The backbone of Discord can be found in its infinite communities. Communities are created by people (like you!) and bring people together over their shared interests, a pursuit of knowledge, or even those simply searching for a space to hang out. On Discord, there are communities for just about everything -- if there’s a group of people that care about something, there’s probably a place where people talk about it on Discord and find new friends.

‍

Before we dive in too deep, though, let’s start at the top. What is a community?

Defining a Community

A community on Discord is an environment (usually in the form of a Discord server, but it can be larger, like a network of affiliated servers) where a group of people come together over a shared interest or passion. This shared interest is the inspiration behind your community and it could be anything: a game, a content creator, a movie, a book series, or even something more niche like a fan club for a secondary character from a beloved TV show. You can build a community around anything, really, and find people all over the world who want to talk about that passion with you. And maybe sometimes similar communities already exist, but that doesn’t mean you can’t build your own space. More communities mean more space to experiment, learn, and grow.

Once you’ve identified the interest or a passion you want your server to focus on, the next step in defining your community is to identify its purpose. Imagine a community centered around an author — people might want to join to talk about the author, or participate in a read along, find similar authors, talk about future books, or more. Maybe all of this belongs in one community, but maybe there can be multiple communities each focused on a specific case.

For your community, you’ll want to determine what people will get out of it and how it will appeal to current and future members. Members may come to a community seeking information, camaraderie, or support (or all of the above!), and it’s important to understand what you and your members want your community to be.

To help institute a purpose, remember to think about your community from the perspective of a new member. Ask yourself some questions. What is this community for? What’s the coolest part about it? Why do I want to stick around? Identifying your community’s purpose as clearly as possible will help you to answer these questions and make your community interesting and distinct.

Now that you’ve identified an interest and a purpose, share this with the members of your community! You should share your server guidelines and expectations publicly, usually in a welcome channel and in a server ruleset that users are expected to abide by.

One last note — remember that the purpose of your community may shift as your user base ages and grows. Be flexible and grow with your community’s needs to successfully foster a healthy environment. Revisiting your founding mission and adapting it as necessary will allow your community to thrive as it goes from a hundred to a thousand to, maybe, a million people.

How do I keep my community safe?

After defining your community’s purpose, the next most important element of running an online community is moderation.

There’s more to moderating a community than just understanding how to use Discord’s moderation tools. Think of it this way- building a community is like building a city, and moderators are responsible for several facets of constructing that space including:

• Building Infrastructure. Building the foundations and the roads and bridges of a community. Creating new roles, channels, and updating rules as necessary to maintain a healthy environment. This may also include moderation bot wrangling and programming.
• User Safety. Keeping the peace and removing immediate threats. Enforcing your community’s punishment scale to ensure all your users are safe. Handling punishment appeals is another important aspect of user safety.
• Event Running. Bringing people together and introducing and integrating newcomers. Many communities will run events to help introduce server members and to bring the community closer.
• Direction. Setting a tone for the future of the server. Firm but fair moderation establishes the direction of your community and gives the moderation team respect and credibility.
• Community Leadership. Being the mayor! Active communication and transparency will inspire others to see you as a leader. As a community leader, moderators act as the guiding force of the community and set the standard for how to behave for others to follow.

At its heart, moderation is about building a healthy society- not just clicking the ban button. It can be quite complex and, at times, the path forward may be unclear.