Hey folks! A while back, I talked about some possibilities for the future of StP. While I ultimately decided to not take action on the ideas I presented there (mostly due to time constraints), I feel it was a productive discussion, and folks were very supportive of the ideas in general.
Since then, I really haven't been able to shake the idea of starting a social media website for this community. I really kept thinking about it just about every day, and it just seemed to make more and more sense as I went over the logistics.
So, I've decided to move forward with some of those ideas, and I'd like to present to you what my plans are for StP in detail.
Moving the message board to a new forum software
I've been wanting to do this for quite some time. We've been running on Xenforo since 2010; in those 13 years it's served our community fairly well. Despite the cost of the software (about $500/year) it did give us some things to play with at the time that were kind of innovative. Over the past few years though, other people have created more innovative forum software packages that I honestly think will be easier for most of us to use, while Xenforo hasn't really added many new features in several years, and the developers seem mostly unresponsive to customer's requests.
I've basically been waiting for a forum software to come around that supports importing our nearly 20 years of content into it. I tried using Discourse, but ultimately their community seems unconcerned about providing an import path that actually works (their Xenforo importer is broken) so I've been forced to look elsewhere. Fortunately, the future looks bright for a new forum software I've come across called Flarum. It's one of the younger kids on the block, but it's open source, free, and seems to have a solid community of developers behind it. I am currently in testing to see if I can get our content moved over to that system.
Assuming that works as it should, my plan is to move the StP message board over to this new software as soon as possible. I don't have a realistic ETA for you right now, but I'm hoping we can make the move in the next month.
This message board is much, much different than our current Xenforo software. The biggest difference is that our current board is mostly centered around 50-ish categories, while Flarum is centered around a tag-based system.
A big point of confusion for many folks on the message board is starting a thread in the right place, and one of our most mundane tasks as moderators is moving these threads around to their proper locations. It happens a LOT. I don't blame users, especially if they have never used a message board before, the FIFTY+ categories is probably overwhelming for most, which would explain why a lot of people put threads in categories that have nothing to do with the subject of their discussion.
Flarum works based on tags, so you can just start a thread from the front page and add tags that are relevant to the discussion. So, if I want to discuss the politics of squatting, I could add tags like 'squatting', 'politics', etc. Other users can click on those tags to see more threads tagged with that term. There will still be some categories, but they will be VASTLY reduced, my goal is to have ten categories or fewer. This should make things MUCH simpler for people who want to post discussions on the message board.
In addition, Flarum has a host of interesting features like automatic language translation which is something I've wanted for a long time, to expand our audience outside the USA. There are a ton more features, but I will go into those in a later thread.
The Mastodon project has been removed from the to-do list, please see this post.
StP will be starting its own social network using Mastodon
I've decided that we'll be installing the free, open source, federated social networking program Mastodon. Mastodon has exploded in popularity since the musk-twitter debacle, gaining millions and millions of users in just the past few months alone.
For those unfamiliar with it, you can kind of think of it as a basic Twitter/Instagram clone, but without all the anti-privacy/advertising nastiness. It will be old-skool text and images only (with embedded videos supported from providers like YouTube), but won't support uploading videos. I just don't have the time, money, infrastructure, knowledge, etc, to do video, sorry.
As I've said before, I miss the days when social media wasn't a fucking cancer and I could see what my friends were up to without having to pour through a deluge of ads. So this is my answer to that, a social network for the misfit underground.
You'll be able to send message and follow anyone you like; Mastodon accounts on StP, as well as people on any other Mastodon server.
The StP discord server will remain in place
Not much is going to change on our discord server, except that we'll likely remove the requirement for users to have an account on the message board to be approved for all chat rooms on the discord server. Eventually, someday, I would like to move us away from discord to element/matrix, which is built on the same system as Mastodon (open source, federated, non-corporate), but I'm waiting for that whole thing to mature into something a bit more user-friendly.
So, something for everyone
So yeah, a little something for everyone. If you don't like to microblog on Mastodon, you don't have to. If you only want to live chat on discord, you can do that. You only want to have long form discussions on the message board? Go ahead. This should provide a way for everyone to share and socialize, no matter their preferred method.
