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What would the best community app be like?
When it comes to forums, the selection has always been limited to vBulletin, phpBB, Vanilla, and a few clones of each.
Same for blogs. You’ve got Wordpress, Typepad, Textpattern, and hosted versions like Blogger, Vox, etc…
We use Wordpress and Vanilla for YGG, which each have their strengths and weaknesses.
Through the process of building the current and previous versions of this site we’ve learned a lot about communities and the apps available to create and maintain one.
I think all of them are significantly broken in some way.
Wordpress is easy to customize, expand with plug-ins, and write content with. But the conversation goes no deeper than comments, there’s no private communication, you can’t contribute your own content unless you have access to the admin, and there’s no way to develop a profile for yourself other than through commentary.
Vanilla eliminates all the excess features of forums that no one really uses, filters out spammers with an application process, is very easy to install and add extensions to, and is great at enabling you to easily discuss whatever you wish. But its extremely difficult to customize the css and layout, adding ads can be a challenge, and it pretty much looks and works like every other forum.
It’s sort of a tit for tat, give and take scenario when you use both of those apps like we do. A forum is an ideal medium for discussions, but not for articles that you wish to spread throughout the web. Blogs are great at enabling you to share your insights with others, but they can’t share theirs with you, unless they have their own blog of course, but that kills the conversation.
Where both of these apps come up short are the social aspects of communities. Developing relationships, achievements, recognition, restitution in some form, and a personal brand, are the essential elements of a community.
Unfortunately, there’s a huge gap between a blog, a forum, and a social network. You can only be one of the three with any hopes of success.
I spoke with Eric about such an application back in early 2006. It was the type of thing where if we ever had a few months, nothing to do, and a spare developer or two in our back-pockets, we’d build this dream community app.
I do hope that at some point this year I’m in the position to develop this and implement it on YGG or one of my other sites.
Until then, I open this discussion and invite anyone to get the ball rolling. What would the best community app be like? What would it look like? How would it work?
I have stacks of idea cards that I’ve written down details and parts of such a community over the past year. I’d throw most of them out after all I’ve learned in that period, but I still have a distinct picture of this community in my mind.
I’m not going to say exactly how I see it, even though you can pretty much paint that picture using the negative and positive aspects of existing software I’ve described in the previous paragraphs.
There are a few sites that sort of get it, 9rules and Yahoo Answers, but they’re still miles away from what I think would be the best community.
I was going to post this in the forum but ranted on a little longer than any forum readers would be able to absorb. Please add your ideas, comments, and questions to the blog and forum. This can be a gigantic opportunity to re-invent the way people see online communities and communicate with one another.
Thanks for sticking through this long post. :)
February 9th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
I think that http://www.startupnation.com does a really good job of converting their static articles into conversations in the forum. Not only that but it has the features that allow users to create online identities.
I my self have made several connections and friends there via our first online conversations via the forum that have generated off line conversations and business connections.
I think they have the best forum atmosphere.
February 9th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Startup Nation is a great community, but everything is still isolated. The articles tie into the forum only by allowing you to start a thread about the article.
The forum looks and works just like everyone elses. I’m not saying that YGG’s doesn’t. We’re in the same boat as them.
Where I see this dream community is everyone takes the role of an author like a blog, but everyone can discuss their posts like a forum as well.
Corporations could use this for internal communications, communities like ours for discussions, companies for questions and tech support, charities for brainstorming.
Startup Nation uses individual apps like we did and currently do. That’s not how I see this future community app.
It’s a platform that can be customized by anyone a million different ways like Wordpress, and also allows anyone to start and join a conversation on a deeper level.
February 9th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Oddly enough, this is an issue that I’ve devoted a substantial amount of thought to with few (if any) real “answers”. That in mind, I’ll be watching this thread with great interest…
February 9th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
How far have you gone in developing such a community Ryan?
February 10th, 2007 at 4:13 am
Although SUN is similar to other forums they have done a lot of customization to the standard forum that offers more options and ability than the other currently existing platforms.
I think they’ve taken a step in the right direction.
February 10th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Yeah, they’re going in the right direction for building their community. But no one else can use it.
What I’d like to do is build a community application that anyone can use. The Wordpress of discussion forums has yet to have been created.
February 12th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Hi,
Drupal has built some great community apps that allow for “book-type” collaboration, varying user roles and permissions, and ultimately allows contributors to achieve much of what you mention above,
“Developing relationships, achievements, recognition, restitution in some form, and a personal brand, are the essential elements of a community”
Some of Drupal’s community modules will allow users to organize their own groups, make money from their own work/pages (like using a 50/50% Adsense split model or other ad 50/50% split), and allows users/contributors to build relationships within their own communities.
Everything you mention is doable with some tweaking of modules – plus if you still want to keep a general forum, you can still use Drupal’s vBulletin module or the forum that comes with Drupal.
Soulcast.com has some of these elements, although it’s built using Ruby on Rails.
You can find more on Drupal community sites by just doing some Google queries for related terms rather than me listing them here…
February 12th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Hey Brian,
I agree Drupal is a great CMS. All of the available ports and modules are nearly perfect replications of Wordpress, vBulletin, etc…
It’s excellent at combining several applications to create a portal or using one at a time as a stand-alone app.
I just don’t see that as the next community.
What do you think Drupal does and doesn’t do well? That might help in our description of the ultimate app.
February 23rd, 2007 at 8:08 am
[...] Design Meltdown mentioned an appllication yesterday that was new to me. It’s called Community Server and seems to be heading in the direction that my original post stated. [...]
August 7th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Hello! Help solve the problem.
Very often try to enter the forum, but says that the password is not correct.
Regrettably use of remembering. Give like to be?
Thank you!
October 17th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Warm greetings! Thanks for all the information, a very nice and well done site! Cheers.