On the End of a Community

The best you can do is be grateful for the good times

This was us once (by Shane Rounce)

I was part of a strong writing community on WordPress for a few years (2015–2018). We would support and inspire each other, write collaborative stories, and even have a few real-life meet-ups.

It was all good and jolly, but as the title hinted, it ended after a few years.

If you had told this to my 2017 self, I wouldn’t have believed it. There was no way we could stop. Of course, there were always members who engaged less and were more on the fringe, but there was a core group, and it seemed indestructible.

Except it wasn’t.

At the beginning of 2018, two core people got job offers. Good ones. The money was great, but the responsibilities were even more interesting. Of course, it came with a trade-off. They would have to spend more time focused on their jobs. These two significantly decreased their engagement. They didn’t stop, but they showed up a few times a week instead of a few times a day. That’s the order of magnitude.

Here’s the interesting part.

You could think two people’s perfectly reasonable actions wouldn’t influence much the community, but you’d be very wrong.