In the MoTaverse we know the direction we are heading in, but we don't plan for every detail. Everything we do is intended to help us get a little bit closer to our dreams of the best tech community out there. Yes, software testing and quality engineering professionals, I believe we can do this!
Our internal philosophy is to build upon one little iteration at a time. Crucial for this is doing the work, making observations and then looking for opportunities to improve. It's a whole team approach, and it's beautiful.
Sometimes to build in iterations, we commit to something publicly and then figure out how to do it. This is what we did with Community Certificates. We announced them, then many months later, found a system that would lead to us issuing them.
At the time I didn't realise it, but the system we started creating was actually a community algorithm — a set of rules and processes to help us make decisions. It started by logging community interactions that we appreciated and didn't want to forget. We internally logged them manually under the code name of ⭐️ Community Star ⭐️.
What started out as a very short list of reasons has evolved into a much longer list. No doubt the list will only get longer, this is largely down to our constant observation of the community and our continuous search for new Community Star opportunities.
How do Community Stars work?
Internally, we award members a point for every positive interaction with the community. It only takes one positive interaction to earn a community star. People can earn a maximum of one star a month. Once they earn 5 stars they are awarded a Community Certificate.
More recently, we've started awarding an Above and Beyond Certificate for people who have earned “many” points within a calendar month. This is because some people deserve recognition for simply going above and beyond!
How are points for Community Stars earned?
We've created a list of reasons to award a point. This is currently done manually and we are fully aware that the process is error-prone. This list is forever evolving, we are always adding, adjusting and removing. We also make human decisions on whether or not we decide to award points outside of this list.
We've not shared our process of the Community Algorithm. Publishing it is our way of operating as openly as we can. We recognise that people may try to hack the system. We are prepared to adapt if we feel people are behaving in a manner that doesn't align with our community culture, so good luck with that!
The Community Algorithm List
- Inspired a poll
- Added a meme
- Detected spam
- Talk contributor
- Grateful for help
- People amplifier
- Shared feedback
- Article contributor
- Grateful for support
- Organised a meetup
- Job advert amplifier
- Conversation starter
- TestBash contributor
- Shared a good quote
- Shared a testermonial
- Grateful to participate
- Updated MoT content
- Donated fee to charity
- TestBash Ambassador
- Amplified MoT content
- Added a photo memory
- Trends article contributor
- Trends quote contributor
- Heavily active on The Club
- Created a public collection
- Reported a MoT issue/bug
- Beta tested an MoT feature
- Added definition to glossary
- Hosted This Week in Testing
- Recommend an item for Radar
- Amplified community members
- Heavily active on the MoT Slack
- This Week in Testing contributor
- Donated to the Scholarship Fund
- Answered questions, shared advice
- The Testing Planet Event contributor
- Earned a Certificate in Test Automation
- All round big MoT supporter and amplifier
- Recommended a tool for Software Testing Tools
- Has MoT Professional Member on LinkedIn profile headline
- Software Testing Essentials Certification (STEC) contributor
The challenges of a human-nurtured community algorithm
The truth is that it's not sustainable to manually manage the community algorithm in the long term. It gets harder to keep on top of it all as things get busier within the MoTaverse. This is the pain we are facing right now.
Whilst there will always be human decisions behind what we do, the goal is to build this into the MoTaverse, create efficiencies and automate what makes sense to automate. This is one of our projects for 2025.
The way I see it is that kickstarting the Community Star efforts has been like creating an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). We've created a highly inefficient way of creating community value. We've confirmed that the people love the recognition associated with Community Stars and Community Certificates. It also helps us to observe and focus internally, which in turn helps us make much better decisions.
Don't get put off if you feel you've done one of these things and haven't been awarded a star. It's early days for the process and whilst we'd love to backdate Community Stars, it feels like too big of a task to make happen.
The community algorithm reflects our culture of expanding towards a positive space.
It naturally aligns with how we do our best to always be:
- inviting
- asking
- boosting
- caring
- tweaking
We don’t use these words lightly, they are intentional and reflect our daily community interactions. Sharing this may help you become more aware of our everyday interactions. We live in hope that our own internal actions will be replicated across the MoTaverse.
🌟 A special thank you to Simon Tomes. Whilst I have written this post, much of this star system exists because of him. 🌟
