One way of dividing up the options is: fix the current platform, or find new platform(s). The natural decay process seems to be tilting towards the latter, but there are downsides: the diaspora loses cohesion, and while the new platforms obviously offer some things the current one doesn’t, they are worse than the current one in various ways (it’s really hard to be an occasional lurker on FB or tumblr, especially if you are more interested in the discussion than the “OP”).
If the consensus is to fix the current platform, I suggest trying the simple fixes first. As far as I can tell, that means, break the discussion/main dichotomy, and do something about “deletionist” downvoting. Also, making it clearer how to contribute to the codebase, with a clearer owner. I think that these things should be tried and given a chance to work before more radical stuff is attempted.
If the consensus is to find something new, I suggest that it should be something which has a corporation behind it. Something smallish but on the up-and-up, and willing to give enough “tagging” capability for the community to curate itself and maintain itself reasonably separate from the main body of users of the site. It should be something smaller than FB but something willing to take the requests of the community seriously. Reddit, Quora, StackExchange, Medium… this kind of thing, though I can see problems with each of those specific suggestions.
One way of dividing up the options is: fix the current platform, or find new platform(s). The natural decay process seems to be tilting towards the latter, but there are downsides: the diaspora loses cohesion, and while the new platforms obviously offer some things the current one doesn’t, they are worse than the current one in various ways (it’s really hard to be an occasional lurker on FB or tumblr, especially if you are more interested in the discussion than the “OP”).
If the consensus is to fix the current platform, I suggest trying the simple fixes first. As far as I can tell, that means, break the discussion/main dichotomy, and do something about “deletionist” downvoting. Also, making it clearer how to contribute to the codebase, with a clearer owner. I think that these things should be tried and given a chance to work before more radical stuff is attempted.
If the consensus is to find something new, I suggest that it should be something which has a corporation behind it. Something smallish but on the up-and-up, and willing to give enough “tagging” capability for the community to curate itself and maintain itself reasonably separate from the main body of users of the site. It should be something smaller than FB but something willing to take the requests of the community seriously. Reddit, Quora, StackExchange, Medium… this kind of thing, though I can see problems with each of those specific suggestions.