Community and Grace

In recent years, I have participated in three online communities: Facebook, Perl Monks, and Sons of Sam Horn. Of these, the latter two are significant because they are primarily composed of people I don't know from meatspace. Both groups are topical -- the former, Perl Programming, the latter, Red Sox baseball -- and both groups contain a significant number of experts from whom I could learn a lot. I have read from, and posted to, both groups.

There, however, the comparison fails. While my involvement with SOSH was short-lived, my involvement with PM continues. The difference in these two relationships, plain and simple, is grace.

Lets be honest here, I should not have been surprised by this difference. SOSH is a notoriously unkind community. We Sox fans are historically tough on our beloved team and its critics alike, and SOSH raises that toughness to an art form. If you post something that is less than well written, it is out there forever, and they will rip you to shreds.

PerlMonks, however, gives you room to fail without feeling permanently outcast. I have been flat-out wrong in my time at PM far more than I ever was at SOSH, but I keep coming back. Upon reflection, I think I keep coming back because this grace made me feel welcome in a way that I never have at SOSH.

My home church has a similar situation to these two communities in that we regularly have visitors, and some of these visitors don't know anyone in the main service. They may have different opinions on free will, worship styles, or what constitutes "appropriate clothing" for church. Some visitors may not even agree with you on such essentials as the divinity of Jesus. Despite these differences, I think we can identify some techniques from PerlMonks that we can use to maintain community through grace:

• Freedom PM has a "chat" area where members can kick around ideas without risking their long-term reputation. There is also a lot of opportunity to laugh together. Does your lobby provide this?


• Feedback PM has a "voting system" whereby members are able to indicate approval or disapproval on the value of posts. This communicates reputation back to the members. Do you provide this level of honesty?


• Flexibility PM allows members to edit their posts after the fact, often in response to prior feedback. If you make a bad post, you can fix it. Do you provide people room to grow?


• Forgetfullness PM has a process whereby postings that are sufficiently incompatible with the community are "Node Reaped" and removed from the discussion (e.g. trolling, flame wars, spamming, etc.). Do you hold a grudge, or are you willing to forgive?

In a real-world community, the process of grace will be different, but the principle remains. If we don't give people the liberty to be wrong and a commitment that supersedes their mistakes, people won't stick around.