It's been about a week and I've talked to a number of people interested in chainBB as a forum solution. There's been some great feedback on the good and the bad, and I'm happy to see a few dedicated users.
The underlying feedback I've gotten from almost everyone points to one thing - it needs to be simpler to start with. There's just too much going on, too many forums, and too much to browse. The lesson I'm taking from here is: just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should right away.
So to refocus and work on building a community of forum users, I've removed about 80% of the forums that existed. Counterintuitive - but makes sense once you stop and think about it.
This initial beta phase will now focus on the smaller topics, starting with:
- steem related projects (chainbb, esteem, etc)
- steem support forums (help new users out)
- steem news and politics (official announcements + witness discussions)
- forums requested by users
The target audience isn't the general populace, it's those who want to really get into steem whether at a technical, economic, political, in the community, or some other level.
I'll also plan to keep any forums that users request as long as they're actually used. If you want to breathe life into a community on a forum, I'd like to help. I'll put a request thread in the chainBB forums once I've got a process in place if you're interested in your own forum. Otherwise feel free to just message me.
It's been an interesting shift in perspective using steem as a forum... I wrote this post not as a blogger, but I wrote it as someone writing some notes to a community that's forming, in our dedicated area. I may also start downvoting off-topic comments and posts that use the wrong tags, and then make the forums automatically minimize those posts.
I will say this. I really like the user interface for chainbb. Its quite sleek, @jesta has really outdone himself. If he continues work on this project I honestly can see it being a force to recon with in the bb world. Why use bitcointalk when you can use chainbb. There are many good aspects about what he has done here. The simultaneous username between steemit and the ease of signin is a fantastic aspect. I'm just really impressed.
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Thank you for the kind words!
I can only hope to rally a community around it like bitcointalk did - that's the hardest part.
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I'm a big believer in if you build it, they will come. I just can't see the logic behind a crypto user not wanting to replace a centralized message board with a decentralized crypto based one. To continue to use the other is against the values of the community.
So I think you are really onto something.
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a very good point, focus on something that makes sense at the moment and take into consideration other community initiatives to have the opportunity to expand the number of solutions rather than duplicating/improving some of them.
I too had to put a stop to some ideas others have declared they were working on them, not that it would be a bad thing, in most times competition is good to define a continuously better product, but under the current circumstances it's better we expand horizontally (more apps) rather than vertically (more similar apps).
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Bingo! Not all of these sites have to try to appeal to the global audience like Steemit is trying to do.
The steem blockchain needs more niche communities IMHO, now it's just a matter of identifying them and rallying them :)
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I agree, and there's a lot of niche-s left to explore, plenty of initiatives to start.
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give people ability to create separate instances of forum with custom set of tags.
Forum as a service.
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That's something I'd really like to do, and I think I can do it with just plain ol'
custom_jsonops on the blockchain.I'm a bit torn as to whether forum creation should have a fee associated to it or not. It would mainly as a way to prevent abuse, but I'm open to discussions on how to handle it best.
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What about that:
Xfrom each post should go to you (this should cover hosting costs + costs of development)Yfrom each post should go to creator (moderator) of forumY > Z, then forum is also promoted on main website of chainbb.comDownvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
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That feels like a portion of the solution, and until communities happen the beneficiaries logic would only be enforced through the UI and not on the blockchain, but that's likely acceptable.
What I meant by fee also was a creation cost in registering the existence of a forum. What if it creator had to burn 50 STEEM to create/claim a forum as well? I'm trying to find something to stop a user from creating 1000 forums and claiming ownership of them all.
Also - did you mean if
X > Yon the 3rd point? :)Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
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not necessarily ;) this could be like:
X=1% for you
Y=2% for moderator/creator
if X > 10%, then forum is promoted
but this is just an example.
what do you mean by claim? Do you want to do everything on blokchchain level?
Cost of forum creation feels pretty natural for me.
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Ahh that makes more sense, I was wondering what Z meant haha, wasn't defined, or I haven't had enough coffee yet :)
That makes sense.
By claim I mean being the person who gets to determine who the moderators are, who sets the percentages, and who get's to make future choices about that forum. If there's no cost associated to it, couldn't the first person just try to create 1000 forums?
I'm just going through ways the system could be abused in the future and determine methods to prevent that abuse.
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nice one
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Look my posts to
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Resteemed
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Great focus!
I just came across one of your latest and thought I'd go check out a few more of your articles. I'm surprised I was not already following you... Till now! ;)
Thanks for the information and look forward to reading more about the evolving project. Namaste :)
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