What Is It?
The project is an open source forum, blog, and archive of information. Like a medieval guild, it will be a private and exclusive pool of information and gathering place (guildhall?) for those who share particular ethical principles. Users will be able to share and learn the 'mysteries' of skills and information held by other members, transmitted through valuable, refined content. The ethics of users are not confined to those of capitalists, marxists, or anything specific; users should be concerned with the world around them, trying to bring about positive change, no matter what the definition of 'positive' is to that user, and no matter the range of people affected by the change (ie individual or societal change). Valuing (or at least accepting) diversity of opinion is required of users. An example of a common goal of users could be to remove corporate influence in their life, this can be because of lack of trust, being critical of capitalism, desire to save money, being critical of modern marketing practises, ie values that can come from the left and right wings and in between.
Like a guild, it's an inward-looking system designed to help people learn and make things, but by nature it will effect the outside world (to varying degrees), the hope being that the collected wisdom of the system spreads through the works created and brings about change where appropriate. Of course, a digital, deliberately fragmented, and largely anonymous platform would negate most of the social hierarchy and backstabbing that brought down the old guilds. Likewise, a well designed system will avoid the issues of existing online options for users, FB groups, subreddits, *chans, etc. Each with issues of user privacy, echo-chambers, poorly organised content, content addiction, becoming an institution, thread-derailing, downvote bombing, etc.
Content and discussion must be highly valuable, and will cover areas like living off-grid, being self-sufficient, DIY, best choices for health and safety, design. The system must be designed ethically, with content culling and logical stopping points to combat content addiction. Posting gratification must be delayed until valuable thoughts are formulated. The content will fall somewhere on a spectrum between presented as fact, and presented as a launching point for research leading to an eventual solution. Attribution of sources is encouraged so others can read original texts to formulate their own arguments. But while the politics of topics and subjects can't be completely ignored, it should never become the focus, and thread-derailing caused by differing political opinions is not acceptable. In general, the topic of threads will be quite clear, so off-topic discussion will be easy to spot.
There are a few basic ways users can contribute information and discussion (not including replying to threads):
- Presenting information.
- Instructions/directions for a certain task. For example: installing Linux, repairing furniture, building a patio, growing crops.
- Information/deep-dives on a certain topic. For example: why to avoid plastics, food additive safety, general electronics, science.
- Essays.
- Requesting information.
- Starting with a limited amount of information, and asking for input/help to reach a conclusion. For example, 'which X should I choose?'
- Documenting a project's progress.
- Showing work done on a project from start to finish, broken into parts, allowing discussion to inform and educate the OP.
- Documenting a design process.
- Showing the beginning of a design process and allowing discussion to drive and influence the design. Posts can continue the process and if desired, the whole process can be seen from beginning to end.
- Talking points
- Responding to a given talking point, presenting opinions with research and references.
- This is most likely to generate social capital and political conflict, some drastic measure to limit this will be necessary.
To encourage better content and give users time to reflect on what they want to post, an artificial delay could be added to the process. The artificial delay would give users a prompt a set amount of time after 'posting' that would let them re-read what they had written, and would ask them if they still think it's worth posting. A process like this could prevent knee-jerk reactions to some content, and could encourage more self-moderation.
To join as a new member, a user will need to have a unique invite code given to them by an existing member. These invite codes will be limited to a certain number per month, and there will be a permanent link between inviting and invited users, so in the case of problem users the fault can be followed back to those who let them in. This is reminiscent of the master/apprentice relationship of those in a guild, and in the same way, new users will naturally have a period where they need some direction from those more established.
In general, a user profile is a means of using the network, not a way to construct an identity or gain social capital. Users can organise and manage their posts through their profile, and they can see their own work, but the method in which users see each other needs to be decided. To limit content addiction, echo chambers, and authority figures forming, the way in which a user's content is presented to others needs to be done in such a way to stop anyone falling into a content vortex.
To ensure the privacy of the system, users could be limited to viewing it from open source browsers (firefox, palemoon, chromium, etc.), meaning big-tech will not get any chances to intentionally and unintentionally get a peek inside. Closed source browser extensions also run this risk, but mainly used on google chrome (as it is by far the most evil). In the case users want to keep using a closed source browser, they could learn how to spoof a user-agent, a valuable and easy way to ensure their general online privacy.
Interface Requirements
- Index/login page
- Just a logo and login prompt.
- Initial view after login, some kind of dashboard? Collection of boards?
- Collection of boards, boards with different topics/themes.
- Dashboard showing most recent threads, notifications of responses, posts by user to encourage updating posts based on discussion.
- Boards
- Collection of boards of various topics.
- Threads
- Collection of threads inside a board, threads are shown by title of 'info' part of OP post.
- Thread view
- Wiki-style section at top, this section is the 'information' part of the thread, and is the first thing seen by a user when they get into a thread.
- The wiki-style section has a time window for editing the content, so the OP can update the content based on that discussion which may introduce new information. This means the focus of the thread remains up to date.
- The discussion section is below the wiki part, and it is something that is only seen by users who want to see the discussion.
- Series view
- See series of posts.
- If user is owner of series, can edit order, add/remove threads from series.
- Profile page
- Old style, no separate edit profile and profile pages, to control the feeling of identity that users get from their own profile. Giving more pages for managing profiles would give more worth to the profile.
- On own page:
- Manage own posts.
- Edit information, password, timezone.
- On other user's page:
- See series of posts.
- Toggle 'blocking' of user?
- Search
- As part of header.
- Full featured search in separate page?
How It Will Be Implemented
The server hosting the project will be running a Linux distro, with Apache, PHP, and MySQL. There is an opportunity to host a Matrix node on the server, so users can use Matrix chat clients to chat, but this is an avenue to be looked into later.
Where possible the framework made for the imageboard will be used, but the extra features required of this project mean that much of the structure will need to be reworked to suit.
Threads (therefore the 'info' part of the thread) are organised by board, but they are also defined by keywords, categories, and the OP which operate independently of the board. Threads can also be part of a/many series, which operate independently of boards and allow users to follow a series of threads across many topics.
Potential Buzz-word:
Frith
Taken from Wikipedia, this word was found while researching guilds, and has a nice connection with the project:
In terms of Anglo-Saxon and post-Anglo-Saxon culture, the term has a considerably broader scope and meaning. Frith has a great deal to do not only with the state of peace but also with the nature of social relationships conducive to peace. Moreover, it has strong associations with stability and security.
