Remember when Fandom Spec'ed Pinboard?

[jesse_the_k]

seems like it's happening again ... don't know if the process can scale, but

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1070364450270507008.html

Tweets from pearwaldorf

If @Pinboard were not actively trying to save the American republic I would beg him to help us figure out how to launch a fandom friendly platform that is inclusive of not just text, but visual and multimedia too
....
Um Maciej DMed me and said if fandom can get a consensus spec on what such a platform should look like, he'll see what he can do. So here's a doc. I've outlined what I want to see, but I'm sure I've missed stuff.
...
Fandom platform of the future - specs and features
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r-Wof6X0aPXjU15edcqukZjwqIiNfrbJFOwaYT48UMg/edit?usp=sharing
...
*wheezing* So, uh, the document has grown to 15 pages of feature requests/requirements. I haven't even given Maciej a link yet. Fandom is fucking amazing.

Pinboard is a low-key, anti-social bookmarking network. When Delicious broke the slash character, fandom folks complained loudly, and Maciej Ceglowski, pinboard's creator whispered that his service still supported it.

Disgruntled fandom folks created a masterpiece spec for how https://pinboard.in could be more useful for us. Maciej listened -- here's the story.

https://idlewords.com/talks/fan_is_a_tool_using_animal.htm

Comments

[inkstone]

Oh my god, talk about history repeating itself.

[jesse_the_k]

IKR?

greywash has hosted a fascinating conversation that in some way parallels and also intersects the one in the Google doc. She's currently indexing the convo and porting it to a post_tumblr_fandom to hold it all.

[ironymaiden]

I wish we could pour all this energy into development for DW.

Thank you for sharing that talk transcript. It's wonderful.

[jesse_the_k]

Happy to share.

I agree re: DW, but I think DW is fundamentally limited by high tech debt. denise is dropping lots of info in her typically wordy posts on dw_news

https://ilyena-sylph.dreamwidth.org/266612.html
is an index to them.

[ironymaiden]

I happen to be involved in a process at work where we are rebuilding the product from scratch and moving the existing users over. it's a lot of work, but with an existing product you have a very robust spec in the form of "go see what it does when you do that." it's the second time I've done it.

while migration is a terror, I think creating a community and body of content is actually harder than the dev work. off the top of my head, the hardest thing would be the style system. but honestly (and I could be wrong) I don't think the customization community is as fierce as they were on LJ when S2 was introduced.

tl;dr we should be creating a dev effort to build DW 2.0 and do a migration.

[jesse_the_k]

I totally agree re: styles. Web 1.0 was tilted towards nerds with excess capacity for preference fiddling. FB has proved you can have a butt-ugly standard interface that most people will just use.

What I treasure here--even though it's a manual stick-shift experience--is accessibility issues aren't routinely thrown under the bus. With style=mine I can actually read it.

[ironymaiden]

yup, I'm a style=mine user all the way. in my case it's because I have a heavily customized style that I can read on mobile, but is responsive so that it's not butt-ugly on desktop.

[muccamukk]

It also has an $11 sign up fee, and requires a mobile phone number.

However, I think the document will be useful going forward.

[bibliofile]

> signup fee

Now that I'm not absolutely flat broke, I'm okay with paying $1/month to save my bookmarks.

And those specs documents are excellent things.

A Network of Our Own?

[mecurtin]

I'm wondering if we can use this document to spec out A Network of Our Own: an OTW project where there's a social network where We Own the Servers. I imagine denise is having enough trouble right now making sure DW can handle the extra traffic.

Re: A Network of Our Own?

[mark]

Servers are doing great. We have tons of headroom, we haven’t actually had to do any infrastructure work to handle the load here. :)

FWIW, I’m very interested in figuring out the right way to make Dreamwidth work for the Tumblr-esque uses, we have been talking about it but don’t have a design ready or anything.

Re: A Network of Our Own?

[jesse_the_k]

greywash hosted a fascinating discussion along those lines at her journal, which is temporarily frozen so she can move it over to this new comm

https://post-tumblr-fandom.dreamwidth.org

Definitely worth exploring and contributing there!

[delight]

"Confused but remarkably vigorous applause" has me giggling so much. I like this person. And I agree about wishing some of that could be incorporated into DW, but I'm not really a fan ish person, I just like many of the ideas for the platform!

[jesse_the_k]

Last time I peeked the gdoc was 60 pgs. It’s awesome to watch self-organization happen!

— Jesse the K Typed on phone - ask if unclear

THANK YOU!

[mdlbear]

I had no idea that the delicious/pinboard thing had ever happened, but https://idlewords.com/talks/fan_is_a_tool_using_animal.htm is simply amazing.

Re: THANK YOU!

[jesse_the_k]

I find reading Maciej's blog a reliable pick-me-up