

Ask HN: Why is the Dribbble community so selective? - imwhimsical

I&#x27;ve been wondering lately, why the Dribbble community is so selective about who joins and who doesnt. I understand that this prevents amateur crap from appearing on the homepage (or any other page), but I&#x27;m still confused at whether giving the users the power to invite members is the right way to expand.<p>Another emerging trend is for people to &quot;win&quot; invites. I mean, this makes sure that only good quality work and worthy designers make it to the community, but most of the times, it requires word of mouth and&#x2F;or even knowing people personally to get drafted by them.<p>I put together a quick portfolio at : arsalanbashir.tumblr.com, and it was kinda confusing as to what I should do next, because there isn&#x27;t a set &quot;method&quot; to get drafted. It depends on the whims of somebody else who may or may not even take your work seriously.<p>What is your opinion about this? Is this the right way to scale a user base?<p>Thanks
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helen842000
I think it's a great way to scale a user base! 'Bigger' isn't always the
answer. Dribbble knows that exclusivity is powerful and makes people produce a
higher quality of work, especially as it is a community of designers judging
designers. Being a Dribbble member is now a standard that designers aim
towards.

Personally, to get drafted on Dribbble I'd use some of the free PSDs they
produce, I'd tweet & thank the creators and link to the work I had created. Do
re-bounds of others popular work, take it in a new & fresh direction giving
ample credit to the original creator. Integrate yourself with the community
even before you get the invite.

Focus on quality over quantity, so instead of having an ever growing
portfolio, cap it at 10 or so of your best pieces. If you create something
new, something less awesome has to be booted to make space.

Any piece that is less than awesome work only serves to dilute your other
work.

Arguably I'd say you could get into Dribbble just on having 2 or 3 absolutely
pristine images and showing you are a designer that is generous within the
community.

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johnjlocke
In the beginning, Dribbble had to throttle growth, because it was a very large
side project and not their full time job. I still like the idea of people
being responsible for who they bring into the community, kind of like the mob.

I'm not sure if there is an algorithm for when they send out invites to
people; it seems to be something that happens every so often, and there is a
finite amount of them. Seeing as how many people use Dribbble as a place to
find more work, I feel like there is more at stake than just making sure that
the best work rises to the top. It's not my site to run, and the majority of
people don't want to see those parts of it change, so I don't think it will.

I will second your feelings on the "contests" that people who do have invites
run. It seems these gimmicks aren't really about finding great talent, hell,
that's all over the place, but it seems like a formula for getting more
Twitter followers and retweets, as that is always part of the "contest rules".
If you have an invite, just give it to someone who deserves it, it's that
simple.

My advice if you are trying to get more industry attention and you can't seem
to get an invite is ask around and see if someone will simply share one. There
are some cool people in the web industry who will, usually people who are the
most well-known (hmm...there's a lesson). The other alternative would be to
set up an account on something like Behance. I like the ability to tell a
story on Behance with a project, and show all the steps and thought process
anyway. Showing the thought process behind your decisions is a lot more
valuable in many ways.

