(Continued from parent due to post length constraints.)
You say we should move off-site. There’s already a large general-purpose forum for Disney: MiceChat. It’s a classic non-federated forum, from a bygone age of the internet. People who aren’t attached to a Reddit-like interface typically are on MiceChat, or one of the thousands of Disney Facebook groups. They’re the largest Disney community on the internet.
We discussed running our own Disney-themed Kbin instance (like /r/StarTrek and /r/Android both did), that would be a federated competitor to MiceChat. The idea still appeals to me. But the fact of the matter is that we didn’t have the time nor money to be admins. I have a full-time job where I can’t be spending time working as an admin all day (and - fun fact - I actually did work for Disney, formerly), and I don’t have the legal know-how to host a website.
Making a community on someone else’s instance doesn’t have those same issues. kbin.social has a sane admin team and is permissive with federation, giving the magazine a large reach (but keeping out hate speech and trolls). There are people on here who want to participate in their hobbies - like going to Disneyland, which for many is a hobby - or who want to use the community as a resource (and the Disneyland subreddit was a resource, too).
Because at the end of the day - it is a lot of work, but seeing a thriving community is rewarding. You grow attached to it. It’s why people play simulation games; you help shepard people along, make people happy, and watch the line go up. It’s not “ego” any more than playing a city builder game is “ego”. I certainly never threw my weight around on Reddit; our subreddit was positively tiny compared to others. The only time I used my green badge on Reddit was to give people warnings or make community-wide announcements. The only time I mentioned I was a mod elsewhere was when I needed a “fun fact” to introduce myself with at work/school or when it’s directly relevant (like letting people on the fediverse know that the magazine here is run by the same team that ran it on Reddit).
The Disneyland subreddit was a good community, IMO. The whole mod team did a lot of work to keep it good, and I was proud to help out. Connecting people with the resources they need and letting them show off the things that made them excited, while keeping the spambots and trolls at bay and redirecting lost folks to the right spot. It’s something you need to experience to understand.
One thing that was missing was Disney’s direct involvement. Disney never contacted us. Even when I worked for them - corporate knew I was a mod there but left us alone since it was considered my personal business (my only restriction was that I couldn’t say I was speaking officially on behalf of the company). As long as the sidebar said that we were fan-run, Disney never said a peep. Because Disney didn’t have any official presence on Reddit, folks would frequently repost news shared by Disney to the subreddit directly.
Threads gives us a unique opportunity to be able to connect folks to official Disney social media right here on Kbin. They’d be able to interact 2-way without needing to make a Threads account themselves (and without Disney needing to come here officially). It’s really the best thing that could happen for that type of community, and it would be a shame to lose out on it.
Question, is MiceChat connected to Disney corporate in any way, or are they a fully independent website, of/by/for disney fans?
I hope you see where I’m going with this question and the fact they are the largest community, still around from the “bygone era of the internet”. If you allow FB/IG/Threads to gain their foothold, you will not be around 20 years later. If MiceChat had integrated into FB/Reddit/etc, they would not be around anymore, especially not in the independent way they are.
btw, I wasn’t arguing in bad faith. the idea of the power hungry power mod of reddit is a widely known concept. Immediately trying to disregard my argument on that continues to show your fragility in your control of your community.
Idk if you’re familiar with GenCon, a board game convention in Indy, but I’ve run the unofficial Discord server since 2017. While not even close to as big as the official server, made in 2020, the users have stayed on our little server and we still gain new users each summer. The thing is, I don’t run the server like some big corpo project, but literally as a diy space where people can feel comfortable asking questions and getting to know each other, myself included. I don’t ban folks without community input, because while I have the sole power to do so, it’s not my community, it’s ours. GenCon LLC has never reached out to me, because I’m not trying to do what they do, and I don’t care about them because of the same reason. I’d wouldn’t mind having a larger number of users, but at the same time, I’d rather keep the community feel homegrown, and not artificially inseminated (with money).
To bring it all around again, kbin and the fediverse works because it is homegrown and community based. Waaaaaaaay back when, Reddit was the same, but being centralized, that will cause problems, thus the problems of the past months. kbin and the fediverse at large (not so much just the AP protocol) will continue to succeed without corpo takeover and influence. It can breed discussion and community without trying to make money off of it. Give them an inch, and they will redefine what an inch is so that it includes all inches in perpetuity.
