A community of communities: Empowering maintainers to grow communities around their code

Open source is about much more than publishing code. It’s about building communities around shared problems. However, it can still be a challenge to empower maintainers of projects, both large and small, to grow safe and welcoming communities around their code. GitHub’s community and safety team is like many other services’ trust and safety teams in that the team is tasked with ensuring users aren’t required to risk their privacy or personal safety in order to participate in the GitHub community. But online communities are no different than the offline communities we participate in every day. Beyond discouraging disruptive behavior in the form of spam, abuse, or harassment, the community and safety team is also tasked with encouraging good online citizenship by making it easier for users to contribute constructively and for maintainers to adopt community management best practices.

Ben Balter walks you through GitHub’s approach to empowering open source maintainers to build a federation of semi-independent communities, both in terms of content moderation policy and specific features, shipped and upcoming, looking at how various community management approaches encourage or discourage community growth and participation. You’ll walk away not only with a better understanding of GitHub’s approach to fostering safe and welcoming open source communities but what tools and resources are available for maintainers to grow healthy communities around their projects that scale along side the code.

Transcript

1. @benbalter #OSCON 2019 A community of communities Empowering maintainers to grow communities around their code
2. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Empower maintainers Encourage good online citizenship Community and Safety at GitHub
3. Online communities are 
 offline communities, just online Challenges | Leaders | Norms #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities
4. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Disruptive behaviors > Bad actors
5. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Good online citizenship Disruptive Constructive
6. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Good online citizenship Disruptive Constructive Inclusive
7. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Project norms Terms of Service Community Guidelines A federation of communities User expectations Community
 expectations
8. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities ~50 community health features in the past year Prevent "drive-through" pull requests Blacklisted open-source namespaces Disallowing disposable emails Safeguards against malicious maintainers Personal data access (data portability) Specify your merge commit email Verified domains
9. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities ~50 new community management features in the past year Comment edit history Maintainer and Triage roles Minimized comments Organization interaction limits Organization-level community health files Notify users when they've been blocked Anonymous moderation timeline entries More obtrusive CONTRIBUTING callouts "On behalf of" commits badges User access reports Temporary blocks
10. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Community growth Community moderation Two stages of community maturity
11. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Community Growth
12. You are the host of the internet’s 
 most boring dinner party #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities
13. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Reader-to-leader funnel 1. Use open source to solve a problem 2. Have a bug or feature request 3. Open an issue or pull request 4. ??? 5. Become the new project maintainer Community growth @mikemcquaid’s “contributor funnel”
14. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Welcome and recognize contributors
15. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Think through the developer experience
16. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Minimize friction
17. Friction (n) - the time it takes to go
 from “I want to” to “I have” #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities
18. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Community Moderation
19. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Minimize impact Encourage good behavior Introduce friction Community moderation Before During After
20. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Tiered moderation Warn Minimize comment Report abuse Edit comment Limit interactions Lock conversation Temporary block Delete comment Permanent block
22. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Rehabilitating disruptive users Because “hanger” is a real thing
23. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Encourage good behavior
24. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Document community norms Contributors must know norms before they can follow them Norms can technical, style, workflow, communications, etc. Community profile offers templates for many common community health files Encourage good behavior
25. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Community Health Files README What problem are we solving? CONTRIBUTING How can I help? SUPPORT What if I need help? CODE_OF_CONDUCT How do we resolve conflict? LICENSE What can I do with it?
26. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Code of Conduct adoption Number of pull requests Before 
 Community Profile After
 Community Profile 101 - 1000 2% 10% > 1000 8% 23%
27. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Be purposeful about when you add process # of pull requests % with 
 code of conduct % with CONTRIBUTING file 1-10 1% 3% 11-100 3% 11% 101-1000 10% 27% > 1000 23% 61%
28. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Encourage constructive contributions First-time contributor Repeat contributor
29. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities help wanted and 
 good first issue labels Specifically named labels that are given special treatment within the GitHub ecosystems Healthy, welcoming, and responsive communities gain additional visibility via discover, explore, and topics. Encourage good behavior
30. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Empower community members Triage - helps manage issues by applying labels, can close, reopen, and assign issues and pull requests Maintain - helps manage non- destructive repository settings New triage and maintain roles
31. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Enforce community norms automatically • Close stale issues • Request more information • Welcome new users • Thanks new contributors • Create documentation • Provide feedback on style • Flag offensive comments Pedantic robots > pedantic humans
32. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Introduce friction
33. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Lock heated conversations Forced cool down period to give participants time to cool off. 
 Can be temporary or permanent. Can also be used for stale issues. Introduce friction
34. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Limit interactions For disruptions that span multiple issues or repositories. Can be per-repository or per- organization. Lasts 24 hours to encourage collaboration. Introduce friction
35. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Report disruptive comments Report disruptive content to GitHub for review. Must violate Terms of Service or Community Guidelines. Reporting can remove disruptive content site-wide Introduce friction
36. Repositories that adopt a code of conduct report 15% more comments on average #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities
37. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Block disruptive users Blocks can be temporary (a forced time out) or permanent. Blocks can happen silently, or you can notify the blocked user (with links) and create a timeline entry. You have the option to minimize all of the blocked user’s comments. Introduce friction
38. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Minimize impact
39. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Hide comments Moderation tools available from the comment kebab Reduces screen real estate of disruptive comments to maximize signal-to-noise ratio Any user can opt-in to view Minimize impact
40. On average, repositories that adopt a code of conduct hide twice as many comments 10 versus 22 hidden comments on average #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities
41. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Edit or delete comments or revisions Useful to remove sensitive or offensive content For sensitive content, can also purge revision history Minimize impact
42. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Transparent moderation Breeds trust and creates a sense of fairness Reinforces community norms Signals that moderators are active Minimize impact
43. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities What’s next? A new, maintainer-centric reporting experience
44. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Previously on OSCON… Hi there! It looks like you're trying to start an open source project.
46. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Automated interventions So that you don’t have to Hi there! It looks like you’re about to post something that you’ll soon regret.
47. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities We’d ❤ your feedback! @benbalter benbalter@github.com ✉
48. #OSCON 2019 A Community of Communities Please rate today’s session Session page on conference website O’Reilly Events App bit.ly/rate-bb
49. @benbalter #OSCON 2019 A community of communities Empowering maintainers to grow communities around their code