Good and Bad: Where is HoH?
I've had a lot of thinking around where HoH is at the moment and how it can be improved. I haven't been much around lately for some personal reasons and mainly because I wanted to free myself from the perpetual motion I was into, but now I am back and I am more determined than ever before to get everything sorted. I've started putting work in my regular projects (GNUCITIZEN and Hakiri) and I am hoping that I can transform HoH for the better of the community.
So where is HoH? HoH started as a social experiment which I thought will never work. The network grew up pretty rapidly from just 1 user (me) to more than 7000 users according to the latest stats. This is remarkable and mind blowing and it clearly shows that hackers, regardless how antisocial they could be sometimes, are interested and willing to communicate and link with each other. For a while HoH was successful because of all of you.
Because HoH grew up pretty much organically, a lot of bad decisions were made along the way which injured the network to one degree or another. Mostly, I blame myself for being quite unexperienced.
The worst decision of all was to use Ning as a platform. This decision pretty much crippled the community. When I was asked to provide newer features I was unable to adequately respond as I wasn't in control of the platform at all. This was quite frustrating not only for the users but also for myself and the poor network administrators. That forced me to look for other solutions. The most obvious one was Mediawiki. For a moment I truly believed that Mediawiki can provide us with not only the platform but also with a common goal. I was wrong and the V2 project sort of failed miserably. Why? The reason for this was because Mediawiki lacked all the features that Ning provided, i.e. all good communication tools.
In simple words, neither Ning non Mediawiki worked for us. Perhaps Ning works for Britney Spears fan clubs but it doesn't work for HoH. Mediawiki works for Wikipedia and projects that evolve around documentation but it doesn't quite well work for HoH. HoH requires wikis and blogs and forums and IRC servers, and a lot more in order to become a true community enabling tool where people can share ideas, work together and lead. Ning simply cannot provide all that. The only logical solution for me is to move away from the current platform, but where do we go?
I haven't got the right solution yet but I have a few suggestions which I hope I can discuss with you right here and we all take a decision for the better of the community:
Idea 01 - Keep Ning and try to get the best out of it. I am no longer fan of Ning and I do not believe that it works for HoH but sometimes it is good to follow the path of the least resistance. There is a lot of work that needs to be done and we all should get prepared for the times when things will not work quite alright.
Idea 02 - Get out of Ning and setup a similar platform from scratch. Although this looks like an exciting opportunity I do not have the resources to start another programming project. Nevertheless, this is an idea.
Idea 03 - Setup a platform using an existing software solution, such as Wordpress MU and BuddyPress and carefully engineer the whole system form there. We can also provide community members the ability to suggest and write extensions for the platform through some kind of process.
Idea 04 - Go with the Mediawiki idea. It is good for building documentation but I am questioning how good it is as a communication tool.
These are pretty much all of my ideas. I've got a lot of side projects for HoH but I better not share them here right now as I want to concentrate on the main problem for now.
So what do you think?
So where is HoH? HoH started as a social experiment which I thought will never work. The network grew up pretty rapidly from just 1 user (me) to more than 7000 users according to the latest stats. This is remarkable and mind blowing and it clearly shows that hackers, regardless how antisocial they could be sometimes, are interested and willing to communicate and link with each other. For a while HoH was successful because of all of you.
Because HoH grew up pretty much organically, a lot of bad decisions were made along the way which injured the network to one degree or another. Mostly, I blame myself for being quite unexperienced.
The worst decision of all was to use Ning as a platform. This decision pretty much crippled the community. When I was asked to provide newer features I was unable to adequately respond as I wasn't in control of the platform at all. This was quite frustrating not only for the users but also for myself and the poor network administrators. That forced me to look for other solutions. The most obvious one was Mediawiki. For a moment I truly believed that Mediawiki can provide us with not only the platform but also with a common goal. I was wrong and the V2 project sort of failed miserably. Why? The reason for this was because Mediawiki lacked all the features that Ning provided, i.e. all good communication tools.