New rules for all parts of the community
I've already simplified our rules into one page, but this page will likely go through a pretty extreme revision. Extreme in the sense that I will be putting forth some very basic philosophies of the community along with a simple ruleset. We're not going to waste time coming up with rules for everything or every possible situation, and grey areas will be left to mods to decide on. I have no interest in spending precious hours of my day squashing drama or policing people on any of these future StP platforms.
Another reason for these rules changes has to do with my next subject...
Starting an official StP co-op house
While I'm not anywhere near what I would consider 'over the hill', I am coming up on my 44th birthday, and I've started to realize it's time to start planning for the next 20+ years. I don't want to have a traditional family or live alone in an apartment. I've talked about starting a hostel, or a punk rock RV park for many years now, and it's time to start seriously putting those plans into motion. This includes creating an official mission statement for StP and the co-op. This will be necessary for incorporating StP as a business (non-profit or not has yet to be determined) and getting loans for a house, etc. I want to start a serious home for ex-travelers, activists, etc to live together and share costs/resources collectively. I believe this is going to be crucial in the upcoming years ahead (i.e. I believe things are going to get quite rough in this country financially).
Discussions on how this should evolve will take place in the message board, and I will be creating a dedicated place for that discussion.
The StP Etsy Store
So the majority of StP's income comes from selling patches, bandanas and other things in our Etsy store. It's not a lot; maybe about $60-100 a month, but considering that I do little to no advertising, it's decent. I can't go into anything specific yet (haven't even thought out the specifics yet) but I want to vastly expand the amount of products there to create more income for StP and finance projects like the StP website and the co-op.
How it all fits together
So the timeline very vaguely looks like this:
Once the main portions of StP are in place, I would like to start actively promoting StP, something I have never actually done (the past 20+ years has all been word of mouth). This means going to underground/punk festivals, tabling at anarchist book fairs, and promotion at any other events I can think of. Like, seriously getting the word out any way we can think of. That includes internationally.
My plans for a co-op will be much more slowly evolving, likely over the next few years as we discuss possibilities and work towards finding a location, etc.
So it's pretty late, and I have to be up early tomorrow, so I'm going to leave it at that. Let me know what your thoughts are, I'd love to hear any ideas or constructive criticisms you might have.
Since then, I really haven't been able to shake the idea of starting a social media website for this community. I really kept thinking about it just about every day, and it just seemed to make more and more sense as I went over the logistics.
So, I've decided to move forward with some of those ideas, and I'd like to present to you what my plans are for StP in detail.
Moving the message board to a new forum software
I've been wanting to do this for quite some time. We've been running on Xenforo since 2010; in those 13 years it's served our community fairly well. Despite the cost of the software (about $500/year) it did give us some things to play with at the time that were kind of innovative. Over the past few years though, other people have created more innovative forum software packages that I honestly think will be easier for most of us to use, while Xenforo hasn't really added many new features in several years, and the developers seem mostly unresponsive to customer's requests.
I've basically been waiting for a forum software to come around that supports importing our nearly 20 years of content into it. I tried using Discourse, but ultimately their community seems unconcerned about providing an import path that actually works (their Xenforo importer is broken) so I've been forced to look elsewhere. Fortunately, the future looks bright for a new forum software I've come across called Flarum. It's one of the younger kids on the block, but it's open source, free, and seems to have a solid community of developers behind it. I am currently in testing to see if I can get our content moved over to that system.
Assuming that works as it should, my plan is to move the StP message board over to this new software as soon as possible. I don't have a realistic ETA for you right now, but I'm hoping we can make the move in the next month.
This message board is much, much different than our current Xenforo software. The biggest difference is that our current board is mostly centered around 50-ish categories, while Flarum is centered around a tag-based system.
A big point of confusion for many folks on the message board is starting a thread in the right place, and one of our most mundane tasks as moderators is moving these threads around to their proper locations. It happens a LOT. I don't blame users, especially if they have never used a message board before, the FIFTY+ categories is probably overwhelming for most, which would explain why a lot of people put threads in categories that have nothing to do with the subject of their discussion.
Flarum works based on tags, so you can just start a thread from the front page and add tags that are relevant to the discussion. So, if I want to discuss the politics of squatting, I could add tags like 'squatting', 'politics', etc. Other users can click on those tags to see more threads tagged with that term. There will still be some categories, but they will be VASTLY reduced, my goal is to have ten categories or fewer. This should make things MUCH simpler for people who want to post discussions on the message board.
