Listen to your community, but don't let it tell you what to do.
Surely you know how journalists like to ask in their interviews about your biggest weakness or your biggest mistake you have ever made? These questions may look stereotypical or even cliché-like. But be careful when you answer them: they are much more important than they seem .
When people ask me about the biggest mistake I made in the process of creating the Stack Overflow (I’m talking about the translator - hereinafter SO), I’m glad that we don’t have to invent and say platitudes. I can honestly and openly tell about the huge, ridiculous and, ridiculously, stupid mistake that I made at the very beginning of the development of SO. Worse yet, I can tell you about such an error, which I continued to commit later for nine months against the background of ongoing community protests.
My mistake, in fact, was that I did not see the need for Meta. ( Approx. Translator - a term that Jeff Artwood coined to describe the situation when instead of directly creative activity there is a discussion of this activity itself). Moreover, I went so far as to write an entire publication that condemned the very existence of Meta.
For a long time I had a terrible attitude to this in the style of Fight Club: the first rule of SO - you should not discuss SO! In the end, we are here to come together to learn something in programming, and not to learn some stupid website. Right?
Meta is the space where you come to discuss the space itself. Pause and think for a second what it means. Meta is designed for people who are so worried about their community that they are even ready to get together and spend even more of their time to decide how to support this community and how to manage it. And I told these people, people who love SO more than anyone else , if you don’t go into details, something like this: “Yes, you got tired, get out of here” (“f ** k off and go away” is the original).
Yes, as I have already admitted, it was not my finest hour.
In my defense, I would like to say that in the end I realized my mistake due to the constant pressure from the community. And although from the very beginning we used an external Meta-site for such discussions, in the end (in June 2009, 10 months after the launch of the public beta) we launched our own meta.stackoverflow , as well as implemented it for the Stack Exchange ( Note - further SE). And now every site that we launch on SE has its own Meta from the very first day of its existence. Now everyone understands that the meta-participation contributes to the manifestation of leadership and helps to manage the community, so it is developed and closely watched.
Repenting for my sins, I became the most active user of our own Meta. For the last 2 years and 7 months, I was completely immersed in a quagmire of errors and requests for new features, participated in discussions and provided technical support. That's what our “Meta” is . During this period, as you can see in my profile , I visited Meta almost every day (901 unique days), which disturbs me somewhat, as it is close to my daily visit. I believe that the statistics of my meta-participation is a sign of honor, but more than that, it is my job to help create this project with the help of the community. We deliberately make everything open to the SE as opposed to the isolated development in the Ivory Tower .
Along the way, from my mistake, I learned a few lessons about how to create software together with the community, as well as how to process and manage feedback.
1. 90% community feedback is nonsense
Let's deal with it right away. Sturgeon's law holds true for men, for women, for children, and ... for communities, in this case. Meta community, I love you to death ! Therefore, let's be honest to each other: most of the ideas and wishes that you are voicing do not have - how better to say this - of great practical significance for many reasons.
But do not despair: this means that the 10% feedback you get from the community is very cool! I guarantee that you will find 10 messages that are worth their weight in gold. They will have the potential to make the site really better for everyone ... of course, provided you have the courage to look at the other 90 posts. Get ready to spend a lot of time, I mean all your fucking time , delving into messages of ideas and wishes to extract these nuggets. I believe that in every community there are quite intelligent people who are able to produce them in some quantity and who will be amazingly beautiful.
2. Do not make sweet talk about building a truck
All incoming ideas and wishes you should immediately lay out in two large baskets. Let's look at two requests:
')
For this car, we need power windows!
or
For this car, we need a truck body!
The first request is quite reasonable to equip a passenger car with a useful function. At the same time, another request is to radically change the design of this car. And the soft features of the software make any innovations too tempting to implement, including screwing the body from the truck to your car. Why not? Users continue to ask for it, and trucks are sure to be on hand. Right?
Do not fall into this trap. Follow your mission. This cargo-passenger hybrid is certainly very tempting for a large number of people, but in the end you will get a Subaru Brat . Until you really want to make a truck, you should carefully direct all users who want a truck to the nearest truck dealer, because they simply were in the wrong place.
3. Be honest that you will not do
It always depresses me when I see bug trackers and forums of ideas and wishes with thousands of messages languishing without an answer, and often even without status. This is a sign of an abandoned community. To make matters worse, this is a sign of dishonest treatment of him. Regrettably, but this is a frequent occurrence. Do not do this!
I'm not saying that you have to tell your community that their ideas and wishes sucks, even if this is often the case. But do not hesitate to politely reject them when you feel that they are meaningless or do not have reasonable ways of realization, in your opinion. (Of course, you should always reserve the right to change your opinion in the future.) Of course, it hurts - to be rejected, but even harder - to be ignored . I am sure that honesty in relations with the community will lead to the fact that such a community will respect you even more.
All relationships are built on honesty. If you are not ready to be honest with your community, then how can you expect it to respect you ... or continue with any relationship with you?
4. Listen to your community, but don't let it tell you what to do.
Meta's point is to be able to listen to your community and respond to its ideas and suggestions, right? It is therefore very tempting to take and use these requests as a basis for developing your software or website. On the other hand, a straightforward reaction to such ideas and wishes of the community is extremely dangerous and is the reason that many initiatives fail when taken too literally. I’ll try to let Tom Preston-Werner, one of the founders of Git-hub, explain this :
Consider this request: "Git-Hub should allow me to upload documentation for my project using FTP." But what this client really wanted to say: “I want to have an easy way to publish content related to my project.” People get used to what already exists and works. Therefore, they formulate their requests in terms that are familiar to them. We could, of course, implement some kind of creepy FTP solution, as requested. But looking deeper into the main question, we now allow content to be published using a simple push operation of the Git repository to your account. As a result, it satisfies all our requirements: functionality and elegance.
The ideas and wishes of the community are great, but they should never be used as a basis. They should not replace deep thinking about what you are creating and why . Always try to determine what is the basic need, and then come up with a reasonable plan for its implementation.
5. Stay close to your community.
Half of the relationship within the community is not to constantly do what the community thinks is necessary. You just need to be there to listen to the community and respond to it. When one of the founders of SE responds to your meta message - even if it’s not at all what you would like to hear - I hope it says a lot about how truly we are committed to creating something with our community. .
It doesn't matter if you are doing business or not, you should like to find those little gems of ideas and wishes of the community that will make your website or product better, and strive for it by all means. This is an effective and open work with ideas and wishes, which tells everyone that " you mean a lot to us, we care about you, and everything is done only to make everyone better ." This is how - all in one delightful gesture.
Do not we all strive for this?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/138241/
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