It even has the potential to interfere with the primary goal of a community, in our case creating a sustainability demonstration project. People have warned us that too much diversity when a group isn't ready for it may mean divisiveness and conflict. Should we decide to make diversity a high priority, we as a group will need to be aware of the social and interpersonal issues that can filter out people who are different than our existing membership, which is admittedly homogeneous on many social spectrums. We pay close attention to the image we portray, which as a forming community revolves around our two main activities of outreach and meetings. One example of how our group did some unintentional filtering was our almost exclusive use of the internet for outreach and communication early in our formation.
Email reaches only a small and somewhat homogeneous segment of the population.
Also, the medium requires typing skill and promotes a certain style of communication, mainly long textual arguments and cross discussions, with emotions and such communicated very poorly. We never really denied that these obvious filters existed but our social inertia kept it as one of our main forums for quite some time. Our meeting structure and style are an example of a much more subtle kind of filter, which is difficult even to notice and sometimes more difficult to remove if you decide to. Our meetings are run by consensus and despite efforts to moderate behavior, conversations often take on a particular style. People in our group often talk quickly and energetically and one person can often jump in as the last has finished.