Open thread: nurturing an online Discourse community

General
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(Misleading title, since all Discourse topics are “open threads”. Meant to suggest the spirit of open threads found on Substack and elsewhere, invitations for one and all to chime in on the subject at hand.)

In “Communities are not fungible” @joanwestenberg points out ways in which healthy communities, online and otherwise, can be damaged by actions taken without regard to what makes the community cohere. Here I’m proposing an open thread on the opposite: what actions can we take to nurture the coherence that transforms a group of people gathered by a common interest into a thriving community. Specifically, this forum, its members gathered by a strong interest in (some aspect of) Joan’s thinking and writing but otherwise diverse.

I have a few scattered ideas about how to approach that, along with some past experiences successful and otherwise with trying. Rather than writing them down in one long post, I will add them as replies to this topic, a few right away, others as they occur to me. My intent is to provide lots of easy opportunities for others to chime in with their own wisdom on sub-topics as they come up, or introduce new ones.

I’ll start by saying that, whatever approach emerges, I hope that it allows us to stay loosely joined as a whole while permitting stronger bonds to grow in subgroups. That is, some of will have things in common beyond the one that drew us all together, informal groups may coalesce around those things, begin to thrive, raise the noise level, clog the feeds with material of little or no interest to those outside the group.

Could be heartening — wow, look at how much life there is in this community — could be annoying — can’t believe how much chaff I have to sift through these days to find something nourishing.

The good news is that Discourse was built with difficulties like this in mind and has several tools for managing them. But even more fundamental than those is a choice we each have: engage, or ignore. As posting activity here increases — I hope! — I plan to adopt a tolerant attitude to things I don’t like, glancing at what doesn’t engage me to see if I might be wrongly dismissive, ignoring the rest. Discourse has features which can help that, and I’ll publicize them in good time.

Note: this is @joanwestenberg’s forum — her place, her rules. If any of my proposals clash with how she thinks things should proceed, I’ll gladly withdraw them.

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I’m a member of a few attempts such as this, and by and large most … fail. I hate to say that, because it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it’s been my experience.

That said, a couple of characteristics I’ve seen that stack the deck in favor of lasting a while:

  • Participation by the owner. I don’t mean to pressure @joanwestenberg , this is simply an observation. Communities set up by a person/personality stand a MUCH better chance of thriving if that person actually drops in and participates from time to time. I think it’s in part some kind of expectation of access behind the group’s existence. Doesn’t have to be often, but it does need to be meaningful. Almost all groups where the owner has faded away have themselves lapsed into inactivity.
  • Members that happen to click with one another. This is completely random, and not something that can be created. I’m a member of at least one Discord group where the owner hasn’t been seen in maybe a year? And yet individuals in at least one subgroup have become almost family. Sharing not just on topics associated with the owner, but sharing their lives, trials, and tribulations. In some groups, it might be considered over-sharing, but here it’s fostered a close community.
  • Simplicity. The most successful groups I’ve seen are single threads of conversational-style posts. My post here would not qualify, as it’s WAY too long and certainly not conversational.

Those are the biggies I’ve seen. Again, to clarify, I’m not proposing any of them, just reporting what I’ve observed elsewhere.

-Leo

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I have participated in online communities over the years. Members gathered because of their interest in The Thing, and the natural topic of conversation was The Thing.

The ones I liked the least were the ones who insisted that all talk center around The Thing, and quashed anything that (in their opinion, anyway) ventured away from The Thing.

Meanwhile, I often found that my most interesting exchanges were on non-Thing topics. Somehow our mutual interest in The Thing assured me that we could communicate more deeply than usual, and it was exciting when two of us found other Things that might not have interested the whole community but definitely interested us. So in tightly policed communities I’m always wondering: what other interesting things could I discuss with you interesting people, if only it were culturally acceptable?

On the other hand, I appreciate the value of anchoring discussions in The Thing, especially in the early days, since it assures common ground with the others. After all, it’s not reasonable to expect others to give weight to what I say, or even a hearing, just because I happen to be here. Believe me, I’ve been on the receiving end of that expectation, often not happily. I’m glad for others to be as wary as they like for as long as they like before engaging with me, perhaps indefinitely.

Is there some middle ground? I’ve tried to find one in many of my posts by starting from a hook I find in a @joanwestenberg newsletter or someone else’s post. And by “hook” I mean a point which I can not dispute or agree with but address tangentially, a point that inspires further thinking of my own, resulting in a post that builds on ideas in the original without directly engaging it. The idea (hope?) is that the reader will be interested in the tangent I introduce because it is grounded in something that interested them, and that the tangent will also expand the scope of the discussion — or at least be a worthwhile rabbit trail.

