Chapter 13 Exercises: Community Architecture

Exercise 13.1 — The Community Audit

Time required: 30–45 minutes Difficulty: Easy Deliverable: Community audit report

Instructions

Conduct a structured audit of your current community presence (or, if you do not yet have a community, choose one of the textbook's running examples and conduct the audit for them based on what has been established in the book).

Part A: Presence Inventory

For each platform where your audience exists, complete the following table:

For the "Audience-to-Audience Interaction" column, score 1-5 (1 = almost none, 5 = very high).

Part B: Community vs. Audience Assessment

Based on your inventory, answer: 1. On which platform does the most audience-to-audience interaction happen? 2. Do any members know each other's names (or usernames)? Do they interact outside of your content? 3. If you stopped posting for two months, which platforms would retain the most activity? Why? 4. Which platform represents your most "owned" audience relationship (hardest for an external actor to disrupt)?

Part C: Gap Analysis

Based on your audit: 1. What is the single biggest gap in your current community infrastructure? 2. What would "one step closer to community" look like as a concrete action you could take in the next 30 days?

Exercise 13.2 — Discord Server Architecture Design

Time required: 60–90 minutes Difficulty: Moderate Deliverable: Full server architecture document

Instructions

Design a Discord server from scratch for a creator in your niche — either yourself, Maya Chen's sustainable fashion community, or Marcus Webb's personal finance community.

Step 1: Define the community mission (5 minutes)

Write two to three sentences that answer: what is this community for? What does being a member of this community mean? What does this community make possible that existing in the niche does not?

Step 2: Map the content landscape (10 minutes)

List the 8-12 most common topics your community members would want to discuss. These become the skeleton of your channel structure.

Step 3: Design the architecture (30 minutes)

Using the Meridian Collective's server as a reference model, design your server with: - Categories (major organizational groups) - Channels within each category - Voice channels - Role system (what roles exist and how members get them) - Bot requirements (what automation would serve this community)

Create a visual outline or table of your server architecture.

Step 4: Write the community rules (15 minutes)

Write 5-8 community rules that: - Are values-grounded (explain the "why" alongside the "what") - Are specific enough to be enforceable - Address at least one equity concern explicitly (harassment, gatekeeping, identity-based attacks)

Step 5: Design the onboarding flow (10 minutes)

Map the step-by-step experience for a new member in their first 10 minutes: - What automated message do they receive? - What is the first action they are guided to take? - What does the first piece of community content they are exposed to look like? - How do they find their first conversation to join?

Step 6: Evaluate your design

Answer the following questions about your design: 1. What channel is most likely to drive the most activity in the first month? 2. What is the highest-risk potential failure point in your architecture? 3. Which demographic of your audience does this architecture serve best? Which does it serve least well, and what could you change to improve this?

Exercise 13.3 — Community Engagement Event Planning

Time required: 45 minutes Difficulty: Moderate Deliverable: A 30-day community engagement calendar with three event plans

Instructions

Part A: The Engagement Calendar (15 minutes)

Design a 30-day community engagement calendar for one of the following communities: - Maya Chen's sustainable fashion Discord - Marcus Webb's personal finance Circle community - The Meridian Collective's gaming Discord

The calendar should include: - At least two recurring weekly touchpoints (these happen every week) - At least one special event per week (AMA, challenge, community night, etc.) - At least one creator-curated member content moment per week

Part B: Three Event Plans (30 minutes)

For three different event types from your calendar, write a full event plan including:

1. Event name and type
2. Purpose (what does this event accomplish for the community loop — discussion, connection, identity, loyalty?)
3. Logistics (when, how long, what platform/channel, how many people)
4. Promotion plan (how will members know about it and choose to attend?)
5. Structure (what exactly happens during the event, minute by minute or phase by phase)
6. Success metrics (how will you know if this event worked?)
7. Follow-up (what happens in the 48 hours after the event to extend its impact?)

Exercise 13.4 — The Moderation Dilemma Series

Time required: 45–60 minutes Difficulty: High Deliverable: Written moderation decisions with reasoning (400-600 words total)

Instructions

You are a moderator for a 10,000-member Discord community. For each scenario below, write: - Your immediate action (within the first hour) - Your follow-up action (within the first 24 hours) - The underlying principle that guided your decision - What would change your decision

Scenario A: The Backhanded Welcome

A new member (joined 3 days ago) comments in response to another new member's introduction: "Oh you don't know about [technical topic]? Lol that's pretty basic, you've got a lot to learn." The comment is not an explicit insult. The targeted member has not responded. Two established members have "liked" the comment; one has replied "ha yeah that stuff is important."

