Tl;dr: Cloudflare laid off much of their Community team and then unexpectedly disbanded the Community Champions program (Discord moderation and early feedback group), leaving the Cloudflare Discord server effectively unmoderated and without the very folks who gave years of their free time to help the community. We’ve decided to create a new unofficial home for Cloudflare users on Discord, a space run by the community, for the community: https://discord.gg/TrPNVKaagR

During the unexpected recent layoffs at Cloudflare, folks involved in leading community efforts unfortunately lost their jobs. This left us (the Community Champions) in an odd spot where we were looking after Cloudflare's own Discord server while having no direct community contacts at Cloudflare. You may have seen many of us in Discord before - we had the green names!

This week, we then received an unexpected message letting us know that, effective almost immediately, the Community Champions program was being disbanded, and our volunteer assistance in the server (moderating the place 24/7 and providing support to Cloudflare’s users) was no longer needed. No real explanation was given as to why, just that it is happening and that the decision had already been made.

The Community Champions program has operated since very early 2021, and has become a staple in Cloudflare’s developer ecosystem, support offerings, and more. Countless users are sent by Cloudflare’s own support team or via product dashboards to the Discord server every single day, and in the vast majority of cases, support for products was offered by a Community Champion purely out of joy and love for the community and Cloudflare.

This news has resulted in many active folks leaving the server already, both community and employees. Therefore, we’re announcing a new unofficial Orange Cloud Discord server, where folks can engage with the same folks who have always helped them, get support for Cloudflare products, and which will be moderated and run by humans who care. Join the server today: https://discord.gg/TrPNVKaagR

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FAQ

We’ll try to keep this updated as common questions arise in the comments on this post.

What will happen with the old “official” server?

At this point, we don’t know, and it doesn’t seem that Cloudflare does either. There are currently discussions around rebooting it later this summer, but in the meantime, we expect it to be quickly overrun with spam, scams, or worse content now that there’s no longer any active and dedicated moderation team, and the few active employees who were providing support have mostly left. This has already started to happen in the couple of days the server has been unmoderated. We’ve also seen those at Cloudflare who now hold moderation powers unfairly removing negative messages about Cloudflare’s products and decisions (as well as the users posting them), including this very change, which leaves us concerned about the future of open discussion and feedback there.

Why should we believe what you’re saying vs. Cloudflare?

Consider that we are a group of friends who have volunteered our free time over the last many years to help the community, and that Cloudflare is a publicly traded corporation with an image and bottom line to protect. We anticipate that Cloudflare may try to spin their own narrative on what has happened with us posting this, and recognise that this may cause some confusion for the community. While we don’t think what Cloudflare has done is the right move, we don’t want to burn bridges and trust that we don’t need to, so we intend to keep the conversations involved here private if we can. That being said, rest assured that we do have plenty of receipts for what we’ve said Cloudflare has done in this post (including suppressing negative messages from users and outright banning users posting those), and we will share these if we decide it is necessary to preserve the true narrative.

Can I still get support from Cloudflare directly in the new server?

This is unclear. Activity from Cloudflare employees even in the official server is few and far between, with most support coming from the community directly. While there are some Cloudflare employees already in the server, they’re not there in any official capacity, and in time, we hope that many other Cloudflare folks can find a home in the new server.

What happened to the XYZ channel?

One of the issues in the official server that we would raise regularly was the sheer number of channels that ended up abandoned by their product teams. To combat this, we’re starting small but centralising on a few product categories, and will evaluate and increase the number of channels over time as needed.

Can issues still be escalated from the Discord?

In the old server, we had a direct tap to many of Cloudflare’s customer support and engineering folks, including multiple custom integrations allowing us to quickly escalate issues to the right folks. Many of those folks lost their jobs or have left the server after the recent news.

However, lots of us still have very good friends at Cloudflare, and other methods of escalation that we’ll use as needed should issues arise that can’t be solved in the community. We’re confident resolution times won’t be any slower than they currently are.

Will Cloudflare still (officially) use this subreddit?

This subreddit has always been community-moderated, much like the Discord (though unlike the previous Discord server, the community runs the subreddit and holds ownership of it). There are some Cloudflare employees present here, and sometimes you’ll see a response from an executive when a post gets a lot of public attention, but moderation from employees has always been near-zero.

We have no current intentions to remove anyone at Cloudflare from the subreddit - we want to continue collaborating with them to benefit the community, and their integrations for blog posts and things should continue to work without issue.