@jean Hi, Jean. Could you direct me to the M.b community guidelines or whichever document lays down the groundrules on how we interact with one another here? I tried to follow a link on the help site and it went to a missing page. Thanks.
@cygnoir Does this work? help.micro.blog/t/communi...
These haven't been updated in a while, and I would love to get input from the community via email: jean@micro.blog.
@jean Here is what's on my mind lately: There are many neurotypical white cis male voices on M.b. How do we elevate historically marginalized voices in our community, and also build a community that supports their participation?
Replying as a neurotypical white cis male voice
Don’t you think this is "a community that supports their (historically marginalized) participation"?
If not - what would you do to make that happen?
If it does - then surely all that is missing are non neurotypical white cis male voices ... which sounds to me like we should be promoting this space into what and wherever those communities are.
I suspect that the real issue is that the nature of Micro Blog is that it generally attracts
- the tech crowd
- apple tech specifically
- the indie crowd
... which I am going to suggest are communities of neurotypical white cis male voices.
Or am I misunderstanding?
@cygnoir These are good questions. I would like to create a venue for them to be discussed, where a coherent discussion can take place and where I can make sure people are heard. We can have good chats on the timeline, but they can also devolve into a bit of a chaotic muddle, which is where misunderstandings can happen. I’ll follow up with you, and anyone else who wants to be part of a dedicated discussion. jean@micro.blog
Here’s the last time I posted at length on this subject. The comments are fine, but a good example of how a discussion gets derailed. 😏
Diversity and Inclusion at Micro.blog: Where We Are, Where We Want to Go
@JohnPhilpin I asked the question because no, I don't think this is a community that supports those who have been historically marginalized. This is not because any one person is specifically excluding them, but rather because if those of us with privilege are not all actively working to include those without privilege, they won't be. Inclusion isn't about being invited to participate; it's about removing barriers from participation, as well as addressing microaggressions as soon as they occur. But that only happens if inclusion is a community value that we all share. If we all shared this value, we could work together to remove barriers. Here's an example of a barrier: Not everyone can afford $5/month for a hosted microblog. Do we create a "scholarship" system that those of us who can afford it pay into, and then we subsidize costs for others? That's why I am asking the question. If we want M.b to become more than a community for the Apple tech / indie crowd, then what are our community values, and how do we live them?
@jean I'm happy to have a dedicated discussion off the timeline, but I also think it's important to have these discussions out in the open. Otherwise it's not clear that the discussions are happening, or that diversity and inclusion are priorities for our community.
@cygnoir as a neurotypical white cis male, I’ll just say that I 100% support this and am glad to see it discussed. Now I will be quiet and listen to what other folks have to say.
@cygnoir Agree very strongly with your words. Because are we going to be the community that takes action or just say we want to be diverse and pat ourselves on our back? Removing obstacles and making people feel safe and like they belong. Let’s help them speak up on issues they want to and not have them think that they won’t find an audience here. It may at times be a chaotic muddle because most are afraid of ruffling feathers and this rather be the place to make happy warm fuzzy posts (those get plenty of engagement.) People cannot be value-free because almost no one is.
Anyway, I usually ramble on this topic a lot but as a non-white person, I shouldn’t have to always. So I am VERY glad you have brought it up. @miraz
PS. It may be but I don’t think the cost is a barrier.
@pratik Your words resonate, especially that as a non-white person, you shouldn't always have to talk about this. I firmly believe that those of us with the most privilege must be doing the heavy lift here. And it's going to take a lot of messy, uncomfortable conversations.
@cygnoir Love the idea of bringing in more diversity (and scholarships too). I think the key is being proactive to bring ‘em into the community. Opening the doors alone isn’t enough IMO.
@timapple That's the thing about barriers: Even if cost isn't a barrier for you or me, it may be a barrier for someone else. So I'd like for us to discuss removing that barrier. And yes, subsidized subscriptions will take work to administrate. Everything I'm talking about is going to be extra work, extra resources, extra thought.