(Continued from parent due to post length constraints.)
You say we should move off-site. There’s already a large general-purpose forum for Disney: MiceChat. It’s a classic non-federated forum, from a bygone age of the internet. People who aren’t attached to a Reddit-like interface typically are on MiceChat, or one of the thousands of Disney Facebook groups. They’re the largest Disney community on the internet.
We discussed running our own Disney-themed Kbin instance (like /r/StarTrek and /r/Android both did), that would be a federated competitor to MiceChat. The idea still appeals to me. But the fact of the matter is that we didn’t have the time nor money to be admins. I have a full-time job where I can’t be spending time working as an admin all day (and - fun fact - I actually did work for Disney, formerly), and I don’t have the legal know-how to host a website.
Making a community on someone else’s instance doesn’t have those same issues. kbin.social has a sane admin team and is permissive with federation, giving the magazine a large reach (but keeping out hate speech and trolls). There are people on here who want to participate in their hobbies - like going to Disneyland, which for many is a hobby - or who want to use the community as a resource (and the Disneyland subreddit was a resource, too).
Because at the end of the day - it is a lot of work, but seeing a thriving community is rewarding. You grow attached to it. It’s why people play simulation games; you help shepard people along, make people happy, and watch the line go up. It’s not “ego” any more than playing a city builder game is “ego”. I certainly never threw my weight around on Reddit; our subreddit was positively tiny compared to others. The only time I used my green badge on Reddit was to give people warnings or make community-wide announcements. The only time I mentioned I was a mod elsewhere was when I needed a “fun fact” to introduce myself with at work/school or when it’s directly relevant (like letting people on the fediverse know that the magazine here is run by the same team that ran it on Reddit).
The Disneyland subreddit was a good community, IMO. The whole mod team did a lot of work to keep it good, and I was proud to help out. Connecting people with the resources they need and letting them show off the things that made them excited, while keeping the spambots and trolls at bay and redirecting lost folks to the right spot. It’s something you need to experience to understand.
One thing that was missing was Disney’s direct involvement. Disney never contacted us. Even when I worked for them - corporate knew I was a mod there but left us alone since it was considered my personal business (my only restriction was that I couldn’t say I was speaking officially on behalf of the company). As long as the sidebar said that we were fan-run, Disney never said a peep. Because Disney didn’t have any official presence on Reddit, folks would frequently repost news shared by Disney to the subreddit directly.
Threads gives us a unique opportunity to be able to connect folks to official Disney social media right here on Kbin. They’d be able to interact 2-way without needing to make a Threads account themselves (and without Disney needing to come here officially). It’s really the best thing that could happen for that type of community, and it would be a shame to lose out on it.
Question, is MiceChat connected to Disney corporate in any way, or are they a fully independent website, of/by/for disney fans?
I hope you see where I’m going with this question and the fact they are the largest community, still around from the “bygone era of the internet”. If you allow FB/IG/Threads to gain their foothold, you will not be around 20 years later. If MiceChat had integrated into FB/Reddit/etc, they would not be around anymore, especially not in the independent way they are.
btw, I wasn’t arguing in bad faith. the idea of the power hungry power mod of reddit is a widely known concept. Immediately trying to disregard my argument on that continues to show your fragility in your control of your community.
Idk if you’re familiar with GenCon, a board game convention in Indy, but I’ve run the unofficial Discord server since 2017. While not even close to as big as the official server, made in 2020, the users have stayed on our little server and we still gain new users each summer. The thing is, I don’t run the server like some big corpo project, but literally as a diy space where people can feel comfortable asking questions and getting to know each other, myself included. I don’t ban folks without community input, because while I have the sole power to do so, it’s not my community, it’s ours. GenCon LLC has never reached out to me, because I’m not trying to do what they do, and I don’t care about them because of the same reason. I’d wouldn’t mind having a larger number of users, but at the same time, I’d rather keep the community feel homegrown, and not artificially inseminated (with money).
To bring it all around again, kbin and the fediverse works because it is homegrown and community based. Waaaaaaaay back when, Reddit was the same, but being centralized, that will cause problems, thus the problems of the past months. kbin and the fediverse at large (not so much just the AP protocol) will continue to succeed without corpo takeover and influence. It can breed discussion and community without trying to make money off of it. Give them an inch, and they will redefine what an inch is so that it includes all inches in perpetuity.