by Travis
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. :)
