Jean and I have been talking this week about what’s next to prioritize around the Micro.blog community. I often focus on technical improvements to blogs, but we’ve had some good momentum recently with community features too, such as rolling out profile pronouns, user blocking, and encouraging alt text in Discover. Starting today, Jean is also hosting monthly office hours to talk to folks on Zoom.
Halsted’s post about creating a safe and inclusive community is also on our minds, and there are a few points in particular that I think we can run with.
- Expanding community guidelines to demonstrate what we want to see, not just what we don’t want to see. The first step with the guidelines was to set a foundation for behavior that we would need to address with blocking posts or banning users. The next step could be to also summarize what kind of posts work well to keep the timeline safe and welcoming for new folks.
- Elevating voices in Discover. Jean is planning to write a post about how we approach curating Discover. There aren’t strict rules for this, and our own guidelines should and do evolve, but sharing our thinking will help the conversation. We are fully aware that Micro.blog is not as diverse as it can be. Improving this will touch many parts of the platform, including marketing.
- Maintaining a new community roadmap. We know the larger vision, but we don’t usually track every little feature request because it can be overwhelming and inevitably become out of date with current priorities. What we want to add, though, is making sure there is a public list of community features so important tasks aren’t lost.
Thanks as always to everyone who uses Micro.blog and has given us a chance to build something unique on the web. I know everyone has high expectations, and we do too.
