Community Signal
@communitysignal.bsky.social
A podcast for online community professionals, hosted by @patrickokeefe.bsky.social. communitysignal.com
Community Signal is turning 10 on December 7! I'm thinking about putting together a greatest hits show of some of my favorite clips from the library. That would be a fun way to reflect. Thanks to @serenas.bsky.social for the suggestion.
Open to other ideas, too. Thanks for listening to the show!
Open to other ideas, too. Thanks for listening to the show!
November 11, 2025 at 12:25 AM
Community Signal is turning 10 on December 7! I'm thinking about putting together a greatest hits show of some of my favorite clips from the library. That would be a fun way to reflect. Thanks to @serenas.bsky.social for the suggestion.
Open to other ideas, too. Thanks for listening to the show!
Open to other ideas, too. Thanks for listening to the show!
Today marks 10 years since Karn Broad started working on Community Signal as the show's producer. I've actually worked with Karn for roughly 14 years in total, going back to a previous show that I hosted.
October 10, 2025 at 6:25 PM
Today marks 10 years since Karn Broad started working on Community Signal as the show's producer. I've actually worked with Karn for roughly 14 years in total, going back to a previous show that I hosted.
“The WELL [online community founded in 1985], because of its open nature/desire to experiment, opened up chunks of the operating system for programmers to actually play with and make little utilities for the people as a way of practicing. There was this maker culture going on at the same time. ...
August 28, 2025 at 11:08 PM
“The WELL [online community founded in 1985], because of its open nature/desire to experiment, opened up chunks of the operating system for programmers to actually play with and make little utilities for the people as a way of practicing. There was this maker culture going on at the same time. ...
LEGO Ideas is a platform, provided by the company, where anyone can submit an idea that gets turned into an official LEGO set. With plenty of creative talent in-house, why do it? Tim Courtney, from 2020:
August 25, 2025 at 8:48 PM
LEGO Ideas is a platform, provided by the company, where anyone can submit an idea that gets turned into an official LEGO set. With plenty of creative talent in-house, why do it? Tim Courtney, from 2020:
When researchers at the University of Zurich conducted psychological experiments on the Change My View community without consent, it was one human space taking advantage of another human space, which made it even worse, according to Logan MacGregor, a volunteer moderator in the community.
August 21, 2025 at 8:43 PM
When researchers at the University of Zurich conducted psychological experiments on the Change My View community without consent, it was one human space taking advantage of another human space, which made it even worse, according to Logan MacGregor, a volunteer moderator in the community.
When you are expanding your online community into a new country, you should examine the verbiage you are currently using. Locally-minded adjustments can help members feel more at home. Here's an example:
![“A lot of [ILTA's] material has the word attorney, which doesn’t exist in the UK. We have solicitors and barristers. … There are little tweaks around the material and our language that we’ve had to do in order to localize what we’re providing to [the UK] region. … It’s a big deal to people.” –Mercedes Oppon-Kusi, Former Community Manager, International Legal Technology Association](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreid7svlowy4teuz5bj5qzj7zmmdeb3zeb5bl47ke2shp36qcwhd2pq@jpeg)
August 20, 2025 at 9:14 PM
When you are expanding your online community into a new country, you should examine the verbiage you are currently using. Locally-minded adjustments can help members feel more at home. Here's an example:
“I think part of providing a good experience is less hurdles to jump over. If you have an open community, then people can find [your] content because it’s indexed by external search engines. ...
![“I think part of providing a good experience is less hurdles to jump over. If you have an open community, then people can find [your] content because it’s indexed by external search engines. Not only that, but if they just visit your community, they can poke around and read the content without feeling like they’re trapped into [creating an account]. Some people don’t want to do that. My theory is if you have a good community site that is easy and people like to use, people are going to be more willing to create a meaningful membership in that community.” -Matt Nevill, Former Customer Community Manager, Agilent Technologies](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreifizq5is3gid2rv2howbnq6hgqy2jodycujeke6hmrfit46vi6eyi@jpeg)
August 19, 2025 at 9:08 PM
“I think part of providing a good experience is less hurdles to jump over. If you have an open community, then people can find [your] content because it’s indexed by external search engines. ...
“Without the protection of Section 230, a well-meaning person or organization may lose their right to maintain a clean well-lighted space for civil discussion and capitulate to every demand regardless of its merit. ...
August 18, 2025 at 11:35 PM
“Without the protection of Section 230, a well-meaning person or organization may lose their right to maintain a clean well-lighted space for civil discussion and capitulate to every demand regardless of its merit. ...
Even though the internet is full of bad comments, that doesn't mean that one more won't cause harm. After researchers conducted a psychological experiment on an online community without consent, they seemed to think that, since their comments were like any others, there was not a risk of harm.