In addition, Flarum has a host of interesting features like automatic language translation which is something I've wanted for a long time, to expand our audience outside the USA. There are a ton more features, but I will go into those in a later thread.
The Mastodon project has been removed from the to-do list, please see this post.
I've decided that we'll be installing the free, open source, federated social networking program Mastodon. Mastodon has exploded in popularity since the musk-twitter debacle, gaining millions and millions of users in just the past few months alone.
For those unfamiliar with it, you can kind of think of it as a basic Twitter/Instagram clone, but without all the anti-privacy/advertising nastiness. It will be old-skool text and images only (with embedded videos supported from providers like YouTube), but won't support uploading videos. I just don't have the time, money, infrastructure, knowledge, etc, to do video, sorry.
As I've said before, I miss the days when social media wasn't a fucking cancer and I could see what my friends were up to without having to pour through a deluge of ads. So this is my answer to that, a social network for the misfit underground.
You'll be able to send message and follow anyone you like; Mastodon accounts on StP, as well as people on any other Mastodon server.
The StP discord server will remain in place
Not much is going to change on our discord server, except that we'll likely remove the requirement for users to have an account on the message board to be approved for all chat rooms on the discord server. Eventually, someday, I would like to move us away from discord to element/matrix, which is built on the same system as Mastodon (open source, federated, non-corporate), but I'm waiting for that whole thing to mature into something a bit more user-friendly.
So, something for everyone
So yeah, a little something for everyone. If you don't like to microblog on Mastodon, you don't have to. If you only want to live chat on discord, you can do that. You only want to have long form discussions on the message board? Go ahead. This should provide a way for everyone to share and socialize, no matter their preferred method.
New rules for all parts of the community
I've already simplified our rules into one page, but this page will likely go through a pretty extreme revision. Extreme in the sense that I will be putting forth some very basic philosophies of the community along with a simple ruleset. We're not going to waste time coming up with rules for everything or every possible situation, and grey areas will be left to mods to decide on. I have no interest in spending precious hours of my day squashing drama or policing people on any of these future StP platforms.
Another reason for these rules changes has to do with my next subject...
Starting an official StP co-op house
While I'm not anywhere near what I would consider 'over the hill', I am coming up on my 44th birthday, and I've started to realize it's time to start planning for the next 20+ years. I don't want to have a traditional family or live alone in an apartment. I've talked about starting a hostel, or a punk rock RV park for many years now, and it's time to start seriously putting those plans into motion. This includes creating an official mission statement for StP and the co-op. This will be necessary for incorporating StP as a business (non-profit or not has yet to be determined) and getting loans for a house, etc. I want to start a serious home for ex-travelers, activists, etc to live together and share costs/resources collectively. I believe this is going to be crucial in the upcoming years ahead (i.e. I believe things are going to get quite rough in this country financially).
Discussions on how this should evolve will take place in the message board, and I will be creating a dedicated place for that discussion.
The StP Etsy Store
So the majority of StP's income comes from selling patches, bandanas and other things in our Etsy store. It's not a lot; maybe about $60-100 a month, but considering that I do little to no advertising, it's decent. I can't go into anything specific yet (haven't even thought out the specifics yet) but I want to vastly expand the amount of products there to create more income for StP and finance projects like the StP website and the co-op.
How it all fits together
So the timeline very vaguely looks like this:
- move to new forum software
- give folks a few weeks/months to get use to it
- install/set up a mastodon server for folks to use
- move the forums to squattheplanet.com/discuss (just a placeholder URL at the moment, it might change)
- replace the front page of squattheplanet.com with the main Mastodon feed
- the discord server will remain at squattheplanet.com/chat
Once the main portions of StP are in place, I would like to start actively promoting StP, something I have never actually done (the past 20+ years has all been word of mouth). This means going to underground/punk festivals, tabling at anarchist book fairs, and promotion at any other events I can think of. Like, seriously getting the word out any way we can think of. That includes internationally.
My plans for a co-op will be much more slowly evolving, likely over the next few years as we discuss possibilities and work towards finding a location, etc.
So it's pretty late, and I have to be up early tomorrow, so I'm going to leave it at that. Let me know what your thoughts are, I'd love to hear any ideas or constructive criticisms you might have.
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