Short version: I’m hoping that you interesting folks will begin to post on what else interests you besides The Thing. If it makes you nervous to post something totally unrelated, a good place to start is some non-central point of a @joanwestenberg essay or some other topic, i.e. “That makes me think of ….”

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A community is held together by social ties, not a common interest. The common interest pulls people in, but the social ties keep them coming back. (IMO)

I think the structures (keywords, categories, rules, conventions) will grow organically.

If I’m a new subscriber, and I’m interested in Joan’s recent post, and I come here and everyone’s talking about Fred’s new coffee maker, then I’m not offended or frustrated, I’m just bored. I might not come back.

So I would recommend that we make sure there is enough guidance on the top-level topic list that new people can find discussion of “The Thing” in a clear place. But other topics won’t get in the way if they’re clearly labeled. Like “social chat” or “water cooler” or something.

If we feel we’re big enough to benefit from some strucure, then I think the above might be a good way to start.

I think having us make clearly identifiable topics based on Joan’s posting would be a good start. It will make sure that new people feel welcome and they know where to post their comments.

P.S. I’m digging “The Thing” as a phrase representing our initiating theme. :slight_smile: Thanks @scout !

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Not trying to pick apart your post here, just that you make so many good points I want to be sure and note them all. Or, who knows, maybe this is a good way to do this kind of discussion.

True! I’ve seen it myself, been part of several. I don’t have any solutions, but like you I’ve noticed things that make failure very likely, and I wonder what if anything we can throw at the problem beyond good will and high hopes.

Isolating a thought from the larger one you’e about to introduce: activity is crucial. It’s not unreasonable for a new member of the community to hold back, watching to see what is going on, how things are done here. If nothing is going on … well. So it takes one or more members willing to speak into the void repeatedly to get the ball rolling. The danger? Willingness to speak doesn’t necessarily correlate with embodying the (a?) cohering principle. Those who post early and often can easily hijack the forum (which dies as soon as the rest see it has drifted far from their interests and move on).

All true. But I’d like to offer the (possibly vain) hope that, even as nothing more than a group of people who like Joan’s writing enough to sign up for her newsletter, we probably have enough in common to make for some interesting conversations even if Joan isn’t participating. If I showed up for a lecture but the speaker didn’t, I would be delighted if the organizer said “Please talk amongst yourselves”, I know the talk would probably be good.

This is what I’m talking about! We’re all here, but it isn’t clear yet how we can conduct ourselves enjoyably, there aren’t guidelines and not yet enough activity to model our own after (or judge that this isn’t the place for us). One way to possibly get past that is to look for ways to talk.

I’ve posted a lot during the past month, not to put myself front and center but just to offer others things they might respond to, or to inspire them to go on their own posting binge. I’ve posted in many different forms in hopes that one or another approach resonates with someone and draws them in. I have limited myself (hard to believe!) to roughly one substantial post per day because I don’t want to dominate, hate seeing my face on the first N posts in the queue. As activity picks up I will gladly drop back, make lots of room for others.

What I like about Discourse is that it supports many different styles of posting — not always explicitly, but the platform usually makes it easy for you to do it how you think best, long form or conversational style or fisking or heavy linking or whatever.

I am constantly reminding myself: there’s more than one way to do this. In fact, I use several styles — and I avoid several others, though just out of personal preference. Just because I like, say, long form posts shouldn’t inhibit you from posting aphoristically, or Deep Thought-like, or conversationally. I know that newcomers are likely to look at the forum, judge the lay of the land from whatever they first encounter, decide whether the reigning style(s) are a good fit for them. I want to say to them: you do you! Maybe I’ll want to read you, maybe I won’t — but someone else might. And vice versa.

Let a thousand flowers bloom!

(I see now that I pressed the wrong Reply button, I meant this to be a reply to @LeoNot’s post, not the topic itself. Oops!)

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Again, not trying to pick apart your post, just trying to respond to all the good points. And, again, maybe this is the right format for that.

Exactly. The common interest by itself is only enough to make me a lurker — I’ve already read the newsletter, and I’m interested in reading responses to what Joan wrote, at least until I decide whether the average response furthers my understanding enough to be worth my time. And — this is just me, an old person — I can appreciate and learn from a vigorous debate but no longer enjoy participating in one.

This is very good. I think categories will be a key Discourse feature for sorting this problem out. Not to say that I have any idea yet what proper categories would be, having not even thought about it. One thing I notice is that a lot of my “tangential” posts fall somewhere between being “The Thing” and “water cooler”, though I don’t know what third category would point to the difference.

