(2021-12-12) Rosano Platform Puzzle Pieces For Sustainable Community

Rosano: Platform puzzle pieces for sustainable community. This year, I started to prioritize community building, which led to the creation of the Ephemerata newsletter and The Café forum (see My mother's gift for some origins). Seeking a hub to house everything and make it accessible with one account, I was determined to make it work with discussion forum software

It's possible for me to 'build my own system' but that would take time from doing what it's designed to support, especially as a single-person operation; this might be a case where it's better to use existing parts and close gaps by creating plugins or automating with tools like Zapier or n8n. Let's review the existing systems…

Community (Talking together)

Discourse is modern forum software that onboards people to participate, encourages reading, and nudges the right things... As much as I hoped to do everything here and leverage its various affordances for community, it demands more effort (or friction) for people to post, and it's not so elegant as a 'home' for long-form writing

I have despised Discord for its chaotic arcade-like approach to communication, but after learning of a unified notifications pane which doesn't require me to click and bounce around dozens of channels to keep up, it's more manageable for me. The main advantage is that it's low-friction, either when signing up (as one account is shared across multiple communities) or when posting ('easily posting quick things' is not just for 'less dedicated people' but also makes it simpler for your tribe to participate); people can sign up and move from passive to more active at their own pace

Funding (Sustainable income)

Open Collective is a new way to crowdfund on a recurring basis. Unlike more popular patronage platforms, it promotes transparency and implements fiscal hosting so that one doesn't need a legal entity to receive payments

Ghost has made me turn my head several times in the last few months

The ideal solution

none of these individual projects span both community and payments

I'm inclined to put Ghost closer to the center