We've been thinking about writing a State of the Bee post for a while now, so thought we'd also use this as a chance to discuss how the site is going in general.

GENERAL UPDATES

* Traffic is at an all-time high right now. August has always been a big month for us; you'd think that traffic would be lower due to summer vacations, but the opposite has been true in recent years. Referrals from Google and Pinterest have been growing strongly over the last several years, and that's helped a lot.

* With the boom in traffic, we're outgrowing our current server. We're currently planning a move to a much larger server, which should allow us to keep the site fast while traffic grows. There are also a number of new features that we've been holding off on, because they'd increase the load on our current server. Once we move to the new server, we'll get started on more new features in the months to follow.

* I also wanted to mention that it really warmed our hearts to see everyone be so warm and loving to Ms. Badger and Lucas a few weeks ago. Seeing all that love and support for a fellow Bee has been one of the high points of my Hellobee experience, and we wanted to thank you all.

OUR MESSAGE BOARDS

There's a separate big issue we wanted to run by you guys. As I mentioned earlier, we've been concerned lately with the sometimes adversarial tone of the site. A number of people have shared that they don't feel as comfortable opening up on the boards any more, out of a fear that they'll be attacked or targeted. Along with a growing number of complaints about all this, we've also been getting some shutdown requests.

We have really struggled with how to respond to this changing tone. To be honest, a lot of the comments have not been in direct violation of our current community policies, which focuses on encouraging civility and avoiding personal attacks. In addition, we worked really hard to moderate with a light hand. In the past when we've run other sites, we've gone down the road of having detailed moderation policies and issuing warnings and increasingly dire consequences for violations. We found that that model has a whole host of issues of its own.

In general, we're not a fan of a model where the site admins are the parents, and the board members are children who need constant policing. Whenever possible, we prefer to treat people like adults - and it's been working fairly well, until recently. We haven't been sure how to address the situation, and we've been brainstorming potential approaches.

We came to realize that maybe this isn't an issue that is best dealt with with rules and violations. At the end of the day, it really comes down to shared goals, and what kind of tone that most of us would like to see on the site.

There are a range of possible tones for message boards, with two extremes:

* Rainbows and unicorns: We hear from time to time from people who are looking for a tone of exclusively "rainbows and unicorns," where everyone agrees and nobody ever is offended. Frankly, that's almost impossible to achieve - and even if it were possible, it's not something that we're interested in.
* Free for all: This is the other extreme, where the focus here is on "winning" debates/arguments, rather than on understanding where the other perspective is coming from.

Here at Hellobee, we've tried to split the difference between the two, with a tone of "honest and civil." It's really important to us that people be able to share their honest opinions about things, even when they're far from the mainstream. That tends to happen most when there's a general vibe of civility. Respect and civility help make the boards feel like a safe space where people can open up. An added benefit is that it makes it possible to discuss even controversial topics without having flamewars. People tend to listen to each other and try to understand each other's perspectives.

That's the Hellobee that we know and love, and that we'd like to see again. Towards that end, we'll be working on a few things:

1. Writing up our goals

We're going to work to pull together a list of goals for Hellobee. In addition to "honest and civil" for example, we both feel it's really important for the site to be inclusive. This isn't a site just for stay-at-home parents, or a site just for working parents... it's a site for all parents. Same goes for birth planning: we aren't looking to push home births, c-sections or inductions: we're looking to support all parents in their choices.

Once we write up these goals, we'll post them on the boards for your feedback. Once we've finalized them, then we'll know if we're on the same page as to the tone that we're trying to set for the boards. I don't think they'll be any surprises, but the effort should help us all figure out if we're on the same page or not. If we're not, that's ok I think; we'd rather have a smaller site where we're all on the same page (e.g. an inclusive community that's honest and civil), versus a larger site where people are looking for something else (e.g. an exclusive community that's a free for all).

2. Moderation guidelines

Once we have the goals in place, we'll writeup more detailed guidelines around our moderation policy. We'll post that on the boards for discussion, and incorporate everyone's feedback so that we have agreement around the rules of the website.

3. Touching base

As we writeup our goals and moderation guidelines, we'll also start to reach out to users who have generated the most flags and controversy. We can review our guidelines and talk through what's OK and what's not. For example, if someone is consistently excluding other members from different backgrounds or is regularly trying to police what other people say, those are conversations we can now have while pointing to a clear set of moderation guidelines.

4. Survey

We'll also look into setting up a regular survey for the community, so that we can get feedback on questions like, "Do you feel like Hellobee is a safe place?" and "Do you feel like Hellobee is an inclusive community?" That will help us monitor how things go in real-time, we can make identify issues more quickly and take action when things get out of sync.

TL;DR

The site hasn't been as much fun recently... but we're going to be making a big effort to bring back the inclusive, honest and civil community that we know and love!

Would love to hear your thoughts on all this... thanks!