As I understand Discourse, most of what can be done there requires admin privileges. Probably for now the best thing to do is to talk about how we would rearrange things if we had admin privileges, then decide whether it’s worth asking Joan to grant them to one or some of us. (She could do it herself, but it’s a big ask of a busy person, so maybe better to establish a framework and some trusted minions instead.)

Very good point. I’m always wishing that there was some technical solution that would allow me to just push a button, and forgetting that there is usually a clever way to communicate my intentions with the tools as they currently stand. Text is a powerful thing!

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The issue to me is not what the platform supports, but what the participants are drawn to. IMO (and in my experience) shorter/concise posts tend to be more engaging than longer missives.

My reaction is exactly the opposite, I’m afraid. If I came with the expectation I’d be hearing from a specific speaker, and that speaker didn’t show up, I’d probably walk. (To clarify, not saying that’s happening here, just that it’s all about the expectation.)

-Leo

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@cquenelle describes what I called The Thing, i.e. what brought us members together, as the “initiating theme”. Helpful! In that vein, maybe as we discuss what The Thing should be we should mix in the tagline @joanwestenberg assigned to the community, “Where Builders Come to Think”. I like the second part, assuming it covers both “think aloud” and “think together”.

I wasn’t sure about the first part, “Builders”. Am I a builder? Not anymore, if I ever was. But I like hanging out with builders and listening to them think aloud and together, so maybe that’s enough?

Then I realized that although “builder” may not be how I see myself, there’s lots of evidence that I have a builder’s mindset. I programmed for a living for twenty years, in research labs and for corporations. I published books and built an online bookstore and tried my hand at farming and helped someone else build a music teaching business. And I wrote, wrote, wrote, nothing more ambitious than long blog pieces but all the while I studied the art of constructing a written piece.

So maybe my contribution will be to talk about things that aren’t necessarily about building but just viewed from a (former) builder’s perspective, things I think other builders might be interested in.

Anyway, that is tangential but still touches on an important question: what is The Thing, the initiating theme, we should center our writing on?

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I won’t dispute that, just note that there is a smaller but still real audience for longer posts, and some people (including me) enjoy writing them, at least sometimes. Looking at @joanwestenberg’s newsletters, I see them regularly ranging between three and fifteen minute reads, occasionally one, occasionally more than twenty. If the current one doesn’t work for you, it’s like dealing with the weather in Texas — just wait a bit, something quite different will be along soon.

Fair! But would you be bothered if after the organizer said “Please talk amongst yourselves” some left while others stayed and talked? I expect that if this was a regular occurrence, the ones who were inclined to leave would eventually not come back. But if it were occasional it might be tolerable. And if the word went out beforehand that a speaker had cancelled but fans were still welcome to come and talk amongst themselves, it might be acceptable to people with either inclination.

I agree that variation risks alienating some of your audience some of the time. Bad choices could alienate most members most of the time, and the community is toast. One solution is to limit choices to good ones, in this case those that serve the widest audience. Another is to allow a broader range of choices but do what you can to mitigate the annoyance of those who find a particular choice bad — maybe create corners where folks who like the choice can go off and talk without bothering others.

I’ve been to many conferences where I felt like the best, most productive time was spent in hallway conversations, between or even during talks happening inside. But I would probably not go to a conference where none of the talks were attended because everyone was in the hallways. I might end up enjoying one if I happened to find myself there, but I wouldn’t make the effort to go — I like talks even better than hallway conversations, reserving those mostly for spots in the schedule where no particular talk interests me.

So I think I take your larger point. New members will take a look around, the activity they see will represent the core ethic that binds the community, and based on that they will decide how much if any time to invest in integrating themselves into the group. Congeniality occurs on many levels, and if enough of what they see is out of sync with a newcomer’s preferences — short or long posts, concise or meandering, telegraphic or wordy, casual or crafted, on point or tangential, disputatious or questioning, closely centered on the initiating theme or loosely connected or totally independent but still interesting (to someone, somewhere) — a newcomer will likely become erstwhile.

I have no good solution to propose, just a hope that the eventual community will be maximally welcoming, and that at least some of us will put some effort into making that happen. I like @cquenelle’s suggestions about imposing a bit of organization so that newcomers can get some sense of which areas might interest them and which likely won’t fit with their preferences.

