Site features

Well as a lurker, I want to put in my two cents: So far, I just haven't really figured out what I should be reading, what I should be participating in, etc. It's probably me. My fantasy would be to have something easier to navigate - maybe more graphic a la buddhist geeks, some real time chat - probably some other stuff that would draw me into participating.

My honest opinion — since you asked, Tom — is that you should focus on making this a better forum and get rid of everything else. I don't want another social network or blogging platform. The value of this place is the community and I don't think we need anything beyond the forum at this point. It could use some love in the form of a redesign or at least a typographic tune up, though.

I tend to agree with Nadav - refine the heavily used features, and let go of the ones no one seems to care about. Though it was interesting to hear from Chriss that she liked chat. I used to use chat occasionally (a few times a month).

But the mobile interface is rather shitty, and I'd rather have that be easier to navigate than have chat back. Main problems for me on mobile are page length is too long, requiring extensive scrolling (allow more "back to top" buttons or shorten number of posts displayed to 5 or 10 instead of 20 or however many); and that the right side of the page is always cut off, so I can't see who posted the reply unless I turn my phone sideways and re-scroll to that post.

I wish there were more frequent hangouts and more lurkers would come out of the closet, but that's life. The participants we do have are great folks.

I almost wonder if AN needs a bit of a mission. Right now, it's more of a really nice chat room for about twenty (active) people.

Dharma Forum Refugees Camp kinda had one in the day, a "safe" place to speak very openly about their thoughts after the second great schism (or Second Great Schism?)

It kinda goes to Chriss' comment (Hi Chriss!). If you were a new lurker, where would you go, what would you say?

For a while I was noodling on what it would be like if the DFRC really was that: a place where people who were off-track in their practice could shelter themselves and get back on track. It was just a passing thought, which I had forgotten until now. Anyway...

Remind me again, why am I here?

Maybe Chriss and other lurkers could speak to that a bit. If one isn't here to start a practice journal (at least not yet), and maybe isn't ready to start threads on random things one has read or heard without feeling a bit daunted, what kinds of subject matter or themes might help make that more comfortable? I love reading stuff by new people. But that requires that a new person (or experienced lurker) feel bold enough to post a subject, perhaps feeling like it might be a dumb question or something no one else will care about.

For Chriss or others who don't post much, what sorts of themes, subjects, etc are interesting to you? What would you love to talk to other people about in a virtual sangha?

[Point being, would it help if there were categories or sticky areas, such as "Help, my practice is a mess?" or "Things I wake up at night wondering about" or "Can someone explain this cuz it makes no sense."...]

-Ona

I like those topics. It's just hard to know what I'd even want to talk about without something specific drawing me in. I came here on the recommendation of a member I met on Reddit, but I haven't really figured out what I want to do here, yet.

Google+ type hangouts could be interesting, along with Ona's suggestions: 'sticky areas, such as "Help, my practice is a mess?" or "Things I wake up at night wondering about" or "Can someone explain this cuz it makes no sense."..'

To Tom, might it make sense (after more feedback) to think about creating some tabs with themes like this? So perhaps there are always categories in the top tabs like "Introduce Yourself" "Practice Problems" "What does that mean?" "What are you working on?" etc?

Though the Index view shows "General Dharma Discussion" - that's really broad. Maybe some subcategories in that category, a few of which live in the tab menu, might help orient newer folks?

What's the real-estate like in the tabs area? Titles would have to be simple to fit neatly.

I suppose some other screen area could serve - such as having sticky topics aimed particularly at newer members listed at the top of the right hand column, with a title saying "Get started here" or something?

Just some ideas.

And Chriss, please join the next hangout (we were thinking of trying to do one once a month) - it's much more interesting when there are more new people!

Tom Otvos wrote: I can start the ball rolling, by expressing my disappointment that the social network part of the site is not used. . . . Also, I had hoped that the longer-form writing section would be more popular.

