Post History

Observations on Codidact's presentation to the outside world

# Visitors, Ghosts, and more

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, they realize there are categories and leave if they do not find a suitable one for their concern.

### 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___.

### 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 the Incubator for "how to write" and idk several sub-tags as well and then doing the same for "Writing" or the specialized site.

The user can just hit a "Writing" button and then get a filtered view of the Incubator as well as the community site 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 "Writing" community site 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), 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 buttons" across sites. The main sorting/retrieval and categorization would happen according to the tags. 

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 be done step-by-step or as needed. 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 an "Incubator" concept. But this is nothing to be shown to the outside world. 

The ___flagship/figurehead___ to the outside is "___Codidact___" not "Codidact-Incubation".

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# 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!_

### 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.