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Post by jmakin on Apr 21, 2019 0:35:48 GMT
Hi. I mentioned in the ATF thread that I have actually been in discussions with a product development manager for a startup he’s founding. It sounded a lot like 2p2 politics so I gave him some advice about what I see and what I think works and people want. in my opinion the politics forum is performing some valuable, monetizable function that doesnt exist elsewhere.
There are many here more technicaly savvy than me but I will volunteer my services for anything forum growth related and in any technical way I can. I am a little green but I believe I can contribute. My time is a bit stretched thin but I am passionate about the community so I could find the will.
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Post by goofyballer on Apr 21, 2019 2:33:54 GMT
I think the technologies that most forums run on (i.e. PHP, Rails, whatever) are completely foreign to me, but I can maybe help with forum-adjacent stuff (like the bots, which I wrote in Go and run independently).
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Post by Loden Pants on Apr 21, 2019 3:27:47 GMT
I'll do what I can. I can always learn a new language/technology, and can help with program management as needed. Experience with AWS/some Azure, databases, Java, C++, Python, Javascript, node.js, mostly back end stuff, coding web UI is not really my thing.
I posted in another thread that we should have a social media presence to draw new users. I'm not volunteering for the content, but if there are technical details that need to be researched, I could help.
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Post by kerowo on Apr 21, 2019 3:50:39 GMT
I have a background in support and learning new technologies to solve problems. I'd love to help keep the place running. I'd love to help with the modding but regardless I'll help try and shape this place into a forum people are proud to spend time at.
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Post by miliboo on Apr 21, 2019 4:55:16 GMT
virtually zero coding experience but more than happy to help with spam clean up
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Post by SensiblePerson on Apr 21, 2019 5:39:49 GMT
Mentioned this in another thread but...
IRL web dev/admin, so possibly relevant things I have experience with:
-Working on/with hosted/managed servers
-Installing/configuring/extending/managing various CMS, including Drupal, Wordpress, Plone (have set up a phpBB some years back)
-CMS theming (HTML, CSS)
-Lots of other stuff relating to the care and feeding of successful websites (content strategy, SEO, analytics, etc.)
I'd be happy to help with any of this, with the caveat that I have a full-time job and some extracurriculars already.
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Post by omggluten on Apr 21, 2019 6:01:04 GMT
I'm willing to help. I have setup a discourse board in production before and have a lot of experience with ruby/rails/postgresql... although setting it up is pretty simple. i don't think many devs will have a very hard time with it.
i don't know anything about those other boards but some potential advantages of discourse:
it's open source so you have full control over modifying it/customizations
it has a great api + sso
it is reactive, new content shows up without reloading
easy to back up
strong community support. all the nerds are using it. you can get support answers very quickly on how to do X from the guys who wrote it.
probably cheaper long term than those other boards.
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Post by smrk3 on Apr 21, 2019 9:08:21 GMT
I have some vague coding skills, if there are any slightly above intern level coding tasks then I can devote some hours a week.
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Post by IrishRunner on Apr 21, 2019 11:49:11 GMT
I'd be willing to help out in any way. Not an expert by an means but have some experience (HTML, CSS, some JS, NodeJS etc).
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Post by jmakin on Apr 21, 2019 12:52:20 GMT
I think we’ll have more than enough tech help, seems like politics posters profession of choice leans heavily tech.
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Post by jbro on Apr 21, 2019 14:19:45 GMT
We probably need some structure on who's in charge of setting up the new site. This is probably best left to a small group to decide, with the rest of us supporting it financially until it takes off.
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Post by microbet on Apr 21, 2019 18:54:40 GMT
I want to develop a whole democratically controlled and owned social media platform. That's kind of ambitious. I think I/we can start it as an adjunct to this site and perhaps start with a module for moderation or making bigger governance decisions or something like that or maybe just starting with a specific thread. With one of the open source boards like omg is talking about I/we could get access to the database.
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Post by kerowo on Apr 21, 2019 23:08:26 GMT
That sounds interesting micro. The first thing that comes to mind is how you balance bothering users with constant things they have to vote on versus not having a group of dedicated jerks who end up taking the site over because they showed up.
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Post by omggluten on Apr 21, 2019 23:47:38 GMT
the secret hitler / 4chan crowd would be all over that shit.
