Community Manager Chat/AMA

Give feedback and suggestions concerning the Codecademy community

As your new Community Manager (see my intro here!), I’d love to know how you feel about the Codecademy community, plus some ideas you may have to improve it… and that seemed like a big enough question to have its own Topic in #Meta, at least for a little while. :slight_smile:

How can we all better grow, connect, and support the Codecademy community at large? How can we optimize digital discussion channels like these forums? How can we best facilitate in-person community building, particularly when we have millions of users all over the world?


Please note that there are specialized places to discuss new course requests, improving the Codecademy product itself, and asking for help!

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I can speak to the feedback part, personally.
I have been a member of codeCademy since April of this year, but I stopped trying to program for about six months until the end of September. Almost immediately, I discovered the forum, and though I never made topics regarding lessons from the courses, I frequently liked to come here and read up on what I was having trouble with, as well as helping other people because I found that I LOVED being part of this community.

I love that no matter how much you know, whether it be little or grand, your help is welcome here, because people at all stages of life and coding experience come to help and be helped. Now that I’ve developed my skills a lot more, I like to help on anything I can, and I like the system. Some of my favorite things about this forum are the way that User Levels work and how Super Users have specific powers that other’s don’t because it’s really about what’s good for each individual user. I love that the moderators are all people from the community and some of them even learned on CC.

Pondering this, there are very few things I don’t like, but I’ll have to say that I don’t like the fact that it takes 24 hours to delete a post, as well as that when you delete a post, it bumps that topic up to the top. These are very minor things, but it’s all that I could think of.
I wish that there were more moderators, but I know that there aren’t many very active people that really fit the molds.

One last thing that I love about this forum; even though I haven’t posted any topics concerning passing a lesson, I’ve created quite a few that are questions about my personal work, or just me trying to get to know the community. Everybody here is really nice and smart, and I also love how funny this community is.

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Hi @danieloduffy!!

Congratulations on your new position.

In terms of suggestions, I tend to agree with @kyleaw… That 24 hour thing can get a little bit annoying at times. Otherwise, all is right with the world! (Or the forum…)

Welcome, and I look forward to seeing you around the forums!

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First off, hello sir! I think you have an incredibly cool job and I hope to, like others, to see you around the forum and all. Second, is it possible for you to tell us a little bit more about yourself like favorite food, married? etc. If not, I completely understand. Third, I think that adding a delete topic button for the user who created that topic would be nice. I know that some users post a topic then realize the solution to their question right afterwords and so feel like they should delete it to not create confusion. I think this could elevate some forum junk and keep it “cleaner” per say. Obviously, I have no idea if that is even possible just a suggestion :smiley: And otherwise, I can’t say enough good things about the forums and how helpful and supportive it has been. You are taking over a great product as is!

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I feel like everyone just wants a bio of you… you should do it!

Hi, I’m Chris. I’m not as new as the others that have posted here… I’ve been a Super User for almost a year (yikes), and I’m tryyyying my best to become a mod :confused:

Anyways… Welcome to Codecademy, and um… good luck! :wink:

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Okay, a quick bio it is! Sorry it’s taken me a while - I’ve had the flu. :mask:

I grew up primarily in Ireland but also lived in the UK, NZ, and have been in the US for the past nine years now, in multiple states, but NYC for the past four years - the longest continuous stretch I’ve lived anywhere. I’ll try and keep the British/Irish self-deprecation / sarcasm / dry humor with which I was raised to a minimum because I’m in a public place :laughing:. I studied philosophy in college so got rather personally invested in 21st century ed-tech solutions fairly rapidly as the job market for philosophers hasn’t exactly flourished since Ancient Greece, so I needed to skill up to become employable! I’ve been passionate about flexible 21st century education ever since. That drew me first to work at General Assembly (similar in ways to Codecademy but with an in-person focus), and then for the past two-and-a-bit years I ran WeWork Labs, a small incubator program to help early-stage startups succeed. I’m glad to be back in the ed-tech world, and it’s exciting to be able to help hundreds of thousands of people make positive changes in their lives. :smile:

I got married to my girlfriend of six years back in September and am very lucky for that too.

I’m a huge unrepentant nerd - I’m actually wearing a Star Trek t-shirt and an Assassin’s Creed hoodie right at this moment. Video games, movies, books, all my kind of things. I’ve been into computers since way back in the days of MS-DOS and trying to find a way to install Duke Nukem on my dad’s work PC :wink:. I never quite got over the fact that I graduated college and like to indulge in (frivolous?) intellectual pursuits completely unrelated to my work / anything “productive” as much as I can, from a long-read non-fiction article through to full-on philosophy books. Favorite food… I’ve gotta say Christmas/Thanksgiving Dinner, which is maybe cheating because there’s so much there to enjoy, but the centerpiece being roast potatoes and Bisto gravy. Mmmmm, lookin’ forward to that tomorrow!

I’m an introvert by most definitions, in that I “expend” energy being sociable in groups and recoup it being by myself, which is not unusual for nerds or people into computers but perhaps a strange thing to hear from a community manager… however I’m A) also quite outgoing so most people never notice B) I think that this perhaps helps me to be empathetic and a good listener.

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I’m sorry you had the flu! That’s the worst, I hope you feel better now.

Question - I thought that Ireland was part of the UK? Maybe not anymore? I know that North Ireland is. I guess you like the states if you live here. I’ve never been to NYC. I want to go to NZ or Australia really bad, so it’s cool you’re traveled so much.

That says a lot about you that you enjoy this. It’s awesome that you got married recently!

It was fantastic to read so much about you, I think that this was really something that we were hoping for! This bio seems very genuine, and it was an interesting read. Hope to see you around!

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You don’t need to. You’re the (kinda nerdy tbh {not judging}) boss, remember?

Yeah @kyleaw, Northern Ireland is UK, and the Republic of Ireland is not.

EDIT: and FYI, none of Ireland is Britain :wink:

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Totally nerdy, @jibblyj, and as I noted - unrepentant. :slight_smile:

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cool @danieloduffy btw I feel great about codecademy and and feeling great about updates and hopefully some new courses! Also sorry you had the flu

I thought we fixed that, and reduced it to one hour?

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Oh, I haven’t deleted anything recently, but thanks for letting me know.

The thought that it used to take 24 hours…:smile:

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(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 1 hour unless flagged)

Just discovered on the boards. Our fix is in effect.

The user actually only has about five minutes to reverse the delete, but we cannot dial it down to that so one hour it is.

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Tony shared this with me on Facebook the other day, and I think it is Ă  propos.