Things are changing. The forum game isnt what it was when &totse was up. There are too many large sites dominating the internet to make small forums like this one successful. And there are a lot of boards out there that are worth something that dont get discovered. A lot of these sites are fringe boards. Fringe boards arent what they used to be. Religious cults or wackos thinking the government is spying on them (well the govt probably is but thats not the point). They are now sites like this and uer that host conversation on something of some social aberration. That yearning to do something incredible if even only in your own view. The urge to open a storm drain, step out of your backdoor at 2:00 am or even to explore chemistry through practice. This desire to learn something new, or do something some may see as insane but you see as invigorating and enlightening or liberating.
These communities are dying people. These communities are being swallowed by a larger fish in the pond. But they dont have to be. I am working on a collaborative effort to form a sort of alliance between any and all forums on the internet that care to join and promote eachother and to ensure that people can meet up and talk about subjects unmolested by the direction social media has taken. We are talking about a movement that takes individual forums and links them together to make information and communities available on whatever topic or subject someone may have interest in. It all starts with a central site. I plan on launching this as an all topics board + archive of other boards and resources that may be of interest to a wide range of individuals. This sit will also direct to smaller sits such as this that house communities and information that specialize in certain subjects. The plan is to make your presence along with many other capable and knowledgeable communities known and accessible to the web.
It works thus, a user is browsing my boards in a sub called something like "Bad Ideas". They stumble across a thread about "night ops" . He gets inspired and goes outside and sees the night for what it is. He comes back and wants more. When he goes back to the board he finds a link directing them to this community where they can make an account and immerse themselves in night ops with knowledgeable people who have been doing it for years. And sure this is a fantasized version of events but it is more or less what may happen. The central board acts as a hub where it can direct users to other hubs such as this or uer with a more specialized and knowledgeable user base.
Questions? Comments? Criticism?
Site To collaboration effort
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Re: Site To collaboration effort
I'm still confused as to the concept of the site. Is it just going to be a directory of sorts to all manner of fringe forum?
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Re: Site To collaboration effort
Sounds a bit like a sales pitch based around what's described in this thread - http://nightops.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1867Xanatos wrote:I'm still confused as to the concept of the site. Is it just going to be a directory of sorts to all manner of fringe forum?
"I'm not worried about this because I am too strong, too good, too intelligent, but I want to say to the others 'don't follow the stupid'."
Re: Site To collaboration effort
There are mainstream boards for all of those examples though, often very popular ones. I'd even include UER as quite mainstream. The advantage to them is that there is nothing suspect about subscribing to them and sharing, and you can do so safe in the knowledge that you have no awareness about anyone else - it's safer that way.Pontifleviticus wrote:Things are changing. The forum game isnt what it was when &totse was up. There are too many large sites dominating the internet to make small forums like this one successful. And there are a lot of boards out there that are worth something that dont get discovered. A lot of these sites are fringe boards. Fringe boards arent what they used to be. Religious cults or wackos thinking the government is spying on them (well the govt probably is but thats not the point). They are now sites like this and uer that host conversation on something of some social aberration. That yearning to do something incredible if even only in your own view. The urge to open a storm drain, step out of your backdoor at 2:00 am or even to explore chemistry through practice. This desire to learn something new, or do something some may see as insane but you see as invigorating and enlightening or liberating.
I agree that smaller communities aren't as common anymore, but would disagree that they're dying. &T was something a bit unique, and I know of a few posters that would simply stay in their preferred forums - I know I did. That's why when it ended I never bothered with any of the clones, I simply switched to forums that catered for those specific interests.Pontifleviticus wrote:These communities are dying people. These communities are being swallowed by a larger fish in the pond. But they dont have to be. I am working on a collaborative effort to form a sort of alliance between any and all forums on the internet that care to join and promote eachother and to ensure that people can meet up and talk about subjects unmolested by the direction social media has taken. We are talking about a movement that takes individual forums and links them together to make information and communities available on whatever topic or subject someone may have interest in. It all starts with a central site. I plan on launching this as an all topics board + archive of other boards and resources that may be of interest to a wide range of individuals. This sit will also direct to smaller sits such as this that house communities and information that specialize in certain subjects. The plan is to make your presence along with many other capable and knowledgeable communities known and accessible to the web.
The core problem is - this is the internet and alliances rarely work, human relationships are fickle at best - and on the internet they're even worse. Consider the number of petty IRC channel raids and dramatic escapades that used to happen 10 years ago.. then the forum raids.. and now it's the likes of 4chan vs Reddit vs Tumblr. Alliances are non existent. Hell there even used to be infighting on &T between forums - i.e Bad Ideas trolling Backyard Ballistics for the amount of idiots they'd direct over there, Weapons & Combat/Better Living Through Chemistry mocking Bad Ideas for some of the worryingly dangerous suggestions people would think are workable.
Then what if users of a given forum, say a survival one, don't want to be associated with anything about "How to produce drugs"? You risk losing some real knowledge from the smaller sites because, simply put, people don't like being associated with the ideas behind the other sites.
In the above scenario; who actually posts to your board then? At the moment it sounds like an old-school style web-directory (like pre-search engine days) and could simply be a list of links. The problem with that is that people will simply find the content they like, bookmark that, and forget about the main hub as it's static.Pontifleviticus wrote:It works thus, a user is browsing my boards in a sub called something like "Bad Ideas". They stumble across a thread about "night ops" . He gets inspired and goes outside and sees the night for what it is. He comes back and wants more. When he goes back to the board he finds a link directing them to this community where they can make an account and immerse themselves in night ops with knowledgeable people who have been doing it for years. And sure this is a fantasized version of events but it is more or less what may happen. The central board acts as a hub where it can direct users to other hubs such as this or uer with a more specialized and knowledgeable user base.
Without any integrations I can't see how it would work, and I can't see how any integrations would possibly work as it would be a complete nightmare from a tech point of view.
I guess I see what you're describing and how it would have the potential to be pretty great, but ultimately I'd be reluctant to go down that avenue. Ultimately, the main issues I see:Pontifleviticus wrote:Questions? Comments? Criticism?
-> You're shining a big light on some communities that, understandably, want to stay off the radar - and lumping them in with other communities that are happy to be popular and have nothing to hide.
-> This relies on everyone agreeing to get along and play nicely.. alas, that rarely happens.
-> Individual sites could lose members to it, especially if they don't agree or identify with the values of the other sites in the group.
-> I'm not quite sure what the main hub would be doing, what would keep people returning after they've found their destination forum and simply bookmarked it. Web directories died themselves for a reason.
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Re: Site To collaboration effort
Wouldn't it be nice to have a list of links to all these types of sites? But as Illu explained that would be hard for a number of reasons. I wanted something like this and didn't understand why nobody was doing it, now I get it. Of course I want to find all those sites in the shadows of the internet but it is hard to find things that don't want to be found. At best a guide or static site to make it a little easier to find them would be more plausible. Like a search engine for fringe sites.
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Re: Site To collaboration effort
If there's no real integration and it is a static site then that could potentially workaround a lot of the more social issues as well as pick up forum recruitment quite a bit!CookieThief wrote:Wouldn't it be nice to have a list of links to all these types of sites? But as Illu explained that would be hard for a number of reasons. I wanted something like this and didn't understand why nobody was doing it, now I get it. Of course I want to find all those sites in the shadows of the internet but it is hard to find things that don't want to be found. At best a guide or static site to make it a little easier to find them would be more plausible. Like a search engine for fringe sites.
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"I'm not worried about this because I am too strong, too good, too intelligent, but I want to say to the others 'don't follow the stupid'."