Nattering.
The community, named after what actually happens in it. Twelve parishes, 18,637 people in one, and a hundred and forty-one meets held in a village hall, a boatyard, a cider barn and quite a lot of car parks.
Twelve parishes, and what each is doing next.
A parish is geographic, it is run by a member rather than by us, and every one of them has a date in the diary. A community page with no date on it is a directory.
Why it is called Nattering.
Every other platform on earth has a community hub. It has a wall, a feed, a badge system and a tone of voice borrowed from a phone company. Nobody has ever gone to one twice.
This is a village-hall register. You are on it, you can see who else is on it near you, and once a month somebody unlocks a hall and puts the urn on. The digital part is the bit that arranges the meeting; it is not the meeting.
Nattering is what people do in that hall. Naming it accurately keeps expectations at the right height, which is roughly ankle level, which is where a community that actually works starts.
- 12
- parishes
- 141
- meets since May 2024
- 0
- community managers employed
The register, as it stands.
Four numbers, all of them from a log rather than an estimate. The last one is the one we are proudest of and the one nobody ever asks about.
How a parish actually works.
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Somebody local volunteers.
A warden is a member who put their hand up. They are not staff, they are not paid, and they cannot be sacked by us — only stood down by their own parish.
Eleven of the twelve current wardens volunteered within a fortnight of their parish opening. The twelfth took four months, which is why The Wolds opened in January 2026 rather than September 2025.
A community manager is somebody’s job. A warden is somebody’s neighbour.
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They pick a night and a room.
Every parish sets its own cadence. The Borders meets four times a year because half of it drives ninety miles. The Downs has no room at all and meets in car parks at the tops of hills.
We do not impose a format, because the one time a format was suggested centrally, two parishes politely ignored it and both were right to.
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The date goes in the diary.
Every parish page carries the next three things it is doing, with a date, a time and a place. If a parish has nothing in the diary, its card says so rather than pretending.
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People turn up, or they do not.
Average attendance across the twelve is thirty-one people, against an average parish size of 1,553. That is two per cent, and two per cent is a perfectly respectable turnout for anything.
The other ninety-eight per cent read the minutes, use the lending list, and are entirely welcome to carry on doing exactly that.
Two per cent turnout is not a failure. It is a village.
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Nobody keeps score against anybody else.
Leaderboards stay inside a parish and reset every season. There is no national table and there never will be, for reasons set out at some length on its own page.
A global leaderboard is a machine for making almost everybody feel inadequate.
The rest of it.
Parishing
What a parish is, how one is drawn, and why the cadence is left to the parish.
The Rules
Six rules, written in English, enforced by people who have to live with the result.
Starting a Parish
What we need before a new one opens, and the four that have been turned down.
Parish Goals
Shared targets tied to real events on the farm rather than to points.
Neighbouring
Members visiting members, with the safeguards that requires said out loud.
Roping In
What you actually do to a friend, and what you both get for it.
Boasting
Badges, honest about what badges are for.
Lording It
Parish level only, and here is the argument for why.
What We Remove
Every removal in twelve months, by category, with the numbers.
A community hub is a product feature. A parish is a place where somebody lends you a post rammer. Nattering, the founding note
What Nattering actually is.
Shape
- Parishes
- 12, drawn by regionMembers propose the boundaries; we do not impose them.
- Members placed
- 18,637Register at 30 August 2026.
- Members unplaced
- 4,912They have an account and have not picked a parish. Entirely allowed.
- Average parish
- 1,553 membersLargest 4,182, smallest 741.
- Wardens
- 12 volunteersNone employed, none paid, none appointed by us.
Moderation
- Posts, twelve months
- 41,902To 31 July 2026.
- Removed
- 168 (0.4%)Every one logged and categorised.
- Median decision time
- 4 hours 20 minutesFrom report to outcome.
- Appeals
- 22 raised, 6 upheldAn appeal goes to a different person from the one who removed it.
- Accounts suspended
- 19 temporary, 4 permanentOut of 23,549 registered.
Access
- Cost
- NothingNattering is open at every membership tier, including the free one.
- Minimum age
- 16With conditions, set out in Safeguarding.
- Leaving
- One tapYour posts go with you if you ask, and stay if you would rather.
Figures are the moderation and register logs for this demonstration build. No real personal data is held anywhere on this site.
What people actually ask.
No, and about ninety-eight per cent of members do not. Reading the minutes, using the lending list and never once entering a village hall is a completely legitimate way to be in a parish.
You are placed in one and you may read all twelve. Several members who moved keep an eye on the old one, which nobody has ever objected to.
Then you are among the 4,912 unplaced members, and Starting a Parish explains what it takes to fix that. Four proposals have been turned down and the reasons are published.
A filter catches obvious spam. Every actual removal is a decision by a person, logged, with a median of four hours and twenty minutes from report to outcome.
Told when your parish meets.
One message before each meet in your parish and nothing else. Not a newsletter, not a digest, and nothing at all in the months when your parish is not doing anything.
- One message per meet
- Your parish only
- One tap to stop
