# A community of communities: Empowering maintainers to grow communities around their code

**TL;DR:** Open source is about building communities around shared problems, not just publishing code. In this OSCON 2019 talk, I walk through how GitHub helped maintainers grow safe, welcoming communities that scale alongside the code, and which community management approaches encourage or discourage participation.

Published 2019-07-18 · [View on Ben Balter's site](https://ben.balter.com/2019/07/18/a-community-of-communities-oscon-2019/)

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Open source is about much more than publishing code. It's about building communities around shared problems, communities no different than the offline communities we participate in each day. Yet, it can still be a challenge for maintainers of projects, both large and small, to grow safe and welcoming communities around their code.

GitHub's Community and Safety team was like many other services' Trust and Safety teams in that we were tasked with ensuring that users weren't required to risk their privacy or personal safety to participate in the community on GitHub. Beyond discouraging disruptive behavior like spam, abuse, or harassment, the team actively encouraged good online citizenship by making it easier for users to contribute constructively and for maintainers to adopt community management best practices.

[Watch "A community of communities: Empowering maintainers to grow communities around their code (OSCON 2019)" on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNQiPeAGzQo)

View the slides on [Speakerdeck](https://speakerdeck.com/benbalter/a-community-of-communities-empowering-maintainers-to-grow-communities-around-their-code).

In [this talk from O'Reilly's 2019 Open Source Software Conference (OSCON)](https://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/oscon-or/public/schedule/detail/76027), I walk through GitHub's approach to empowering maintainers to grow a federation of semi-independent, safe, and welcoming open source communities that can scale alongside the code. I also cover the tools and resources that were available and planned at the time, and how different community management approaches encourage or discourage community growth and participation.