- A bit overdue, but we put together a Community Guidelines document that outlines what constitues acceptable discourse along with defining some overarching content guidelines. This document is subject to change as the platform evolves.We also spent a bit of time and improved some aspects of our chatrooms by displaying the users role next to their usernames. Furthermore, we added a site-wide "Lounge" page for users to chat with eachother.Changes:
- Added a "Community Guidelines" document.
- Renamed the "legal" page to "docs".
- Added a site-wide "Lounge" page for people to casually talk and connect with the rest of the platforms users.
- Added "Staff", "Owner", "Admin", and "Moderator" badges beside the usernames in our chatrooms
- We plan on also displaying these badges on posts and comments
- One of our most requested features was to add the ability to create more than one community per user. We heard you and have now added that.
- Added the ability to create up to 3 communities per user
- This release we improved our text editor with a focus on simplifying the toolbar buttons.
- Added an "emoji" button to the toolbar.
- Improved the "image upload" button so that you can choose between attaching an image via a URL or an upload from your device.
- Improved the "media embed" button so that it's more clear what types of content you can embed.
- Fixed a bug preventing us from showing a placeholder in our text inputs.
- Fixed a bug preventing users from re-ordering the social links within their community
- We've been spending some time working on improving the post creation experience and performance of the app.What changed:
- Added two additional post types to choose from upon post creation. We introduce a "Link" type that shows a thumbnail of the provided link, and an "Image" type that simplifies the upload process and improves the way images are displayed in our feeds.
- Improved the layout of the posts to put more emphasis on the titles to make it easier to parse information when scrolling the feeds.
- Added an "OP" badge on commnets to indicate the user who made the original post.
- Added "Activity" and "Recent" filters on the "Home" page. The activity feed shows posts based on the most recent comment and bumps.
- Fixed a bunch of minor UI bugs
- Improved the page load times to be up to twice as fast on the initial load
- A side effect of this is improved SEO
- This past release we've been focused on improving the user experience and performance of the app.What changed:
- Added the ability to move posts between boards
- Improved home page performance
- Improved the SEO of our app to help with posts being indexed
- Improved mobile page density by reducing horizontal padding throughout the app
- Changed how our select menus works on mobile so that it uses the full height of your device making it easier to scroll
- Fixed a bunch of minor UI bugs on mobile
- Updated the styling of our comment filtering buttons and swapped their position on the page with the comment creation input
- Create a multi line code block with ``` (syntax highlighting will be added in the future)
const supportForCode = true;We have some more UI changes in the works with an aim to improve legibility and post density. Stay tuned for a future release. - One of our most requested features was to improve the customizability of the community pages. We heard your feedback and took a first step towards addressing this.What changed:
- Added the ability to upload a custom community banner image.
- Moved the video player and playlist into a tab to make room for the new banner.
We have other plans in store such as allowing communities to set custom themes and background images. We will update when we add those! - Just wanted to provide a quick update with some changes that we just released. They are live now for everyone to use!
- Added a button to the toolbar when creating a post to attach an image (pasting image URLs from sources like Imgur will auto embed them)
- Added an account settings link to the profile menu dropdown when you are signed in
- Made the community name clickable on the individual post page
- Added a notice widget to the home page
- Added a filter to the home page to allow sorting the feed by "popular" and "recent"
- Made usernames on posts clickable without routing to the post page
- Just wanted to start by saying welcome to all our new communities and users! Happy to have you on the platform and we are excited to have you all join us on this crazy venture.We've been collecting a ton of feedback over the past week and I wanted to do a quick post outlining what our biggest priorities are in terms of development. Nothing in this list is static, and we are always open to feedback from the community on what everyone thinks is best for us to prioritize and work on.
- Community moderation tooling
- We will build out an extensive moderation dashboard that display's a list of things to review from each community that a user moderates. Whenever a post is reported or flagged it will appear here for the user to review.
- Add a customization option to boards where an admin can configure them so that every new post within the board has to first be approved by a moderator to appear in the feed. These posts would seamlessly appear as part of the new moderation dashboard page.
- Integrate with AI to automatically scan every new post and comment for things that go against our content guidelines. Flagged posts would need to be approved by a moderator before appearing.
- Add a "Community guidelines" page to each community that the admins and mods can use to outline what they define as acceptable discourse.
- Add the ability for mods to ban users from the community and issue timeouts.
- Add "Modmail"
- [Released]
Add the ability for mods to move posts from one board to another
- Adding NSFW filters to both posts and communities
- We want to foster an open community accepting of all forms of content. To implement this properly, we need tagging and filtering in place to ensure that users aren't accidentally exposed to content they don't want to see.
- We will be introducing a NSFW category on the "Browse" page for communities to list under. Communities where the primary theme is NSFW will be required to mark themselves as such and list under that category. We will be adding a section to our community guidelines describing this (see below for more on the community guidelines).
- For all other communities, you will still be able to create and flag individual posts as being NSFW. These posts will be blurred out in the communities feeds and require clicking through a confirmation modal to access.
- We will also be adding a global "Show NSFW" toggle that allows users to completely hide all content tagged as such.
