We launched our Communities feature seven months ago, in May, 2013, to assist Gittip members in finding—and inspiring—one another. Communities allow individuals to identify with large groups of people that share common interests, such as programming languages and geographical regions.
The Korea community group was the first to surpass the 150-member threshold to become a viable Community, but other groups have since surpassed it in membership numbers. Viable communities have formed around JavaScript, Python, and other tech interests and projects around the web.
Communities have shown us that they’re more than just a number of people with common interests, though. Three months ago, the Drupal Community rallied to help a major Drupal contributor meet a significant weekly income goal. Community support is integral to the survival of projects like this. Without it, overhead costs like bandwidth and hosting become cost prohibitive and a significant financial burden to the project. Without financial support, many projects like this would not be possible.
In fact, a user who joins a community on Gittip is three times as likely to be an active user of Gittip than one who doesn’t. Because it’s clear that this feature makes Gittip more useful, we look forward to finding ways of adding even more value to the community experience on Gittip.
There are currently 18 fully active communities on Gittip. Communities with fewer than 150 members are still considered in the formation stage, but many are growing quickly. As of December 2013, there are about 700 Communities still in the formation stage, so there is literally something for everybody. Browse the list. You’re likely to find an interest you share with others.