Good and Bad: Where is HoH?

[pdp]

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?

[Luminus]

And it has set a deadline so the discussion is not accelerated dragged long enough ... What now agrees to propose the deadline?


PDP your idea is good ... we have to move if we want to then reach a consensus.

[Ambrianna]

Well I still love the NINGs! My vote would be to stay ....but I am rarely here so my vote holds little relevance... maybe a hybrid site would work but I actually think the last idea posted above by pdp sounds quite functional.

[pdp]

I've got a funky idea. The other way of doing it is to write the social networking features in python for app engine. I've got most of the helper libraries written as I had to write the interfaces for websecurify, netsecurify and blogsecurify. Than we can setup Google Apps domain so that the most dedicated users will receive email accounts and access to other features such as docs, calendars, etc.

it is just a crazy idea.

[pdp]

hey, mediawiki is the easiest solution... I've already got it ready ... it will take me 2 seconds to bring it up... don't get me wrong :) I am just questioning whether it is a good enough communication/expressive platform. That's why I was thinking along the lines of BuddyPress which will be a lot harder to setup and secure. Though, BuddyPress is based on WordpressMU which is basically a blogging platform and I do not know if we need to have blogs given that there are so many other blogging platforms out there. What do you guys think?

Mediawiki will give us an aim which is good but I also want to see the fun stuff happening as well like the Female Hacker group or the Urban Explorers group. And also we need a place for discussions and where members can build their profiles and earn the respect of their peers.

[root]

Less technical? We can have a java applet for the IRC (we don't even need HoH's own IRC server, we can use http://www.efnet.org/ for example) and Mediawiki's not that complicated (who doesn't wiki? :P)
Would you prefer some other concrete CMS? Or maybe have Mediawiki/IRC/+some other CMS for general news etc.

[pdp]

Mediawiki will give us a structure and probably a common goal to build something useful. We can definitely have a mailing list and IRC but I also want to make sure that other people who are less technical can participate.

[root]

Use Mediawiki.
"how good it is as a communication tool", it's not really. Get on IRC ;)
I think that's a decision worth trying :)

[DaRkNeSsEs]

PDP is very difficult to move around until I think it impossible. but the new platform should be very good for members of HOH again never again to migrate
I personally am in agreement with a new website for to all

[pdp]

DaRkNeSsEs, thanks for the comment. It was much appreciated.

All I want to do at this stage is to help the community find the best place to grow and develop. The majority of those who commented on this post agree that Ning needs to be replaced with something of our own. I am keen on investing the resources in this new things but I just want to make sure that we move to the new platform as painlessly as possible and also that I have the community support to make the necessary changes. I realize that platform change will be a drastic move especially when I cannot import the old content.

[DaRkNeSsEs]

cuote : I was very impressed the first time I visited the site and saw right then that this was a great place to be.
People are tired of this, and many of them left (I admit I'm not spending much time as I used to do before Hoh).
If we are to remain with Ning that first we have to change. We must ensure that the above points are covered and the community is safe.

I did not intend to say so far, I have participated in a long time since some time here and watch in silence in the community, but I like to give my opinion PDP, this has been a great community at the time, the rest has here is not only "Lammers who do not want, as mentioned by Luminus," there are still a few good professionals here in which a change if they make a good platform can be retrieved, but if they keep down the fault as before, to finish by all and never completely migrate back by the bad experience. Many of those who were here since we have seen changes in HOH good and bad seasons change and at this stage to be provided should be more than good to save what has become the NING. but also must keep in mind you are going to do with being here ... "the least", because they also joined and also have reasons to follow. [do not forget to leave them on the way] ... looking for a good change but also think of those left behind by them and also to us all that are part of all this .... This is my opinion ..