Great idea!
I publish artists and poets. I started to use the community tab for art entries as part of a program I have in place but it was difficult for some of our artists to use get used to the idea so I made it as part of the official submission process.
Poets canāt post there at all. They need to be able to format poems and it just comes up as a big mess since there are not HTML features.
I need some sort of community feature so that we can discuss topics without an email going up each time one of my bright ideas comes up. I use Facebook for those. We have an ongoing discussion on many issues regarding art including exhibitions, etc.
It would be great if Patreon can figure out how to set up the Community Tab so it acts just like a Facebook group.
This is my site and you can see the posts on the tab - http://www.patreon.com/didimenendez
Iām going to bump this topic because once again Iām wondering what the point of this tab is when itās so difficult to use. Most of my fans donāt even go to the Patreon site to get their content, so they donāt know the community tab exists.
I feel like this is either an immense lost opportunityā¦ or something that needs to be culled, or folded into some new plugin. Are there any plans for the community tab or is it backburnered?
2 Likes
Thanks for the bump, @haikujaguar! I checked with the product team and sadly there is no update I can share at this time, but your feedback has been duly noted and shared with them.
I can say that one of the areas the partnership team has been working on is providing community building opportunities for creators via partnerships with other platforms, like reddit, Discord, and Discourse (this forum is run on Discourse).
Hopefully this helps a bit! Iād love to hear where you currently interact with your community and patrons at the moment and how thatās been working for you. Itās a topic Iām very interested in 
I think i could make this tab work really well if the following two things were added:
-Ability for creators to make posts (and pin one) OR a small description section at the top.
-Ability to change the name of the tab so we can change it to whatever WE want to utilize it for.
Right now itās a review/testimonials tab for me. Did a call for new testimonials and got a handful today https://www.patreon.com/Temrin/community which makes me really happy. (Trying not to tear up at some of these. My patrons are so epic.) But it would make so much more sense if i could change the name of the tab and also have some sort of description at the top either as itās own thing or a post i can pin.
5 Likes
I think keeping the current function of the community tab at its core could still be useful. I get nice messages there, or even questions. But I think what could be nifty is if the top of the community tab had a few key components that itās missing.
-
Move the Follow/Share buttons and social media link buttons from the non-patron landing page to the community tab. Give us some prime real estate to show off a few of our social media hot spots where people can follow you and keep up with what youāre doing. Right now this is sort of broken and clumsy in its use because all of those links are dead weight. No one is clicking those because in all likelihood people made it to my non-patron landing page through one of those platforms in the first place. No one showing up to your Patreon landing page is looking to follow you or share your page, they just want to know what they can get and for how much. If the recent changes were in hopes of streamlining the conversion experience, cut the dead weight.
-
Along with those social media highlights, include Discord! Right now I have many patrons who donāt realize they are eligible for Discord rewards and joining my server, and my server is the main hub for the most enthusiastic and connected members of my community. You could also do this with Reddit and any future integrations as well. A community tab only goes so far with the way Patreon is built, but if it was turned into more of a landing page for those who want to connect even more with the creator, it could be a really powerful tool.
-
How Iām picturing it is almost like the way tiers are displayed, a little box with an image, a description, and a link. Maybe give us the ability to create a little blurb about the platform and what we do there. For example, I use Twitter as my quick nā handy way to give people bite-sized updates, share new posts, etc. and Iād pitch it as such. Iād pitch the community and tight knit vibes of my Discord. Iād probably include my YouTube on the off chance people managed to find my content elsewhere and havenāt subscribed.
-
Then below those boxes you could then have the same kind of comment board functionality that the community tab already has. There are also other things that could be done. Show off recent hot posts with the most likes or comments, let us pin a post, maybe in a āWhat You Missedā type of way. Iām thinking less ācommunity pageā and more ācommunity dashboardā. That could be a lot of effort for something that currently isnāt super valuable, so I understand if itās a hard sell, but I think thereās something that can be done there that could turn it from wasted space to a frequent stop for patrons who want to dive even deeper into the community of their favorite creators.
3 Likes
Ok, my thoughts ā about the community tab ā Iāve -never- used it. My patrons interact directly on posts (and in in other communities that I have online). I canāt start things there last I checked, so itās not helpful as a community announcements/dashboard thing.
I donāt use it, my patrons donāt use it (because if they want to communicate with me they either reply on posts or use other channels), so right now it seems rather sad.
Honestly, Iād forgotten about it until I saw this post. Thatās how sad this is.
Now, yes, maybe I could use it to encourage my patrons to post their own projects, but again, theyāre doing that in other places already (like my FB group, for example).
So, for me, in terms of Patron connection, the community tab is rather redundant. If it had the option to do stuff like Pinned Posts and announcements and such, that, admittedly, would be useful.
2 Likes
Could you make it possible for the Creator to post on the Community tab on their own Patreon page?
1 Like
Could we have the option to āhideā the Community tab - just remove it from the Creator page? Just a checkbox option on patreon.com/edit/about, default to visible so thereās no change for existing Creators.
3 Likes