Should we move KFD to Ning?

What do you think? Is it time?

Here is the URL to NIng, if you want to get a look:

www.ning.com

Or is there some other platform that is better? Please discuss.

I have no experience of Ning, but I still think that KFD only should move if the existing forum can be migrated to the new platform.

Here's Andy W's reply, cut and pasted from our discussion on Facebook:

"Ning lets you build your own social network, which I think would be a better fit for the kind of community that KFD is. Our real strength is in supporting each other's practice, whether through advice from more experienced yogis, or just a simple gesture of sympathy from someone at the same stage. If we had everyone's latest meditation logs up on one page, like Facebook's news feed, then it'd really make it easier to see what everyone is up to and offer support and get advice. At the moment, you need to really be dedicated to a yogi's practice thread to keep up with what they are doing, and that inevitably means that some people have much more discussion on their threads than others, who might feel slightly left out. I also think that Ning would "futureproof" KFD. Wetpaint hasn't changed in years, and is increasingly hard to use on mobile browsers. Ning, on the other hand, has Android and iPhone apps, and benefits from all the improvements that the team are doing. We could still have all the pages and the discussion forums that we have now, with the added benefit of futureproofing and social network-style interaction. That's my two cents, anyway. There might be better platforms than Ning for doing this kind of thing, but I definitely think that's the direction the KFD site needs to move. Happy to talk more if you like! Check out: www.ning.com/about/spotlight/ and www.ning.com/about/product/

-PEJN, I'm guessing that for you it's a question of retaining access to the existing threads? Does anyone know if it would be a major project to move them?

-Thanks, Andy, that's valuable info. I agree with your comment about "futureproofing" and I worry from time to time that Wetpaint will simply stop working someday, with no warning. It's been clear for some time that the administrators are not committed to keeping the platform up to date or even keeping the performance at previous levels (it used to load much faster).

"-PEJN, I'm guessing that for you it's a question of retaining access to the existing threads? Does anyone know if it would be a major project to move them?"

I definitely wouldn't want to lose the old threads. So much valuable information. To save them, we'd really need someone to write a program (once a new site was up and running) that would be able to harvest the data and copy it over. I am not a programmer, so I have no idea how to do this. But I do have a yogi friend of mine (I keep trying to convince him to post on here!) who is a programmer, so I will ask him. Watch this space.

Alternatives to Ning include:
www.socialgo.com/
wall.fm/
grou.ps

There is also buddypress.org which is Wordpress powered, and free.

A crystal ball would be useful at this point to see which of these platforms has the most longevity!

If Ning or some equivalent alternative was secure from Google's prying bots, then I'd be in favour of it. I discovered last night that my practice journal was available to anyone who cared to do a simple Google search for my name. Lesson learned. I'll use aliases from now on.

Yes, the move to a social network model should not make it necessary to abandon pseudonyms. Very much agreed.

I agree with everyone on here. If there was the ability to move to a more modern platform but keep the existing content somehow, I am all for it. We cannot lose these valuable practice journals though. Here is how to back up wetpaint: splats2.wetpaint.com/page/Back+Ups

Folks, why move from one publicly managed place to another? I'm concerned about privacy and ownership issues relating to both our own posts and all the other content that gets placed here. Publicly managed forums, message boards and social media sites do not care about our stuff as much as we do, and they do what they want and we can't control them or their policies and processes. Our stuff becomes their stuff, and they do what they want when they want.

Thoughts?

By "publically managed" I guess you mean, "on a website owned by someone else, i.e. a company". I don't know exactly what the ownership rules are with Ning or the others. They aren't free services like Wetpaint or Facebook, so there's a chance that whoever pays the fee (whether Kenneth or us as a collective) would own the posts. We'd need to read the T&Cs. I agree that it'd be good to own our content outright, but let's not rule out using existing platforms since they are much less of a financial and technical headache than building our own from scratch!

The ideal would be to find a make-your-own-social network platform that was free and opensource, but which we could control and own ourselves, and where there was a strong enough developer community to keep the thing ticking over the years.

"The ideal would be to find a make-your-own-social network platform that was free and opensource, but which we could control and own ourselves, and where there was a strong enough developer community to keep the thing ticking over the years."

Yep. Exactly.

I'm not technical at all so I don't know if it's appropriate to our needs or any good for that matter, but there is Elgg. www.elgg.org

Well since this thing in its current state is basically just a message board. Why not port it over to a real message board platform on a hosted domain for now? Or like Andy suggested something more social like you guys are talking about...there are open source options out there like Andy suggested. Buddypress sites can look pretty nice.