- Custom community personalization and branding
- [Released]
Add the ability to upload a custom community banner image. - Add the ability to add a custom background image.
- Add the ability to add custom themes.
- Add the ability for a community to set custom emojis
- Improve the "Home" page
- Add a feed that only shows posts from communities that you follow. Would prioritize posts from the community owners/mods so they can get their messages out.
- Build a post recommendation algorithm to have a feed that shows posts related to content/communities that you view.
- Add ability to purchase post and comment awards
- The revenue from this would be shared with the community owners.
- Add ability to buy gifted memberships for a community
- For communities that opt in to monetization, we plan on adding the ability for users to purchase "gifted memberships" modeled after Twitch.
- The proposed way gifting would work is the system would keep track of every user that visits a community and would first assign gifted memberships to those users. When gifting in a community that does not yet have enough unique visitors in relation to the amount of memberships gifted, the system would randomly assign the gifted memberships to other users from across the app.
- Users who get gifted a membership would receive a notification message alerting them that they have been assigned a membership to that community. Our thinking is that this would help draw those users into the community which would help with community growth.
- Add ability to create multiple communities under one account
- Add support for Instagram / Tik-tok embeds in posts
- Add tiered membership options to allow communities to create customized membership plans.
- Allow community owners to associate the plans with various access levels and actions within the community such as restricting content and boards behind the membership tiers.
- Add filters to boards and browse page to sort by different constraints
- Add user created sub-categories to our categories on our "browse" page
- This will improve the discoverability of communities as you will be able to further narrow down your search based on specific niches and topics.
- Add light mode theme
- [Released]
Add code blocks when creating a post/comment - Add ability to add community polls
- Add ability to "pin" posts to a board
- Improve the user profile page
- The design for this page needs a refresh. It's one of the older pages of the app and hasn't been touched in a while.
- Add the users post and comment history to the page.
- Add ability to transfer ownership of a community
- Add ability to rename a community
- Add ability to hide communities/posts from appearing on the browse/home page
- Add comment "lines" that help show which replies belong to which comment
- Add RSS support to communities
- Look into offering an integration with our moderation tooling
- [Released]
Show "OP" indicator on comments - Add ability to view posts in boards in "Compact" mode
- [Released]
Add "Link" and "Image" post types- This will help make it easier for us to format the content to do things like showing a thumbnail for links and sizing the images.
While we have other stuff we plan to implement, this is just a list of some things on our immediate horizon. We look forward to hearing from the community on what else they'd like to see. - In the digital age, content creation has evolved into a powerful means of not only sharing information and entertainment but also building communities. Content creators, whether they are YouTubers, bloggers, podcasters, or social media influencers, have recognized the potential of their content to foster connections, engage audiences, and create vibrant communities around their work. This concept has transformed the traditional one-way model of content consumption into a dynamic, interactive experience.Many creators view their pursuit as the craft of creating content. After all, it's in the name. However, what many fail to realize is that the most substantial source of value they create arises from the community that forms around them. The craft of content creators lies in creating communities and not just content. To exhibit preeminence, it's important for creators to view their content as a means of building a community, not just an endeavour of creating things to consume.Major platforms such as YouTube have shown why focusing solely on your content can be unfavourable. Many creators have experienced demonetization on their videos for innocuous reasons. Often times their videos will get wrongly age restricted limiting the ability to display ads or get demonetized all together over benign things such as swearing or saying the wrong words. The path for recourse is rocky as well often times taking substantial periods of time to resolve a dispute. These types of situations can be catastrophic for creators who depend on the ad revenue to create their content.By focusing on creating a community instead, creators can substantially lesson the impact of these types of financial hits by supplementing the loss of income with the direct support of their following. Platforms such as Twitch have demonstrated how all you need is one or two highly dedicated and engaged fans to make being a creator an extremely lucrative endeavour.The concept of content creators using their content to build communities is a testament to the power of digital media in fostering connections and facilitating meaningful interactions. Through shared interests, authenticity, engaging platforms, and effective moderation, content creators have the ability to bring people together, nurture relationships, and create vibrant communities centered around their content. These communities not only benefit the content creators themselves but also provide a space for individuals to connect, share, and grow together.If you are interested in reading more about how Sociables can be used to help foster your community as a content creator, check out this page: https://sociables.com/creators/
- One of our biggest priorities is expanding our moderation tooling. This post is mean't to give some insight into what we have planned.
- Build out an extensive moderation dashboard within each community. Whenever a post is reported or flagged it will appear here for the community admins and mods to review.
- Add a customization option to boards where an admin can configure it so every new post within the board has to first be approved by a moderator to appear in the feed. These posts would seamlessly appear as part of the moderation dashboard page.
- Integrate with AI to automatically scan every new post and comment for things that go against our content guidelines. Flagged posts would need to be approved by a moderator before appearing.
- Add a "Community guidelines" page to each community that the admins and mods can use to outline what they define as acceptable discourse.
These are just some of the initial ideas we have. We look forward to hearing from community owners what types of things they are looking for to make their lives easier.
