
Show HN: Webwide – a discussion community for web designers, devs and makers - xadz
https://hello.webwide.io
======
puranjay
Extraordinary that we're coming full circle with the internet. Slack is the
new IRC and "communities" are the new forums.

Makes me think how much collective human knowledge we're losing as all the old
forums go extinct (Archive doesn't backup everything).

~~~
Jaygles
I hate the overuse of the term community nowadays. All it is is an attempt to
prod users into contributing more whilst the "community" will never even once
consider contributing back to the user(s).

Live streamers are guilty of this. Its become a standard for Twitch
broadcasters to call their viewer base a community in, what I guess is, a way
to get viewers to think tipping the broadcaster is benefitting the "community"
while only the broadcaster benefits.

~~~
xadz
I hope we get a pass with the word. At this stage any revenue made from
supporter memberships, the only revenue stream atm, is being funnelled back in
to the platform and documented transparently in monthly updates.

------
xadz
Hi HN! I launched Webwide this week. A bit of a throwback to the traditional
forum. About time they made a comeback in this space I think!

Let me know if you have any questions or comments at all.

~~~
KajMagnus
Curious about how this is different from
[https://www.designernews.co](https://www.designernews.co) and dev.to? :- )

B.t.w. I'd suggest including a link to
[https://webwide.io](https://webwide.io), otherwise people (incl I) might
believe everything is behind a login wall.

This:

> Get writing \n Start sharing writing without the pressure of a blog.

Is there a place for "blog posts" over at Webwide? Like posting to Medium? But
for web things? Or how does / will it work?

~~~
adventured
I had the same impression about the hello.webwide subdomain, thinking that a
person had to sign up to see everything.

I'm certain that impression is intentional. They're using it as a conversion
page, which is of course why it was the page posted to HN. Dark pattern in
action.

~~~
xadz
Hi, sorry! Didn't want to mislead. I am of the impression that not knowing
it's all in the open is a bad thing so definitely not something I wanted to
hide away.

Of course the page was built with conversions in mind, for the good of the
project I want to spell out the benefits and convince people to sign-up but
certainly not in a dark way.

I've added some more links including the logo, a view all discussions button
and a browse as guest down by the bottom CTA to communicate this better.

~~~
mekane8
I noticed the "browse as guest" link as I was about to (begrudgingly) sign up.
Thanks for adding that.

After poking around a bit, I felt like I could use a very brief introduction,
like "what should you do first" suggestions.

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perspective1
User beware: "You are granting us with a non-exclusive, permanent,
irrevocable, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content in
connection with the Service."

...and

"We may remove or modify any Content submitted at any time, with or without
cause, with or without notice."

~~~
xadz
It’s my understanding that covers us to actually display your content on our
website and distribute on social etc. which is sort of the bread and butter of
a discussion community.

The latter is surely standard across any community for moderation.

Users have the ability to edit and remove their own content to take it off the
platform.

Happy to receive any advice on how this could be more palatable!

~~~
staz
IANAL but doesn't `irrevocable` means that user legally can't remove their own
content from the platform?

~~~
codingdave
IANAL either, but I do not read that as a lack of permission to remove your
own content. It sounds more like a statement that the the user cannot expect
the site owners to remove all their content on demand.

Which sounds like it is in direct conflict with GDPR.

~~~
xadz
GDPR applies to personally identifiable information, this may apply to some
content posted. Of course no ToS can override your rights under GDPR and there
are tools built-in to comply with any data requests.

~~~
codingdave
GDPR grants you control of your data, including the right to have it removed.
And if you have tools built in to comply with such requests, then you
absolutely can remove the "irrevocable" clause from your TOS.

~~~
xadz
As I say I am no lawyer but will be getting some more personalised advice on
wording since we seem to be growing! I hope you can see there are no ill
intentions but I understand that it is good to have these things in black and
white. Many thanks. :)

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tiborsaas
Just a feedback on registration. I used github connect, then you ask for me to
type both username and email, but you should already know these info. I'm
using a lazy third party sign in just to avoid this and skip the activation
email procedure.

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cdata
I mean for this comment to be constructive, but it is steeped in my personal
opinions about the web and the rise of social networks within it, so I would
like to emphasize that any apparent animus is not directed at your product,
which seems nice and good intentioned. That said:

I personally wish that any forum for discussions about the web and related
professional and/or creative work would be (wait for it) open and readable by
the entire web. To me, the advent of walled-garden / login-gated content silos
was a milestone in a long, degenerative process for the web overall. This
forum seems to follow in that mold, preventing me from viewing any of the
related content without first creating an account, signing some TOS or EULA
and logging in. To be honest, this whole arrangement reminds me of
ExpertsExchange, which some might recall from the days before StackOverflow
was a thing.

I completely agree with the premise of this product, but I will always caution
my colleagues to avoid closed forums like this.

