Having strict rules on EA Groups’ WhatsApps helps reduce friction for easier community building

By Kashvi Mulchandani 🔹 @ 2025-11-18T22:22 (+44)

I'm Co-Chair of EA Bath Uni Group, and therefore manage the WhatsApp community for it. A common problem people have in university society group chats is that scammers and bots often join, so to prevent this, every time someone requests to join the group chats, I message them and ask if they are a real student.
If they are a real student, I then ask them how they heard about EA, and usually follow up with something like 

'Oh, that's really cool! Would you be okay to meet so I can explain what EA is about and what EA Bath offers? Or alternatively chat on text / have a call?'

In our 1-1, I summarise my intro talk as a summary of what EA is, and then explain our fellowship that we are running at the university, and finish up by showing some EA resources (e.g. EA Forum, 80K Problem Profiles). This then usually results in them attending at least one session – with a few attending more. 

I think this is really effective for reducing friction when asking for 1-1s, as it makes it seem a lot more casual and gives a purpose to the conversation, and although it would not replace any other methods of community building, I think it is a good addition that may have been overlooked.

Stefan Trnjakov @ 2025-11-18T22:55 (+3)

The bot battle is real 😳 

Thanks for sharing!

Kashvi Mulchandani 🔹 @ 2025-11-18T23:14 (+2)

Agreed! You’re welcome :)

shepardriley @ 2025-11-19T10:17 (+2)

This seems like a really good thing to do, nice!

Melanie Brennan @ 2025-12-10T17:24 (+1)

I'll explain our current onboarding process at EA Barcelona, as it took several iterations to get to where we're at now. 

Firstly, we've made our main onboarding document publicly available on our website. This includes a link to our WhatsApp community guidelines document, which explains its purpose, how to use it, the different sub-groups, etc.

At the end of the document, there’s a link to join the WhatsApp community directly. We don’t share this link anywhere else, so the idea is that only people who’ve read (or at least skimmed) the guidelines first can join. We also try to ensure that a community builder reaches out to new people who join to encourage them to make a small intro to the community soon after. 

In addition to that, we also invite people individually - usually people we’ve met at events, those who’ve reached out directly expressing interest, or friends and colleagues of current members - to join our Whatsapp community.

I think this system has helped us maintain a fairly steady rate of growth while preserving the quality of discussion and avoiding a constant influx of people who are entirely new to EA ideas. If anyone is curious to read our onboarding guide (and subsequent Whatsapp community guidelines doc), it's linked here on our website: https://www.eabarcelona.org/contact. Hope that helps and curious to know more about how other EA groups approach this (kinda tricky) part of community building!

Andreas Jessen🔸 @ 2025-12-09T18:06 (+1)

To prevent bots and too many inactive accounts, we only add people to our local group's Signal chat that we have met in person or that someone already knows. Also, remember that you can reset the invite link. This can help when you get overrun by bots. 

I think it makes sense to make it not too easy for people to get access to the group chat so that it feels private and personal, so people are less shy about writing there. 

We still need a good way of handling the problem of inactive accounts in the Signal group. If a person turned up only once three years ago, maybe they no longer need to be in the group. But what is a good way of having an overview, which accounts can be removed and which can't? Especially one that has as little overhead as possible. Does any of you have any Ideas about that? How do you handle this?

We currently have about 90 accounts in our group chat and maybe 20 or so people that actually write stuff in there and that come to events. I'd like to bring these two numbers closer together, so new people don't think they write to 90 people when something like 70 of them will probably never read it.

Kashvi Mulchandani 🔹 @ 2025-12-09T20:56 (+2)

To prevent bots and too many inactive accounts, we only add people to our local group's Signal chat that we have met in person or that someone already knows.

This sounds like a good idea. I guess some people join through the community through the freshers fair / student union page, which is why I check. 

Also, remember that you can reset the invite link. This can help when you get overrun by bots. 

This is true! I guess I haven't bothered, as I would have to change the links elsewhere, e.g. on the student union page, which is probably low effort, so maybe I should. 

I think it makes sense to make it not too easy for people to get access to the group chat so that it feels private and personal, so people are less shy about writing there. 

This is also a good point. 

Does any of you have any Ideas about that? How do you handle this?

Good question. EA Bath has only been around for just over a year, but last year we had a main group chat in the whatsapp community that had too many people, so our chair deactivated the group chat and made a new one that the more active members could join – and posted a link to the new chat in the group chat before deactivating. So I guess you could remake the group chat every year so that the newer/active members can rejoin it? And then you could call it 'EA (insert group name) 2025' or something. 

Andreas Jessen🔸 @ 2025-12-10T11:48 (+1)

We have an e-mail address that people can use to contact us. That is used for communication with new people until they come to their first event where they can join the Signal group.

Creating a new group every year sounds like something that might work, but it might also lead to some confusion. For example, if you try to find something someone wrote a while back. I'll think about it. Thanks for the idea.

Chris Kerr @ 2025-11-26T12:55 (+1)

Hang on - why do you have to be a student to join an EA group?

Kashvi Mulchandani 🔹 @ 2025-11-26T16:24 (+1)

Oh, sorry, I should clarify – this is a university EA group, and is therefore directed at students. We have had a couple non students – who have joined the University later, but I more meant that I'm checking they're not a bot, and are a real person.