@timapple Hm, a foundation is an interesting idea. I'd love for more inclusion within the greater Indieweb community, but as a woman not in the tech industry I've struggled with inclusion there, myself. I was focused on Micro.blog, since I consider it my primary online community.
@cygnoir @jean @JohnPhilpin @Miraz @issimonwoods @timapple @alongtheray @pratik @petebrown I have so many thoughts about this but am too exhausted from peopling to express most of them coherently. The most urgent of my thoughts, I think, is to echo that showing up and inviting people to a space not built with them in mind and not transformed to be explicitly welcoming to them is not enough to change participation. Over the next couple of weeks I will try to articulate more of my thoughts around this - especially the ones that are research-based.
@kimberlyhirsh @issimonwoods @cygnoir @timapple @alongtheray @pratik @petebrown @jean @Miraz @JohnPhilpin A corollary to this is that spaces can be unintentionally exclusionary; a space doesn't have to be maliciously designed to exclude people.
@cygnoir I’m probably the last person to ask since I don’t really fit into any one community as a nomadic wanderer in real and online life. (Might have to do with being deaf in a hearing world and being a part of neither.)
I will say @kimberlyhirsh makes a good point not to assume any one place is automatically (or can be made) inclusionary and/or welcome to all. For example as a deaf person I wouldn’t naturally gravitate here because it’s different culturally and deaf topics don’t “fit”.
To be clear I’m not asking for this place to change in that way — it is what it is here and I accept that but we have to be mindful of things we might not think of in recruiting others without understanding the environment we’re asking them to join.
@issimonwoods Thanks. I agree with @jean too, and I look forward to wherever and however the main discussions will take place. Until then, I only have this shared space with members of the Micro.blog community. And I have a sense of urgency about it, so we don't lose anyone else.
@kimberlyhirsh Thank you so much for weighing in now, and for your future contributions. I'm so eager to hear what you have to share with us. // cc: @jean @JohnPhilpin @Miraz @issimonwoods @timapple @alongtheray @pratik @petebrown
@alongtheray When you say that you're "probably the last person to ask" -- but you're exactly who I want to ask! You, and everyone else, who has a different M.b experience than the one assumed to be the norm. I agree with what @kimberlyhirsh said as well; she touched on something that I've been struggling with since I became a member of this community. I know there are others who have also struggled. And it's worth defining what a community's values are around this struggle.
@cygnoir 💯 I agree that it is an urgent matter, and has been for some time. It's also why I agreed with Jean during Micro Camp that getting at least one more community-focused person onboard the team is needed.
@cygnoir I'm just not attached to any one community and it's a bit of an outlier but that's cool, I embrace it. : )
To further clarify, what I'm saying (and this is just me - I am not speaking for anyone) to folks wanting to bring others in is don't recruit others because of their color, handicap, etc. to make you feel better or to make the enviroment appear more diverse. There has to be mutual benefit (and "fit") to all.
@alongtheray I agree; it's tokenizing for us to "recruit" in that way, especially if we haven't done the hard work of actually building an inclusive space.
@cygnoir @jean Thank you for bringing up this really important conversation. After reading the recent thread about community members that left here, it saddened me that it happened and I was immediately left wondering what could’ve been done differently to prevent such an occurrence. This is a pernicious issue that still plagues society in general, and is definitely not isolated to just Micro.blog and other online communities. Diversity brings different viewpoints, lifestyles, and thoughts into the community, and can only make us stronger as a result.
I’m more than happy to have a conversation here, or off the timeline.
@cygnoir I am happy to see these discussions taking place on the community. I selfishly hope, since 2018, that their are voices I could connect with more often on the timeline. I am suggested I should take initiave and spread the word in my country. Well, the assumption is I don't do that. It's difficult to convince people when there are so many barriers, including the cost. Anyway, I have stopped minding any more.
