User blog:FishTank/Town Hall recap - Building Strong Communities

 FANDOM is all about empowering users to have the best possible experience on their Fan Journey. Our most recent Town Hall put the spotlight on building strong communities, a major part of making sure that readers and contributors alike have a great experience on the site.

As with all of our Town Hall sessions, we answered participant questions and shared tips and insights from FANDOM staff members. Here’s a recap of what was discussed!
 * Seeding and Growing a Healthy Wiki. Doug Trein (aka TheBlueRogue) kicked off the event by sharing best practices for creating and building a new community. He outlined strategies for eye-catching styles and main pages, detailed how categories are key for community organization and mobile main pages, and explained how a Manual of Style can help your community have a shared vision. Finally, he discussed engaging with users in a variety of venues and how to keep things fresh with special events and more.
 * Communities of Communities. Julia Christelsohn (aka Springteufel) talked about the special relationships fans have with their fandoms and how this builds strong communities. She also talked about the importance of learning new perspectives from other communities and how social media can help your community grow.
 * Understanding and Embracing User Diversity. Sannse (aka Sannse) discussed the advantages of having a diverse community with different perspectives, and how prejudice has no place on FANDOM. She explained the importance of being Inclusive — one of FANDOM’s core principles — and how accepting and welcoming diverse voices ultimately makes communities richer.
 * Participant Questions. Isaac Fischer (aka FishTank) and the presenters took turns answering community questions ranging from user recruiting advice, language translation, and individual politics on communities. Questions asked live included strategies for communities without new official content, dealing with strict policies, choosing the right administrators, and more.

If you want to get in on the action and see the latest from FANDOM, you won’t want to miss our next Town Hall, "Evolution," on April 21, 2018 at 11am Pacific Time. We'll be talking about the current and future direction of FANDOM's product development and the role communities are playing in that. We hope you'll join us for the live broadcast!