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I think it depends on the website you're wanting to run.. I was part of a now-dead "threaded message board", which had a somewhat cliquey view of what should/s
by goldcd 7y ago
I think it depends on the website you're wanting to run..
I was part of a now-dead "threaded message board", which had a somewhat cliquey view of what should/shouldn't be posted. In the evening when the moderators were away, the discussion became more interesting as it strayed off-topic.
Eventually the community wanted 'to fork' so I decided to build something myself. I'm not IT trained, so first version was PL/SQL on Oracle - all I knew. v2 was the product of me buying an O'Reilly PHP/MySQL book (I still have 'platypus' somewhere).
People came.
First few years were a mess. The more technically literate people used to hack me for fun - but then would confess and provide security tips.
As the mood took me I'd add features, and then if they became troublesome fixed/killed them.
The odd person would arrive and cause trouble, and I'd have fun working out how to make them stop.
(correlate logins with emails, password, IPs, browser fingerprints etc). Then maybe experiment with hiding troll-posts from the other users, whilst displaying it to the troll, who thought they'd been ignored - etc etc.
Or maybe auto-embed some very dodgy zero-sized images in their feed, if I know they were going through a company/university proxy.
After a while it just all got quiet and relatively happy, and it's been puttering along since 2003.
It's currently got over 9 Million posts, a load of marriages and children - and a few deaths with some 'best-of posts' for the departed.
I'm fully aware this isn't impressive as a potential unicorn, but I feel there's a bazillion other little sites, like mine, happily puttering along out there that are overlooked.
- gjs278 7y agowhat’s the site
- seisvelas 7y agoThis is a lovely comment, and now I'm super curious to see what the site is.
- goldcd 7y agoI now realize, I didn't add a conclusion. My little site is 'local' - I don't have to deal with the world turning up. I don't need admins, I don't need a TOS, I don't need arbitration systems etc etc. There's a good community of people who just get along. Rough edges were knocked off a long time ago. We're a little niche ignored by the world - and we like it that way. Issues with 'toxic' influx come when you're trying to drive people in/draw attention.
- gtirloni 7y agoIf you don't mind the question, what's the niche?
- goldcd 7y agoThe original site was - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popbitch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popbitch (scurrilous media gossip from within the machine) Mine? - Mainly what people have eaten for lunch... ..but if I had to come up with a proper answer it's that it's connected a pretty disparate bunch of people who once had a random common interest, over what happened to them in the next decade or so. A shared diary?
- barbecue_sauce 7y agoYou're not IT trained but you knew Oracle PL/SQL? Edit: I know it's gauche to complain about downvotes, so I'll explain my question further. I find his situation extremely interesting as I associate Oracle with the "IT-iest" of "IT" things.
- goldcd 7y agoSortof... Always loved computers, but unlike maybe most people here, for what I could do with them (not the beauty of their logic blah). Did a Masters in Bioinformatics, that came with a few Oracle lectures... and then as this was in 2000 was enough to get a job.. and well I was given some problems and there was a shelf of books. shrugs
- goldcd 7y agoI've no idea why you'd get a down-vote either - whoever that was, "Hang your head in shame and reverse that click"
- RugnirViking 7y agoI love these kinds of sites, and they always leave an impression on me, even when I only spend a day or two lurking the recent posts. Especially ones designed for niche interests such as old and long-dead games. I genuinely think you should feel proud for making the world just a little bit better and more like it's ideal self
- goldcd 7y agoThis is a 'full on brag' (not some humble-brag) - I'm really proud of the site. Every f'in part of it I built from scratch. It's me, for better or for worse. More pragmatically, it helped shape what I like doing for my job (I'm currently a Product Owner - a job I think fits me)