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Philosophy
Here is a list of things that okmeme is NOT:
- del.ici.us
- Pinboard
- Forum
- Discourse
- Social media
Here are a list of things that we would like okmeme to do:
- Link dump (aggregation)
- Link tags
- Chronological
- Search/filter by tags/keywords
- Semi-anonymous user hierarchy
- Semi-anonymous post visibility
- Top down trust hierarchy
With the recent popularization of social media sites and it's algorithm based feeds, you will find a lot of various parties vying for your attention.
okmeme strives to solve this problem in the following ways:
- No algorithm based homepage: if you miss a post, you miss a post. There's always search.
- No point based incentive: no magical internet points to brag about - your post/comments might get votes but you don't get any of it. Equivalent to thumbs on YouTube.
- No incentives to post in general: it's a link dump firstly, "social" features second.
- No crossposting: all discussion takes place in the same section to reduce duplication.
- Hierarchy based user tiers: users are gated to their level and are restricted to certain roles. See semi-anonymous for more detail.
maintainers != contributors
contributors != maintainers
The short answer is: you shouldn't.
The long answer is: use it if you want to. A small polling of fellow humans have shown that there is a demand and a need for a niche-focused, publicly (or privately) sharable, well-indexed link aggregation system. Link dump is a better term in this case as it's supposed to act as a scratch pad of sorts. The content linked is not necessarily good, and that's OK. If you're working on a project and are chatting with someone, and you send them lots of links, well, you're never going to find those links again. That chat app does not have good search, and especially without context, it'll be nearly impossible. So, this adds the context back, with tags. "But doesn't Pinboard have tagging?", you ask. Yes. Yes it does.
See the relevant section in Users design for design details.
The concept of semi-anonymous is inspired as an opposite reaction to forums. Closer to the imageboard style of complete anonymity, but still with accountability.
The simplest way to describe it is that in a hierarchy:
- Users at the same level as you can see your username and posts.
- Users below you in the hierarchy cannot see your usernames (and sometimes posts). You, however, can see theirs.
- Users above you are all anonymized as the user group directly above you even if there are other tiers higher than the one visible to you.
With this semi-anonymity, the idea is that you are always above and below someone. The people below you know there are people above them but have no way of telling them apart. The opposite is true, you know that you are below someone but not who they are. In this sense you are essentially anonymous to the people below you. However, you are kept accountable by your peers at the same level, as well as the people above you.
Keeping in mind that "unregistered user/public" is a valid (and the lowest) hierarchy tier, your posts are essentially anonymous until you log in. This is good for preventing attribution via public search engines/crawlers. However, within the site's ecosystem, you can still attribute correctly.
In the same vein, signups are restricted. This can be accomplished in several ways: 1) allowing user signups but limiting users to move up in tiers 2) invite-only signups, period 3) a mix of both. Ideally, only higher tier users are allowed to promote users up and down. The paradox of needing someone above you to promote you and not knowing who they are is key to the semi-anonymous design. #2 is the current preferred approach.
Moderation is also a top down approach. Upper tiers essentially serve as moderators, however this role is not required of them.
- Poke holes in the design: is there something inherently wrong with the design?