Keeping the community welcoming

community
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Hi guys. As the community grows (which seems to be happening right now), I was wondering if it will stay as welcoming as it has been. Newer people may bring different ethos. To me there are subtle signs it is already happening (or may be that's just me). So just wanna know from those in the community moderation roles, are there any explicitly defined measures we have in place that'll help us preserve Rust's culture of being nice to others?

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I don't have any sort of official role, but I do consider myself part of the community.. As such, I think the important thing is that everyone remains polite and welcoming to eachother. Communities are built by their members, not just their moderator (important as they are!)

Rust's choice of forum software supports this: any one can ask others to remain polite. A private message is just one flag away (you can either "flag for moderator attention", or "flag via direct message to author".

That sounds worrying! Would you mind sharing them, so others can be on the lookout too?

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Thanks @BurntSushi. Didn't know that document existed. :slight_smile:

To be honest though, while a clearly stated policy is a must, ultimately it boils down to the actual dynamics of the group in my view. New people are sure to bring their own values and, with increasing size, the original message -- such as the policy above -- can get lost and the culture can slowly degrade. So I was just wondering what extra we can do to prepare ourselves. For as the language grows we can be sure that jerks are going to show up eventually.

I don't really have a clear answer. I guess I'm just sharing a concern. As @juleskers rightly said, we'll certainly need to be good models for each other. This will be especially required of folks in leadership roles (not that they're falling short in any way right now). Second thing perhaps would be to deal with any breach stringently: a sort of continual weeding may be required to keep things healthy.

Haven't seen anything openly bad, but sometimes you just get a sense that a change in the style of communication may be creeping in. Or may be it's just me being hypercritical.

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