A Minute from the Moderators
How we can support our communities
Hello and welcome to the new year! I hope everyone was able to find sources of rest and recouperation towards the end of the year. As we kick things off, I’d like to talk about community support.
As technologists, we care about the open source ecosystem. As people invested in decentralized spaces where others can connect and grow, we care about the sustainability of the platforms that bring people together.
Something I’ve been seeing across all of these fronts is the rise of burnout.
Burnout creates its own forcing function. As ecosystems shrink, fewer people remain to carry things forward. If the work doesn’t also change to accommodate that, then each remaining person’s task load grows. This means that burn out can spiral, and spiral faster.
I see more people discussing concerns that their third spaces are shrinking or disappearing. In the physical world, some of this was driven by the pandemic. Smaller gathering places like cafes and community centers struggled when people couldn’t meet in person, and not all of them recovered. Surveys find that roughly half of adults now report experiencing loneliness, with young people seeing an especially sharp drop in time spent with friends.
In online spaces, we see something similar, but perhaps with a different cause. As people feel greater economic uncertainty at work or greater demands at home, we’re all less likely to give of ourselves to community spaces—not because we don’t value them, but because we simply don’t have it in us.
But: what if we did (have it in us)?
I want to pause here for a few moments of reflection.
First, I want you to remember moments when you felt the most joy. These don’t need to be work-related, or even open source / volunteer org related. Anything in your lifetime, no matter how long or fleeting. Think of past conversations, places, or other moments. Whatever comes to mind, just take your time.
Now, I want you to look for what your moments of joy have in common. Was it connection? A sense of accomplishment? Being seen, or seeing others clearly? Feeling part of something, or feeling free of something? Being able to relax and let your guard down? Make a mental note of any common internal experience you have amongst them.
Now, a second set of thoughts. This time about projects, communities, or other volunteer work. While for many of us here on Hachyderm there may be open source / tech communities in here, I want to emphasize that you do not need to constrain on these unless you wish to. This question is intentionally as broad as you need it to be.
One last reflection exercise: how have things been lately, in your honest assessment?
Have you wanted to do something you couldn’t? More time with loved ones, time to read, to feel the sun or touch grass? Do any of you feel like you might have “time”, in terms of minutes on a clock, but not “the time”, as in no emotional space inside of you?
If any of this resonates, you’re not alone. You’re not failing. A lot of people are sharing similar thoughts and feelings. Feeling like they take actions that don’t have results. Working hard with no, or insuffient, outcome. Participating in community but not feeling connected.
Why this exercise?
The reason I wanted everyone to go through this exercise is to help us all remember that we’re not alone. And that while we on Hachyderm, and many online spaces, welcome volunteers that it helps us help you if you are able to tell us your wants and needs.
When you want to volunteer somewhere, or just generally participate in a community in some way, The Place usually knows What They Need from you. In the case of a social media instance, these are usually tasks that support people supporting each other (handling reports, disagreements, etc.) or support technology that supports people (software updates, server maintenance, security, etc.).
Collaborating together means being able to discussing the intersection of “skills you bring” with “meeting community needs”, but also being able to communicate what brings you joy, and when you need rest, especially in times like what we’re all currently experiencing.
To the point: stepping up to volunteer your time is a gift to others. And being able to know when you need to step back and/or ask for change is a gift to yourself.
Both of these are legitimate. Neither is failure.
Stepping up
Volunteer labor is measured in seconds and spoons.
There are a lot of calls for action out there, and it’s both possible and likely that there are more situations you wish you could share your skills and time with than you’re actually able to. This is okay. It’s a good opportunity to learn more about yourself and to practice having boundaries. After all, a sustainable you is better than a you that’s spread too thin and burning out.
When you’re assessing whether to join a new effort, ask questions of yourself first. Not just “how much time can I devote per week,” but “what do I need to know” so you can better determine how much you can give and whether the organization’s needs match your skills.
Not all time is created equal. As someone who used to take on-call rotations, I used to joke that one minute of incident time is one year of real life. The stress is higher, the pace is higher, everything takes more. There’s a reason organizations with healthy incident response culture ensure people can take time to themselves after a shift with an incident—even if they were scheduled to take that shift.
As you better understand how much time and emotional energy is needed from you, you can not only better decide your capacity but also better communicate the boundaries you need.
Stepping back
Stepping back doesn’t have to mean dramatic exit. It can mean doing less, doing differently, taking a defined break, or shifting into a different role. The key distinction is to step back with intention instead of collapsing from exhaustion. Making choices with intention not only helps you, but also helps give information to the community (or organization) that you’re working with.
If you find yourself overcommiting because you’re worried as you watch your communities struggle: that is absolutely a hard choice. But it helps both you and others to say “not right now” or “not this”. The spaces you’ve helped build do not require your depletion as the price of membership or community. (And honestly, if they did would you want to participate in that environment?)
In the broader open source ecosystem, there’s even data around this. Tidelift surveys show a consistent 60% of open source maintainers either have quit or consider quitting. This means it’s not individual weakness, it’s something we can choose to normalize doing with intention, communication, and without shame, so that communities can adapt rather than being caught off guard.
