The communities feature is working

[chadwhitacre]

We now have a dozen viable communities on Gittip, representing a fair breadth of the open source world. It could be good to write a follow-up to:

http://blog.gittip.com/post/50359120414/communities

See #1353 for a story about a specific community (Drupal).

[heidigardner]

Working on this one-- who wants to throw out a few of the communities to feature in particular.
Links for resources are appreciated!

[heidigardner]

Lordy @whit537 I promise I haven't forgotten about you. I was tending to a dying family member. oy.
Hope you had a great birthday! Do you know of anyone that can help me gather resources or choose communities to highlight? I am fine doing writing, but need a little advice on resources because I myself am not as immersed in the groups that tend to use gittip.

[chadwhitacre]

@heidigardner Sorry to hear about the death in the family. :-(

Birthday was fantastic, thank you. :-)

So for the communities post, what is the story we want to tell? I'm think it's mostly along the lines of "We now have 664 communities on Gittip and 16 of them have at least 150 people." I don't see this as highlighting specific communities as much as talking about the communities feature overall. That said, here are a few organizers I know about:

• @dahlia Korea
• @greggles Drupal
• @nathany Go
• @jeresig JavaScript, jQuery

One idea for understanding how communities get organized on Gittip would be this Twitter search:

https://twitter.com/search?q=gittip%20community&src=typd&f=realtime

Are there statistics you'd like me to get from the database about how communities have been shaping up?

[heidigardner]

@whit537 Since I last wrote you I had one more uncle die (it came in threes)-- but I am still on it. Funeral tomorrow. Hope to have this done by the end of the work week. I may have stat questions for you around Tuesday. :)

[chadwhitacre]

I'm so sorry! :`(

No rush here, obviously.

[heidigardner]

It's obviously good that there is no rush. ;)
I do appreciate the ability to contribute to the project shame-free in fits and starts.
Right now, there have just been lots of fits. hahahah

For now I think I can write around the stats and add them in at the end for support if it seems to solidify the claims.

[chadwhitacre]

Sounds good! :-)

[heidigardner]

@whit537 forgot to post this draft. It has room for some meat on each bone.

At the heart of Gittip is connection, and throughout the first year of Gittip it became more apparent that it was networking that would not only help individuals achieve goals, but would create satisfaction with Gittip. The “Communities” feature was created in May 2013 assist members of the site in finding—and inspiring—one another. (Is there another goal or reason it came to be I missed?) The “Korea” group was the first to make the community milestone of 150 members and there are now 17 communities in that category.
Since that first community, the remaining 16 Communities have formed around tech interests and projects. There are two more general communities that are approaching viability, Writers with 104 members and Art with 71. Once a community reaches 150, “New Members, “ Top Givers” and “Top Receivers become visible on the community page.
But communities are more than just a number. In September we shone a light on the Drupal community for its contribution and role in helping a member meet a significant income goal. (Do you have any good story or anecdotal information about any of the communities in particular? Anyone you can remember spearheading a community and saying something quotable?)
Communities with less than 150 are considered “in formation” and there are 667 labeled groups, seeds of communities. Browse the list and join the ones with whom you share an interest.

[chadwhitacre]

Great start, @heidigardner. I'll work on answers to your questions ...

[chadwhitacre]

Okay, @heidigardner! We have someone else interested in working on the blog with you. @cummingsrob is going to look at this. I've given him creds for the blog and have pointed him to #1353 (comment). Let me know what you need from me! :-)

[cummingsrob]

I've taken @heidigardner 's awesome start and reorganized it and expanded it a little. I think this is good to publish as is, but we could reach out to the members you listed above (Korea, Drupal, Go, JavaScript) to see if anyone wants to give us a couple sentences on how this has impacted their work.

Anywho, DRAFT version here: http://www.tumblr.com/blog/gittip-blog/drafts

(Should we be fleshing out the draft here first?)

[nathany]

Fyi, I can't see drafts. Tumblr user is [email protected].

[cummingsrob]

DRAFT 20131216_1700

Connection, the Heart of Gittip

Connection is the heart of Gittip. The first year has shown us that personal networking would not only help individuals achieve their goals but also create satisfaction within the Gittip community at large. The “Communities" feature was created in May 2013 to assist Gittip members in finding—and inspiring—one another. Communities allow individuals to identify with large groups of people that share common interests, such as programming languages and geographical regions.

Communities have shown us that they’re more than just a number of people with common interests, though. In September 2013, the Drupal Community rallied around a member to help a major project contributor meet a significant weekly income goal. Community support is integral to the survival of projects like this. Without it, overhead costs like bandwidth and hosting become cost prohibitive and a significant financial burden to the project. Without financial support, many projects like this would not be possible.

The “Korea" community group was the first to surpass the 150-member threshold to become a viable Community, but other groups have since surpassed it in membership numbers. Viable communities have formed around "JavaScript”, “Python”, and other tech interests and projects around the web.

Communities with fewer than 150 members are still considered in the formation stage, but many are growing quickly. As of December 2013, there are about 700 Communities still in the formation stage, so there is literally something for everybody. Browse the list. You’re likely to find an interest you share with others.

[nathany]

Looks good to me.

[chadwhitacre]

Here's a link to the draft: http://blog.gittip.com/private/70219900845/tumblr_mxx40odabb1ryzw25.

@cummingsrob You can get that link by clicking the little foldy corner at top right of the draft in the admin view (not very obvious, imo):

[chadwhitacre]

so there is literally something for everybody

Can we drop "literally"?

[cummingsrob]

I'm Ok with dropping "literally."

Modify and publish! (Who's in charge of this issue?)

