community page should occasion some kind of communing

[chadwhitacre]

From: https://twitter.com/whit537/status/336466917487431680

Carolyn: Does having one's own homepage make something easier? Facilitate conversation? Gifting? Or? I'm all about it, just gotta know.

Chad: Right now it helps you see new members + top givers and receivers in a community. How can we make those pages better?

Carolyn: Hm... maybe if the pages displayed profile statements and uploaded portfolios from all the members? so one could get a quick overview of all the intense awesomeness in a community? Maybe there could also be a space for a brief community tagline or statement of purpose, and perhaps some kind of forum or posting function for members to discuss their projects / fundraising / gifting strategies? In other words, it would be cool if the community page occasioned some kind of communing.

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[mvdkleijn]

Since communities are supposed to be self-organizing... let them organize. For example, make available community specific forums, or perhaps even better, allow them to publish a link to their off-gittip-site forum. Allow them to add a description, goals, perhaps even vote on community leaders that get special powers?

Gittip doesn't need to provide forums or mailing lists or repositories, etc.. Other sites already do that. However, Gittip could provide a central profile / hub page that has links to various resources. On a side note, the "lesser" of these benefits could be made available to fledgeling communities (M < 150) for issue #1316

Also make sure not only the "top-dogs" are highlighted in a community. Sticking up for the small guys, allows them to grow too (in terms of giving and receiving). This in turn will grow the amount of funds circulating within Gittip.

Think of the community voting for "most interesting new comer" and the result posted on the community page and the collected outcomes on the main Gittip page for example. Or maybe just "random guy/gal giving/receiving" lists. Or "Most recently started giving/receiving" Or "Up-and-coming receivers" (people getting lots of funding in a short time) or "Up-and-coming givers" (people who're starting to make a significant >$ nnn dent in the Gittip community)

Again, just some thoughts.. feel free to ignore.

[ehmatthes]

Here's a question that might focus some of this conversation, which I asked on #1358:

I am working on a pretty significant Python project. I am a member of the Gittip Python Community. How can I leverage my membership in the Python Community to build support for myself in carrying out this project?

Communities should help members build support for their projects, without becoming spammy. Lots of ways to approach it, I look forward to the ongoing conversation about what we want Communities to be.

[chadwhitacre]

@greggles at #1358 (comment) :

Communities exist elsewhere already, and I think communing can happen wherever they current exist since that's presumably where those groups were founded and do most of their interaction.

[chadwhitacre]

Here's a question that might focus some of this conversation [...]

That is a helpful focus, thank you! :-)

[mvdkleijn]

My input for what communities should be: #1316 (comment)

[bruceadams]

+1 from https://twitter.com/FinancialBest via [email protected]

[chadwhitacre]

Relevant discussion at: #634 (comment).

[YesCT]

I'm in favor of retaining the top givers leader board. I think it is an important motivator.

[chadwhitacre]

+1 in private email:

I think that the site could be improved by the addition of some content...I myself have been toying with the idea of a blogstream of user posts whose order is determined by upvotes/downvotes in the fashion of reddit. Another idea that I've had is to find a way to give users the ability to make their own content feeds by following other users, and perhaps the feeds could be drawn directly from the users' own blogs/sites (like Google Reader did). I think that a lot of your users may not return to Gittip very often because there isn't the draw of novel or actionable information...I will go on reddit a few times a day because of the novel content. The more visits, the more "gold." I would imagine a lot of people in the Github community are very interested in collaborating on projects, and so adding some functionality to encourage collaboration (like project-based content) would be nice...

[webmaven]

Several relevant resources:

• Art of Community free PDF edition
• Design for Community
• Building Web Reputation Systems - book, blog, wiki

[mattbk]

Closed until communities (or tags) return.