[Edit] At the time of writing, there was no obvious way to view content in the
site without logging in. OP has since shared a link below showing how to
browse the content without logging in.

~~~
xadz
All public discussions are available on the main domain without a login:
[https://webwide.io/](https://webwide.io/)

Sorry that wasn’t clear! I’ll add a browse as guest button to the landing
page.

~~~
cdata
Thanks, I definitely looked through your landing page more than once trying to
find something like that.

~~~
xadz
No worries thank you for your thoughtful comment and feedback!

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dpau
i would be much more interested if it was built on open source forum software
that we could all improve and use to build our own communities. in fact i
wonder why OP didn't use an open source alternative like phpbb, flarum, or
discourse but instead went with a proprietary solution?

~~~
xadz
Great question! XenForo is mature software developed over almost a decade by a
great team in the UK. It is unfortunately proprietary and this was a decision
making factor when choosing a platform.

The only other contender that matched my vision for a revival of a more
traditional style forum was phpBB and I don’t think it would have been up to
scratch for the eagle eyed and fairly demanding tech community.

Discourse, Flarum, Vanilla are all great options but I don’t think they were
well suited to what I wanted to build. Not enough to set them apart from other
communities in this space.

Building a bespoke solution wasn’t an option when time commitments and budget
are considered.

The data is all well portable and neatly organised so if those needs change
and can be reconsidered as we grow what is the best decision.

~~~
KajMagnus
> Not enough to set them apart from other communities in this space

That sounds interesting to me. Was looking different, a goal in itself? (if I
interpret you correctly?)

(Interesting that going back to the "old style" forums, is the way to look
different, nowadays :- ))

~~~
xadz
Sort of! For starters, Discourse, Flarum & Vanilla all share a similar
structure of a single feed of posts organised by tags which is quite different
to an "old style" forum where there are individual boards. These kinds of set-
ups are possible in those ones but aren't highlighted as much. But not only
that...

Flarum is not at v1 yet and isn't really recommended for production. It's also
quite feature light and I would be hesitant to expand upon it while it's not
stable yet.

I've never seen a Discourse forum that doesn't look like another Discourse
forum, have you? They all look the same! I had a pre-launch landing page up
where something like 75% was on desktop. Discourse seems to have a mobile
first, desktop never approach to its design and appears to be difficult to
customise. I felt it was a sub-optimal experience suited better to communities
centered around a single topic or perhaps support.

Vanilla is the most mature of these new style options but just wasn't doing it
for me.

I don't think going a bit "retro" is a bad thing. I thought XenForo had a
great balance between retaining that classic, nostalgic, familiar vibe while
still providing lots of nice QoL features to go with it.

------
m_b
Another silo I can’t know how it works, contribute to, nor host it myself.

No thanks!

~~~
t0astbread
Tbf this is a prime case of software that is justifiable as a service as it's
inherently non-local.

Aside from that isn't HN also a silo like that by your definition?

~~~
quickthrower2
HN source is available and there are some hosted clones out there.

~~~
t0astbread
Nice, I didn't know that. Makes me wonder, is there anything like HN but for
more niche communities? Like subreddits but with a greater focus on link
sharing and discussion and less original posts.

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digitalboss
A sad reminder of the Geeklist old days. I'll give it a spin, congrats on the
launch Adam!

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sandov
Looks really nice, but so did Medium when it started, and look at them now.

On one hand I'm excited, on the other, I'm cautious not to funnel too much
time into something that may _Mediumify_ (i.e. turn into absolute garbage).

~~~
xadz
I _hate_ Medium with a passion! I totally understand your reservations and I
would be the same. Running costs are low and I've enjoyed the forum world for
10+ years so I don't foresee there being any need to undertake any of those
awful tactics.

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arkitaip
What makes your community inclusive?

~~~
xadz
I like inclusive in many senses of the word. No matter your background,
technology, skill-level, etc. Inclusive to those who share our values that is.
Trying to achieve this by:

\- Clear messaging from the start setting this tone to hopefully attract
people who share those values

\- An enforced Code of Conduct with zero tolerance on hate speech and growing
enforcement team

\- Spaces for people using any and all technologies including code-free

\- No areas off limits to free users

I anticipate there being many lessons learned along the way but very excited
to see where we can go with it. Thanks for checking it out! :)

~~~
the-dude
Do examples of communities which are not inclusive to those who share their
values exist?

~~~
xadz
Ha, I see what you are saying. I’ll look at how I can word that better. Thanks
for your feedback!

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jaequery
Care to share the tech stack behind the forum?

~~~
jaequery
Nvm, I see that it is a forum using xenforo.com. I was gonna say I was pretty
impressed if it was built from scratch.

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melvinroest
Redacted

~~~
arkitaip
You should post this in a separate Show HN.

