You raise some good issues, and I don't think 'liking' or 'voting', goes against anybodies sacred beliefs. Some conversations lend themselves things like that.
[I myself was thinking recently, Citadel could use some a project management feature.. <project><task><status> .. so, I thought about writing a new module for that. Then I though we should have better examples of writing modules, in case people want to write one, so then we're just back to the documentation project. :) ] The goal is freedom and free speech, not necessarily for or against features. There's nothing wrong in wanting something more like twitter, or facebook to create a community. Citadel in fact, even has the largely unused feature of message expiration, which can allow it to be configured to be more ephemeral like reddit, or 4chan where posts expire and disappear (or get archived) over time. With relatively little effort, you could turn Webcit into a 4chan clone.. The question of votes/likes is who would write it, and where would it be implemented. In Citadel itself, it would require a key/keys to store votes/likes under, and a sorting function for messages which doesn't exist yet, and some additions to the webcit interface. How far do you want to take it? All the way to the text client? Then that also would need to be updated. It's also something that can be done in other client systems, and I think that's where things are headed. Through things that connects to Citadel through a protocol, or API, or something that Citadel exposes as a feed. There are a lot of interesting questions which should be discussed. There will always be a feature du-jour. But, how true should Citadel stay to it's origin? It was a simple text-based bulletin board, which later developed the ability to send emails. But true to the unix design philosophy over the years, the Citadel project has been open to integration with many different kinds of systems.. hence the "Groupware" appellation. Therefore, when we talk about these things, we should be thinking about the lower-level architecture, and what belongs in Citadel, and what can be handled by a connector. For many installations, Citadel is just a mail server. A great deal of effort has gone into that, and we should respect it. There should always be a path for someone to quickly build a mail server from the command line. There are many of these in use for both business and personal needs.. Any differentiation here could be reflected as "Themes".. (currently, files in static, or static.local) For a Business/Personal or Community look and features. This is almost a must, and something I'm currently working on. I'm thinking more and more, Citadel has the potential to be the powerhouse back end for many different things. What we really need work on is the json/javascript API, and the various "diaspora" protocols. PubSub/Activity Feed and things like that, as Art has pointed out. Citadel itself is largely okay. But the growing scarcity of c programmers is going to make the addition of features like this hard to accomplish. If anything, we need more convenience methods or a scripting language. Citadel is lacking in middle-ware to implement business logic outside of the core. I have a lot of thoughts about this, possibly an nginx-citadel module, that lets you implement things in Lua, or php or something. Maybe just a library of convenience wrappers to make the C more accessible to less experienced programmers. We also don't have to mistake Webcit for Citadel. There are so many things which can be done. It's just a matter of understanding whether we are inside, or outside. [By this I mean things like static site generators, to generate websites based on a whole system, or user/blog posts, by just iterating through blog posts and writing them out somewhere. ] Also, XMPP Integrations shouldn't be overlooked. It ain't perfect as protocol, but still has a lot going for it. Mainly lots of users and clients. One way would be to expose Citadel (Rooms) as a Component (MUC Component) as an option to using the internal XMPP server. This would open the door for a lot of cool things, like phone calls, and video conferencing, without the hassle of keeping up with XMPP and rewriting erlang or lua code in C, since there are already mature XMPP servers out there.. The Tech Giants have shown their desire and ability to censor, so it's all hands to the battle stations. It's time for the Federation of all free systems.. Feel free to jump in, get involved, and help out. Also, don't underestimate your programming ability until you've actually tried. If you've programming anything, it's probably not beyond you. Mostly it's just an investment of time.. > Tue Nov 10 2020 11:12:52 AM EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored > > > >I know you're going to hate this suggestion, that it is difficult or >impossible to implement, and it makes Citadel *closer* to what you're trying >to get away from - but I think if it could happen - it would generate more >traffic and encourage more repeat traffic. > >First - the ability to "like" posts. I know... I know... but what happens >with likes is it encourages lurkers to interact. They don't have to say >anything, but they can go, "I agree with this post," or "I like what this >post is saying," without going through making a whole post to say, "Yeah... >what he said..." > >Second, it encourages content producers to create more content. Often, if I >get several likes on a post, I'll expand on my original post, and that >creates a positive feedback loop where I post more. Often, that will get >people who agree to speak up and elaborate on their read of my post, >stimulating conversation. Or, people will see the post getting likes, >disagree, and feel like they have to speak up their opposition to what I am >saying. Either way - it encourages conversation. > >The other would be a mobile app, or at least mobile sharing. The ability to >take a photo, or something else saved on your mobile device, add a little >note, and share it - without first sending it to a PC... this encourages >repeat usage - it creates discussion. > >I know we can easily do most of this now and that the way it is creates a >natural barrier to entry that actually keeps the userbase higher quality and >more technical. > >But maybe if something like this could be switched on or off, depending on >what kind of userbase the sysop wants? > >Just throwing ideas out there. I have no actually coding ability outside >Access VBA - so it is all just a big pipe dream for me. > > > > > >