Discourse categories are one way to make this happen. Right now everything is posted under General, because the rest are either admin related (e.g. Blog Feedback) or spots for different sorts of Joan content (e.g. YouTube, Next Book). Probably we need a Joan-related supercategory (all categories in this group are focused on what Joan has written or said) populated by categories that divide up the different containers her thought comes in (newsletter, videos, books). A separate supercategory could group together non-Joan-specific posts so that those who came for her thinking and not that of the rest of us can avoid being bothered by non-Joan-related activity … while those who would like to talk about other things with members who are amenable could have a place to do that, non-disruptively.

Maybe the maximally welcoming route is too risky. If true, I can accept that, and I think bringing the community to life is more important than any preference I might have about how that happens. But in these early design stages, I think you can see how I’ll be leaning.

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That way lies madness! :slight_smile:

Update: That was possibly too trite. I meant that important things should be done with care and deliberateness.

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To start with how about if we just request two new categories:

  • Content Responses - Replies related to newsletters or videos etc posted by Joan
  • Water Cooler - Non-Joan related social topics.

Maybe heart this if you want to up-vote the idea.

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Just a note: I don’t want to discourage anyone from taking action they think is fit — when it’s time to shoot, shooting is better than talking about shooting — but for me, I’m inclined to put off decisions and actions, for two reasons. First, forums are primarily about talking, so I’m reluctant to take a promising topic like this one off the table, even if it’s about the platform rather than the reason for gathering. Second, what I like about Discourse can also be a weakness — conversations are linear but don’t unfold in real time. It could be many days before everyone who might want to be part of this discussion even checks in and sees that it has started. So, absent urgency, I lean towards delaying action as long as possible.

Regarding the two categories, I think the split is correct — Joan vs. non-Joan — but I think two categories might not be enough. Fortunately, Discourse makes it possible to group categories, with the groups reflected on the home page. So there might be two sections, a group of Joan categories and one of non-Joan categories. (Probably a third group as well, for platform-related technical discussion, like the current Blog Feedback category — I’ve seen such a group on many other Discourse forums.)

In the Joan group, there might only be one category, at least starting out. I haven’t yet come up with a reason to separate one kind of Joan-related discussion from another. But I could easily be missing something. Good news again, no particular reason that additional categories might be created for a group once it became clear that different sorts of discussions were happening and could benefit from separate spaces — and possibly an admin with the time and interest could move old topics into the proper category, though that would be a nice-to-have.

In the non-Joan group, I think there should be at least two categories. The obvious one is the water cooler, though I tend to think of this more as a lounge or lunchroom or conference hallway. Here is where nearly any topic is fair game — book and movie recommendations, pointers to interesting websites and blog posts, anecdotes, shower thoughts, travel plans, requests for advice. This would allow members who get their fill of smalltalk elsewhere to avoid clogging their Westenberg feed with it, and provide a mini-forum for members who would like to spend some time interacting socially with other builders who think.

Posts I’ve made here that might qualify: A YouTube channel I admire, Good movie: Send Help, Good film adaptations, Scott Alexander on Scott Adams, A question about AI chatbots.

The second category would be not for social interaction but where builders could think out loud outside of Joan-related discussions, thoughts expressed with enough care and detail to support discussions of their own. Posts I’ve made here that might qualify: Metrics: Threat or Menace, How can a self be impermanent, When you have to shoot, shoot, don’t talk, Looking for a way to stand out.

Since I’m not so much proposing a solution here as trying to think expansively about the possibilities, allow me to continue.

One analogy I tried to apply when thinking this through is a technical conference. There are keynote talks, where all attendees gather. There are periods with multiple simultaneous talks, dividing up the attendees. There are tracks, where attendees can attend a series of talks centered on a theme. There are breakout sessions, where attendees take over responsibility for creating/presenting the content. There are social periods, lunches and dinners and entertainments. There are lounges and hallways, where attendees can meet for one-on-ones or small group conversations outside the conference flow.

I can see — kind of — how a large thriving online community might make use of such an elaborate structure. But it seems counterproductive for a fledgling group, like walking into the Apple Developer Conference but only twelve people showed up. Still, there are some possibly useful ideas in there — lounges, breakout sessions, talks (maybe tracks?).

One other conference format that might be relevant to the non-Joan part: the unconference.

Typically at an unconference, the agenda is created by the attendees at the beginning of the meeting. Anyone who wants to initiate a discussion on a topic can claim a time and a space. Some unconference sessions (for example at FooCamp or BarCamp) are led by the participant who suggested its topic; other unconference sessions are basically open discussions of the session topic.

An “unconference” is particularly useful when participants generally have a high level of expertise or knowledge in the field the conference convenes to discuss.

