities. If you have any questions or would like to schedule some time to explore this further, please reach out in our Discord. Thank you for your time, and happy Pride.