---
title: "Online community building"
source: dbt Core Documentation
source_url: https://github.com/dbt-labs/docs.getdbt.com
licence: Apache-2.0
domain: data-and-analysis
subdomain: dbt-docs
date_added: 2026-04-25
---

### Maintaining a channel in the dbt Community Slack

#### Overview

The dbt Slack is the place for real time conversations with the dbt Community. Slack channels exist for specific locations, tools, industries and methodologies. In order to make sure that every channel has dedicated attention from a committed community member, we have Community Maintainers who oversee the discussion in particular channels.

#### Contribution opportunities

Every channel can benefit from people who are engaged and committed to making it a more interesting place to hang out! If there's a channel that you're interested in, spend time there.

For new channels that you'd like to create and maintain, post a message in the #channel-requests channel.

#### Sample contributions:

- Karen Hsieh's [contributions](https://getdbt.slack.com/archives/C02TU2DSKND/p1661483529756289) to the #local-taipei channel are a fantastic example to learn from.

#### Get started

- Read the guide to [Maintaining a Slack Channel](/community/resources/maintaining-a-channel)

### Participating on the Community Forum

#### Overview

[The dbt Community Forum](https://discourse.getdbt.com) is the preferred platform for support questions as well as a space for long-lived discussions about dbt, analytics engineering, and the analytics profession. It's a place for us to build up a long-lasting knowledge base around the common challenges, opportunities, and patterns we work with every day.

#### Contribution opportunities

Participate in the Forum by asking and answering questions. These discussions are what allows us to find gaps in our best practices, documentation and other recommendation, as well as to get folks onboarded and understanding dbt. Remember, it’s a mitzvah to answer a question.

If you see a great question or answer, be generous with your 💜 reactions. Click the Solved button when your question is answered, so others can benefit.

#### Sample contributions

- An analytics engineer wrote about [how they modified dbt to automatically put models into the correct schema](https://discourse.getdbt.com/t/extracting-schema-and-model-names-from-the-filename/575) based on their filename.
- Here's [an example of the supportive, thorough answers](https://discourse.getdbt.com/t/is-it-possible-to-have-multiple-files-with-the-same-name-in-dbt/647) you can receive when you take the time to ask a question well.

#### Get started

- Read the [Community Forum Guidelines](/community/resources/forum-guidelines) to understand what topics are a good fit and why this space is important in building long-term community knowledge.
- Head over to the “[Help](https://discourse.getdbt.com/c/help/19)” section of the forum and look for areas to hop in! You don’t need to know the exact answer to a question to be able to provide a helpful pointer.
