Gareth Coles
Community-Oriented Software Dev & Manager
Hello!
I'm a long-time community manager, dedicated to building safer, more inclusive spaces via policy, moderation, activism and software development.
I have experience with a surprisingly large number of subjects and activities, including moderation and policy-writing, application and library development, and even a small amount of graphic design work!
To learn more about me, read my blog or follow me on social media, please feel free to check out the links in the menu to the left.
Portfolio & Projects
Here's what I've been up to, and what people may know me for:
I'm currently working on founding my own business, which focuses on human-oriented software and services for communities, companies and other organisations.
I'm not currently ready to announce what I'm up to, but I'll update this spot when I am!
Kord Extensions is a long-running project of mine. I realised that the Kotlin ecosystem didn't have any great libraries for creating Discord bots, and this project is how I decided to solve that problem.
Kord Extensions has grown in size considerably, and provides everything you could need to develop your own Discord bots. For more information, click the link above or check out the GitHub repo.
A previously-bustling Minecraft community, originally founded by Andrew Godwin. It was a pioneer in both the Classic and Creative Minecraft spaces, creating the very first true multi-world Minecraft server software.
While The Archives shut down its Minecraft servers in 2015 (due to dwindling community interest in Creative Minecraft), it still exists on Discord as a lively (but private) off-topic community.
A Minecraft mod-loader project originally dedicated to solving the inclusivity and diversity issues inherent in the modded Minecraft community, trying to show that these things aren't to the detriment of the project.
Strong push-back from the Minecraft community (which is resistant to change or self-improvement) made running this space difficult, with strong harassment and extremely defensive attitudes from people that have been called out resulting in extreme burn-out for some staff members, including myself.
An incredibly large Discord community dedicated to the Python programming language. It continues to grow essentially exponentially, and is one of the largest programming communities on Discord.
This space is run far more like a business than a community, given its impressive size (over 300k members). This is a trend that began while I was still staff, and I realised that this internal culture was causing me more harm than good — but they continue to do impressive work.