IndieAgora

I am open to any suggestions all users have about how the forum should be structured, what categories should it be organised into?

I never really intended IndieAgora to be rigid. It can be about anything but I am happy to create separate sections of it makes searching and discussion easier.

Let me know in the replies.

I was going to discuss it privately, and I don't fully know if it is a good idea, I am still thinking about it or how it might play out if it were done or agreed to but I'm not sure I would even want it, but I was thinking that I'd at least like to collect a list of all the threads I created and so still control the editing of, and then posdibly to have them all moved to a locked area where my threads go but which anyone can reply in but they can't start a topic in, and that was just to help me organize and keep track of my topics which for me act as temples dedicated to meditations on certain collections of intertwining ideas that build into an overall theme and where things that are related can be aggregated abd collected to further build and emphasize the ideas and their nuances.

I could just manage it in any section though without an exclusive locked area, and also since I'd not like anything to look discouraging to people who might want to post.

My main concern is seeing how the way people think and feel has changed over the years, and to get an idea about what would make the site more appealing to show to people so that they feel more interested in jumping in and getting started. The impression I'm getting from people is that something is turning them off or away about the layout, the appearance, and any learning curve or re-learning curve if they've been away from forums for a little while now.

I've, possibly annoyingly for the people I've been insisting with and soliciting to join, been trying so hard and repeatedly to get them to communicate over this format, but they seem a lot more eager and willing to chat, so maybe something about this site and the available writing on it appears too formal and intimidating for some of them, not that we should start lowering the standards, as I am very pleased with the writing here and that it encourages quality and keeps the standard high, for length, depth, and quality.

Many are from past forums like Godlike Productions, Lunatic Outpost, Free-Minds.org, Wizard Forums, the two big religion or religious forums dot org and dot com, even as far back as Totse, or from various Buddhist forums. They had been exposed to sites like the Thelema forum, E.A. Koetting's Become A Living God, and possibly various gaming and even C.I.A. run "Islamic" forums and who knows what else generally pretty weird stuff, and often pretty unpleasant looking too, but somehow this site may be visually rubbing them the wrong way and not looking like what they are looking for, but it isn't clear what would do better and they might not even know since they aren't thinking about it like that or used to being really sharp about their reactions to every little detail.

I barely care about that element currently because I've reached a point where I'm at least comfortable enough to produce my usual style of writing here, which I was practicing for the last few years on little private forums where I was practically the only person writing and which only a few people would see or be exposed to, with practically no responses or feedback or even knowing if the one other person there who owned the site was even reading any of it lol, perhaps a little similar to this situation too, but my first concern is that I produce anything at all and that it is protected and preserved and retrievable.

So from my experience, the navigation within just this forum section can be improved somehow, as I don't know how aware people are of clicking the title bars up top like "Board Index" and "General Site Information" to navigate around, which is the main method I use.

I'd also like a "recent posts" or "recent activity" area below or somewhere that I can access to see whatever the latest posts are in any thread no matter when they occur or where, which is how I navigated most sites in the past to quickly get to wherever the activity was. Way back in the past I used to enjoy little gimmicks on much more active websites like when a topic would end up getting a flame next to it to show it was a hot topic with a lot of views and activity, but those websites had very large populations when forums in general were more popular also. Those gimmicks acted like advertisements though, they would attract even more attention and activity by highlighting the threads and making people feel like they might matter more somehow due to the effect it had of concentrating attention to anything, and the websites that did that also were profiting from ads.

What made me afraid and turned me off from a lot of places and communication was all kinds of unpleasantness and unpleasant seeming people, peolle who seemed to be political agents trying to manipulate public opinion or post propaganda and agendas and then the totally criminal seeming nutcases on the other hand who seemed obsessive and volatile and very dangerous to be seen by, which increasingly made me feel uncomfortable long after things like the "Patriot Act" were in play.

On a lot of sites, people also just seemed to repeat the same stuff endlessly in little one line responses, totally disinterested in saying anything, thinking about anything, being creative, being entertaining, so offering no substance or stimulation, yet still writing that way for years upon years regularly, just like one sentence per post or less and of their favorite comments to post, gosh it seemed like something had to be wrong with them too.

All those years, bots were being tested extensively over these places too, and earlier A.I. before it was as mainstream or widely accessible to the public. One of the ways in which I was shown how it was being used was by poll manipulation, and otherwise by multiple client programs or whatever they may be called, where a single controller would spam different comments and opinions as different people or "socks" to manipulate the public also and make things look skewed in certain ways.

What always kept me from writing a blog was the sense of initially just talking to nobody, even though that is what I'm probably typically doing anyway, the sense that someone may be watching or may see besides me changes the way I write slightly but at the very least makes it feel more worthwhile to do. The idea of no feedback, even imaginary feedback, in some quiet little unsearchable and unfindable, totally unknown place where I'm the only one I know of and I'm typing really exclusively to myself at first, seemed horrible and depressing to me and not worth doing even though it probably would have been a good practice.

I bring it up because people are saying No to this site, yet are writing what they would or could have written here or somewhere like here on places like facebook which look pretty bad to me, but the difference must be a greater sense of people being around and having things seen by others, the same thing that kept me away from writing a blog might keep people away from sites which don't seem to be very active of have much of a population, plus with so many bad experiences now amply available online, people may also hesitate to risk running into any such thing, especially when emotions are running high and people are on edge and feel like anything is too much.

