This post by Bill Mills about power and communication in open source is great:

Being belittled and threatened and told to shut up as a matter of course when growing up is the experience of many; and it does not correlate to programming ability at all. It is not enough to simply not be overtly rude to contributors; the tone was set by someone else long before your first commit. What are we losing by hearing only the brash?

Bottom line: if you, either as a maintainer or as a community, are telling people to shut up then you're not open at all.

If you make opaque demands of people to test their legitimacy before participating then you're not open at all.

If you require that only certain kinds of people participate then you're not open at all.

The potential of open source is, much like the web, that anyone can participate. On Known, we're really keen to embrace not just developers, but designers, writers, QA testers - anyone who wants to chip in and create great software with us. That's not going to happen if we're unfriendly or project the vibe that only certain kinds of people can play. Donating time and resources on an open project is a very generous act, that not everyone can participate in. Frankly, as a community we should be grateful that anyone wants to take part.

As a project founder, a lot of that is about leading by example. That means being talkative and open. I get a lot of direct messages and emails from people, and I try and direct people to participate in the IRC channel and the mailing list - not just because it allows our conversations to be findable if people in the future have similar questions, but because every single message adds to the positive feedback loop. If there's public conversation going on, and it's friendly, then hopefully more people will feel comfortable taking part in it.

Like any positive communication, a lot of this is related to empathy. I'm pretty shy: what would make me feel welcome to participate in a community? Probably not abrupt messages, terse technical corrections or (as we see in many communities) name-calling. Further to that, explicitly marking the community as a safe space is important. We're one of the few communities to have an anti-harassment policy; I'm pleased to say that we've never had to invoke it. More communities should do this.

Which isn't to say that there isn't more that we can do. There is: we need better documentation, better user discussion spaces, a better showcase for people to show off what they've built on top of Known. We're working on it, but let us know what you think.

And please! Whether you're a writer, designer, illustrator, eager user, or a developer, we'd love for you to get involved.