[rdpintqogeogsaa]

Lovely post that matches many of my experiences (admittedly with communities not directly related to a product). A few notes of my own:

> At the start, having just two channels was fantastic. First, it reduced the community ghost town effect by concentrating all activity into those two places.

I'm surprised to hear people keep re-learning this lesson. Back when web forums were popular, this was basically the one big mistake I kept seeing people make. Way too much compartmentalization.

> After [being shown a project in private] a few times, I proposed a new channel: [...] We didn’t try to force the community’s hand.

I think this could and should be generalized into "Avoid surprises". Communities generally do not react well to change with no announcement. Even if you know that a measure is strictly necessary (e.g. because your platform provider changed its terms of service in an impactful way), first give a heads up before you make a change. It goes a long way for public opinion. It's tempting not to, especially as time goes on and you feel like you have people's trust, but it's essential to ask first wherever possible.

[someproduct]

> I think this could and should be generalized into "Avoid surprises"

Great way of putting it. When we were considering moving our community from Slack to Discord[1], we actually did a Request for Comment[2] laying-out our rationale, and asked for comments on the doc. I think this went a long way towards building trust and buy-in around big community decisions.

1. https://orbit.love/blog/how-to-migrate-a-community-from-slac...

2. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PFHhZyyYmiIHNufYpS6fX7gU...

[tinkertamper]

> I'm surprised to hear people keep re-learning this lesson. Back when web forums were popular, this was basically the one big mistake I kept seeing people make. Way too much compartmentalization.

Ahh yes, the “General” section of phpBB. To be fair though a whole generation as come online since then, that never had an opportunity to learn for themselves yet. The internet itself moving away from small niche sites/forums to subreddits/groups/categories under big monoliths.

[omniscient_oce]

Same thing happens with Discords I'm in. They just add more and more channels and it becomes a chore to scroll and navigate to the one I want (just my opinion) let alone the reduced engagement in each channel (anecdotal evidence)