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Comment by mariedm | Hacker News Reader

Hello HN, today I’m presenting you Women Make. I use to struggle to find fellow women entrepreneurs so I created a group on Telegram. Since then it grew to 500+ members. I felt it was time to make a website to go with the group. Happens I learned Node JS last year, which I used with mongoDB and Telegram's API to build a forum. Members can interact with the website thanks to a bot. And here is the result! Let me know what you think, any feedback is welcome!

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This is one of my favourite communities on the Internet. Lots of thoughtful, stimulating conversations. Thanks so much Marie for building and managing Women Make.

Congrats! I am curious, does having 500 people in a single channel present any challenges?

Actually yes. More people and more activity means more moderation. And I think it's the time you realize if your foundations are strong enough. Moderation really is everything, and it's a lot of work to make people understand what are the values of the community, what is tolerated or not, etc. while making it welcoming. If you made that clear since the beginning, it's easier to handle later. And members might actually help you too, they become messengers, they also represent the community.

Good to know you found a case there people actually desire to join your community. I tried a few attempts to build platforms for some niche or relatively general communities but failed to reach critical mass. That turn into 'speaking with the air'.

The platforms I built are not for profile, not even having any ads, just made with good mind but seems I didn't catch a real need.

Building a community takes a lot of time and energy, and even with that it doesn't necessarily works.

This is awesome! Congratulations and keep up the good work, this is much needed!

Congrats on the launch!

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