Policy & Guidelines

Guidelines for Community Manager

• Be Open - Always default to open where you can. Openness breeds authenticity.

• Be Communicative - Talk and write openly and freely, provide extra context, and over communicate. It will reduce anxiety, build relationships, and build trust. It will set the norms of how those who participate engage.

• Be Educational - Provide training, mentoring, and assurances that your team won’t be punished as they learn this openness.

• Be Pragmatic - Your community should be in the business of getting s#!t done (while having a great time). Trade in specific, actionable work with specific outcomes. Work toward measurable value, not obscure or irrelevant ideas.

• Be personal. Focus on quality not quantity. It will build better long-term health in your community.

• Be positive. Part of the reason tonality is so important is that it rubs off on people. Highly positive environments generate positive engagement and negative environments result in a bunch of Debbie Downers, who precisely no one wants to be around. (Nope nope nope)

• Be collaborative. Involve people, gather their feedback, get a gut check, and validate your ideas.

• Be a leader. focus on our other Culture Cores, such as being open and collaborative. Do your best to ensure they are the right decisions, get a gut check from people you trust in the community, and be open about how you reached those tough choices. You will earn respect, even in the face of unpopular choices.

• Be a role model. Demonstrate objective, empathetic, authentic decision making and leadership. Be the person you want to be and you will be the leader other people want you to be.

• Be empathetic. Be intentional: don’t just be empathetic in the privacy of your own mind. Say it, demonstrate it visibly. This all builds trust. Empathy is a powerful driver for building inclusion, which is a powerful driver for innovation. “Belonging is crucial to us as individuals, but civility is crucial to us as a society.” Ensure you don’t just show empathy yourself, but develop a culture of empathy across your members too.

• Be down-to-earth. Let other people sing your praises; it is for them to decide, not you. Focus on building relationships, being interested in other people and their lives, and how you can support their success.

• Be imperfect.

Guidelines for Community Members

Sense of belonging

• We criticize ideas, not people.

• We treat people as equals and everyone is welcome in our community, irrespective of their gender, sexuality, political orientation, or otherwise.

• We judge contributions based on their individual merit.

• The vast majority of collaboration in our community happens openly, with limited exceptions for security or customer reasons.

• We believe in “fail forward.”

• We don’t demonize people for failure but embrace it to learn and improve.

Likeability

1936 How to Win Friends And Influence People, identifies several elements for befriending others.

• Show genuine interest in other people.

• Talk in terms of the other person’s interest.

• Make the other person feel important, and do it sincerely.

• Show respect for people’s opinions.

• Admit mistakes.

• Appeal to noble motives.

• Show praise.

• Don’t criticize or complain.

Reciprocity

You may increase your influence within a community by initiating a reciprocity cycle with members. This is a long-term strategy through which you try to help members with any problems (related to the community or not) with a view to building up a reciprocal influence.

Proactively interact with members, find out what problems/challenges they have (or might have), and identify ways you can help them.

Expertise

The final popular path to gaining influence is to provide remarkable value and expertise in every interaction. The objective is to be perceived as a highly regarded authority on the topic in the same vein as some academics. The mantra to this approach is interact less, but better. You spend less time interacting with individual members and more time making sure your contributions are respected and help you become an authority within the community.