joshgachnang
commented
9 years ago So I thought this over a bunch, and it seems like this comes down to "is inCrowd software to make a small, private group, or a platform for making custom social network sites"? I'd say it is the former but should move towards the latter. The number is arbitrary, and not actually enforced currently.
I do think there should be a target audience size. I don't intend to make the next Facebook or Twitter. Those are big, complex, custom systems, and supporting really big and really small sites is nearly impossible. I think from a platform perspective, the Wordpress model makes the most sense: generally run on a single server, tens to thousands (at the most) of users, lots of plugins, themes, etc.
However, I'm one dev working on this in my free time, and running an instance of it for my friends. Every bit of platform added is more complexity, slower dev cycles, more complex testing, etc. Personally, I'd love to see this used for the slew of smaller artist fan sites that have been popping up all over. Maybe even subscription-type sites (live.deadmau5.com is a good example of a much larger version, but there are tons with only a few hundred or thousand subscribers). So I want to get there and it is the goal, but it's going to take some time and work. Pull requests welcome :)
As far as admin, it's already available (at /admin/) via the standard Django admin interface. You can make users staff and superusers, delete posts, etc. I think it could be a lot better, and I actually considered a voting system at one point, but I think that makes more sense as an optional plugin.
A capacity of 25? Why not a capacity of 5000 like other successful social media sites? (or atleast maybe something greater) How am I supposed to have a controlled group with my graduating class (65 people) or a group with my Freshman year Witte Hall floor mates (70-ish people). Those would be two of the more important groups that I could see incrowd being used for. You could think of the reasons groups like these could be advantageous.
Anyways another point that was discussed along this topic, since anybody is allowed to add people to the group, maybe there could be a central group "admin"? So when someone goes and adds Frank to the "Amherst High School Graduating Class of 2011" crowd that wasn't in the graduating class, the "central admin" could remove Frank.
If the "admin" idea takes away from the "allowing everybody to add people to the group thing" then maybe something a little more creative. Maybe along the line of a voting system. Maybe Frank wasn't part of the graduating class, but he was part of the graduating class for a while and transferred schools. This "voting system" could allow the core members of the group to decide whether Frank should be allowed into the group. This could be an interesting "exclusivity" feature so that the "core people" that started the group could be a little more strict about who is allowed in the group.
--Maybe these are dumb ideas, but Davis thought these were worth mentioning.