I don't care what we do, as long as we get rid of the "Do you find this valuable?" button. I get the impression there's someone (not even part of our community) randomly cruising around the various threads poking "no" just to be a pain in the arse.

"I don't care what we do, as long as we get rid of the "Do you find this valuable?" button. I get the impression there's someone (not even part of our community) randomly cruising around the various threads poking "no" just to be a pain in the arse. "

I have formed the same impression.

It's not random. There is a pattern to the poking of the buttons

What's the pattern?

People. Pay attention from poster to poster. Who's getting the likes and dislikes? It's very childish, almost funny, that folks will devote energy to it in that kind of systematic manner.

"
"The ideal would be to find a make-your-own-social network platform that was free and opensource, but which we could control and own ourselves, and where there was a strong enough developer community to keep the thing ticking over the years."

Yep. Exactly.

"

WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and a dynamic content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL. It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1 million" websites and as of August 2011 manages 22% of all new websites. WordPress is currently the most popular CMS in use on the Internet. -- Wikipedia

If KFD paid $5 or 10 monthly for private web hosting with WordPress, it/we could own the blogging site. The hoster would back it up. We'd have to maintain it ourselves. But one of the reasons it's most popular blogging tool is that once configured it runs itself unless you want to extend it with programming or plug ins.

My wife and I are programmers. She just replaced a client's home grown website with WordPress and everyone is very happy with it. The look and feel is very customizeable. Probably others here more experienced with it than I am who can confirm or refute.

WetPaint has a couple of ways to export supposedly the entire site. But don't know what it would take to port it to another blogging platform, like WordPress. Just a thought.

This is an important thread as it entails the future of this community so... bump!

This is indeed important and because of that several very long time KFDh members have created a hosted site, registered a domain, installed community software and will continue to talk to Kenneth about the possibility of moving KFDh to that site. This is not something that can be done overnight and it's critical not to destroy all the pages and posts here, so great care is being taken to figure out how to move everything, should Kenneth agree, lock stock and barrel to the new site. It will be owned by Kenneth and this community and will not be subject to the whims of large companies that do whatever they want, when they want. It will also have all the features that we should have - social media connections and hooks, better message board technology, ease of use, look and feel enhancements, and like "stuff."

Please stay tuned.

Good news indeed! But might it be a good idea to get some feedback from members of this community about what exactly we'd like to see on the new site? I realise that this is being done by volunteers, and so all wishlist items might not be feasible, but surely it wouldn't hurt to have a few guiding principles?

My two main "wishlist" items would be:
- A social media style for the site, with status updates for practice logs (the full log could be viewed on a yogi's profile)
- Smartphone compatibility

Absolutely we need feedback, Andy. Please recommend away! That applies to all of you, by the way. What do you want to have available?

From most important to least:

I'd like to be able to log in with openID.

Threaded discussions.

A working search function, so I don't have to use some external search engine. Ideally, external search engine crawlers would be denied access (i.e. a really private forum without leaks to google and its ilk)

An easy way to see what's new, and "mark as read" when I'm done.

No like/dislike buttons, no "become friends" buttons.

Email instead of PMs. - I don't want to have to maintain yet another inbox.

No "social media" integration - no twitte/facebook/g+/whatever buttons. Or the option to turn them off without having to fiddle with NoScript.

A way to turn profile pictures off.

Cheers,
Florian

I agree with most of what Florian says. I think particularly the "dislike" feedback should be abandoned, as it is negative and seems to hurt and inhibit people. I don't see anything wrong with positive feedback though, as it is useful to know when the board finds something particularly meaningful or inspiring. Some boards allow a small number of "likes" per day, per user. That way getting a "like" isn't common and so a lack of "likes" doesn't mean exactly the same thing as "dislike" -- if you know what I mean.

The reason for having a "like" type feature is so that everyone doesn't have to make a string of "Great post!" posts after every great post.

I agree with dropping the "friends" mechanism too. I consider everyone here my friend, but I don't want to send out a bunch of invites and whatnot. Instead of a "dislike" button, maybe some people would like the option to quietly ignore certain posters instead. Not everyone gets along. Some personalities just seem to rub each other the wrong way. This would be a non-offensive way of filtering for those who find themselves annoyed.

I don't mind PMs, but email would serve just as well.

And yeah, turning the pictures off to make it easier to read the board at work without broadcasting that I am goofing off would be great!