Scenario B: The Off-Topic Political Argument

The #general channel has erupted into a debate about gun control — triggered when a member referenced a news story tangentially related to the community's niche. It has been going for two hours. 40+ messages. The debate is getting heated but not explicitly rule-violating. Several members have asked it to stop; several others are actively participating.

Scenario C: The Anonymous Report

A member DMs you privately with screenshots showing that a prominent community member — someone with a "Community Veteran" role who has been active for two years — has been sending unsolicited sexually suggestive messages to newer, younger members in DMs. The reporter asks to remain anonymous. The accused member is well-liked and has not violated any rules in public channels.

Scenario D: The Marginalized Majority

You review the past 30 days of ban decisions and discover that 80% of permanent bans were of members who identified as Black or Latino in their introductions or self-descriptions, while these groups represent approximately 40% of your community's membership. You also notice that the moderation team is 90% white. There is no individual decision that was obviously wrong. The pattern emerges only in aggregate.

Scenario E: The Pile-On

A member posts a hot take that many community members disagree with strongly but that does not violate any rules. Within an hour, 15-20 members are aggressively responding, some of them making fun of the original poster. The original poster has gone silent after one defensive reply. The pile-on is technically "just disagreement" but feels coordinated and disproportionate.

Exercise 13.5 — Paid Community Tier Design

Time required: 45 minutes Difficulty: Moderate Deliverable: Three-tier paid community structure document

Instructions

Design a three-tier paid community structure for Marcus Webb's personal finance community, currently running on Circle with a $97/month single-tier membership.

Marcus is considering restructuring into three tiers to better serve different segments of his audience. His community has: - 15,000 Discord members (free) - 400 Circle members at $97/month - An audience predominantly ages 22-35, urban, college-educated, predominantly Black, income range $35,000-$120,000

Your design document should include:

For each of the three tiers: 1. Tier name (something that resonates with the community identity) 2. Monthly price 3. What it includes (specific, not vague — list the actual deliverables) 4. The specific audience segment it serves (who is this tier for?) 5. Why a member would upgrade from the tier below 6. What they would lose by downgrading

After designing the tiers: 1. Project what percentage of current Circle members would likely stay at each tier after a restructuring 2. Project whether total monthly revenue would increase, decrease, or stay the same — and why 3. What would you test first in a limited pilot before fully rolling out the three-tier structure? 4. How would Marcus announce this change to his existing $97/month members without losing their trust?

Exercise 13.6 — Community Culture Case Study

Time required: 30–45 minutes Difficulty: Easy-moderate Deliverable: Written analysis (300-500 words)

Instructions

Choose a creator community you are familiar with — one you have directly participated in, or one that has been well-documented publicly.

Analyze the community's culture through these lenses:

1. What norms are explicitly stated (rules)? List three to five explicit community rules. Are they prohibition-based or values-grounded? How specific are they?

2. What norms are implicitly practiced? What behaviors are tolerated that are not explicitly addressed by the rules? What behaviors are informally discouraged?

3. Who is centered? Based on both the explicit rules and the implicit norms, which demographic appears to be the "default" or "core" member? Who might feel like a guest rather than a host?

4. Moderation in practice If you have access to information about the community's moderation: is it consistent? How are edge cases handled? Are some members held to a different standard than others?

5. Your recommendations What two or three changes to the community's rules, architecture, or moderation approach would make it more genuinely inclusive without changing its core focus or identity?

Exercise 13.7 — Community Governance Framework

Time required: 60–90 minutes Difficulty: High Deliverable: A written governance framework document (600-900 words)

Instructions

You are building a community governance framework for the Meridian Collective's Discord as they scale from 15,000 to 50,000 members. The Collective has raised concerns about: - Moderation inconsistency as new mods join - A recent harassment campaign that targeted Priya and was not handled quickly enough - The fact that their moderation team is not representative of their community demographics - Unclear escalation paths when mods disagree about a decision

Write a governance framework document that addresses:

Section 1: Moderation Team Structure (who has what authority) - How many moderators are needed at 50,000 members? - What are the different moderator roles (lead mod, standard mod, trial mod)? - How are mods recruited, onboarded, and evaluated? - How is the moderation team kept representative of the community?

Section 2: Decision-Making Process - What moderation decisions can a single mod make alone? - What decisions require mod team consultation? - What decisions escalate to the Collective members themselves? - How are disagreements between mods resolved?

Section 3: Harassment and Identity-Based Attack Protocol - What constitutes a harassment emergency requiring immediate response? - What is the step-by-step response to a coordinated harassment campaign? - How are targets of harassment supported (not just the attacker addressed)? - What is the communication protocol — what does the community see and when?

Section 4: Accountability and Review - How often does the moderation team review its collective decisions for patterns? - Who holds the moderation team accountable? - What is the ban appeal process? - What does the community deserve to know about moderation decisions?