Building a community always has its highs and lows. Let me list some of the tricks that helped maintain a healthy balance between the community’s and my team’s vision.

State your principle: Especially in the early stage of the open source project when the source code is still coming together and things are not exactly going perfectly, it is hard for somebody coming from outside to really understand why you are making the decisions that you are making. Communicating the principles on which you take actions helps you to be upfront about your thought process so that the community does not interpret things incorrectly.

This practice is really helpful. It is also important to follow through and show that when you make a decision, it is guided by one of these principles.

Decide how you are going to collaborate: This may be through channels like Discord, Slack, or simply emails. But if you try to use all of them, you will immediately diffuse the community. People will be communicating with each other all over the place. Choose one or two collaboration tools, and really invest in them for synchronised communication.

Treasure the feedback: Listen to feedback from the community and act on it. Show that you care about what the community says, even if it requires you to make tough decisions.

Maintain a code of conduct: If you interact with a community, you need to define what is going to be acceptable conduct. Having that in place helps warn people in case they go out of line. You can avoid a lot of trouble if you can just define this early on.

Think about how you will distribute your project: There may be instances when you may not be willing to make your project available to the public because you do not have a certain component in place, or you have features you may not want to make accessible to everyone. Creating distribution terms that suit your preference without compromising on what the user wants is key, so that people who want certain features can access these while those who can do without them also have the option to start using the project without having to compromise.

Avoid polls as much as you can: This is because, often, certain members vote for an option that may not be what the majority goes with. This can create a sense of failure in these members and make them feel excluded from the project. Instead, try asking them what problems they would like to be solved, and then try to invent a solution that does not involve trade-offs.