HN Explorer

Ask HN: How do you build and grow decentralised online communities?

7 points by prologic ↗ HN
ssia; I recently built https://twtxt.net/ as a decentralised micro-blogging platform based on the twtxt file specification format. So far so good, about ~1-3 new users per day. How do online communities form and grow? It would be pretty awesome if I could help anyone run their own instance and grow a network of twtxt instances. Share your ideas/thoughts and suggestions!

11 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 38.2 ms ] thread
Ptrulli
I think growing a community consists of consistency, inclusivity, and really driving discussions. Paying close attention to users.
prologic
Thanks! I agree. Can you elaborate on "consistency", consistency of what?
prologic
Of course OTOH; the _real_ question is how do we form decentralised communities of which github.com/prologic/twtxt is designed for? My main goals are to make it as simple as possible for _anyone_ (even non-tech folks) to spin up their own instance.
prologic
Another user just signed up on https://twtxt.net/ and posted their first post! -- But as this thread's question states; I would really feel like I'v accomplished something positive in the world if just one person spun up their own instance! We as a society need to start thinking about taking back control and ownership of our data and the digital footprint we leave behind. Its yours!
bsldld
> We as a society need to start thinking about taking back control and ownership of our data and the digital footprint we leave behind. Its yours!

Head over to the Solid[0] project then.

[0] https://solidproject.org

prologic
Looks interesting. Similar ideas :) I have a bit of a different focus though; mine is more focused on self-host ability.
alexmingoia
They grow organically. One person finds it valuable and tells another person who joins, and so on.

Twtxt is a neat format. I personally don’t like the lack of new lines, but that’s part of its simplicity.

prologic
Yeah I love it too! I just wish I wasn't about ~4yrs late to the party! Oh well better late then never! My goal(s) right now are to help revitalise the twtxt community and build software and tool that help make it easier for _anyone_ to use. So far that's https://feeds.twtxt.net and https://twtxt.net

Yes (_just realised I used them here_); the lack of "multiple lines" does feel a bit limiting sometimes; but its not that bad really once you get used to it. I implemented twtxt,net's software such that you couldn't actually accidentally the format of the underlying twtxt.txt files that it writes to.

OTOH I did add Makrdown rendering support to the client (web) that is twtxt.net so you at least have a nice subset of Markdown formatting including pictures!

companyhen
Pretty cool, reminds me of feedweave - https://github.com/feedweave/feedweave-ui

The founders of reddit said they used to create fake accounts and have conversations with themselves when the site was starting to make it look like there was activity.

prologic
:O That's a pretty deceptive way to get people to use your thing eh? NOt sure I want to do that ;)
zzo38computer
I have a NNTP, although so far nobody joined (except for a few testing messages, and some of my own stuff) and nobody mirrored it onto their own servers (although I haven't yet implement the ability to forward from my computer, and IHAVE currently isn't enabled on my service; I can fix this though if people will want it in future). There has also been the suggestion to also include a web interface to configure and operate it for users who use web interfaces, as well as having the NNTP service for users who use NNTP. There is also the idea to support Markdown, which I also think is helpful, although there are two considerations that must be made: (1) Only articles with a "Content-type: text/markdown" header should be interpreted as Markdown; otherwise, it might mess up a display due to using things that isn't supposed to do. (2) It might be helpful to use a subset of Markdown without HTML features, to make it more readable even if you do not have Markdown on your computer.