Continued Improvements to How Our Members Post about Crime and Safety - Nextdoor Blog

We have spent the last few months working on this challenging issue. In that time, we’ve made a series of changes to our product, including: a new racial profiling flag on posts, updates to our member guidelines, and a mandatory warning screen before posting in crime and safety.

Two weeks ago, we shared that we would begin testing a new “structured” form for when members post in the crime and safety section. Today, we are excited to release yet another new form. This form uses an entirely new “conversational” approach to guide members through the posting process.

The new form is designed to:

• Require that members specify whether they are “reporting a crime”, a “suspicious activity”, or “other”. This helps us route the member through the correct prompts for more information.

• Guide members through a step-by-step form that requires complete descriptions of individuals and criminal activity.

• Educate members about the harms of racial profiling, and more broadly, what constitutes valid criminal and/or suspicious activity.

Once again, we want to recognize the assistance of Oakland advocacy groups Neighbors for Racial Justice (N4RJ) and 100 Black Men, as well as several representatives from the City of Oakland, including Vice Mayor Annie Campbell Washington, Council Member Desley Brooks,  and multiple members of the city administration. We are proud to be working with both the community and local government to tackle one of the toughest issues that plagues our society today.

We will be actively testing the two versions of the form in neighborhoods across the Bay Area and Baltimore. After a suitable test period and any additional enhancements, we have every intention to release these features to all 98,000 neighborhoods across the country that rely on Nextdoor. Thank you for helping us get this right.

Nirav Tolia
Co-Founder and CEO
niravtolia@nextdoor.com