I was really distressed for example by finding out my writing had been disturbing or annoying for anyone, like it is natural that people actually don't like bothering others or being viewed negatively, and the fear of stepping on anyone's toes when there are now so many darn toes everywhere jutting out makes people just want to hide, maybe even cry.

They reminisce to me and lament about places like Wizard Forums, and I don't fully remember too clearly but it may have looked a bit different, with a wisely chosen light color scheme as I've found dark color schemes seem to not only look less professional or worthwhile in a sense value of "seriousness/realness", but also tends to invite and bring out the worst in people like I often see on Discord, the very name if which may be attracting problematic people who are acting out there. So it was light, maybe alright looking ir better looking to people somehow, and was populated seeming, even though a good number of those populating it seemed to be not that nice or great, since the overall niche is one that brings in a lot of people who are disenfranchised and defensive, the whole social politics of what people with fringe beliefs or ideas feel they have to go through to get what they think other people have who never discuss such things makes them tend towards overkill in various ways, like a bunch of fledgling cult leaders fighting to even find their way up and more prominent in the goo, not separating from it but also coming out on top, and questioning any of it is totally contrary to what they seem to be up to or anything they are interested in experiencing.

I bring that up since it could be that people don't like what it is I like or try to do, they are actually interested in and doing something else entirely when they used to communicate on forums or choose to communicate.

The people I've collected over the years as contacts seem to be a little different at least, or at least much more curious about things and wandering as compared to people who are obsessed with projecting a specifically curated identity as their real daily practice, which to someone like me seems properly nuts and even worthless. Also, if it is about cosplay, then just do it, but it never seems to be enough for people who know they don't have much going on and barely even think about things or look into their experiences, it is all then about forcing and coercing and pressuring people to accept them in whatever way they want to be accepted or acknowledged, even based on whims that change by the second and no amount of worship can appease, it is an endless itch that can't be scratched, abd some people make a career out of it.

What interest would it be to such people to just learn about things, learn about others, play with ideas, even to be amused? We must seem especially lazy to people who, even if unemployed, are always "working" "as" but scarcely "being", which seems to me like a fundamental misuse of what to do with life, but they would think meandering exploration is probably worthless crap.

Again, I'm bringing up these vague seeming things to try to figure out how this site could seem more welcoming to people and to give them what they are looking for, but also to discourage people who might be too different, which it appears that this site is so far achieving at least at such an early stage.

Also, though it may cause confusion for our file keeping purposes which might not be all that important, I've also enjoyed websites which aren't full of lots of filed away seeming areas, and sometimes I like as few clicks as possible, so going right

I do prefer a section when it shows everything right away and have sometimes preferred those which immediately show all their posts on the front page without lots or even any separated out sections or just one main area.

So the threads that are new could end up in the same area as the imported threads, otherwise it will start to look better as that new thread area fills up more, so The Ram could be moved there potentially if you want to keep the older threads organized as separate, even though I'm adding new writing and I'm likely to add new titles and basically make them like they are new threads anyway.

So I don't mind also if you end up moving Boethiah Khaine and all the others into that section which by having so many threads in it makes it also seem more active, besides also for now being more active since I've been posting there. Actually, now that I think about it, dif I re-purpose any and all threads in there or did I end up making new ones in there too? I think I probably just re-purposed threads in there and had otherwise made some recently when the main site and the forum site were less connected briefly. So that makes the two sections probably not that important for now. You could shift it all to one general area or just make it all available for less clicks before getting to the threads and the action.

The color scheme and other superficial aspects could be played with, but it can be hard to know what would hit the right spot for the most people and aldo what would hit the spot for the people who are going to be using it the most, which for now is me and you, and hopefully some of the others return and our newest members also continue to post a lot if they can find the time and energy. My energy has been fluctuating tremendously very recently, and I'm going to try to figure out what that might be about besides the stressors and health issues, to see what motivates me and when and what demotivates me and why that might be.

So on my phone version on Chrome still since I haven't found what to delete to make room for Firefox to test that, the forum for me appears to have no little extra personalization gimmicks that people tend to like and to use to feel more "identified" or projecting some persona or attitude through or honoring some symbol or idea or image through their name and an image attached, which sometimes changes frequently. I never liked signatures where people would have some sentence repeated at the end of their writing, which would become really obnoxious and irritating looking when they would post very briefly and then have this stupid quote or whatever at the bottom, but little images on the side under their name would help to quickly identify them.

Sometimes there were other things like slightly alternating background colors between posts, which if a person doesn't post twice in a row would further clarify that a post has ended and that someone else might be writing, though a more advanced form of that would perhaps at least keep the original poster of the thread getting a slightly unique background color in their thread or bless them with the badge of authority of having "OP" next to their name in their threads or some kind of highlighting.

They also had reward systems of a sort, probably to encourage posting, like stars or some information about their post count or little titles lol, maybe those made people feel appreciated more.

These are just ideas from things I've seen on older forums throughout the years, starting with Totse I think, which was the first forum I was on:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOTSE

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