![“So much of what [the researchers] did to try to prevent harm was to say ‘comments like this happen all the time online, we don’t think that it’s going to cause individual trauma.’ We kind of dispute that because some of the comments are [you] pretending to be a trauma counselor and maybe that could actually cause some harm. … I don’t think they thought enough about community impact until after the community screamed ‘ouch.'” -Logan MacGregor, Moderator (Volunteer), r/changemyview](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreiewxwzewwtxmctkqdff7flavtekdbjtb7fxt7nsve62a6djhngbey@jpeg)
August 15, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Even though the internet is full of bad comments, that doesn't mean that one more won't cause harm. After researchers conducted a psychological experiment on an online community without consent, they seemed to think that, since their comments were like any others, there was not a risk of harm.
“I’ve always tried to think like a chameleon. Whenever you go into a company, they’re going to put you where they think you belong. … This is just another version of that question of where does the community person belong? For me, it’s can you have a satisfactory job? ...
August 14, 2025 at 9:09 PM
“I’ve always tried to think like a chameleon. Whenever you go into a company, they’re going to put you where they think you belong. … This is just another version of that question of where does the community person belong? For me, it’s can you have a satisfactory job? ...
“When one community person – a volunteer, a host, a person in this line of work – stands up for their community, they stand up for all communities.”
- @patrickokeefe.bsky.social
www.communitysignal.com/university-o...
- @patrickokeefe.bsky.social
www.communitysignal.com/university-o...
August 13, 2025 at 6:29 PM
“When one community person – a volunteer, a host, a person in this line of work – stands up for their community, they stand up for all communities.”
- @patrickokeefe.bsky.social
www.communitysignal.com/university-o...
- @patrickokeefe.bsky.social
www.communitysignal.com/university-o...
“[I asked a room full of senior staff at PMI,] ‘Can anyone tell me what community is?’ The answers that I got were webinars, articles, blogs, and virtual events. I thought to myself, ‘Oh my word, everyone thinks we’re just content.’ We’re not. That is not what community is. ...
![“[I asked a room full of senior staff at PMI,] ‘Can anyone tell me what community is?’ The answers that I got were webinars, articles, blogs, and virtual events. I thought to myself, ‘Oh my word, everyone thinks we’re just content.’ We’re not. That is not what community is. It really got me thinking that maybe we are not having the right conversations with people within the organization. … If staff doesn’t know what community is, then how do we really know that our members know how to utilize it and what it is?” -Marjorie Anderson (Quote From 2017), Former Project Manager, Digital Communities, Project Management Institute](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreibo5t5h3qofayzlmneicostdvwnfszkzshmotfsogig7ridjf2lgi@jpeg)
August 11, 2025 at 9:59 PM
“[I asked a room full of senior staff at PMI,] ‘Can anyone tell me what community is?’ The answers that I got were webinars, articles, blogs, and virtual events. I thought to myself, ‘Oh my word, everyone thinks we’re just content.’ We’re not. That is not what community is. ...
After researchers revealed that they had been running psychological experiments on the Change My View community without consent, the moderators of the community wanted two things.
![“From my perspective, I think the things that we wanted the most [from the researchers were] an apology and a promise not to publish. The second was really important because we were concerned that if this was published in a peer-review journal … if it was elevated to a prominent journal, that our community, which is supposed to be a protected human space, would now become just another sandbox for researchers. We felt very strongly that it should not be published. … Unfortunately, it didn’t land well.” -Logan MacGregor, Moderator (Volunteer), r/changemyview](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreie7x4b2q6e5hyuhsmrmajwiwdfp5qhkrhvbjzkseospnp6czyopfu@jpeg)
August 6, 2025 at 5:39 PM
After researchers revealed that they had been running psychological experiments on the Change My View community without consent, the moderators of the community wanted two things.
One day, you receive a message from researchers at a major university, and they inform you that they have been conducting experiments on your community.
They have used AI-generated comments to pose as a victim of sexual abuse, a Black man that is against Black Lives Matter, and a trauma counselor.
They have used AI-generated comments to pose as a victim of sexual abuse, a Black man that is against Black Lives Matter, and a trauma counselor.
August 4, 2025 at 8:22 PM
One day, you receive a message from researchers at a major university, and they inform you that they have been conducting experiments on your community.
They have used AI-generated comments to pose as a victim of sexual abuse, a Black man that is against Black Lives Matter, and a trauma counselor.
They have used AI-generated comments to pose as a victim of sexual abuse, a Black man that is against Black Lives Matter, and a trauma counselor.
“When I left [my first job in gaming], I realized that the amount of fear and anxiety that I was living with every day was crippling. … Then I left, and I realized that it was never about the job in terms of what I was doing, it was about the job in terms of what I had. ...
![“When I left [my first job in gaming], I realized that the amount of fear and anxiety that I was living with every day was crippling. … Then I left, and I realized that it was never about the job in terms of what I was doing, it was about the job in terms of what I had. I was so scared to lose it that I didn’t have the confidence that I used to have. … It took leaving to get where I am now.” –Joe King, Associate Community Manager, Sony Interactive Entertainment; Consultant, Joe King Consulting](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreieosuaygm434s3yafhpcoervkayarv7vxagbwtkqvtwfgqca24tre@jpeg)
May 15, 2025 at 11:11 PM
“When I left [my first job in gaming], I realized that the amount of fear and anxiety that I was living with every day was crippling. … Then I left, and I realized that it was never about the job in terms of what I was doing, it was about the job in terms of what I had. ...
