Introducing the 3W/3M Community Chat

Chat becomes community.

Earlier this year, we participated in the beta for a new Substack feature- a chat tab in the Substack app, where we could post discussion threads for all of you to participate in.

Since then, we’ve seen the feature as a nice addition to our offerings- we’ve used it to make book and podcast recommendations; Mike Huddleston has posted about some of his favorite artists; Mike del Mundo has shared new sketches and never-before-seen artwork. It’s been a lot of fun. And in the meantime, the Substack app launched on Android, making it available to virtually everyone. If you haven’t already, we strongly encourage you to download it today:

Why? Because this week we signed on for a new feature beta: an expanded chat tab that allows our community members to launch their own threads in the app.

We’re excited about this because we’ve been looking for new ways to hang out and interact with all of you. And while it’s great to post things for you (and we still will- in fact, expect us to post more now), it’s even better to post with you.

What can you post? Anything you want! Talk about 3W/3M stuff. Talk about not-3W/3M stuff. Recommend cool things. Ask questions, get to know each other. Discuss this week’s comics, movies, books, whatever. We hope we set a good tone with the threads we’ve posted over the last couple months, but we’re sure you’ll come up with plenty of cool ideas on your own.

Some housekeeping stuff: for now, we’ll be limiting the ability to create new threads to members of our premium tier, THE CIRCLE. While we plan to eventually open this up to all paid subscribers, this gives us a manageable place to start from. Anyone can still participate in the threads once they’ve started. So if you’d like to participate at that level, here’s your chance- upgrade or sign up today:

If you’re already a member of The Circle, and you don’t see the option to create a thread, try updating the app.

Beyond that- We’re hopeful to see this grow into a thriving, engaged community. But obviously, it’s good to have some rules in place whenever you start something like this. So here’s a short set of community guidelines to go by, which we can obviously tweak or add to as we learn. We’ll post these over in the chat tab itself, as well.

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3W/3M COMMUNITY GUIDELINES

Be respectful, civil and polite. No insults, derogatory language, or direct/indirect threats, of any kind will be allowed. 

No Hate Speech or Hateful Conduct. We have a zero tolerance policy on this front. 

No spamming or advertisements. You can promote your own work or projects within reason, but please avoid overzealous promotion. 

No NSFW or sexually explicit content. If you are linking to something potentially NSFW (like red band trailers), indicate it clearly. 

Avoid divisive topics. There are a lot of places to debate current events, this isn’t really one of them. Be cool. Be kind. Let’s all be friends.

No copy-written material or anything that violates intellectual property rights. Without permission, obviously.  

No spoilers without warning. There are no spoiler tags yet in the chat feature, so if you need to post spoilers, please clearly indicate beforehand.

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Okay, that’s it. These can really boil down to: let’s keep this fun and uplifting. Can’t wait to see what you do with this- download the app and get the conversation going, we’ll meet you there:

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