One question that comes up every now and then as we look at our community venues is how effective are our options when it comes to having, so to speak, a social lobby: an official, easy to reach place with active conversation, both "on" and "off"-topic, where, in particular, newbies can land on and settle. Below is a quick (and not necessarily neutral!) review of where things stand, meant as a conversation starter should we feel like shaking things up a bit. (For another take, see this post by @Cas , written in a similar spirit last year.)
Now, for a very long time this Forum has been the central hub of the community, providing a space for conversation and linking various initiatives across the Stuntsphere. The usage patterns of the Forum, though, have changed significantly over the years. On the one hand, it remains a key venue for Q&A, technical discussion, project coordination and team activity. On the other hand, the volume of open-ended conversation in the Forum has fallen a lot since, say, the early 2010s, specially when it comes to off-topic chat. While a concerted drive to make the quieter corners of the Forum more active could be a worthy initiative, I see open questions about how accessible the old-growth structure of the Forum is to newcomers, and more broadly about what kind of forum culture we can hope to rekindle in this day and age.
Meanwhile, the Stunts group on Telegram, started by Cas about two years ago (cf. the thread about it here), has become a pretty successful experiment in running a "third place" for casual chat, a role not unlike that played by the Stunts IRC channel, in tandem with the competition sites and the Forum, back in the early 00s. It sparked many interesting conversations, bout about Stunts and otherwise, and helped us keeping in touch with a few long-absent pipsqueaks. While the group is open to people from the community (let us know if you want to join!), up to now we have hesitated a bit when it comes to actively advertising it, or bringing it to a more central place in our ecosystem. One reason for that, I reckon, is the fact that the group is hosted on Telegram, a social media platform which, like most social media platforms, offers us little control over its workings, and which people might be unwilling to sign up for due to various reasons.
There are, of course, other spaces we might conceivably explore. In particular, last year we had a brief look at Element/Matrix (cf. this Forum conversation about it), and how it potentially could offer the amenities of modern group chat/messaging in a platform providing us more meaningful control, thus making it easier to bring under the stunts.hu umbrella. It could be a fitting time to revisit Element and consider what would it take, and what issues we might have to deal with, in order successfully set up a chat venue based on it.
Now, for a very long time this Forum has been the central hub of the community, providing a space for conversation and linking various initiatives across the Stuntsphere. The usage patterns of the Forum, though, have changed significantly over the years. On the one hand, it remains a key venue for Q&A, technical discussion, project coordination and team activity. On the other hand, the volume of open-ended conversation in the Forum has fallen a lot since, say, the early 2010s, specially when it comes to off-topic chat. While a concerted drive to make the quieter corners of the Forum more active could be a worthy initiative, I see open questions about how accessible the old-growth structure of the Forum is to newcomers, and more broadly about what kind of forum culture we can hope to rekindle in this day and age.
Meanwhile, the Stunts group on Telegram, started by Cas about two years ago (cf. the thread about it here), has become a pretty successful experiment in running a "third place" for casual chat, a role not unlike that played by the Stunts IRC channel, in tandem with the competition sites and the Forum, back in the early 00s. It sparked many interesting conversations, bout about Stunts and otherwise, and helped us keeping in touch with a few long-absent pipsqueaks. While the group is open to people from the community (let us know if you want to join!), up to now we have hesitated a bit when it comes to actively advertising it, or bringing it to a more central place in our ecosystem. One reason for that, I reckon, is the fact that the group is hosted on Telegram, a social media platform which, like most social media platforms, offers us little control over its workings, and which people might be unwilling to sign up for due to various reasons.
There are, of course, other spaces we might conceivably explore. In particular, last year we had a brief look at Element/Matrix (cf. this Forum conversation about it), and how it potentially could offer the amenities of modern group chat/messaging in a platform providing us more meaningful control, thus making it easier to bring under the stunts.hu umbrella. It could be a fitting time to revisit Element and consider what would it take, and what issues we might have to deal with, in order successfully set up a chat venue based on it.
The trickiest section here, in terms of requiring extra attention and maybe a touch of foreplanning, might be the fast chicane leading out of the back straight.
