This week in community building — Issue 79

Equitable community software

By Ben Werdmüller

We need to move from a source-code-centric model for free software, to a community-centric model that shares ownership of both the software and the process used to build the software with everyone involved, from (yes) the coders and designers, to the people the software is being built for, to research subjects and the communities touched by it.

On Being Known

By Ava

Of course, even if you don’t want to be online at all—even if you want to share as little of yourself as possible—you can’t escape the mortification of being known. It’s only by risking something important that we can produce good work and form meaningful relationships. The possibility of judgment is the price we pay for real love.

✍️ More articles

• 200+ Community-Driven Founder Resources Guide — Lolita Taub
• Scaling community efforts at Webflow — Build With Users
• What's On Deck for On Deck? — Erik Torenberg
• Orbit Community OS — Shiny Object Social Club
• Growing ContentUK #1 — Christina Pashialis
• Helping mental-wellbeing creators find their 100 true fans — Tom Gab
• Whom do we lose? The case of dissimilarity in personal networks — Science Direct
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Online Communities — Shondaland
• Custodians of the internet — Tarleton Gillepsie (Google Books) 📖

🗞 News

• Bevy raises $40 million in Series C funding.
• Zoom Wants You to Zoom Even When Using Other Companies’ Apps — Wall Street Journal
• Why Microsoft Wants Discord — The Verge
• Twitter is working on a community page 👀
• Chaos at Reddit as dozens of subreddits made private in protest at site — Metro

🎧 Podcasts

• Ep. 02 - Building Dev.To and Forem with Peter Frank — Community Led
• Episode 052 - Community Manager Positions and Who Owns Digital Self-Help Customer Experience? — Peers Over Beers
• Successful Open Source Communities With Ian Tien — Technically True

🐦 Twitter