Episode I — A New Community
Community building is a daunting task, especially on a platform that is named “Discord”. — Some random person writing this article
In my journey developing a Discord bot and providing a service on Discord, I have noticed that there is a common theme among the communities that seek out my bot:
All community builders hunger for more.
You are likely here right now because you want more. You want more members, more member engagement, more active moderators, more tools and automation, or more knowledge. This hunger for “more” is what drives community builders to create spaces where hundreds, thousands, tens- and even hundreds of thousands of people from around the world gather to discuss, learn, and enjoy themselves. It is why community builders seek out tools, knowledge, and peers sharing in their struggles. It is why this blog exists.
I am Landeau, the developer of Statbot which is a modest Discord bot that collects and provides data to community builders. From my perspective, the bot’s success can only be attributed to one thing: people want to know more about what it is that makes their communities tick. Without data, a community cannot identify weaknesses and strengths; it is difficult to know where to focus the often limited-available manpower that’s available. However, data alone can only go so far.
You cannot know where you are going until you know where you have been. — Probably paraphrased from someone famous
Despite being the developer of a data-driven service, I do not think that data is the be-all and end-all of my responsibilities. I cannot overlook that there’s much more to running a successful community on Discord than just data. There’s something that is absolutely necessary alongside the data. Without this thing, graphs are pointless, insights lack vision, and tools lie around doing nothing. The missing element is People. Additionally, people have something that none of those others do.
Experience — direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge.
Knowledge — the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association.
Through our experiences and the experiences of others, we develop a wealth of knowledge that help us make better decisions. Automated insights usually try to mimic this human ingenuity from the analysis of data. The problem is that without powerful machine learning programs and limitless amounts of data to process in order to train them, such insights pale in comparison to the raw analytic and creative output of people. You will likely walk away with just as much if not more by just hearing someone’s story, how they handled a situation, and the result of that action.
And that brings us here.
I strongly believe that the sharing of knowledge and experiences is important for community builders of all walks of life, novices and veterans alike. The Community Builders Blog (CBB) is the result of this belief and the Statbot team’s commitment to you to provide you with more than just data. It is a space for people to share their stories and a place where experience and data come together to give community builders ideas and resources in their quest for success.
The initial focus of CBB will be to highlight Discord community builders who have expressed interest in sharing their stories, successes, and shortfalls. Content will then branch into other topics covering resources, tools, and yes, statistics! CBB will become the go-to place to learn about other communities, to share in their successes and learn from their misfortunes, and find out more about what it means to be a community builder.
Thank you for reading and we wish you the best of luck, though we know you don’t need it!
Want to write for CBB for compensation? Please fill out this application and join the Statbot Discord server where CBB operations will be temporarily based.
I want to leave some final notes for those poor souls who have read all the way down to here. Get ready for some rambling! (^_^;)
You may notice I avoided using the word “server”. Yes, everyone knows these things as Discord servers. You join Discord servers; you’re limited to 100 servers; X server is about Y. But the way I see it, community builders don’t run servers. Servers are machines, mediums through which information is received, stored, changed, and sent. A server is only ever the sum of its parts. A Discord server contains a community and a community can be much greater than the sum of its parts. Why? Because of People.
To further illustrate, code running on a computer server does its job and only that. It doesn’t think outside its box. It generally doesn’t change the computer server its running on. The computer server is not without mention as well. It generally does not care what’s running on it or happening in it.
By contrast, a community of people in a Discord server actualize the purpose of the server and may even have a part in creating or changing that purpose. The community builders create and maintain an ecosystem in which the community can take root and grow. In return, the community may share feedback about the environment, communicating wants and needs thereby establishing a feedback loop. This relationship transcends a simple host-guest system that the word “server” implies. This is why I consider the act of “building a server” to stop when that first invite goes public. In that moment, a server builder is done building only a server. The owner of that server and their team become community builders, growing and nurturing a community of people.
PS: I called the Statbot server just that, a server. There’s a reason behind it and I’m open to discussing it if you would like to know more.
