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Global SMF social network

Started by sangham.net, February 26, 2013, 03:24:51 AM

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sangham.net

Dear SMF friends,

I guess I it will open another big barrel. Maybe one with good content and community nourishing.

Coming from sharing with social buttons and the experiences with global social network, I find the objectives of SMF somehow different to global tendencies of eating and being eaten as well as authority. A very healthy concept with immense potential.

Now, the social network of SMF users is somehow "limited" to the SMF community forum (mostly for forum runners) and for users the social network within SMF is mostly just inside the registered board.

What if such as a "Global SMF social network" would exist, a kind of sub forum every forum could add as well as a "Global SMF social network"-Membership which could be enabled as a special group within every board.

Its is imaginable that such as friendships between forums of similar interests could be forced even the integration of simply users of forums in the global network and feed back could be won.

I could also image a kind of "share" button within the "Global SMF social network", which would addopt a topic of post from another forum to your own (according to your permissions or within the "Global SMF social network"-section or sub forum in your forum). User could be enabled to wander through a bigger field of interactions even they have their home boards.

Today the Global discussions within the SMF community are merely limited to the topic SMF-softerware and Administrative issues but such a base could be used even for more.

Maybe a visionary thought for a big step forward of SMF use and accessibility which might be worthy to think more about.
From my experiences, forum users are often on many forums active as well as they also use social networks. Why not making SMF to a central point of global exchange? A big SMF society already exists (not sure if there are global data about it)

Hopefully I have not opened to many barrels at the same time. We could grow very distracted if we face to many pleasant seeming stuff at the same time and would be overwhelmed maybe. The "greed"-shock so to say, similar like a "fall of the Wall" - enticement with all its pro and contras.

So it should have its careful discussion generally, I guess.




Colin

Interesting idea, but it would have to be an opt in service.
"If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody is not thinking." - Gen. George S. Patton Jr.

Colin

sangham.net

Of course Colin,

other wise it would go astray from the original SMF objectives sooner pr later as well it would go into the danger of dictatorial or authoritative desire like of many other social networks with there natural conflicts an battles with each other.

So:
"welcoming" not "forcing"
"optional expand able" not " head into a direction"
"an unbinding offering" not "a binding deal "

I guess SMF has its some great bridging objectives, why not put them into function also within all thousands of individual SMF forum boards. I guess that is very important otherwise very bridging will be soon just an outlet and there will be no or less flow back.


Kindred

it has been suggested before.

The answer is - NO.

A forum is a contained community. There is no need or desire to share users ebtween forums (and thus dilute the community of my own forum)
Additionally, 99.9% of the forums out there has no relationship with my forum - in tems of focus, topics or anything except software - and THAT is not a valid reason to link...

The SMF social community is HERE, in the forum which discusses SMF itself (and in forums like "the Admin Zone" which discusses forum ownership and administration across products)
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"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Arantor

Kindred, he's channelling Gri again!

Kindred

he is...  I don't think I have ever seen a German who is quite so indirect and obfuscatory.
lol...

except instead of "grivitations" he has some sort of buddhist-zen flow of consciousness thing going.

Of course, that doesn't make it any more comprehensible...
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Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

sangham.net

Aside of your Gri-traumata... (must have been a deep cut) some "Maybe in addition" to express that issue a little more:

The final user would have the possibilities to join not only an individual forum but also the possibility to join the global SMF hood with all its members who enable this possibility.
It is for sure possible to have special membership rules and conducts for such a membership and it could be provided with every account creation in an individual forum.

With this possibility the envy and problems with changing the forum while leaving the last board would not exist and a Global member would have the possibility to request a forum specific membership as well.

It would be also able to make such as a global SMF portal where people can join to SMF in the first place and have the possibilities to travel through the individual forums and rest and dwell according to their preferences. That would be the payback of such board membership to SMF Global social network. So all in all an additional door which is away for the individual reach possibilities of individual boards.

So to say "Join the SMF Global social network and access more then 5000 different boards all around the world". So the quality of the SMF objectives would be direct accessible by simply user.

I guess normally, user do not care much about the software it self and also not much about the hidden businesses behind which thy indirectly support.

SMF is a non-commercial platform and run mostly by voluntary SMF members by them self.

That brings back an useful pressure on ethical conducts among the individual forums as well and could give rise to a general different tendency toward healthy independecy but not on the costs of others.

It would also not need big servers like most social networks maintain, but the whole system is provided by many individual servers. SMF mother ship would just provide the interlinking with a huge travel guide and maybe a  - if handle able -  general meeting board.

The "likes" (posts linked back to the home) would go back to the home board where a member dwells as an individual normal forum member (that could be a programming challenge, of course if there is no general server but should be possible if the member carries information of his home board with him/her).

This would be also an inspiration to create once own board, to have a individual home. Maybe a light version of SMF board for individuals would be interesting in this case which could have also some hosting supports by third as well or a possibility on the SMF server.

SMF community would also have more access to the potential of the single forum user in regard of translations or other support as they do not have much knowledge of SMF it self now generally.

If you can image the potential behind this idea you only need to be careful of being not caught by greedy material attraction if for example a potential investor knocks on the door and likes to buy the SMF community for simply commercial use, but even that is not so dangerous like on usual social systems as it is still runs by many individual boards and home member ship will be mostly within the individual board from where who could work easy against such a dangerous tendency by leaving the global community ship.
So the "power" needs to be well balanced to enable such possibilities and give attractiveness for the existing board owners as well.