“Section 230 protects any person or any entity that publishes other people’s content online. That is pretty much every person and entity that I know. There’s nothing in its language that limits it to Big Tech. ...
May 12, 2025 at 9:53 PM
“Section 230 protects any person or any entity that publishes other people’s content online. That is pretty much every person and entity that I know. There’s nothing in its language that limits it to Big Tech. ...
“When I was looking for the job in community … a lot of these companies were really looking for business development or sales or growth hacking. They were just sugar coating it with the title ‘community manager,’ ...
March 24, 2025 at 9:24 PM
“When I was looking for the job in community … a lot of these companies were really looking for business development or sales or growth hacking. They were just sugar coating it with the title ‘community manager,’ ...
From 2019: “There are three main types of machine learning. Supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and then reinforcement learning. What we are talking about here is supervised learning, where you put in a bunch of training data ...
March 20, 2025 at 8:13 PM
From 2019: “There are three main types of machine learning. Supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and then reinforcement learning. What we are talking about here is supervised learning, where you put in a bunch of training data ...
“Basic charts are really powerful because they’re so well understood, they’re so well used, and it can be tempting to get into this, ‘I’ve created something nobody’s ever seen before, it’s so novel.’ … Generally, visualizations are for people other than just the person making them. ...
March 13, 2025 at 10:13 PM
“Basic charts are really powerful because they’re so well understood, they’re so well used, and it can be tempting to get into this, ‘I’ve created something nobody’s ever seen before, it’s so novel.’ … Generally, visualizations are for people other than just the person making them. ...
“We [online community pros] should advocate for those higher roles because each time one of us does that, each time someone insists that they get the director title instead of the community manager title because their job reflects it …
March 3, 2025 at 7:55 PM
“We [online community pros] should advocate for those higher roles because each time one of us does that, each time someone insists that they get the director title instead of the community manager title because their job reflects it …
From 2018, about automated content moderation tools: “The really important thing for us in the industry is probably going to be avoiding that old tech problem which is that there’s this piece of technology and it can solve everything. …
February 27, 2025 at 9:25 PM
From 2018, about automated content moderation tools: “The really important thing for us in the industry is probably going to be avoiding that old tech problem which is that there’s this piece of technology and it can solve everything. …
“My goal as the global community manager is to have a model or multiple models lined up side-by-side that I can show to anyone at the company and they will say, ‘I can get behind these numbers.’” -Meredith Humphrey
▶️ www.communitysignal.com/how-spotifys...
▶️ www.communitysignal.com/how-spotifys...
February 17, 2025 at 9:41 PM
“My goal as the global community manager is to have a model or multiple models lined up side-by-side that I can show to anyone at the company and they will say, ‘I can get behind these numbers.’” -Meredith Humphrey
▶️ www.communitysignal.com/how-spotifys...
▶️ www.communitysignal.com/how-spotifys...
“Membership, first and foremost, is a newsroom saying that we believe the healthiest business model for the news is one in which readers help sustain it, and that sustainment is not about exclusivity. They’re not donating because they are going to get something that other readers cannot. ...
February 13, 2025 at 10:25 PM
“Membership, first and foremost, is a newsroom saying that we believe the healthiest business model for the news is one in which readers help sustain it, and that sustainment is not about exclusivity. They’re not donating because they are going to get something that other readers cannot. ...
“It's time to get back to our roots around free expression and giving people voice on our platforms,” Mark Zuckerberg said recently, when announcing changes to how Meta moderates content.
No. The root of Meta is rating the hotness of girls in your school.
No. The root of Meta is rating the hotness of girls in your school.
January 21, 2025 at 6:12 PM
“It's time to get back to our roots around free expression and giving people voice on our platforms,” Mark Zuckerberg said recently, when announcing changes to how Meta moderates content.
No. The root of Meta is rating the hotness of girls in your school.
No. The root of Meta is rating the hotness of girls in your school.
“The domination of the major [social media] platforms isn’t infinite. It’s going to end one day. It’s our responsibility to think about what we are going to build in its place.”
– @bassey.bsky.social
▶️ www.communitysignal.com/building-inc...
– @bassey.bsky.social
▶️ www.communitysignal.com/building-inc...
![“The domination of the major [social media] platforms isn’t infinite. It’s going to end one day. It’s our responsibility to think about what we are going to build in its place.” –Bassey Etim, Senior Director - Content Strategy, Pluralsight; Former Community Editor, The New York Times](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qqwoski3y6lg4mmf267uk7av/bafkreid4vf6c7sqc7d36ikucp3vqk3oztd3v2yg2lxcrod4epmnrljvdsy@jpeg)
January 16, 2025 at 11:12 PM
“The domination of the major [social media] platforms isn’t infinite. It’s going to end one day. It’s our responsibility to think about what we are going to build in its place.”
– @bassey.bsky.social
▶️ www.communitysignal.com/building-inc...
– @bassey.bsky.social
▶️ www.communitysignal.com/building-inc...