cross-posted from: https://piefed.zip/c/foss/p/1548253/we-are-trying-to-grow-a-new-foss-collaboration-community
A few of us have put together a forum and wiki in the hopes to build a community focused on collaboration for various open source and creative commons projects. We build the platform a few months ago, but haven’t done the greatest job of actually spreading the word and building up the active members, so I’m posting in another attempt to try and spread the word to establish some activity for our community.
In short, the idea behind our website is to:
- Build a community that is based on genuine connections and collaboration. Our community is a forum and wiki, and hopes to steer towards a slower (and possibly more old school) type of internet - and away from some communities that are mostly article reposts and memes.
- Libre/foss/creative commons/etc - we want to help generate community that can come together to work on projects that benefit everyone, and in a way, push back against some of the urges of capitalism.
- Involvement - we want to welcome everyone, but the idea is to eventually create a culture where people are not afraid to contribute small things to many projects. We want to motivate individuals to grow the foss ecosystem without feeling like they need to commit heavily to any one project. Projects can get rekindled and improved on even if others have abandoned it.
Overall, we have a big vision for the community - but at this point we are just trying to get it off the ground and are looking for members to sign up and start some discussions to help us grow.
The goal is to create a community that is able to stand on its own, and outlast myself or any of the other admins. And essentially become a commons space, with the current admins simply acting as a steward that can be replaced if they need/want to step down. In that respect, we hope to get some members and allow the community to grow and evolve the platform to fit the needs of the community.
While modern social media has its place, we felt that the current standing of online collaborative spaces were limiting and often highly niche. We hope that maybe we can grow a space for people of various skills, backgrounds, and ideas can come together to create a creative and productive space - and make some lasting connections as well.
I know this post got a bit lengthy, and many will probably skim over it, but if it’s something that sounds interesting to you I would really appreciate it if you came over and checked it out, signed up, and maybe help us get some discussions going to help us grow our community. And of course, if you would be so kind as to helping us spread the word, it would be greatly appreciated - as we spent so much time working on building the site, but none of us are all that great at actually “marketing” the community to actually find new members.
Our forum is: forum.UnfinishedProjects.net
And our wiki, where we hope people will actually build out various projects together is located at:
push back against some of the urges of capitalism.
On
piefed.zip???I like the idea, but wonder if a lemmy community may have been just as good. The main friction I think many of us will have is “one more place to go to”. Also, I think the founders likely should step up to create content initially otherwise you run into
- New user visits
- Nothing here to see… I like the idea; will bookmark to check later
- Later never comes and the person just forgets about the project
In my opinion the founders need to create some, even if minimal, value for new users until there is a critical mass.
All super valid points, and I agree. I really appreciate the feedback :)
As for the “one more place to go”, I agree that I hate having more logins and such, but it felt worthwhile to have a dedicated space its own if we wanted to build a community that was more closely knit. The structure of a traditional forum allows discussions to last and not get buried. A small compromise is that the forum is federated, so each category can be accessed from the fediverse.
As for initial content - that was the plan, and we will slowly be working on it, but sadly I burnt myself out on actually creating the platform and needed a break - and now I am reattempting, but am currently in the process of IRL things that are preventing me actually working heavily on content/value for initial landing. But hopefully we will slowly be able to get actual content up to prevent the issue you described.
TLDR: I completely agree with you, and hopefully we will address the content issue eventually. In the meantime, I figured I would try to spread the word and hope a few individuals might be willing to add their projects or ideas.
it’s not a sprint, but a marathon. Rest, recharge and then come back… For example you could do posts in Lemmy of summary of an article in your site or just put link to article in your site, once things are moving.
That is good advice, thanks. I will try that out.
And yes, I constantly remind myself to take it slow. . . But I seem to rarely listen to myself haha.
Some forums already federate with lemmy. More will in the future. Setting up email notifications means you don’t have to visit multiple sites each day.
Ours is federated too :)
How can the forums be accessed from lemmy? Do you have info anywhere on that?
This forum in particular already displays how you can.
See this for example: !announcements@forum.unfinishedprojects.net
You have to search for that. E.g. this is a post on their forum via lemmy.world: https://lemmy.world/post/43610473
On registration:
I consent to the collection and processing of my personal information on this website.
Understood…
I consent to receive digest and notification emails from this website.
This I suggest you change or indicate one can manage digest somewhere. I did not want to select that since I don’t want digests, but it won’t let me register otherwise. Also, just seems like a bad thing to request. That should be a setting, not a requirement.
This is part of NodeBB forum software, and settings in your user profile you can adjust what you receive. I think (unless I am mistaken, and I simply need to adjust the settings) that this is a blanket statement that covers the forum admins to adjust settings without violating consent. I will need to do some more research if this is even changeable on my end (both technically & legally).
On our end, we are hosting the nodeBB forum on a VPS, and are not doing any sort of telemetry or data gathering (except that information that nodeBB gathers for site usage data), and we don’t send any digest emails (other than what the individual sets up in their profile settings that get auto sent through the software).
I know that doesn’t necessarily fix the issue, but hope it at least clarifies it a little. I will look into this issue further though.
I suggest, if possible, just change the wording to make it clear one can opt out of emails after one logs in.
@julian@community.nodebb.org is there any chance you might be able to clarify this? Is this the case, or am I mistaken?
I will sign up as soon as I’m at home!
Yay! You’re the best ;)
If you have any projects or discussion to share, it would be much appreciated - as often the beginning stages are the hardest since there is not much content to interact with for new members
Neat, wish I could code to contribute. Not willing to submit ai slop, either.
Projects need other skills, like translators and artists too.
We’re trying to be more than just coding projects, and really any project that is not under a closed license.
Just as an example, a couple of us designed board games. It can be things even like world building, CAD projects, tinkering, craft blueprints, etc.
While FOSS is pretty much centered around coding (the “software” in FOSS) we want to build a community where people can collaborate on more than just code.
Not sure if that makes any difference or not, but I figured it was worth pointing out :) - either way, thanks for the interest!
