7
votes
Building "Board Culture" for each separate group through scrapping the 'front page' view
Partially inspired by @Amarok's comment on culture specific to /r/listentothis and some thoughts I've been having: how can we make sure that each group (and sub-, and sub-sub-groups, etc) each have a sort of identity of their own? In my own experience and opinion having a cohesive identity as a subgroup helps the content quite a bit, as opposed to "just being a subgroup".
And I have a suggestion: If we scrap the front page as is, and we don't show all the subgroups' content mixed through each other, but stick to either a "classic" forum view, or like 4chan's view where you have to click through to a subforum, people would be forced to visit just that subgroup, and do so consciously. Thoughts?
Gosh I posted in that second one (the most relevant) as well :/ Thanks for the link though, haha.
Well, looks like present me, though forgetful, agrees with past me.
I like having a front page that shows everything. I don't want that to change, while the site is still small/new.
In fact, I'm not sure I want to change ever.
Can you explain why you don't want it to change, ever? Opposing viewpoints are worth a lot ^^
I like stumbling across things I wouldn't normally look at.
I don't know anything about anime, for example, but because it's on the front page I've clicked a few links and watched some stuff I'd never have seen.
I think the problem is we just don't have enough members or specific enough groups to form subcultures.
Groups right now are very general. I think once we have more specific groups and the users to support them subcultures will begin to emerge.
For example, we have a very diverse group of people on ~tech. The only thing common to everyone is an interest in technology, we all have different operating system preferences, views on privacy etc. Once we have groups like ~tech.linux and ~tech.hardware, clearer subcultures will form. Two users who frequent ~tech.linux will have much more in common than two users who frequent ~tech, and I think that will build a subculture unique to ~tech.linux.
This can be observed on reddit. All of the old defaults have more or less the same in-jokes and culture, while smaller, more niche subs feel very different from one another.
For now though, tildes doesn't have the userbase to support niche subgroups.
We only have around 5000 accounts and fewer active users. That's barely enough to have a self-sustaining culture site-wide, if the user base was fragmented by the site being sectioned off into smaller forums, you'd probably be looking at an activity death spiral. Not to mention, is developing board cultures even ultimately desirable? Tildes is on a solid footing when it comes to site-wide culture, and given the stated goal of the site is basically to avoid the... degradation, that reddit has suffered, promoting the development of unique board cultures doesn't have much to offer in improving the community, while it could do a lot of harm.