[Discuss] adding new category for topics from Twitter and Reddit

I’m trying to gain more attraction from people who are more interested on such topics. And some of the topics not only worth discussing on Twitter, but also worth discussing more seriously on a forum. My argument is with such topics we would have more activities and later more contents for better SEO. Then new comers to Clojure world has easier access to us on the forum.

What do you think?

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Good idea. I noticed you posted some stuff from such sites, it sometimes generates interesting discusion. +1 vote for me.

Personally, I’m not sure if it’s a good idea. From the perspective of someone new to Clojureverse, I’m still determining its utility for myself.

A key differentiator for me is whether it’s providing valuable content I can’t find elsewhere. The signal-to-noise ratio also has to be pretty high. If a lot of the content or topics are things that are being discussed elsewhere (such as Twitter or Reddit), my attention is now going to be split between the source and the conversation here if I want to keep up with the conversation as a whole.

What I think I would find valuable in Clojureverse is a source of high-quality discussion that I can’t find elsewhere.

This also ties in with another concern I have with Clojureverse and the online Clojure community: there’s a mailing list, Slack (which is less than ideal given that its history is separate from the actual conversation), Reddit, and now Clojureverse. From my perspective there’s a risk of splitting a lot of conversations, making it difficult for people new to the community to figure out where’s the better places to participate or get information. That’s hard to evaluate when you’re new.

That said, I also am not convinced that we’ve really got the “conversation” thing sussed out yet in the Clojure community, so perhaps Clojureverse may actually be a better solution. With respect to Twitter and Reddit, however, those are huge platforms that already have their own conversations: pulling those into Clojureverse feels like it’s splitting those conversations rather than developing its own value for itself.

That plays into arguments adding encouraging adding threads from Twitter and Reddit in an SEO effort as well: to some extent its similar to blogspamming. FWIW, I’ve found the recent spate of reposts from Twitter to be more noise than signal: a few have fostered some good discussion, but it’s decreased the value of the “new posts” thread on the whole for me. I’d like to see Clojureverse succeed on its own merits.

Like I said, I’m new to Clojureverse and am figuring out whether or not it’s useful for me. But these are things I’ve been actively thinking about while I evaluate it. That also may mean that the vision of those already using Clojureverse may be different from what I’m looking for, and that’s fine, too.

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I have similar concerns as @grzm but definitely agree that there is value in provoking conversations.

Maybe a weekly summary of what has been going on on Reddit and Twitter (curated a la The Repl) could be a good balance here.

I appreciate the posting of topics from twitter/reddit and feel it’s a good thing and provides a way to connect the discussions in other places and open stuff up for discussion on clojureverse. Also I share the concerns with spitting the conversations too much, but prefer discussions happen here because slack/twitter are unlikely to provide lasting and organized search results, where clojureverse will be an excellent resource for future developers searching google years from now. My preference would be for the core team to encourage use of clojureverse over slack because it’s lasting and topic based.

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Here’s my observation: forums can keep growing and growing, as time goes, more new comers will join, so you can’t achieve both goals with one forum,

  1. high quality,
  2. high activity.

So we have to choose. For me I would choose high activity, and let Reddit be keep being the source of posts with high quality(not sure what @plexus would choose…).

As time goes, more answers and solutions will be written on this forum, which means better SEO and more exposure to Clojure developers and potential Clojure developers. And they will contribute back to the activity.

There are not many topics in Clojure if we limit the time to single days. So I would prefer collecting topics from around the community and post them on ClojureVerse. Even further, I would try to forward messages from Slack and post them as topics on ClojureVerse for higher activities.

And for noise, it’s more difficult to control noises on forums given that it opens access to the whole web. You can control in chat channels, on ranking list like Reddit, at where there’s larger chance to find high-quality contents.

My thoughts on this are generally that a post should never be just a link. If you’re going to post a link, tell us why you’re posting it, add some interesting insight, provide some value.

Under Showcase, Your Projects and Libraries, Blogs, etc. people are encouraged to post their own stuff, but there too a post should not be just a link. Explain what you’re linking to and why people should care.

For linking to Twitter / Reddit threads and other things I’d say the same thing: add some words, add some value.

For instance, if you’ve seen a few separate things and you feel there’s some interesting connection, then use that as your starting point.

I noticed that several people are discussing <topic>, like this post by dagobert duck and this other thread on lemon site, which reminds me of what other language has been doing. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Or maybe you want to discuss a specific aspect

A lot has been said about the recent keynote by Marouane Fellaini, but one topic that I feel hasn’t gotten much discussion yet is <some specific aspect you want to talk about>

Or just

I came across this blog post and particularly liked <mention specific things>, it made me realize that <personal insight>.

I also like @martinklepsch’s idea of writing a The REPL-like “this week in Clojure” post. That would actually provide value to people without adding much noise. That’s real commitment though, and I don’t think it’s really necessary to have that.

  1. high quality,
  2. high activity.

So we have to choose.

I think it’s clear that for me quality >>> activity.

This is a forum, not a link aggregator. If you want to stay current with every little thing in the clojure world then I think Reddit + the announcements channel on clojurians are more suitable. This is a place for conversations. If a link can spark that conversation then sure, post it, but while you’re at it actually start a conversation.

I would not worry too much about SEO. We’re doing fine here. We don’t need a huge influx of new traffic, we need people who feel at home here and want to help to build a positive, considerate community. I feel like bit by bit those people are finding their way already. It hasn’t been that long since the relaunch and already we have a really nice level of activity, and have established ourselves as a recognizable brand in the clojure space, so personally I’m not too worried about that.

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Roger that. I would add more words next I sharing.

For that choice thing, I observed it several times when a community was growing rapidly with lots of beginners coming to this area. Not sure if such a day would come in Clojure(Script) community. I treasure high quality content as well, it just becomes harder in a situation I described. Can’t really predict the future anyway, maybe we will never need that choice.

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:+1:

As for a new category, instead of having a twitter/reddit/news category, I’d rather add “semantic” categories to place those things in. e.g. maybe we need some more categories under #topics, or maybe a #philosophy category would be cool.

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Can’t really tell the tiny differences between different words. “topics” should be fine for tagging those topics, or something like “sharing”, “discussions”?

My point is to have categories based on what the posts are about. Web dev, machine learning, tooling…

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