Show HN: Webwide – a discussion community for web designers, devs and makers
hello.webwide.io
hello.webwide.io
Makes me think how much collective human knowledge we're losing as all the old forums go extinct (Archive doesn't backup everything).
That said, in the past it was more generally accepted that forum moderators would rule with an iron fist.
Seems more recently, if you're being a dick and you are moderated it's interpreted as censorship and an attack on free speech.
Related. One thing I have noticed in the last decade is people no longer pulling people up on their spelling and grammar as much as they used to in the early days of debating the internet. I like this.
Live streamers are guilty of this. Its become a standard for Twitch broadcasters to call their viewer base a community in, what I guess is, a way to get viewers to think tipping the broadcaster is benefitting the "community" while only the broadcaster benefits.
We have player bases, viewers, commenters, categorized in action, but not purpose.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments at all.
A bit down this post I did a pros and cons of Webwide vs. Reddit style, Twitter style and Slack/Discord style
B.t.w. I'd suggest including a link to https://webwide.io, otherwise people (incl I) might believe everything is behind a login wall.
This:
> Get writing \n Start sharing writing without the pressure of a blog.
Is there a place for "blog posts" over at Webwide? Like posting to Medium? But for web things? Or how does / will it work?
I'm certain that impression is intentional. They're using it as a conversion page, which is of course why it was the page posted to HN. Dark pattern in action.
Of course the page was built with conversions in mind, for the good of the project I want to spell out the benefits and convince people to sign-up but certainly not in a dark way.
I've added some more links including the logo, a view all discussions button and a browse as guest down by the bottom CTA to communicate this better.
After poking around a bit, I felt like I could use a very brief introduction, like "what should you do first" suggestions.
My ideas for writing benefits would be both that people can make their replies and new threads as long/short form as they want.
There's also plenty of categories where we welcome blog style posts whether you want to write a tutorial, development log, share an achievement, etc. Self-promotion rules are relaxed because as an industry we're creators and I think platforms such as Reddit can really stifle this.
That's a good point. I think there are somewhat many people who develop software or designs, and would post mostly their own things to a place like Reddit or Webwide — and get upvoted and appreciated by the community.
...and
"We may remove or modify any Content submitted at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice."
The latter is surely standard across any community for moderation.
Users have the ability to edit and remove their own content to take it off the platform.
Happy to receive any advice on how this could be more palatable!
I think I can do more to guarantee certain rights with regards to a users content though and will get some advice on communicating that.
Thank you!
Which sounds like it is in direct conflict with GDPR.
However, taking out the author name from a content could be seen as a kind of copyright infringement... so the content produced need to be co-copyrighted by the platform
I personally wish that any forum for discussions about the web and related professional and/or creative work would be (wait for it) open and readable by the entire web. To me, the advent of walled-garden / login-gated content silos was a milestone in a long, degenerative process for the web overall. This forum seems to follow in that mold, preventing me from viewing any of the related content without first creating an account, signing some TOS or EULA and logging in. To be honest, this whole arrangement reminds me of ExpertsExchange, which some might recall from the days before StackOverflow was a thing.
I completely agree with the premise of this product, but I will always caution my colleagues to avoid closed forums like this.
[Edit] At the time of writing, there was no obvious way to view content in the site without logging in. OP has since shared a link below showing how to browse the content without logging in.
Sorry that wasn’t clear! I’ll add a browse as guest button to the landing page.
The only other contender that matched my vision for a revival of a more traditional style forum was phpBB and I don’t think it would have been up to scratch for the eagle eyed and fairly demanding tech community.
Discourse, Flarum, Vanilla are all great options but I don’t think they were well suited to what I wanted to build. Not enough to set them apart from other communities in this space.
Building a bespoke solution wasn’t an option when time commitments and budget are considered.
The data is all well portable and neatly organised so if those needs change and can be reconsidered as we grow what is the best decision.
That sounds interesting to me. Was looking different, a goal in itself? (if I interpret you correctly?)
(Interesting that going back to the "old style" forums, is the way to look different, nowadays :- ))
Flarum is not at v1 yet and isn't really recommended for production. It's also quite feature light and I would be hesitant to expand upon it while it's not stable yet.
I've never seen a Discourse forum that doesn't look like another Discourse forum, have you? They all look the same! I had a pre-launch landing page up where something like 75% was on desktop. Discourse seems to have a mobile first, desktop never approach to its design and appears to be difficult to customise. I felt it was a sub-optimal experience suited better to communities centered around a single topic or perhaps support.
Vanilla is the most mature of these new style options but just wasn't doing it for me.
I don't think going a bit "retro" is a bad thing. I thought XenForo had a great balance between retaining that classic, nostalgic, familiar vibe while still providing lots of nice QoL features to go with it.
No thanks!
Aside from that isn't HN also a silo like that by your definition?
(Took a while before I found them :- ))
On one hand I'm excited, on the other, I'm cautious not to funnel too much time into something that may Mediumify (i.e. turn into absolute garbage).
- Clear messaging from the start setting this tone to hopefully attract people who share those values
- An enforced Code of Conduct with zero tolerance on hate speech and growing enforcement team
- Spaces for people using any and all technologies including code-free
- No areas off limits to free users
I anticipate there being many lessons learned along the way but very excited to see where we can go with it. Thanks for checking it out! :)