Building a Community for Engineering Students: The Mistakes I'd Avoid
Students ask the best questions. They also ask them badly.
No title. No details. "Pls help urgent." I've seen thousands of these on CrazyEngineers, which has grown to 400,000+ engineering students and professionals over twenty years. And for a long time, I let them all stay.
That turned out to be one of my bigger mistakes. So instead of the usual "post consistently and be authentic" advice, here are the things I'd do differently if I were starting a student community today.
1. Be kind to the bad question
New students rarely know how to ask. Someone always has to reply, "Can you share more details?" There's a nice way to say that, and a not-so-nice way.
We had a member who was super helpful and super quick to answer. But the way they asked newcomers for details offended a lot of them. So I sent them a DM, then got on a call and showed them how it could be done. They were receptive. That was simply how they talked; they never meant to hurt anyone.
It was sorted in days. But think about how many first-time students we lost before I noticed.
The first 24 hours decide whether a new member stays. A like on their first post, a "welcome to the community", a follow-up question. That's all it takes.
2. Don't let thin threads pile up in public
Here's the mistake in full.
We went lenient on moderation and let thin discussions stay, including lots of queries from students who didn't yet know how to write well. Around 2019, Google's updates started sending us less traffic. There was never a penalty. The algorithm just stopped rewarding us.
When we moved to our own platform in 2018, we'd already removed roughly 15,000 to 20,000 thin threads. Without AI or good tools, it was really hard to spot them. You can't judge a thread by likes or reply counts.
What I'd do today: if a thread doesn't fit the community's niche, remove it or don't allow it. If it's thin, move it to a private section search engines don't index. Keep the public side for answers worth finding.
3. Give the chit-chat a private room
Students love to chat. Let them. Casual talk is a big part of why people stick around.
Just don't make it public. Keep chit-chat and off-topic sections private, so the conversation can happen naturally without dragging down everything Google sees. On Jatra, posts in meme, social and introduction sections are kept out of search automatically, even when the channel is public.
4. Lurkers aren't a problem. Ignoring them is.
Most people will read and never post. That's normal.
There are two kinds of lurkers. Guests without an account, who come from Google or a friend's link and visit a few times before joining. And members who signed up but don't know what to post.
The second kind is easy to fix. If someone visits often and never posts, DM them or tag them in a thread they'd know something about. You'll see that they respond.
5. Skip the leaderboard
We tried leaderboards at CrazyEngineers. They actually went against the community. The same few active members always held the top spots, so nobody else could ever win. It created negativity.
Automatic trophies for posting were worse. People started writing "hey, hi, hello" posts that added nothing, just to collect trophies.
So reward the right things. Coming back regularly. Getting a like. Giving the best answer. Make it a personal quest, where members compete with themselves, not with each other. That's how we designed trophies in Jatra.
6. When a regular goes quiet, message them that day
About 1% of your members will do most of the work. Know them personally.
If one of them goes silent, DM them right away. "Hey, what happened? You were active. Is there anything we could do?" I've done this so many times I don't even remember, and members always appreciated it, especially because it came from the owner.
Proper communication can solve 90% of the problems.
7. Give second chances
In the early, strict days, we banned a member within a day or two of joining. A week later, someone new signed up with a different email, a new avatar and the username "Godfather".
Godfather turned out to be an asset. He contributed a lot, became a moderator, and even organised the first ever CrazyEngineers meetup on his own. I only learned it was the same person years later, when he mentioned it in a casual chat. We're still in touch.
Not every story ends like that, of course. Once we passed 10,000 members, public fights became regular. Two members once argued over a technical idea until they were swearing at each other in public. I locked their threads, DMed both of them and posted a note about protecting the community's culture. Both went quiet for two or three weeks, then came back and stayed active. They just never talked to each other again.
My test for every heated thread: is this constructive criticism, or just vilifying each other with no value for anyone? Debate stays. Fights don't.
8. Count who comes back, not who signs up
The biggest vanity metric is the member count. It looks good on a slide. It holds no value at all. It's just the number of records in the database.
The number I trust is returning members. Get about 10% of your registered users coming back, and you're building a genuinely useful resource. Getting them to post is the next problem, and it's a solvable one.
9. Expect an empty room
Nobody tells you this part. For the first couple of weeks, nobody replies. It's like talking to an empty room, and few founders are prepared for it.
Burnout happens when there's no visible success. So keep your expectations super low at the start. An hour a day is enough for the first 15 days. If you do it systematically, you'll see some traction in 10 to 15 days, and real growth by day 30 to 45. Then it gets fun.
If I were starting tomorrow
Pick one narrow topic students actually struggle with.
Reply to every first post within 24 hours.
Keep the answers public and the chit-chat private.
Reward coming back, not posting volume.
Message your regulars the day they go quiet.
Watch returning members, not sign-ups.
For the whole path, from niche to platform to first members, read how to build an online community. Building for developers? Read how to build a developer community.
Which of these have you run into? I'd love to hear what your student community struggles with most.