by We’re building a community.
But first, let me explain the history, and some thoughts regarding goals.
I managed a list serve, for a number of years, from 1997 thru 2016. We peaked at about 35 members, before numbers started to decline. The group was pretty ideologically diverse, and the common thread was that we all knew each other personally IRL. The group more or less became defunct in 2016, and I personally became disinterested in engaging further with some of the people who were associated. And so a smaller subset of people migrated to Facebook. That group lasted a few years, before people started to get concerned with OpSec and Facebook’s approach to privacy. People have their work lives, their intellectual lives, and their professional lives. And they often like to keep them composed in separate spheres. There were no guarantees Facebook would continue to support that sort of privacy everyone wanted, so we migrated to yet another platform, where we lost more people.
One of the things I learned along the way is that the most important component of an online community is the people — it seems sort of obvious — but it needs to be said.
The platform comes second. Unfortunately, there is no ideal platform at this time. There are trade-offs that have to be considered. I’d prefer to use something like Riot, but the UX is awful. In order for an online community to work, people have to actually be able to use the tools, and want to use them. Urbit is a great experiment, but unless you are some sort of full-time tech guru, it just isn’t an option. So Discord is the best I could come up with when all trade-offs are considered.
The third important component is the actual content. Well, I am not too worried about that. With the right people and tools the content will take care of itself. Don’t worry, we’ve been doing this for years — you won’t be bored. There will be conversations in the Discord, posts to this blog, and we’re planning a Podcast. Stay tuned.
My goals for the new group? There’s a number of ideas I’d like to explore with like-minded people, and I’d like to do it in an easily accessible forum. And I’m not going to lie — I plan on monetizing it at some point. I’ve had my own (free) groups, and I pay to be in other groups now. And I just feel like I can do it as well, or better than others. I want to manage my own forum, and I want to figure out a way to eventually make money off of the content we produce. So I’m just being upfront about it.
The first group of people will be people I know IRL. And, in general, I picked 50 as the number of people who will be free members for life. So if you already know me, and were directed to this form by me, you’re in for free — permanently. After that, I’ll be asking for payment from strangers we poach from other Discords, vet, and invite. What are these people going to pay for? They’ll get to talk to intelligent people, in a civil manner, in a fairly private forum about a number of topics, in-depth, that we share a mutual interest in. The payment will screen out the morons and it will also pay for my infrastructure expenses to support this. And maybe we’ll figure out other worthwhile stuff to do if we somehow make a profit. But first things first: let’s just get this off the ground.
You need to ask for access. You’ll get it. But you need to send the request first.
