Hey everyone, the attached link is my write-up about the plans for a new community I am trying to get established.
Since I know a lot of people don’t actually follow links to read articles, I’ll copy and paste some stuff here:
My ideal for this platform is to build a space that values creativity, learning, and working/tinkering at various projects - whatever that may be, from arts and crafts, to software development, to 3D printing, to scientific research. As the forum title suggests, “UnfinishedProjects” is meant to bring people together to share what they are working on, provide a network to collaborate and work together, and just overall enjoy the journey and make some friends along the way.
The forum is not meant to be a “hyper-niche” space, but instead a place for creatives and tinkerers (the kind of people who always have three half-finished projects sitting on their desk) to come together. While the forum has a slight leaning towards the open source and Creative Commons space, to support the “Libre” community - it’s meant to be more of a general philosophy rather than a strict gate-keeping measure.
To initially get started, I am using a free hosting platform, but as soon as I am sure the community has enough members who are committed to the community, I plan on transferring over to nodeBB which has native support for Fediverse integration.
Also, addressing the questions of “why not just create a Lemmy/PieFed instance":
Let me start off by saying that I recognize that mega-forum platforms like Reddit, Lemmy, and PieFed exist, and serve an important function. While Lemmy and PieFed have yet to gain traction, I personally hope that they might eventually mature enough to replace Reddit - but as of now, Reddit is a central platform that allows users to find almost any sub for a random topic, and get questions answered from other people who are also interested in that specific niche. This is great, and I think this is where mega-forums excel.
However, I feel that individual forums (like this one that I am trying to create) have very much died off, with the exception of some already well established and long lived ones (BoardGameGeek, I’m looking at you). What I think a personal forum like this has to offer that mega-forums do not, is the permanence and commitment from its members - generally leading to a smaller but more tightly-knit community and network of individuals. On mega-forums like Reddit, it is so easy for members to move from one sub to another, and get lost in the “social-media” type of posts and memes that detract from the intent of any one specific forum.
Additionally, subs on these platforms are often hyper-niche, which can offer a lot of benefits, but a traditional forum may provide a better place to bring people together from various skill sets, interests, and hobbies to share and encourage one another.
If this is something that you think you might be interested in supporting, I kindly ask that you might be willing to join our community and help us build a place that we can all be proud to participate in.
I hope you all have a great day!
Stay safe in these crazy times ✊
-Anthony
BruisedMoose@piefed.social 10 hours ago
Maybe you’ve already looked into this, but my concern with your plan is the idea of packing up and moving to a new site and platform. What happens to existing users and post history? Building a community only to tell them they need to start all over could be detrimental.
UnfinishedProjects@piefed.zip 9 hours ago
Yeah, I totally feel this - and it’s one of the major drawbacks that I mentioned in the article. To compromise my sanity (of possibly spending a lot of time, and some money) with not losing all the progress of th community - my plan is to transfer early.
It’s not the perfect solution - I admit, but I feel that if I can just get a small handful (maybe 10-15 people are semi active/committed to the goal of the community) then I’d feel comfortable transitioning because I know we have a decent foundation to grow off from. But mainly I’m using this free hosting platform just to make sure there are actual people who are interested, and it’s not dead idea on arrival.
I will be honest though, the more I’ve been trying to get this community started - the more I’m tempted to just bite the bullet and go strait to buying a VPS and domain to set up nodeBB. I think if I can just get the feeling that people are actually interested and it’s not going to be a waste of my resources, then I might just do that.
Super valid point though. (I might even be able to find a way to save the data from this forum and preload it into the other forum - but I kind of doubt it since they are two different pieces of software)