In simple words, neither Ning non Mediawiki worked for us. Perhaps Ning works for Britney Spears fan clubs but it doesn't work for HoH. Mediawiki works for Wikipedia and projects that evolve around documentation but it doesn't quite well work for HoH. HoH requires wikis and blogs and forums and IRC servers, and a lot more in order to become a true community enabling tool where people can share ideas, work together and lead. Ning simply cannot provide all that. The only logical solution for me is to move away from the current platform, but where do we go?
I haven't got the right solution yet but I have a few suggestions which I hope I can discuss with you right here and we all take a decision for the better of the community:
Idea 01 - Keep Ning and try to get the best out of it. I am no longer fan of Ning and I do not believe that it works for HoH but sometimes it is good to follow the path of the least resistance. There is a lot of work that needs to be done and we all should get prepared for the times when things will not work quite alright.
Idea 02 - Get out of Ning and setup a similar platform from scratch. Although this looks like an exciting opportunity I do not have the resources to start another programming project. Nevertheless, this is an idea.
Idea 03 - Setup a platform using an existing software solution, such as Wordpress MU and BuddyPress and carefully engineer the whole system form there. We can also provide community members the ability to suggest and write extensions for the platform through some kind of process.
Idea 04 - Go with the Mediawiki idea. It is good for building documentation but I am questioning how good it is as a communication tool.
These are pretty much all of my ideas. I've got a lot of side projects for HoH but I better not share them here right now as I want to concentrate on the main problem for now.
So what do you think?
Add a Comment
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Comment by Pat E on November 14, 2009 at 2:16am -
I have a server... I could set up an IRC server, blog ain't no prob, forum is easy, I can do PHP, HTML & CSS, so making a website wouldn't be a problem. Due to possible DDoS attacks we'd need many mirrors, which we would update using a script. Also we should do something about the spam... anything but captcha! I hate that.
My impression is that many people here ain't hackers but wannabe-hackers... That's okay, but we should set up a sub-page for them so that they can learn and we can apply knowledge.
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Comment by boyz27 on September 18, 2009 at 6:06am -
my dream is using teleconference with less bandwidth or many server...HoH teleconference and virtual reality. yeaah!! d-_-b
use cms...like opencms(java) or ocPortal(html) is better i think.
or http://www.invisionpower.com/ like rapileech did (but heavy to load the page for me)
or like my friend did http://tecon-crew.org/forum ( HoH is his inspire)
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Comment by darkghost on August 30, 2009 at 5:13pm -
Guys, I am a new user at HOH...I am good in c/c+ and java. But I don't know anything about ning, buddypress and other tools you had mentioned....
But I will be happy if I can help you to make HOH a better platform for the users...
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Comment by l)4nT1nl) on August 23, 2009 at 8:24am - ning jan f*ck tnan owggg,dibakar ae ning kui.,.,.
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Comment by Lukman Davies on June 26, 2009 at 12:52am -
Hello Bro,how are you doing,my name is Lukman and i will love to make deals with you .we have a lot of things to do in making $$$ ok.I am honest drop and you shall enjoy working with me .please add me on my yahoo mail Lukmandavies@yahoo.com
i hope to hear from you soon.
Lukman
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Comment by Lukman Davies on June 26, 2009 at 12:50am
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Hello Bro,how are you doing,my name is Lukman and i will love to make deals with you .we have a lot of things to do in making $$$ ok.I am honest drop and you shall enjoy working with me .please add me on my yahoo mail Lukmandavies@yahoo.com
i hope to hear from you soon.
Lukman
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Comment by m0ur3n on May 31, 2009 at 10:50am - IMHO HoH V2 suck, we should wait for Google Wave or write our platform.
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Comment by DaRkNeSsEs on May 11, 2009 at 12:08pm - I agree PDP
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Comment by pdp on May 1, 2009 at 8:25pm - ok, the new platform seems stable now... please let me know if you want to have an early try out...
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Comment by pdp on April 30, 2009 at 11:34pm
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folks, I just want to let you know that during the weekend I will be building the new HoH system. I will post an update when the system is ready. I decided to stick with buddypress as it is a familiar platform and there are already tones of extensions available.
The houseofhackers.org domain will be relocated to point to the new system. The old network can be accessed via its ning address. I will update the front page to point the rest of the members where to find the new network.
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