A similar subject came up on another site recently. Back in about 2003, when the whole social networking thing was just getting going, there was an assumption that there was an infinite amount of user-generated content out there. That's proved not to be true. Not only are active participation rates on the Internet way down (mine included), what user-generated content there is has to be spread over a huge number of outlets (Facebook, blogs, Twitter, Youtube, many forums, etc.).

Tom Otvos wrote: Exactly what is preventing this from continuing that "safe harbour" mission? Is it just a posting paralysis ("where do I put this?") or something else?

I just don't think we've thought along those lines in any formal way. I don't even know if there is a need for something like that... and I don't know what we would be getting into if we took on that role. Maybe we couldn't be responsive to those kinds of needs. I can see that "good idea" going downhill, potentially pretty fast.

Taking a big step back, I would say this site is like a great big field. The tricky thing is new people might not know if it is a baseball field, a soccer field, etc. so they might not know what kind of talk to engage in. (???)

I mean we have a nice blend of christian, daoist, dzogchen, zen, practical dharma, etc. ... so I really don't know what game were playing either, which is half the fun.

shargrol wrote: I almost wonder if AN needs a bit of a mission. Right now, it's more of a really nice chat room for about twenty (active) people.

I pretty much agree with shargrol on this - to me it don't seem like it's broke, don't fix it!

As I told Tom in our private chat, I think there is also just a general shyness in many people. When I taught in university, it was pulling teeth to get people to offer ideas in discussion groups, except a few Hermione Granger types. No one wants to go up front and read during church services, except the regular devout ladies. People often hang back, unsure of what's okay, where to start, where they fit in. So if we can structure some spaces that help make the shy folks feel more free to participate, that's great. Not sure what those would be. Maybe some of the shy folks will make more suggestions!

The people who have been regularly active for a long time tend to know each other simply because they've all been posting for so long that it's led to hangouts and emails and skype chats and such. To my mind that's by no means a feeling of being a "club" or something. It's just a factor of the same few people blabbing away for so long that eventually you get to know each other. It's fun to have fresh faces in the active group - that way we get new topics of conversation, new perspectives on practice, etc.

Speaking for myself, I like the format here. That said, I do find myself thinking from time-to-time about the history of the site, and as such, I feel like I'm in a "feeling out" phase.

To wit: I am (and by extension, I would assume others are) not entirely clear on what the "Second Great Schism" was. My assumptions around these schisms are based on what I can learn from nosing around the site -- that perhaps the first schism was the AF/Dharma Overground situation, followed by something happening over at KFD. For my part, I initially started keeping a journal over here because that was the suggestion coming from KFD -- that the journals over there should be moved over here. Subsequently, browsing this site seemed to indicate (and perhaps I have this wrong) that Kenneth had been banned from AwakeNetwork. In which case I am making a follow-up assumption that there is no way that Kenneth would be able to view prospective students' journals being kept here. Which, without proper context, is a bit confusing.

Obviously, that hasn't kept me from continuing to update my journal and having valuable conversations here. But there is a lack of clarity on that front. It's kind of like walking into a party in which most of the company has had a long (and sometimes dramatic) history together. There's the impulse to just hang back.

I hope this perspective is helpful, and in the appropriate place -- I know the conversation is mostly about logistics, but it seems like the subject of user participation is also coming up....

Hi there, I love this thread. I think it's very useful to - once in a while - think about what should or should not change.
I'm kind of a lurker, but since you asked for input from lurkers
When I'm looking for a forum and want to join it, first thing I do is visit threads with topics that are current to my practice at that moment. These change, so I can't name many specific topics, but generally I look for advice when I'm stuck with something, or want to learn more about something interesting or I want to find reviews about books, websites and PDF's. Preferably threads where lots of people participate, so that I can look for different views on a subject.
When I decide to join, usually I already have a vague idea about which people have valuable input. The 'wise' people, so to speak. Because of the way I approach a message board, for me it's kind of a database where I can delve in to read interesting topics, information and advice.

