@jandren I concur. That is why we get along.
Note: oops, I ended up writing more than I expected below.
On community, from my user and moderation experience:
Especially true today is the fact that people have little patience for nonsense and toxicity. People are also fickle. If a community isn’t welcoming, then so long, I never knew you, with angry people badmouthing in some corner of the internet. (Hopefully, just a corner, and not burning the rest of us in their nuclear meltdown.)
My director from work always reminds me to bring value to people. Value means doing things that make engagement and delivery as frictionless as possible and have immediate relevance to expectations. It doesn’t matter how amazing we or our work are, work and actions are waste if they don’t bring value.
An example of waste is how many discussions turn out in the forum. Too many words without much consideration, people talking past each other and uncivil behaviour. Although it is wonderful to wind down and let it out once in a while, wasteful dialogue doesn’t go anywhere and often makes things worse.
Another example of waste is the technical barrier. We are all nerds or geeks, but do note that this demographic is not homogeneous. People are enthusiasts and experts in very different things. A healthy community recognizes and accommodates the differences in background, expertise and values.
To me, overly technical discussions and documentation alienates a large proportion of the population. It would be worth considering creating a space where there can be a novice-friendly parallel to technical streams. The technical has value too, just not in certain moments and contexts. (So, please! Don’t enter the discussion with technobabble if it isn’t required or relevant.)
(And don’t get me started on people providing misinformation intentionally or unintentionally. As a forum member, please flag such content for removal or revision!)
In general, hard to parse discussions tend to be (a) harder to enter, (b) harder to return to and (c) harder to search and discover for humans and algorithms.