Towards a Sustainable Online Community

On this page you will find the first results of our investigations about sustainable online communities.

Wait for it. ;)

Goal: To build a sustainable online community.

What is an SOC?

• Comprises a diverse audience concerning gender, age, location, interests, etc.
• Sustains for a significantly longer time than what could be expected when it was created.
• Has substantially less personal conflicts (“flame wars”) than in other online communities with comparable diversity.
• Not driven by the consumption of external input, but it is productive by itself in some field/s of art and/or science.

Basic Steps to Create the SOC

• Create the software tools
• Attract user interest

Ongoing public art and/or projects

Decentralized approach, no single creator

• Maintain the international online community

Continue to welcome newcomers, ease the transition into the fold

Using Sustainable Tools for a Sustainable Community

Free Software (Open Source Software)

• Not reliant on a single company
• Available to all users
• Freedom to study, modify, redistribute the software
• Example: phpBB

Benefits

• User-controlled content and information feel more secure/comfortable
• Prevents the one-way data relationship many companies have with their userbase

• Company receives data on users, users not privy to company actions
• Information stored there by users liable to be lost with site closure (not sustainable)

Potential Software Tools

Platforms that house, inspire, and connect the community.

Email List (with public archive)

• Good for readable resource rather than in-the-moment community
• Ability to scan and skim content
• Potential Challenge: Sorting everything and keeping the overview is up to the user

• Easy for email to be lost in the shuffle

Wiki

• Managed by the users themselves
• Sustainable: multiple user-editors means multiple avenues for content addition
• Logically entralized: all users working together on a single resource in one location
• Good for lists

• Project priorities, needs

• Display pertinent information immediately (vs. a forum thread)

• Useful to display the current state of subjects

• Challenge: Not the best tool for general community discussion

• Potentially scattered conversations in a variety of locations
• Difficult for any one user to locate it all
• May be avoided with clearly designated comment sections
• One intermediate solution could be to redirect discussions from the wiki to a forum

• for instance by placing an URL to the thread on each “discussion” page
• Best if not enforced
• Fruitful discussion can die immediately if it is forced from one platform to another

• Long-term solution could be a wiki whose “discussion page” (or “talk page” in Wikipedia) is a thread in a forum, automagically.

Discussion Forum

• Easily bring new users into the ongoing conversation
• Challenge: Less skimmable, harder to find information

• May be mitigated with outside resources that direct the user to the appropriate locations
• Still blitzable

• Posts added chronologically

• Easier to follow conversation
• More difficult to sort by subject

• Mitigated by good organization of subforums

• Provide ordering and searching tools which can help to keep overview
• Potential markup languages

• phpBB

• Fairly widely used

• Markdown

• Possibly difficult to jump into
• Some similarities to MediaWiki's markup

• User-entered HTML

• More freedom
• Easily mangled

Additional tools

• Something like Dropbox, file-sharing source

• Having a file-sharing service in the same Internet domain as a phpBB forum would simplify the use of images in the forum

Conclusion

• The best long-term solution will be gateways connecting both worlds

• all types of users can participate using their favorite tools

• The best short-term solution is to use something like phpBB
• In the long term, my favorite platform would be one where everyone can participate using xe's favorite tools
• In the short term, as long as we don't have gateways, we must not confuse the users by too many competing platforms.

• once they do no longer compete, we still must not confuse them by allowing too many choices

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-On "Centralization" --we want to set up a “decentralized” alternative to Facebook such as Diaspora and/or Friendica --“Decentralized” means, in this context, that the infrastructure isn't controlled by a single company --everyone can contribute to the infrastructure by setting up xer own server --Criticism: this “decentralized” approach would make it more difficult to access these platforms ---it is more complicated to contribute to the infrastructure of a decentralized platform than to access Facebook ---it is just as easy to access it, however --having all resources physically distributed among serveral servers doesn't conflict with having them logically centralized ---the user experiences them as a single resource --To summarize: We want to have a logically centralized platform ---And we want to have it physically decentralized ---Both goals do not conflict

-Within the community --Raise the awareness of sustainability

-Names --Sustainable Online Platform --Eierlegende Wollmilchsau ---Very useful, but quite ambitious

-Questions --How can we get those sustainable tools? ---Start with current tools, move to initial platforms, move to more sustainable resources --How can we attract people there to form an online community? ---Social Media Group willing to introduce new students to the sustainable platforms --How can we keep them there and make the online community sustainable? --How can we raise awareness of sustainability in that community? ---Community feeds itself with art and science ---Focus on a topic of sustainability for these projects

-Why is the OTT sustainable? --Traditions that keep the community together ---Versus potentially alienating newcomers (why?) --Friendly population ---Creative, intelligent ---Not what created the OTT, but rather a result of it --Use of Wiki ---Links from signatures in the thread to it ---Well-written ---Kept up to date ---Used to further understand the thread ---Centered around community rather than artwork --Blitzing ---Newcomers encouraged to start at beginning ---Read entire content ---Experience formation of community personally ---Help and motivation from the Present community

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Blitzer tools (Example: mrobdex)

---Means of accessing community history ---Artistic reward while blitzing (the ONGed OTC) --Willingness to assimilate weird new things ---User presentation (avatars), communication formatting (footnotes), manner of speech ---Perhaps result of competing tensions: desire to follow OTC and onset of Madness

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Created core set of users not dissuaded by unexpected changes

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Easier to welcome new traditions

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Flexible community

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Flexibility fosters sustainability

---Commmunity knowledge that all users have opportunity to contribute own traditions

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More apt to participate in others' traditions

-Sustainable community conclusions --Be willing to experiment, hear new ideas, adapt to the unfamiliar ---Don't be afraid chasing away some of the people in the community by exposing them to new challenges ---Necessary for distilling out the core set of users who will become the solid rock to build the sustainable community on ---there must be something to bring back those who flee the Madness --Promote individual creativity and recognize user contributions --Optional traditions rather than mandatory --Sustainable Online Platform must provide tools to ease blitzing everything. ---Search functions ---Filters ---Blitzer scripts, as in the OTT ---Hyper-Threading

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inserting searchable headlines into our email

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an email archive which could handle them, display them online, and maintain them while sending new emails through a web interface

-Why is Drawception not sustainable? --Very young (in age) community based around a game --Arguments over procedurals (gameplay) ---Reminiscent of heated OTT discussions over "how to blitz" --Game site trying to be social media site ---Tension between game and social aspects

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Results in a split userbase

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Opposing "sides" with differing goals

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Community fights self rather than fostering self

---Social tools inadequate

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No private messages

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Unmoderated forums

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Hundreds of tiny, scattered comment sections that are difficult to find

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Impossible to read it all

--Little sense of heritage ---More focused on current games and daily trends --Potential fix: remove the dichotomy? --Potential fix: providing a Hotdog Interface in our platform

Misc -Creation of appropriate forms of expression for furthering awareness of sustainability -Non-technical maintenance of international online communities -catalog of requirements for the implementation of the online platforms according to the goals of the project

Also known as: creating the "artistic design" of the community

-Methods to avoid --Spread students among too many disparate social media platforms with no clear recommendation ---Results in factions that have few intercommunity exchanges

Order --The active discussion comes first. Otherwise there is nothing to blitz.

-Potential setbacks --Differences in language