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communitysignal.bsky.social
Community Signal
@communitysignal.bsky.social
160 followers 82 following 300 posts
A podcast for online community professionals, hosted by @patrickokeefe.bsky.social. communitysignal.com
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communitysignal.bsky.social
“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. ...
“The WELL, because of its open nature and 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. As Howard Rheingold put it once, it was where the tool makers meet the tool users. In addition to being a place where people can converse, it was also a kind of birthplace of a sort of online gift economy.” -John Coate, Former Marketing Director and Conference Manager, The WELL
August 28, 2025 at 11:08 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
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:
“99% of the smartest people in the world don’t work for us. Ideas can come from anywhere. It’s about leveraging those ideas, but it’s also about building those relationships with people. … I’ve had three community members come in and get hired as LEGO designers.” –Tim Courtney, Former Experience Manager, LEGO Ideas
August 25, 2025 at 8:48 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
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.
“One thing that’s really special about Change My View is that it’s a human space; it’s a decidedly human space. … The University of Zurich is a decidedly human space. What I think is so insidious about AI is it’s caused people to behave in ways that I don’t know we would have ... because it’s a toxic influence. Unlike the bots that are invading us daily, that we’re constantly shutting down. … That hurts a little bit more than just dealing with bots, because this wasn’t just bots. These are people interacting with other people, and there was a human element there.” -Logan MacGregor, Moderator (Volunteer), r/changemyview
August 21, 2025 at 8:43 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
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
August 20, 2025 at 9:14 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
“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
August 19, 2025 at 9:08 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
“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. ...
“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. An organization facilitating online community may decide to close their community altogether deciding that the risk is not worth the benefit. Who really loses when we threaten the opportunities to build meaningful communities that can have a positive impact on people’s lives?” –Scott Moore, 20+ Year Community Pro; Formerly Answers.com, the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, and Fujitsu
August 18, 2025 at 11:35 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
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
August 15, 2025 at 6:56 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
“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? ...
“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? Because if you don’t have a satisfactory job, in my opinion, if you’re not happy working, that’s the time to question your job. But if you can have a job that you’re satisfied with and have the impact you want, it doesn’t matter where they put you.” -Craig Dalrymple, Community Consultant; Formerly Project Management Institute, Zynga, and Sony
August 14, 2025 at 9:09 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
“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...
“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.” -Patrick O’Keefe, Host, Community Signal; Author, Managing Online Forums; Ex-CNN Community and Interactive Product
August 13, 2025 at 6:29 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
“[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
August 11, 2025 at 9:59 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
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
August 6, 2025 at 5:39 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
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.
Community Signal episode cover: University of Zurich Researchers Conducted an AI Persuasion Experiment on Members of This Online Community, Without Consent. Guest: Logan MacGregor, Moderator (Volunteer), r/changemyview. Logan is pictured. Hosted by Patrick O'Keefe, also pictured, with the Community Signal logo.
August 4, 2025 at 8:22 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
“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
May 15, 2025 at 11:11 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
“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. ...
“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. I actually hear this a lot from my friends in the legacy news media community who feel like Big Tech got this statutory advantage that they don’t have. I always tell them, ‘Look, you publish online ... and you enjoy the same protection when you are an intermediary, when you publish wire service stories, when you publish reader comments, when you publish advertisements. All these things are not your own content. You get the exact same protection that anybody, that Big Tech does, regardless of what that means.'” –David Greene, Senior Staff Attorney, Civil Liberties Director; Electronic Frontier Foundation
May 12, 2025 at 9:53 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
“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,’ ...
“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,’ which was really interesting to me because I know that for them it sounded appealing but they really didn’t want to invest in communities.” –Shreyas Narayanan Kutty, Head of Community Relations, Trilitech
March 24, 2025 at 9:24 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
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 ...
“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 and machine learning is trying to identify patterns in that data and then be able to, in this case, classify new examples to say what this does or doesn’t look like. One of the things that you have to recognize is that it’s going to be as smart or as dumb as what it learns from. … Machine learning is only as right as whatever the data was that it was trained on.” –Cj Adams, Founding PM - Perspective API, Google
March 20, 2025 at 8:13 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
“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. ...
“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. Your audience is going to work that much harder to understand the message you’re trying to get across, so you’re creating some cognitive burden for them to just read it, let alone take away the point that you’re trying to get across.” –Tammy Armstrong, Owner, Little Data Solutions; Former Director of Analysis, Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield
March 13, 2025 at 10:13 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
“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 …
“We 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 … instead of just accepting that they can be community manager because, hey, the money’s good and I’m being paid like a director, it matters. … Don’t sell yourself short, really believe in yourself and push yourself forward. If you need a pep talk, let me know. I’ll be happy to do it. … I believe that this work is important and I think that it is partially on us to push it up and find those opportunities whenever we can.” –Patrick O'Keefe, Host, Community Signal; Author, Managing Online Forums; Ex-CNN Community and Interactive Product
March 3, 2025 at 7:55 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
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. …
“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. … The technology is really a tool. Just because you have a good tool you can’t just have one person wield it. … You’re going to need a lot of people using the same tool to truly be effective.” –Bassey Etim, Senior Director - Content Strategy, Pluralsight; Former Community Editor, The New York Times
February 27, 2025 at 9:25 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
“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...
“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.’ Because I think some teams look at the impact survey and say, ‘This is spot on.’ Other teams say, ‘I have a lot of questions.’ I want to be able to go to any team, any department and they say, ‘These are undeniable, solid numbers.'” -Meredith Humphrey, Program Management Lead, Global Music; Former Global Community Manager, Spotify
February 17, 2025 at 9:41 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
“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. ...
“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 about creating a sense of belonging, again, in this sort of membership community and feeling like you’re putting your hard earned dollar between something that is holding the powerful to account.” –Rebecca Quarls, Executive Director, Customer Strategy & Growth, The Atlantic; Former Senior Director, Membership, News Revenue Hub
February 13, 2025 at 10:25 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
“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.
A screenshot of Mark Zuckerberg from his "More Speech and Fewer Mistakes" video. The subtitle reads: "I want to talk about something important today."
January 21, 2025 at 6:12 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
“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...
“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
January 16, 2025 at 11:12 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
“Most of Facebook’s investigations on coordinated, inauthentic behavior come in response to outside reports. ... NGOs doing investigations, news organizations giving reports, opposition groups complaining. ...
“Most of Facebook’s investigations on coordinated, inauthentic behavior come in response to outside reports. What I mean by that is NGOs doing investigations, news organizations giving reports, opposition groups complaining, etc. When there is an outside figure that’s feeding this to Facebook, that’s someone outside the company who can put pressure on Facebook, who can say, ‘If you’re not going to do anything about this, we’re going to the New York Times and tell them you don’t care about our country. What do you think about that?’ Then suddenly, Facebook will decide to get their act together.” –Sophie Zhang, Data Scientist, Formerly Facebook
January 15, 2025 at 6:06 PM
communitysignal.bsky.social
“When I hear people invoke free speech on a for-profit social media site, not only does that not exist today, it never has existed, and it never will exist.”

– @ubiquity75.bsky.social

▶️ www.communitysignal.com/elon-musks-q...
“When I hear people invoke free speech on a for-profit social media site, not only does that not exist today, it never has existed, and it never will exist. Let’s deal with what reality is actually giving us and talk about that instead of these fantasies that actually are pretty much not good for anyone involved.” –Sarah T. Roberts, Associate Professor, UCLA; Author, Behind the Screen
January 14, 2025 at 10:21 PM