I don't think it's the lack of intent on community's part. It's the lack of moments to do that.
And the replies heavy timeline doesn't help the cause. Every topic that majority can connect with tends to get amplified, drowning down the single, non-busy posts. But I have complained enough, very recently too. @jean @Miraz
@pratik Sometimes I feel may be I should rather be more vocal, rambling on why a suggestion or a reply won't work for me because of the place I live in or the economy am part of or just the sheer mechanics of the things. But sense prevails when I realize it's a scale problem, and convince myself I needn't.
@cygnoir if cost is an issue, and I am sure it will be for some, maybe a guide to the simplest way to join in with a free external blog might help? I wonder if WordPress.com, a simple theme that supports microformats and hook up to micro.blog would work? There may be better solutions?
@pratik Fellow POC here with some what of a dissenting view. I don’t think it is Mb’s responsibility to make this space any way or another because that would run counter to the spirit of the indie web. One thing that makes this place attractive to me is that it’s apolitical in that sense. I’ve found and followed mostly minorities by focusing on finding people writing on topics that are interesting to me.
@kimberlyhirsh raised some good points re spaces and how they can become exclusionary without intention. I agree. But I also note that any effort to make Mb explicitly welcoming along domains @cygnoir mentions would make this space less welcoming to folks like me who enjoy this space because there is no top down effort from @manton, @jean et al. to make Mb fit into a framework they think is best.
@lukemperez You raise some good points. I think an important consideration here is what Micro.blog does as a service vs. what users of Micro.blog do as members of a community. What may be needed might not be a top-down imposition, but rather a critical mass of users stepping up to communicate their own values and intentions for their use of the space. And people who do not want that set of values dominating their timeline could evaluate each user to decide whether to follow them. There are many possible ways to improve inclusion.
@kimberlyhirsh This. This! You’ve landed on a key part of this whole discussion. All the inclusive guidelines in the world won’t change a thing without the community — people, individuals — actively doing the work to bring in and lift up those voices.
Frankly, as a Black man I think even having a space where these things are being actively considered by the service and some of the more active voices that use it is great! I’ve been following along the whole discussion.
Culture can be influenced by the designers of a thing (gestures broadly at America itself) but it can only be truly changed by the people within it.
@lukemperez It doesn’t have to be political when you have people of color. Most of it will be focus on access and belonging but that’s exactly the things we are talking about. In a more inclusive environment, people may but not always talk about their interests, hobbies, opinions with a take that we may not have heard from others. Where are the black people who love ink pens, etc. Selfishly too, attracting a diverse set of users will make in fact MB a richer place and avoid groupthink. @cygnoir
@pratik I use political in a very broad sense here. What you describe is political, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Though it can be, and much of the corporate social media, as you know, is political, and unfortunately is pathologically so.
Another way to restate what I'm thinking is simply that the priorities of such a project are not necessarily the priorities of those currently using Mb and those who might potentially use Mb. My concern is that a concerted effort to be more inclusive would turn off some of us using Mb or others who might. @cygnoir
@pratik @lukemperez I really appreciate Pratik's perspective here. It can be easy to forget that marginalization impacts a person's existence but isn't the entirety of it.
@kimberlyhirsh exactly. Eg., I have very strong ideological priors and study politics professionally. I have chosen not to follow a few accounts who post and write on politics because I don’t want Mb to be more of what I already get served and do on other platforms. Which is not to say I haven’t replied to a political post here and there but in the main, it’s great that this is a neutral space, or can be.
@lukemperez @pratik @cygnoir Turning off users is a potential risk; we have already seen some people leave for feeling unwelcome or excluded. This is why my response to your concern is that perhaps there could be a caucus of users committing themselves to deliberate inclusion while others don't. It could potentially be useful to have a directory of affinity groups as a "who to follow" starter set for new members. Like @burk's set of community-suggested tagmoji, this could be a bottom up thing.
