Broadcasts.com - "Are You Gardening, or Are You Managing Waste?" (Community Signal)

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Are You Gardening, or Are You Managing Waste?

Published: Nov. 22, 2021, 10:30 a.m.

Earlier this month, blogging pioneer\xa0Jason Kottke\xa0tweeted\xa0that \u201csocial media would be a better place to connect with people if the folks building and using these services had spent formative time on and taken inspiration from Flickr and MetaFilter instead of 4chan and Reddit. Gardening vs. waste management.\u201d

That tweet spoke to Patrick who retweeted it, and that retweet elicited a reply from\xa0Lydia Fiedler, community manager for\xa0Splitcoaststampers, leading to this episode of the podcast.

What do your community members want out of their community? Are you tending a garden that is actively growing toward those goals? Or are you tolerating noise and managing waste that gets in the way? Having a clear sense of what brings the community together helps Lydia Fiedler\xa0keep conversations on track, set expectations for community members, and come up with inspiring challenges.

If you\u2019re planning programming for the coming year or just in a creative rut with your own work, this conversation with Patrick and Lydia offers some great inspiration that can help you create great experiences that will bring your members together and enable them reach their own goals.\xa0

Lydia and Patrick also discuss:

Operating in the \u201cgray areas\u201d of community management
Features that people clamor for on social media platforms that hosted online communities offer routinely
How challenges align with the Splitcoaststampers community\u2019s goal of becoming better artists and crafters

Our Podcast is Made Possible By\u2026

If you enjoy our show, please know that it\u2019s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor:\xa0Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

Being comfortable with making judgement calls for your community (5:15): \u201cIf you have a community that you\u2019re taking care of, and there\u2019s something that maybe doesn\u2019t exactly violate the letter of one of your guidelines, you have to be able to make the judgment call that you still don\u2019t want it in your community. Then you have to be able to communicate that, \u2018I\u2019m a human being, and I make judgment calls. I do it to preserve the culture of this community.'\u201d \u2013@understandblue

Fostering Splitcoaststampers\u2019 spirit of creativity (9:28):\xa0\u201cThe most important thing that you have is the definition of what you want out of your community. That\u2019s your little seed that you\u2019re going to protect. I\u2019m in a creative industry, and so the cultural little seed that I have to protect with everything in my online communities is people\u2019s ability to feel creative.\u201d \u2013@understandblue

Cultivating a community of gardeners (13:05):\xa0\u201cWhen you have a really good, strong community culture, \u2026 the people that love what you\u2019re building, they help you take out the trash. They don\u2019t want it there anymore than you do, and you know you have a good thing going when you have people helping you with the trash.\u201d \u2013@understandblue

About Lydia Fiedler

Lydia Fiedler\xa0is the community manager of\xa0Splitcoaststampers, where she has been for 11 years. Lydia has been creating art for nearly 40 years and creating online content for about 20. Crafting spaces that feel friendly and welcoming is her mission, whether at work teaching online, or engaging in social media. She also spent 20 years in the construction industry as an HR director and marketing director, and has worked in software development and at great startups in the Austin, Texas area, but the art industry has been her home for more than a decade. Lydia lives in Austin with her husband and two feline overlords, Maddie and Splotchy.