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Observations on Codidact's presentation to the outside world
I put some thoughts into the problem of attracting more people and the Incubator concept. I have ideas and suggestions I'd like to share. Maybe it gets something going. If not, also fine.
Current State
To the outside world "Codidact" is the name that is presented. This is the name that sticks in the head of people. As I mentioned on several occasions, if those people come to the main page and they realize there are existing categories and none fits their concern, they leave.
TL;DR: The main page has to directly put the user into the Incubator
(or directly and prominently introduce the place to post at least; see comment thread by trichoplax for details).
Problem
The problem is, the Incubator is a Codidact-internal concept, which existence is not communicated to the "outside world". Thus, there is no guidance from the "Codidact" main page into the "Incubator".
The name is totally fitting for the purpose of it. But from an "advertising point of view" it is a huge obstacle. There needs to be a more fitting name to the outside world.
In fact, my thought is Codidact has to become the Incubator to the outside world (<-> The Incubator has to become Codidact to the outside world).
Convey the message to all users
If people come to Codidact, they have to be presented with the opportunity to ask any question that they would like to address - no restrictions. This attracts people and generates content. This would foster an "incubation effect", without explicitly naming it this way.
The Meta-people/admins/mods then can observe which topics are requested and act accordingly (put up a site, maintain fitting tags, groups, categories etc.).
Instances vs. Filters
The communities have to be presented as some kind of pre-defined set for filtering all posts -- preferably offered at the sidebar, directly accessible. So they become "first order citizens" of the navigation.
The intent is, preventing the need to filter/search the Incubator for "some topic" and idk several sub-tags as well and then doing the same for "Writing" or other specialized site(s) that might be covering those topics.
What about topics that are not covered by a specialized site yet, like "Worldbuilding" for example - the term is obvious and generates interest, but the topics are inside the Incubater, maybe Writing, and Speculative Science (for a part of those questions), maybe even Puzzles (but this is only a proposal as well).
The user can just hit a "Worldbuilding" button and then get a filtered view of the Incubator as well as the community sites content that exists for it and where the pre-collated and categorized posts are to this topic.
-- In fact, this button might just put the user into the specialized community (for example "Writing") as it exists now (let's assume that the Incubator gets sorted and filtered regularly to pipe all the contents to the right sites).
This way you can present the "full content body" as one big pool of Q&A (internally they can be structured as wanted of course, I do not mean to merge all posts into one big database; just make it accessible as a unit), while adding "filter buttons" to the sidebar as many as you like or want to experiment with. Because they are no "instances" but just "filter options" across sites. The main sorting/retrieval and categorization would happen according to the tags.
If a new post is made for "Worldbuilding" for example (determined by clicking on such a filter button) the new post just gets the according tag and is posted to the instance what is now the "Incubator Q&A".
Maybe a quick way of achieving this is to provide a navigation by hand-selected tags on the right sidebar of the Incubator Q&A (with a friendly message inviting to post the first post of something, instead of showing "0 results for this query"; which would be discouraging).
This prevents the "Ghost town" effect while at the same time allows to convey a (huge/larger) field of topics that are applicable and endorsed here.
I do not mean to blindly add all the proposals to a list of filter buttons. This can/should be cherry picked. But maybe all the proposals are listed below a clear indication of "Help to build..." - that would be very inviting to post something "new".
Insider knowledge vs. Outside presentation
"We" (The Meta-People) know that this is the "Incubator concept". But this is nothing to be shown to the outside world.
The flagship/figurehead to the outside is/has to be "Codidact" not "Codidact-Incubation".
Further Site Observations
Focus between Meta vs. Communities
I noticed the bottom panel on the Codidact sites. They read
- "The Codidact Project" and
- "Other Codidact Communities".
The effects are two-folds:
(A) It puts primary focus on the meta aspects of Codidact.
Actually, the meta-aspects are only a kind of administration or maintenance layer/group (no degradation intended, that to be clear!) The Meta-people are the driving and creational factors, but they should act behind-the-scenes and not at the flagship position.
-- Unless of course, I misunderstand the Codidact project and purpose. Then I'd love some feedback on this. Would help me a lot.
(B) It diminishes the light on the communities
I mean "Other communities"?? They are "THE communities" they "ARE Codidact's main content". In fact they are "Codidact" to the outside world.
That should be promoted.
Main Site Navigation
As of currently, communities are almost invisible, because they only show up if you click this "3x3 grid button" on the top right corner. Honestly, I associate this button glyph and position with an option for "grid display vs list display" of the current content on screen. Not with the main navigation of the site!
Same and maybe even on a more severe level goes for the "overhang" menu on the far right end of the top bar with the arrow down glyph. This menu should popup when a user clicks on the main button on the far left (the "current community" icon/image).
(See comment thread by trichoplax for more details.)
Dashboard
The dashboard puts too much focus on the subcategories in terms of space. There is no way of looking at all communities at a glance, because all the subcategories compete with the title image. And you need to scroll to check them all.
Bottom Panel Revamp
I would suggest (independently of improvements to the other aspects) creating some small button versions of the title images and add them to the bottom panel.
Categorized, grouped, or at least similar items closer together. Not by alphabetical order or some randomized/arbitrary ordering (by "adding date" or "importance"? I don't understand the current way of sorting right now.
- This way "Christianity" is neighboured with "Judaism" under the category of "Religion" (for example) and allows adding more.
- And "Power Users" can be associated with "Software Development" and others (like "Cryptography", "Crypto-Currencies", etc.) to "IT" for example.
- "TabletopRPG" and "Boardgames", "Videogames" and others are collected under "Games".
- And "Writing", "Arts&Crafts", "Creative Challenges", "Puzzles", etc. are presented under "Creativity".
- "Outdoors" "Sports" and the like under "Activity".
- And so on. I think the picture should be clear at this point.
1 answer
Subtle difference, big change
The difference between what we have now (a group of distinct communities) and what you propose (a single community with filters) seems subtle, but I believe the long term results would differ more than might be expected.
Communities are self governed
Each community decides through community consensus on its local Meta whether to go ahead with any changes. A community can decide to have different categories, different rules, customisations of the site appearance and additional capabilities (being open source means anyone can implement these).
If Codidact were to be merged into a single community with filters for different topics, this would be a change to every existing community, so it would require agreement on every local Meta. I don't know whether you would get this agreement, but I personally would be opposed. My objection would not only be based on losing the customisations, but also my concerns about the loss of the benefits of a focused community.
Self contained communities
In a distinct community, voting can include some votes from people visiting out of interest, but in most cases will be votes from a community of people with a particular focus on that topic. This will tend to be a mixture of experts and people who have frequent interaction with that topic, so the voting will give a better measure of the questions and answers than the voting in a generic community covering all topics.
A distinct community can also have community-specific rules and guidelines on its local Meta site, which may not fit with other communities. Although it's tempting to seek a single best approach for everyone, in practice this tends to leave everyone in a state of compromise. Different communities benefit from different levels of rigor and formality, and different rules about what is welcome on the site, beyond just a subject area.
These are just my personal opinions, but there are existing examples of generic Q&A sites with no topic restriction, and I don't get the impression that they lead to high quality.
2 comment threads