Hi Hashnoders,
Today, we wanted to discuss some growing pain points and remind all of us what Hashnode is and why we're here.
The whole community was built when Fazle and Sandeep realized that there are no places where you can ask an open-ended question, and expect to see an opinionated and a friendly answer. Most of the online developer communities are either hard to join, heavily moderated and in some cases fairly toxic.
Hashnode was built to be friendly, open, welcoming to beginners, and a safe place to have a development-oriented discussion. As the community grew, we've set up a few guidelines which haven't changed to this day. These guidelines are here to help others understand what the goal is, to stop people from spamming and keep the tone of the discussions friendly.
Be helpful, and understanding. As developers, we’ll always have differences in opinions with the myriad of approaches to arrive at a solution to a problem. So, when you are participating in discussions, try to be helpful, and understanding; and try not to get carried away, and take anything personally.
As the community grows on a daily basis, it's hard for moderators to catch every spammer or to remind people to keep the discussion civil. This is why we added options to report spam or misbehaving users.
In case a person is not very friendly and the discussion takes the wrong turn, we tend to approach that person directly and try to remind them to keep things civil. Being praised publicly doesn't have the same effect as being approached in private. We start from the premise that sometimes people are not aware of their actions and try to voice our concerns in a friendly manner.
We do encourage discussions, but we don't allow people to badmouth others, offend them and insult their work. There is a huge difference in having a meaningful assertive communication and having a toxic environment where calling people and their projects names is considered to be normal. At Hashnode, toxicity will never be accepted and such comments, actions and toxic users can expect to get sanctioned and face moderation.
That being said, if you'd like to report any user or comment, all you have to do is click on those three dots and click on report. We are trying hard, but sometimes we might skip some comments or discussions.
Someone recently made a poll and asked the rest of the community to vote against one of our users. We want to make it clear that we haven't started it, and that such polls are not allowed. It takes a lot to get banned at Hashnode and me as a community manager as well as Fazle do our best to first get in touch with all the people who behave against our guidelines and explain that their actions are not acceptable. We're not one of those communities where people can get banned easily and we really try to be as transparent as possible. In case the report button is not enough for you, feel free to write to us at community@hashnode.com and we'll make sure to address all the issues and hear your opinion.
Please, let's keep Hashnode a safe space for all, and remind ourselves that we as a community need to grow and improve. Please let us know if there's anything else we can do to make this a better place for you.