@jean thanks for sharing this, Jean. Having read through the entirety of this thread, (and completely unrelated to the central "theme" of this discussion - i.e. diversity & inclusion - I hasten to add, I am left wondering/curious about how many members micro.blog currently has. Can you shed any light here? cc @manton
@jasraj Yes I do, here’s the thread that started my looking into this. This thread was started by Smokey himself and was referenced in his blog post on the topic. Finally, here is the original thread that sparked the whole issue.
Sorry for the multiple links, it was spread out over several threads and a blog post that I fell down the proverbial rabbit hole about. I felt it important to read everything and get a sense of what happened.
@jasraj @jean We haven't shared any numbers like that yet. I think one of the best things we can do as a company is to try to get growth coming from more diverse groups. We've talked a lot about how to do that through marketing and want to do more in 2022. Need to be welcoming to new people and also actually reach those people.
@manton @jean I think that the switch to the current help set up may have increased the difficulty in getting started. There's a variety of documentation updates and additions that I think could reduce some of the technical barriers people seem to find. I will try in the future to record challenges as I notice them and share that's with you.
@kimberlyhirsh Thank you, I agree. The new help was a bit of an experiment and we quickly realized that the "official" help pages were getting lost. @jean and I were talking last week about making time for a help site restructuring.
@manton @jean Thank you for writing back. Is there any reason why you haven't shared those numbers?
I've seen you mention "slow growth" previously, but I'd be curious to understand more about the 'growth' you have mentioned in your reply (i.e. the sorts of user numbers you have in mind for the community in 2022, and 3-5 years from now) and what your broader, long-term goals for micro.blog are.
@JMaxB Interesting you mention "family thanksgiving dinner" model because even that has evolved over the years 😬 But with every day virtual community, I want to know what your core beliefs are. Some contrasting ones are fine. Some are absolutely not. At least 2016 taught me that.
@pratik I am sure there is talent in this community to get to a pretty good approximation of those numbers if you really want to.
@pratik @jasraj @jean I think y’all assume we track more than we do. 🙂 I could calculate how many blogs were created but most are unused. Likewise for active users, some people take a break for months and come back. We don’t have specific user growth goals. The goals are high level: supporting the community and being financially able to keep doing this indefinitely.
@pratik This is a useful reminder, thank you.
The phrase I've heard used for this type of distinction is "my rights end where someone else's begin", and while there can be grey areas, I take that to mean that "personal beliefs" that involve advocating for harming or dehumanizing others don't fall in the realm of "agree to disagree".
@manton @kimberlyhirsh @jean As far as technical barriers to entry for M.b., part of that comes from the methodologies involved in the IndieWeb. Even though M.b. handles a lot of things behind the scenes, I think it’s still important that people are provided with a way to understand them in more detail. Not just because some of the principles of the community are rooted in the IndieWeb, but because there is a technical level of understanding required if someone wants to customize their blog.
Along those same lines if someone is looking to Hugo itself as a reference to the functionality of M.b., that quickly becomes a roadblock since the difference in versions creates a disconnect between the documentation and what’s actually available here.
@JMaxB @pratik @manton @jean This is exactly the issue at play though; when people don’t feel welcome to full expression because those views are smothered (even if unintentionally) by the more common majority. Without more diversity and inclusivity in the community, however, that’s a difficult hurdle to overcome.
Even completely ignoring that issue, there’s also another factor at work in artificially limiting expression, namely the general attitude and vibe of the community. As the neurotypical, cis, white male that @cygnoir mentions in her initial post, I’ve even held back posting some things that I wanted to discuss or vent about. My hesistation came from both wanting to maintain a “reputation”, and not wanting to bring negativity into the community. But here’s the thing; life is imperfect, and so are we. If we hold back expressing our true thoughts and feelings, we’re doing ourselves and the community a disservice. If we’re angry or frustrated about something, sharing it here needn’t devolve into a Twitter-style rant fest. On the flip side, nothing will ever change if those things never get expressed and recognized.
