Hey, you! I have a thought that I’m itching to talk to you about: I’m very, very curious to find out whether we can start and sustain a community of kind, caring, wonderfully curious people who can hang out as much or as little as they want, whenever they want.
You might be wondering, why start a community now? We currently have 160 subscribers, an average 40% open rate on each email, and a handful of paying subs (like you!). The stats are nice, but I still feel somewhat lonely. And despite some people leaving public comments, I still feel like there’s a sense of performing an identity in that space. What I think is lacking is a private space for closed-door, intimate, truthful, no-bullshit discussions among people who feel comfortable with one another despite coming from very different backgrounds.
I’m thinking specifically of these scenarios where one would turn to this community:
You read/watched/heard something (not just stuff I publish via Substack) and want to discuss it with a group of like-minded people → post to the community
You’re frustrated or down because something happened and you prefer to talk to someone other than your family or friends → post your thoughts/feelings to the community (we’ll be a special class of friends)
You’re bored and want to engage in something meaningful (not Netflix or Reddit front page) → check the community
You want to start a new project and want some general feedback from people who are likely to share your interest → post to the community and ask
You want help or advice on something → ask the community
You have something you’d like to ask me informally or for me to write about formally → post to the community and people (including me) can chime in with their thoughts
etc.!
And these are the constraints I’m thinking to impose at the start:
Only paying subscribers can access the community. My hypothesis is that this puts up a barrier to entry and keeps the quality of people and topics high.
I’ll be the sole moderator for a while, which means that while we’ll shape the rules of engagement together, I’ll have the final say on what is a rule, who should be banned, etc. (I need this to be the case so this community is sustainable in terms of effort. In the future maybe we can have elected moderators, but I’m getting ahead of myself!)
In a way, this thread hosted on Substack is already a platform on which we could build our community, but I don’t particularly like how rigid it feels (I need to post something, set the topic, then we discuss it, for example; you cannot, as a paying subscriber, start a thread that you want).
So, I’d love to hear from you on these points:
What do you think? Can you see yourself engaging in a community moderated by me? If not, why?
Which community tools do you know and love most? Discord is one, Slack is another, even WhatsApp is possible. I’m leaning towards one among that list but IMHO it is not very good, so I’d love to learn about others.
Do you have any experiences participating in or starting/leading online communities that you could share? What made them great or terrible?
Anything else? (I’m all ears, as usual!)
As a final note, this thread is only readable and reply-able to by paying subscribers, and we currently only have a small handful of us. So I’m risking feeling very lonely if you don’t leave a comment, but please, you do you! You can either reply privately to me as an email reply, or leave a comment that is only readable by other paying subscribers:
Honestly, I would love to part of any community that you are in. If I get to be the one running an online community that you are part of, I would be not just honoured but excited about the future. So far, I’ve not found an online community that I feel that I belong. Starting one is my attempt at solving this problem.
Heads up: I am scheduling this thread to be visible to everyone in 14 days’ time so that free subscribers who might be interested in joining this hypothetical community know that this is actually in the works.
Honestly speaking, I have no intention to join any community but had to join a few to get information on course work or things I do. I have seen quite a number of groups using discord and Rocket recently started shifting from Slack to Discord as well.
Honesty is appreciated Wei Yu! :) What is it about online communities that doesn't speak to you? For me, it's the fact that it takes quite a lot of effort to feel a connection and then even more to maintain it, so I also honestly don't participate in any actively
Understood! Don't you find it hard to have people you could meet in-person to chat about certain topics that don't naturally fit the current interests of your friends? For me that's the main problem with real communities - I don't know people in real life who are interested in the thing I'm interested in (which changes over time too, making it even harder).
True, it's hard to find the time and the right person chat about certain topics. It's likely that certain topics only fit certain group of friends and some fit other groups. I feel that if we can find a few friends that cliques with us on some parts is already a bonus. It is close to impossible to find a friend that shares 100% of what you are interested in, not even twins share the same interest. You do know someone in real life who is interested in the thing you are interested in: Your wife!
True, it's a blessing if we already have a few friends whom we feel comfortable with and can chat about a range of things in general. Oh but my wife doesn't care about personal knowledge management or writing, to name a few things that I'm very interested in!
Honestly speaking, I have no intention to join any community but had to join a few to get information on course work or things I do. I have seen quite a number of groups using discord and Rocket recently started shifting from Slack to Discord as well.
Honesty is appreciated Wei Yu! :) What is it about online communities that doesn't speak to you? For me, it's the fact that it takes quite a lot of effort to feel a connection and then even more to maintain it, so I also honestly don't participate in any actively
My reason is the same as yours and I would rather meet in person to chat.
Understood! Don't you find it hard to have people you could meet in-person to chat about certain topics that don't naturally fit the current interests of your friends? For me that's the main problem with real communities - I don't know people in real life who are interested in the thing I'm interested in (which changes over time too, making it even harder).
True, it's hard to find the time and the right person chat about certain topics. It's likely that certain topics only fit certain group of friends and some fit other groups. I feel that if we can find a few friends that cliques with us on some parts is already a bonus. It is close to impossible to find a friend that shares 100% of what you are interested in, not even twins share the same interest. You do know someone in real life who is interested in the thing you are interested in: Your wife!
True, it's a blessing if we already have a few friends whom we feel comfortable with and can chat about a range of things in general. Oh but my wife doesn't care about personal knowledge management or writing, to name a few things that I'm very interested in!
Well, at least she's interested in Campervan trips! 😁