Asking for change
If you’re volunteering in spaces that you’d like to stay with changes, rather than cutting back, this is both similar and different: you still need to ask for what you need, the needs are just shifted.
Being successful with these types of requests requires knowing what’s depleting you specifically, not just feeling generally exhausted. It requires being able to say “I can do X but not Y” or “this structure isn’t working for me” or “I need this to change in order to continue.”
It also requires being in a community that can receive that. Not every space is ready to hear what its members actually need. But communities that want to survive have to become places where this kind of honesty is possible. Where people can say “this isn’t sustainable for me” without it being heard as complaint or received as abandonment.
If you’re in a position to ask for change, I’d encourage you to be specific. Not “I’m burned out” but “weekly syncs are depleting me and I’d like to try async updates.” Not “I can’t do this anymore” but “I can continue doing documentation but I need to stop doing issue triage.” When you are able to communicate what is contributing to exhaustion or burnout, this gives your community the ability to change specific things and removes guesswork.
How this builds collective capacity
Communities can’t allocate resources they can’t see. If everyone is performing sustainability while quietly running on empty, the system has no signal to work with. It can’t route around problems it doesn’t know exist. It can’t offer support to people who haven’t said they need it.
Honesty is a collective resource. It is something to be cherished and it helps the broader community understand its actual, collective, capacity. This also helps communities make decisions like “what can we actually sustain? What do we need to let go? Where do we need to recruit, restructure, or rest?”
The alternative is what we see too often: projects that seem fine until suddenly they aren’t. Maintainers going silent. Spaces that hollow out from the inside while the exterior looks unchanged. Communities don’t usually die from a single dramatic failure. They disappear from accumulated, unspoken depletion.
Coming back to joy
I asked you earlier to remember moments of joy, and to look for what they had in common. I want to return to that now.
The point of this reflection wasn’t optimization. It wasn’t about finding efficiencies or maximizing output. It was about remembering what it feels like when the things you do actually meet your needs. When actions and outcomes are aligned, and participation is restorative rather than extractive.
The communities and spaces that we build should be the things that sustain ourselves and others. Not every time and always. There will be seasons of giving more than you receive. But if a community is only ever drawing from you, never restoring, something is misaligned. And you’re allowed to notice that. You’re allowed to name it. You’re allowed to step back, or to ask for it to be different.
This is how we rebuild collective capacity: one honest assessment at a time. One clear communication at a time. One person at a time remembering that their sustainability and the sustainability of the things they care about are interconnected.
Quick housekeeping: manual application approvals
As many of you know, we’ve been on manual approvals for about six months now. The main reason for the shift was a dramatic surge in bot sign ups, or Human Sounding Automated Sign Ups.
As many of you are also reporting on an increase in bot traffic / spam overall, this likely doesn’t surprise you (and thank you for continuing to report those!). For those who haven’t encountered it directly, here’s an article we reference often that illustrates just how convincing these bots have become: The future of forums is lies, I guess.
We’ve been working hard on better ways to ensure that the accounts we approve are either for people or, at minimum, entity accounts that are clearly intended to be entities—projects, conferences, and so on.
As concerns around online safety increase, we’ve also been getting more questions about whether certain activities affect your application: signing up with different email providers, using VPNs, what happens if your application is denied and you’d like to appeal. I wanted to take a moment to address these.
The short answer, with context: When we evaluate applications, we’re trying to answer two questions. Is this account a bot? And if not, will this person be a good fit for our instance? This means we don’t have rules for or against the use of specific email providers, VPNs, and so forth.
So what is helpful?
On “bot or not”
Unfortunately, human-sounding reasons to join aren’t always helpful here as now bots write these with ease. That means applications that provide other “proofs of life” in addition to their Reason to Join can be processed more quickly.
Since we have a lot of technologists, this typically means things like GitHub or LinkedIn profiles, though it doesn’t have to be. If you have a pre-existing account you’re migrating from, even if you don’t plan to link them formally, mentioning it helps us look for bot patterns in prior activity.
On “good fit”
This is where your Reason to Join matters. Our number one rule, and our shorthand for following our Code of Conduct, is “don’t be a dick.” If your application tells us enough to know you’re a person and that you’ll follow the Code of Conduct by treating others with respect, that’s all we need.
Prior social accounts help here too. In addition or in lieu of that, having an existing member refer you is also a great way to expedite this process. It means that someone is willing to vouch that you’re not automated and that you’ll be good to others. This shortens the entire application process significantly.
On appeals
All denials are appealable. In many cases the outbound email tells you what to do, but the overall gist is: for most denied account applications, emailing us is a great way to let us know to take a second look at your application. Everythign I said before also applies here: anything you can provide that helps us distinguish you from a bot and establishes that you’re interested in positive engagement goes a long way.
Thank you for your patience
I think I can speak for all mods and instances by thanking everyone for their patience. Each instance is figuring out how to handle both the changes in account sign ups and other concerns, and it means a lot to us when people remember that we’re all trying to create a better, safer, online experience.