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Post by microbet on Apr 22, 2019 2:12:32 GMT
That sounds interesting micro. The first thing that comes to mind is how you balance bothering users with constant things they have to vote on versus not having a group of dedicated jerks who end up taking the site over because they showed up. Important that all this is voted on of course. But, you have different levels of members. Guests are welcomed, but can't vote on much. Members have to vote on them to become members. Easy to vote in (something like majority) harder to vote out (close to consensus) and a group of Elders or whatever who are a level higher and also are voted in or out by other members at that level. Something serious like a perma might have to be a strong majority of one group with a possible veto by the other group. Maybe spam could be deleted by any member or a member doing it and seconding it. People can check to see if that's going ok or call on some slightly harder vote for it (first 10 members or whatever). Members should probably be able to vote Elders down as well, but a pretty high threshold needed for that. Mods might still be there for excising things into new threads or more complicated procedures, but modship would be either widespread, rotated or voted on. I think it could all be worked out with some trial and error. |
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Post by monsterjmcgee on Apr 22, 2019 16:26:07 GMT
I'm able to help with design related stuff if that's every needed, which may not be likely. UI, logo, branding, etc.
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Post by Louis Cyphre on Apr 23, 2019 5:46:21 GMT
I like Microbet's idea of an elected forum council.
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Post by Marksman on Apr 23, 2019 21:11:48 GMT
I have decades of experience with bbs and forum operations. I will say my chops are very rusty but I think I provide a good bit of experience. Also with issues like SEO I have experience but I would need to brush up on current standards.
In general I feel like I can offer a good sounding board for proposed ideas and see shortcomings or offer suggested improvements.
I don’t know that my current health would allow me to play an aggressive part of coding a site and building out the forum including creating modifications. I know we have younger more talented guys for that but will pitch in however I can.
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Post by poopypants on Apr 24, 2019 2:37:34 GMT
I have programming experience including js, php, python, etc. Has everyone settled on the forum software?
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Post by microbet on Apr 24, 2019 7:27:00 GMT
I installed Discourse (forum software) on a machine I have at Linode.com. I don't have it all set up yet. Discourse itself was easy, but getting it working with postfix (email software) has been tough. I can tell you Discourse is quite heavy and will probably take more than the cheapest hosting option.
My intention here is to set something up and let a bunch of people be mods and administrators and play around with the software. Anything in production will need another home, but it's not in my way or adding any cost in the short term.
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Post by poopypants on Apr 24, 2019 14:23:00 GMT
How well does Discourse handle massive threads? The format seems kind of unwieldy for a long thread like the Presidency of DJT thread.
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Post by microbet on Apr 24, 2019 16:19:01 GMT
Dunno. I wish I could stay in today and fix this, but I can't. I have Discourse loading and ready to register. Postfix is working insofar as I can "echo 'whatever ' | mail " subject " me@gmail.com" from command line and receive the email. Discourse runs, but in order to verify an admin account it needs to send me an email and that's not going through. I've had all kinds of varieties of config and errors, but the latest is (from Discourse's error log):
Job exception: hostname "mail.icwydt.com" does not match the server certificate
(yeah, I know - get the server certificate matching. I've made one attempt at that which failed. I can probably get it working, maybe tonight. But if there's like someone who knows sysad stuff well and wants to get on a google hangout or something lmk)
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Post by master3004 on Apr 24, 2019 22:21:48 GMT
Just a heads up, HumbleBundle is offering a pretty large full stack web development package bundle right now. No idea how good the tools are but gonna do some research on them and possibly get them for my wife.
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Post by kerowo on Apr 24, 2019 22:23:45 GMT
If you are a nerdling and aren’t watching Humble Bundle you should fix that.
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Post by Loden Pants on Apr 25, 2019 2:37:55 GMT
I want to develop a whole democratically controlled and owned social media platform. That's kind of ambitious. I think I/we can start it as an adjunct to this site and perhaps start with a module for moderation or making bigger governance decisions or something like that or maybe just starting with a specific thread. With one of the open source boards like omg is talking about I/we could get access to the database. I had some ideas around this, but more from the trust/fake news angle. We had a huge problem with false social media posts being sent around in the 2016 cycle. My idea included message authentication as well as encryption, so that public posts would have to be authenticated so that the original source could be determined. Now I think that a blockchain ledger can help, and there are some social media startups using it. Another aspect is that users could choose to trust other users, and a community trust level could be calculated based on how trusted a user is on average, or by your trusted circle, or any other criterion. Kind of like the original PGP idea.
I have some contacts in technical coops and philanthropy, and if the social platform idea gains traction, I can see if I can drum up some interest. I've already reached out to the coop community for advice on the organization. Here's one link I've found about Drupal: agaric.coop/blog/resources-scaling-community-decision-making |
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Post by Trolly on Apr 25, 2019 4:36:41 GMT
Just a heads up, HumbleBundle is offering a pretty large full stack
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