@manton @jasraj @jean I wouldn't want to use the terms DAU and MAU but something like that in terms of 5K-6K accounts/users would help. You have our credit card details to know how many distinct users there are. You don't have to share all you know but just at an overall level. I bet I am underestimating by a lot compared to the reality.
@pratik @jasraj It's possible to determine the number of users by building a crawler for the task like @JohnPhilpin is hinting at. But by gathering open-source intelligence, I'm pretty sure we could make an educated guess that wouldn't be too far away from reality. Some observations:
- The Kickstarter had 3,080 backers.
- KnockPy reports around 9,650 subdomains for micro.blog. That includes non-blogs like help.micro.blog and test blogs like manton-test.micro.blog. There are definitely blogs missing as well.
- The Discover timeline is curated by @jean and features the same handful of people, again and again. She's either really picky 😊 or the pool of active users just isn't that big.
- Wayback Machine's site map of micro.blog has roughly 1,500 users indexed for 2021. The graph is interesting; it clearly visualizes a handful of people creating most content.
So, my guess is less than 10,000 (human) users, most of them inactive.
@Gaby I find this really interesting and problematic- Goes back to the unique and odd thing about MB. If this is your personal blog. You should write what you want. But if you write and think about this MB community first - which is a subset of your blog readership … then what does it matter?
I enjoy the community but I think placing my blog elsewhere is where I am leaning cause I want to not worry or think about the MB community when I write.
@sod The "Books" user is a Big Deal 😆
on a serious note: that wayback machine view is really insightful into heavy users.
@sod @jasraj Ha! This is fun. I’m not really interested in exact/specific numbers but this is nice. As @manton said, as long as it is financially viable for him, it’s good. I’m sure he is not thinking about rapid growth coz I hope he doesn’t plan to sell (out) but making it an enriching environment will make it more worthwhile.
@timapple Interesting point. The reply with email that Pete put into his theme is a good one for sure.
PS. I did not mean to wade into this excellent conversation. I see the history of this conversation now.
@amit Thank you for weighing in, Amit, and also for resurfacing your comment about single, non-busy posts. I would also love a long-form-only timeline view (saying this as someone whose long-form posts get little to no engagement).
@johnjohnston I do think that the M.b documentation could be a lot more accessible to those of us who aren't tech professionals or tech-savvy hobbyists with time to tinker.
@gr36 Thank you for weighing in, especially since you debated so long about doing so. I appreciate you adding your voice. I agree with everything you've said about barriers to entry. If I hadn't reached out to some M.b users to ask for their help in setting up my site (and, gratefully, received their help) I would have gone back to WordPress already. I also agree with your suggestion for engagement, although I don't share your experience of "the people are so nice" here, which is why I asked my original question.
"The reply with email that put into his theme is a good one for sure."
Agreed - would be great if this was part of core functionality - alongside of web mentions and the like ( and much improved ease of use of same) - and if I had the option to add the email reply into the post comments ...
YES - give me an inch and I WILL take a mile!
// @pimoore
@terrygrier excellent point about the uniqueness of MB and the conflict of personal blog versus community. The @timapple idea would be a great extension.
THEN the worry becomes of all the levers per post you can pull might get burdensome.
Have to say - I lean towards this is my blog. If you don’t like what I have to say feel free to not follow or even block. We know it’s possible (I think - can't recall how to though, kind of like I don’t block Phaux News on the TV - I just ignore them. )
// @gaby
@gr36 so much of what you say here resonnates with me. It summizes almost exactly what I have been thinking (about MB) for the past few weeks.
@JohnPhilpin Yep, me too, really. My gut tells me it's somewhere in the hundreds to lower thousands. But I would have to dive deeper and review the data to find solid support for that. Or write that crawler...