[chadwhitacre]

Connection is the heart of Gittip.

I like the idea of finding some "big picture" language to emphasize in our posts. I'm not sure this is exactly it. Here's our mission statement:

Gittip's mission is to redeem the economy.

We envision a future in which the economy is characterized by trust, collaboration, cooperation, sharing, openness, transparency, care for one another, inclusion, inspiration, purpose, generosity, patience, empathy, optimism, and love.

Our blog posts should emphasize one or another of these characteristics. "Connection" is somewhere in there, I suppose.

The first year has shown us that personal networking would not only help individuals achieve their goals but also create satisfaction within the Gittip community at large.

I don't know what this sentence means. What's it's purpose?

The “Communities" feature was created in May 2013 to assist Gittip members in finding—and inspiring—one another.

I like the date reference and the finding/inspiring language. We should avoid the passive voice, I think, "was created."

[chadwhitacre]

@cummingsrob I don't think @heidigardner will mind if we work on this and publish it. We shouldn't wait for her, I don't think.

[ehmatthes]

Gittip's mission is to redeem the economy.

We envision a future in which the economy is characterized by trust, collaboration, cooperation, sharing, openness, transparency, care for one another, inclusion, inspiration, purpose, generosity, patience, empathy, optimism, and love.

First of all, I think connection is a good way of framing Gittip. When I read through the list of characteristics in Gittip's mission, "connection" is a pretty good way of pulling those characteristics together. Gittip for me has always been about supporting the people behind the projects that inspire us. I have always liked that Gittip lets me connect with individuals, rather than specific projects.

Communities have shown us that they’re more than just a number of people with common interests, though. In September 2013, the Drupal Community rallied around a member to help a major project contributor meet a significant weekly income goal. Community support is integral to the survival of projects like this. Without it, overhead costs like bandwidth and hosting become cost prohibitive and a significant financial burden to the project. Without financial support, many projects like this would not be possible.

I have to challenge this paragraph. Yes, communities are important. But did the Drupal Community on Gittip have much at all to do with alexpott's success? He certainly called on the overall Drupal community to offer him support, and it worked. But if the Gittip Community did not exist, would he have seen any difference? Unless I missed something, the Gititp Community had little to do with his success in building support. I am not saying that Gittip Drupal Community members did not support alex; I am saying that he did not explicitly use the Gittip Drupal Community infrastructure to build support.

I would like to see this blog post say something specific about how Gittip Communities can be used by members. I am working on a pretty significant Python project. I am a member of the Gittip Python Community. How can I leverage my membership in the Python Community to build support for myself in carrying out this project?

[chadwhitacre]

I came up with an interesting and relevant statistic over at #1316 (comment) : People who join a community are three times as likely to be an active user than people who don't. I think the message here is that communities so far are a success in making Gittip more useful to people, and we should do more of that! (Compare this with the horn feature we just killed [#1466]: something else we threw against the wall, but which didn't stick.)

I have to challenge this paragraph. Yes, communities are important. But did the Drupal Community on Gittip have much at all to do with alexpott's success? But if the Gittip Community did not exist, would he have seen any difference?

Well, my understanding is that we at least have correlation; from our blog post about Drupal + Alex:

Though the Drupal Gittip community was experiencing steady but modest growth, it is now almost four times larger than it was when Alex announced his Gittip goal.

Because of the fact that members of a community are three times as likely to be active users than members of no community, I think we can say that the community feature did help Alex. It reinforced that this was something the Drupal community was doing together.

I would like to see this blog post say something specific about how Gittip Communities can be used by members. [...] How can I leverage my membership in the Python Community to build support for myself in carrying out this project?

Yes! So after Alex's experience, the question is, how can we do more of that? The communities feature worked in one case. How can we learn from that and make it work for everyone?

[chadwhitacre]

I made the following changes to the draft:

• Changed links in the Drupal paragraph. Linking to our prior post instead of to the Drupal community and Alex's profile directly.
• Moved the Korea paragraph above the Drupal paragraph.
• Added a paragraph about the 3x statistic.
• Changed the title from "Connection, the Heart of Gittip" to "Communities: Let's Do More of That!" Trimmed up the opening sentence to match.
• Added a sentence to the beginning of the last paragraph: "There are currently 18 fully active communities on Gittip."

Any final input? I'm ready to publish this! 💃

[chadwhitacre]

Also:

• Took out quote marks around community names.
• Linked initial "Communities" to old blog post.

[greggles]

I see what @ehmatthes is saying both here and in #967. But I question whether people should look to gittip to provide the "communing" location. Communities exist elsewhere already, and I think communing can happen wherever they current exist since that's presumably where those groups were founded and do most of their interaction.
I do think that the existence of the /for/drupal page made Alex (and the other folks) much more successful. I think the leaderboard of giving definitely helps encourage people to give (several people have mentioned that). So, I think the statement is accurate as written.

[cummingsrob]

@whit537: You beat me to the changes. I was already editing when I saw you changed the online draft.

All changes look good to me!

Publish!

[ehmatthes]

Communities exist elsewhere already, and I think communing can happen wherever they current exist since that's presumably where those groups were founded and do most of their interaction.

I'd like to build the community of educators on gittip. I don't know how to find these particular educators outside of gittip. I want to connect with teachers who understand something like gittip, and build a network that moves the education world forward in terms of its adoption of open source products and methodologies.

[chadwhitacre]

@cummingsrob Eep, sorry! :-(

Published! :D

http://blog.gittip.com/post/70621940685/communities-lets-do-more-of-that

I'd like to build the community of educators on gittip.

You are living on the bleeding edge, sir. Keep on us and one day Gittip will be usable for everyone! :-)