I don't remember who, but somewhere in this thread someone said it would be helpful to create more categories and I am all for that, because the more topics are specified, the easier it gets to find an interesting category and read threads. On DharmaOverground there are so many categories and subcategories and the participation is so intense that it's kind of a huge library and I often spend hours to find an interesting topic about which I want to learn more. Though I'm not scared to bring up a topic myself, I prefer to find a thread in which the same questions have already been asked by others.

Personally, I'm not a chatter. That is, talk (through a mike), or participate by typing like a fury, because otherwise people already changed a topic And one thing I really don't like is things like Google Hangouts and Google+ I'm not saying I'll never join, but at the moment I'm looking to find alternatives to Google, rather than participate in yet another one of their products. Besides, I assume most of you live in the United States, so for me in Europe it would be difficult because of the time zones.
Hope this helps a bit.

I will forever use the place as a message board only because I'm on the REALLY shy end of the shyness spectrum. The only minor change I have thought of making to the place is changing the motto, or whatever you call it, below the site name to actually reflect the diversity of the group who regularly post. I think "discussing twenty-first century CONTEMPLATIVE practice" would be more in line with what actually occurs here.

As far as being a shy lurker goes, there's almost nothing you could do to get me to post more. A month ago, I almost posted my daily practice journal for a month just to see what would happen and then didn't. Posting it just feels too invasive and embarrassing. I have a text file of questions to ask but I'm not interested in most of them anymore. Whatever I was experiencing that caused the questions eventually passed and things changed. But I can almost feel another period of frustration with practice looming so some of that stuff might get posted then.

I'm mainly here to read what you people post because I enjoy listening in on what you discuss and because I want to keep up motivation to sit regularly. This is where all the cool people from the old KFD ended up.

Hi Kirk, I thank you for having the courage to just say that you are a very shy person. But I think that what you would write and ask is very valuable for others - who might not even know how shy you are if you don't spell it out.
I hope that you do decide to post some of your stuff. And you might find that being shy isn't necessarily a permanent condition! I used to be shy and I trained myself step by step to practice just ordinary conversations about the weather and things like that, while waiting with all the other moms and dads to get our kids from school. This helped enormously. And while I still feel a bit shy sometimes, people don't notice it.
Another thing I would like to share is that my practice has helped a lot too to help me with self esteem issues and I was very surprised, because I didn't know that things like that could change, I wasn't even trying: I used to feel like everyone was criticizing every thing I said or did or disapproved of how I dressed. At first, I learned that strangers usually have other things to do than walk around, judging all strangers they encounter. And later on, I just felt; everyone is unique, very special in a way, and no one has more or less right to exist and make something of their life. And one day I noticed I didn't care any more whether people looked at me or not, judged me or not. Really, it was completely vanished and that was very freeing as I could now walk around with ridiculously big, rubber boots to walk with my dogs through mud and grass.
Hope this helps, nothing is permanent and shyness can be overcome. It will take years, yes, but it's such a relief when you notice it becomes less and less. And I don't know how old you are, but I think it diminishes when you get older.

Reviewing the mobile interface, which I use equally to the laptop (though I rarely write anything via mobile - just read)... it's fine. it's not snazzy amazing the way something like Wordpress and some other systems do with their mobile interface. But forums in general seem to be a bit clunky, as if a relic of Web 1.0. This one is not bad at all - downright slick compared to most.

One thing going on now re: mobile:
-login is being maintained across devices more often, which is nice. It used to say I was logged out frequently, but then if I logged back in it would say I was already logged in. That used to happen multiple times a day, now only once every few days (perhaps when changing networks? no idea).
-I don't use the social functions at all. I basically use "recent topics" and that's it.
-"New" is indicated when I read on my mobile or laptop, but that I have then read that thread doesn't seem to migrate to the other device, which it USED to. So when later in the day I read on the other device it says "new" on a thread, but if I look, it is stuff I already read. This is a new quirk.
None of these things are a big deal.

Thanks for your work at maintaining everything!