To get right to the point, why did this community become so inactive?
I can only really share from my own experience… when I first joined this community in 2018, I introduced myself and occasionally read posts, but at the time it was quite busy here and actually felt overwhelming. There was a lot of discussion, but not much in terms of small things I could do to contribute. At the time, pre-pandemic, I was more active in in-person communities such as the Humane Tech London Meetup. But I appreciated the existence of the community here, even if I wasn’t very active.
More recently, when I occasionally came here I felt rather underwhelmed, even though I am sure there are still people who care about these issues. My own impression on opening up the community in my browser was that the pinned posts we had up weren’t so welcoming as they were asking for quite significant help (related to the translation program, which hadn’t really taken off).
My hope for the coming year is that this community might feel a bit more welcoming & relevant, a place for those interested in humane tech to connect, learn, and discover. I don’t expect the forum to be as active as 2018, but I think with some small tweaks it can offer more than it did in 2021.
For me this is the key:
They’d probably actively participate if there were very concrete small things they can contribute. For more than that they lack the time and energy. But providing these concrete ways to ‘jump in’ requires a level of participation that’s hard for a grassroots volunteering community to provide.
I would like to provide few small, concrete ways for people to jump in. This will have to be limited to actions that don’t take much time to facilitate. I’ll put together a pinned “How to participate” topic for this soon and then we can revise it.