19 votes

WeCo - Cooperatively owned, democratically governed, open source social news

9 comments

  1. determinism
    (edited )
    Link
    I came across this site after browsing the Coop Exchange site that was linked in this Tildes post from earlier today:...

    I came across this site after browsing the Coop Exchange site that was linked in this Tildes post from earlier today:

    https://tildes.net/~tech/p63/the_co_op_that_blocked_the_sale_of_the_org_domain_to_private_equity_has_a_plan_to_democratise_large

    It was mentioned in the bio for Leo Sammallahti.

    A platform cooperative enthusiast. Started the Wikipedia article about platform cooperatives and was a participant in the worlds first platform cooperative accelerator program UnFound, representing WeCo, an online discussion and link-sharing platform owned cooperatively by the users.

    These look like pretty exciting projects that I had not been aware of. The for-profit cooperatively owned model was not one that I had considered when thinking about different alternatives to the status quo.

    9 votes
  2. [8]
    heady
    Link
    Is this a link aggregator with a cooperative ownership model? or does it do original reporting? The website has been replaced with a static page to save bandwidth costs that is sparse on...

    Is this a link aggregator with a cooperative ownership model? or does it do original reporting?

    The website has been replaced with a static page to save bandwidth costs that is sparse on information. Perhaps we have tildes hug-of-death'ed it.

    4 votes
    1. [3]
      Kuromantis
      Link Parent
      With a few thousand people clicking on the link at best? Seems unlikely, although the site seems to have only a dozen or so contributors.

      Perhaps we have tildes hug-of-death'ed it.

      With a few thousand people clicking on the link at best? Seems unlikely, although the site seems to have only a dozen or so contributors.

      3 votes
      1. [3]
        Comment deleted by author
        Link Parent
        1. cfabbro
          (edited )
          Link Parent
          90-9-1 rule, so there are likely a decent amount of lurkers on Tildes. ~250-300 unique comment authors per day x 10 = 2500-3000 potential daily lurkers. But given how Tildes generally asks more...

          90-9-1 rule, so there are likely a decent amount of lurkers on Tildes. ~250-300 unique comment authors per day x 10 = 2500-3000 potential daily lurkers. But given how Tildes generally asks more effort out of users making comments than most sites, the 90-9-1 rule may be even further skewed toward lurking.

          5 votes
        2. Kuromantis
          Link Parent
          Realistically it's like 300 people.

          at best

          Realistically it's like 300 people.

          1 vote
    2. [4]
      determinism
      Link Parent
      It appears that it's still a work in progress - my mistake. There's a statement on this page indicating that they've been down since mid-april: https://opencollective.com/weco

      It appears that it's still a work in progress - my mistake.

      There's a statement on this page indicating that they've been down since mid-april:

      https://opencollective.com/weco

      WECO.IO is an early stage social news platform offering a range of unique features that aim to further empower social news communities. These include a more advanced organisational structure, built-in polling tools, and new ways to filter posts, among others. We're also a transparent, non-profit, coop that allows our members to participate democratically in the platforms governance; including voting on what new features to implement and how any surplus profits the platform produces are spent each year. Read more about the project on our wiki.

      Update (11/04/2020): The main platform is currently down to save on hosting costs while we continue developing new features. We hope to have it up and running again with an improved feature set later this year.

      Membership

      If you would like to become a member of the coop and participate in Weco's governance process, simply select a membership tier from the options to the right that you feel comfortable paying for. Once the first payment has successfully been processed you'll be allowed to vote on all governance polls for the platform, currently held on Loomio.

      Contribute

      We need new users to help us build thriving social news communities on the platform and generous givers to help support us financially so that we can continue to keep the project online and develop new features. If you believe in what we're trying to achieve and have the money or time to support us, we would greatly appreciate your contributions.

      3 votes
      1. [2]
        Icarus
        Link Parent
        This is the latest version of the site so far (May 17th, 2020): http://new.weco.io/h/root/wall Very cool but very much a work in progress. It will be interesting to follow it over time....

        This is the latest version of the site so far (May 17th, 2020):

        http://new.weco.io/h/root/wall

        Currently you can:

        • Create ‘spaces’ within ‘spaces’ within ‘spaces’ (the holonic community structure)
        • Navigate through spaces using the options in the left or right side bar
        • Create posts within spaces
        • add a title, description, url, and tags, tags auto-suggested based on existing spaces, posts appear within all tagged spaces (and their parent spaces)
        • Add comments to posts (viewed on the posts unique page)
        • React to posts: like, heart, add a rating (0-100)
        • Delete posts
        • Filter posts by total reactions, likes, hearts, comments, date created
        • Search posts
        • Create polls: include your own answers, vote on polls, display poll results (complete but not on the latest deployment)

        Some of the areas I’ll be working on next:

        • Adding pie charts and time graphs to the poll results
        • Creating new poll types (multiple choice, weighted choice)
        • User accounts (with the ability to log in from Facebook and Twitter)
        • Image uploads
        • Moderation rules
        • Notifications
        • Improving the UI
        • D3JS visualisations of the holonic community structure

        Very cool but very much a work in progress. It will be interesting to follow it over time.

        https://github.com/WeCollective

        6 votes
        1. joelthelion
          Link Parent
          Don't these features look suspiciously similar to reddit? "Cooperatively owned, democratically governed, open source social news" sounds insanely cool, but if the result is another reddit clone...

          Don't these features look suspiciously similar to reddit? "Cooperatively owned, democratically governed, open source social news" sounds insanely cool, but if the result is another reddit clone...

          1 vote
      2. joelthelion
        Link Parent
        Has anyone found a way to be notified when they re-open?

        Has anyone found a way to be notified when they re-open?

        1 vote