The “sessions are led by the participant who suggested its topic” part is how I think about the non-social non-Joan category, the place where builders think aloud and invite discussion of their thoughts.

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Having 3 categories like you described seems good. I might name the two non-Joan ones as: “Building” and “Social“. I’m not super excited about those names, so anything is fine.

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I’ve done a terrible job at this in 2026, I’ll be the first to say that.
I think the chaos of the Xmas period bled over into the chaos of school holidays, and then back to school, and then back to work on the business, and I spend so much time working with the good folks at Discourse I forgot to nurture and manage and care for my own Discourse.
So I’m here to eat crow and apologise for that.
I’m making a committment to prioritising this community this year. And I do appreciate the patience everyone has shown!

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I have been working on stuff though!
I’m sure folks have seen the Westenberg blog redesign and the custom theme; I’ve been plugging away at a Discourse theme to match:

Screenshot 2026-02-16 at 6.10.15 am
Screenshot 2026-02-16 at 6.10.15 am1638×1148 72.5 KB

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I don’t think an apology is called for. You’ve done something good just by making this forum available and assembling a curated membership. I’d certainly rather find ways to adapt to the attention you’re able to pay, rather than give up on the project because you don’t have large amounts of time to give to it.

And I think the limited attention you could pay recently led some of us with more time on our hands to step up our game and think about ways we could help. As I said elsewhere, I like to help, and I think most people do.

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This post by Seth Godin popped up in my Readwise feed this morning. It’s so brief (like most of them) that I’ll quote the whole thing here.

The lurkers

It’s frustrating for anyone who leads.

If everyone who says that they’re a contributor/member/supporter/fan/long-term customer showed up, huge things would happen.

So we spend a lot of time hustling to get the lurkers to take action. Post again! Create more incentives! Dumb it down! Most of all, focus on creating urgency.

This isn’t how progress actually happens.

The 95% who lurk will almost always lurk. That’s okay.

The place to focus is on the 5%. Because when their persistent, consistent and generous action begins to add up, change happens. And that brings the lurkers along. It might even activate them. They’ll catch up when they need to.

There’s nothing wrong with lurkers. Lurkers are potential action-takers.

For now, though, our focus, our energy and our gratitude is for the people who are already showing up.

Worth contemplating as we work together to bring the Westenberg community to life.

I’ll add, since Godin doesn’t say so, that I think lurking is a fine thing to do, even for members who will never contribute. Whoever continues to visit and read must be getting some benefit from it, and I’m glad to contribute to that. A few may even take something they read and pass it along in some form in a way we’ll never know about. Even the possibility of that makes me happy.

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@scout You’re making me think again. I like it! There’s a difference between a real-life place like a tavern or a book club meeting or a shop, and an online place like a forum or a social network. This difference allows “lurkers” in the virtual place, but not in the real-life place. What’s the difference that allows “lurkers”?

In real life, when you go to a place people can see that you are there. And they can see when you leave. There is always a chance someone might walk up and talk to you. Only a certain number of people can fit into a single social space.

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Just a thought, which I find hard to express without sounding dismissive or confrontational: is it reasonable to think, in a “there are two kinds of people in the world” way, that members join this forum primarily for one of two reasons?

  • to interact with Joan fans and Joan herself about her writing
  • to interact with people who also appreciate Joan’s writing

Being in the first camp is fine, I think. We’re all here because her thinking engages us on some level, and some of us probably come hoping for opportunities to engage that thinking more extensively with other fans, perhaps even with the thinker herself. This forum, or at least a section of it, may be the place to serve that desire.

I am solidly in the second camp. Not because I am against the idea of interacting with Joan — I might or might not enjoy that, I don’t know yet and may never find out — but because it isn’t what drew me here. I am here in search of … well, not like-minded people, that’s too restrictive, but people who are attracted to a certain kind of thinking, a kind that Joan exhibits, in hope that we might find common ground worth exploring, even if it is far afield of Joan’s areas of interest, even if it’s totally off her grid. And, to be blunt, I’m looking for people who have more time than she does for going off in a corner and conversing.

I think both camps could peacefully coexist on a single forum like this, and even benefit from some amount of cross-pollination. But I worry that being an active member of the second camp might terminally annoy some members of the first camp, especially if they think (possibly correctly) that there’s only room for one camp on this platform.

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@scout I feel like you’re describing a difference between “content focussed” and “social”. I agree it’s useful to know where the bell curve of users falls. But my experience with humans tells me that people often find fulfillment in unexpected ways. So if we make this place generally inviting, people will return.

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