Kindred

we alreayd had a "global login" capability with "OpenID".
as a demonstratgion of how much this is NOT wanted, OpenID failed miserably...

basically...   as I said to start. No.

And, the load on the simplemachines.org servers to try and maintain such a list...   double no.
and SMF does not and will not ever offer hosting.

Users on my forum "Ask A Witch Community" have no desire to participate in my other forum "Legions of Steel Miniatures Wargaming" and vice versa. Actually, members of LOS, for the most part actively AVOID the "Warhammer 40K" wargaming forums. (and that is just three of my own forums...   spread that across 18 million different forums on 12 million different focus/topics)
There is very little cross over between forums.
And once again... If I have gone to the effort of getting a good and active group of users, why the hell would I want to share them and split their attention to any other forums?  If I did, the activity on MY forum would drop.


And there you go, harping on the translation stuff again...

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"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

sangham.net

Kindred,

I do not want and SMF is not mine. I just share some ideas with the intention to be supportive and the impressions of future needs and problems. That is all. Whether you pic them up or not is yours, if you make it yours.

So really no problem for me and really no struggle to like it to have from my side.

If the SMF community is merely serving such stuff as wargaming forums I will be very careful to raise and further ideas. Of course such games and stuff can course may strange things in mind and one sees only enemies even if some one likes to support a little.

I guess I will make a step back again, as I see there is somehow a kind of general dislike in regard of the topics I opened and that has its reason. I don't think its good to go further in this direction as it would be just a matter of time till you would feel offend to an extension that would lead you to not only to unwholesome thought but also to unwholesome actions. So I will not give it further field to grow.

If you like to close the topic, feel free. There is no intention to put further on it from my side.

Be well and thanks for all your interest and patient before.


Kindred

the smf community serves MANY areas... actually, we probably have someone running a forum in any given focus...    My examples were just in 3 of the forums that I run myself and are definitely not represetnative of the general forums out there. :P


It's not your suggestions that we have issues with... It's how you present them.
There are two things wrong with your topics...
1- you present them in overly flowerly and difficult to understand language. I can not image that it makes any more sense in German than it does in English. German is an efficient language (and is the root of English, after all). When you want to present a suggestion, then present it. Don't go into all that other crap.

For example, your whole first post in this thread, could have been condensed into:
"I think it would be a great idea if SMF forums connected to each other. They could share users, allow users to take their account on one SFM forum and apply it to another and, in general make agloabl community of all SMF forums. Simplemachines.org would be the host of the integration list for any forums that chose to join."

the answer still would have been no... but it would not engender quite so much annoyance.

2- You seem to make assumptions about "what people want" and then be unwilling to listen to the people who know the systems, software and community better than you do.
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Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Irisado

Johann, I admire your enthusiasm, but I do find your latest proposal to be both unnecessary and impractical.

I agree with previous comments that this forum is the SMF community.  In my view, it doesn't make any sense to try to share users between fora via some kind of network.  To my mind, that's just trying to leech members from others sites, and that's not exactly well thought of behaviour.

It's well documented that this is the place to come to participate in the SMF community so to speak, and it's really the technical side, and the development of the forum software which does bring people together, so why start trying to broaden this?  I can only see it as an unnecessary burden, and I just don't see how it would benefit all the fora who signed up to it.  They already know where to come for support (here), and trying to bring together groups with divergent interests just sounds like a recipe for conflict to me.
Soñando con una playa donde brilla el sol, un arco iris ilumina el cielo, y el mar espejea iridescentemente

emanuele

Quote from: Kindred on February 26, 2013, 07:46:22 AM
A forum is a contained community. There is no need or desire to share users ebtween forums (and thus dilute the community of my own forum)
Additionally, 99.9% of the forums out there has no relationship with my forum - in tems of focus, topics or anything except software - and THAT is not a valid reason to link...
Well, that's you... :P

A (long) while ago I was thinking to such feature in order to share members between three similar-but-different communities (all speaking mainly about the same subject, but from different points of view and with different owners with very different ideas).
And I would be interested in it even now since I participate in two friendly communities (again similar-but-different) that already shares more than 60% of the users.


Take a peek at what I'm doing! ;D




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Aiutateci ad aiutarvi: spiegate bene il vostro problema: no, "non funziona" non è una spiegazione!!
1) Cosa fai,
2) cosa ti aspetti,
3) cosa ottieni.

Kindred

emanuele,

OH, I can see your point of linking some related communities - but what Johann was suggesting was linking ALL SMF communities with a list through simplemachines.org.

I definitely would not mind a feature or mod which alloed you to share communities (posts? users?) across domains on an indvidual level.
I just can't see a "global smf web-ring" as being effective or useful.
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Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Arantor


Kindred

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Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Ricky.


Arantor

Quote from: Kindred on February 27, 2013, 12:19:38 PM
???

IP.Connect is a feature added in IPB 3.4 that allows you to bridge multiple IPB forums together, such that you can defer authentication from one forum to another and if an account doesn't occur on the slave, it will be created using the details from the master.

It is indeed very elegant and neatly sidesteps most of the bridging issues that normally occur.

Ricky.

I wished it for SMF long ago ..

But now that is not required as forum to be bridged are now on various platform including vb and IPB too .. ;)

Kindred

ah. yes, Arantor.   Like you describe for IP.Connect. :)   That would indeed be a good feature/mod.

As I said earlier, though - that is useful but is very different from the global SMFconnect that was originally asked about. :)
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Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Arantor

Conceptually it's a subset of what the OP is requesting - except it has the virtues of 1) making sense and 2) having a real practical use.

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