Melancholy wrote:
I don't think I've explained my idea very well.
I definitely don't want to provide a way for people to appear more popular than other users; the idea of adding followers was simply so that if we did have a status feed, there'd be a way to show only posts made by people that you want to see. If we did have a following feature, I think it should be a hidden metric; as in, nobody can see who is following who.
Facebook's structure of status updates and newsfeeds have created an environment of superficial interaction
I'm not basing my ideas of of how Facebook is structured. In my opinion Facebook isn't a good social network, a social network isn't very social if you're not interacting with anyone but people you already know.
I do have a fairly nice idea of how a status feed could work, while keeping true to the forum's atmosphere.
It's not really a forum anymore then, is it?
The forum aspect of it would remain untouched; it'd simply have an extra feature added to the site. Sure, people could start calling the site a social network, or even as I call it, a community; but I don't see how what the site is, changes the community in the slightest.
[2:15 PM] Melancholy: hm, people seem to be against the idea of adding a feed and followers
[2:17 PM] Melancholy: maybe i should describe what my vision of a feed would entail
[2:17 PM] Melancholy: and i sort of agree about the followers thing
[2:18 PM] Melancholy: i basically wanted them as a way that people can customise which items they see in their feed
[2:18 PM] Melancholy: but i could do that with the friends system anyway
[2:23 PM] zey: read the posts
it's tough. it's hard to get a good balance. and maybe for Lewd the balance has been reached
[2:29 PM] Melancholy: idk, i just think lewd could be so much more
[2:31 PM] zey: the problem is while some of them are okay with changes like that I imagine, most are there for what Lewd is now. so you have to determine a middle ground that will appease the current users and also attract new users
I don't really know your userbase well enough, or at all, to help determine what that middle ground is =/
[2:32 PM] Melancholy: i mean, it wouldn't even be taking anything away
[2:32 PM] Melancholy: lewd would be the same, it'd just have more features, and i'd be able to market it as a social network for weebs
[2:38 PM] zey: some like the feeling of being able to know who most if not all of the community are. and I guess those are the people that like smaller communities. personally, I'm kind of one of them; I don't like larger communities as much, it's overwhelming for me. but, a social network for weebs would definitely be a larger community if done right
you need to really determine what features you want to bring in that would allow for that to be viewed in a good manner for those that like smaller communities, because the post you made doesn't go very in-depth. as a whole, those features seem fine (to me). but it depends what your goals further than that are, if any
but maybe you don't need to keep the users that like smaller communities, because that might not be your target audience
idk. just offering a bit of a view from both sides i guess
[2:38 PM] Melancholy: even in large communities, small communities can form
[2:39 PM] Melancholy: when you have things available like personal groups, it's easy to make a small community within a large one.(edited)
[2:39 PM] zey: well, again, it's very possible if you do it right. I think facebook did it wrong. discord is a kind of social network, and I think it did it right
[2:39 PM] Melancholy: the thing that facebook did wrong is they made it closed
[2:40 PM] Melancholy: a social network isn't very social if you're not interacting with anyone but people you already know.
[2:41 PM] zey: yeah. UX matters a lot here too. maybe it has changed in the few years since I used facebook, but I always found switching between groups annoying, and knowing what notifications I had for which. on discord, it's very easy
[2:42 PM] zey: idk if groups like that were part of your plan, but stuff like that would be important to do right. that's basically all i was saying, in a very very roundabout way
[2:47 PM] Melancholy: groups would work exactly the same way they do on lewd now
[2:50 PM] zey: I don't know how they work =/
[2:51 PM] Melancholy: anyone can make one, and when they do, they get their own private subforum and a different coloured name
[2:52 PM] zey: ah. I don't really see why it wouldn't work, then. just clarify what they're asking about and see what you get back from them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[2:52 PM] Melancholy: they just don't like change : 3