There’s been some bitching about the Flashcoders list recently, which made me think back over the different ways Flashers have gotten together and shared ideas and stuff over the years.
When I came in, around 1999, it was all FlashKit. I consider myself a n00b because I missed out on the FlashPad and Dreamless. Then school let out and FlashKit filled up with script kiddies, and most of us moved on to Were-Here or UltraShock, with a few going to ActionScript.org. There was the era of the WH/US wars, where nobody won. Last time I was at WH, there were tumbleweeds. I’m not sure what’s happening with US. AS.org seemed to weather the storm and come out on top. But largely, the days of the forums have died out.
The next age was the age of the mailing lists, Flashcoders being the king of the jungle. I remember going onto Flashcoders years ago, back in the Flash 5 days. It was a very small community with people were talking about prototypes and AsSetProp and horrible sounding things like ACK and FLEM. It sounded exciting but I had no idea what they were talking about. I looked around and backed out quietly. A while later I went back and it was a bit bigger, a bit more mainstream, and I was a bit more experienced, and it pretty much took over for me where the forums left off.
Then it got bigger. And bigger. And BIGGER. One of the things (for me anyway) that led to the demise of the forums was people loggin on, signing up, posting some simple question without even looking at the page they posted on. Half the time the same question would be a bit further down the same page. At worst, the next page. Stuff like that kills the sense of community and just pisses you off. And that’s what I saw happening to Flashcoders. Same questions, pretty much on a weekly or even daily cycle. God forbid you call someone out on it too. Then there was the off-topic stuff, and worse than the off-topic was the complaints about off-topic. Yeah, an OT post is bad, but the 35 posts complaining about it are unbearable. I found my finger getting tired from hitting DELETE, so I finally unsubscribed about a year ago. The above posts ensure me that this hasn’t gotten much better.
About the time the lists started getting unruly, the Flash blogosphere (I hate that word, but it fits) started solidifying. Everyone started getting a blog. I finally gave in and started this one. MXNA and FullAsAGoog started aggregating them. For me, this is how I stay in touch with the Flash community now. This IS the Flash community for me. I like it. If someone wants to post about their sick cat or their bad experience with Best Buy, they can. It’s off topic, yeah, but easier to ignore than 93 emails bombarding your inbox. The one thing that does get really annoying is when something happens in the community and everyone decides they need to blog about it. Yes, yes, for the love of God, I KNOW that Product X Beta N was released today!!!
I imagine that eventually MXNA will just have so many blogs that it gets unmanagable. Already they’ve added so many in the last year. Maybe they will add some more complex filtering, or something, Or you can always use your own aggregator and just add the ones you are interested in.
Or perhaps something new will come along to commune around. Any insight? Or maybe all the guys who started out on Flashkit are just too busy working at their high profile jobs or own startups and raking in huge gobs of money to have time for being part of the community.
Hey Keith,
Personally I think there should be some kind of specialized web app. A regular forum or a mailing list doesnt really cut it. My idea (that probably needs a lot of thinking through) is that you can mark down OT people or idiots and mark up the smart people. The forums could then be staggered so you can only post in forums that are your level and below (but read all). The drawback is that it would probably get too cliquey or that it would be frustrating for someone who wants to join in on an advanced topic but can’t because they just joined yesterday.
Flashdot? 😉
Keith, something you said in your post made me curious how you read email. You said you got sick of hitting delete? What I have been doing is using Outlook Express. I’d setup mail rules, and all lists would go into their own folders. Every 15 minutes or so, if I saw the Flashcoders folder having say 12 new messages with its name bolded, I’d click on it scan the headers, and if nothing jumped out, I’d just select all, and mark as read.
How is it you were “deleting” posts? Just curious how you read the list.
Yeah, the finger hurting from hitting delete was more tongue in cheek. Yeah, I had filters and a flashcoders folder and pretty much did the same thing you describe. It’s just that there was a lot of scanning, a lot of selecting all, and a lot of deleting, compared to actual reading.
Not to mention that if you went a few hours or a day without checking it, you might be scanning many dozen or even a hundred or more messages, and still only reading a couple.
Personally, I really miss We’re Here. In my opinion it was simply unmatchable in it’s prime. There were a lot of talented people on there, and it’s really those people that I still think of as the backbone in the Flash community. So much great talent in one place. We all knew each other, we all helped, we all helped push things forward. To this day, I still feel the 25 lines contest is an amazing bar that we set within that community context.
I loved helping and contributing on WH. I learned from teaching, because it got me to explore ideas or face problems I may not have on my own projects. When it went down is when I really started to withdraw from the Flash Community in that sense and just contribute through the blog – though that’s become way more infrequent now too.
Sites like Flashkit had a -ton- of information, but it seemed the noise ratio was too high for my tastes. Flashcoders had good information and good people, but it’s format was difficult to follow for me.
A part of me really misses the collaboration and inspiration. I don’t get to see much of what’s happening with some of those people (like Lifaros, Diu, etc) – just the ones like yourself that blog regularly.
I would love nothing more than for something to come back like WH was. But for now, I’ll pour a 40oz for my fallen communities.
Agreed, WH and even FK in their prime were awesome. What’s funny is that I’m still in touch with some of those people personally. For example, I knew tyard (Todd Yard) from WH and I think FK for a long time, then met him at a couple of FlashForwards, and worked on a few books with him. Then he moved to Boston and we are now co-workers at Brightcove.
Also, Diu (James … I forget his last name) moved to Boston and I see him regularly at our user group meetings.
I actually like the name Flashdot 🙂 But I’m wondering if the digg model would work better. Interesting topics get voted to the top of the forum or something.
That’s awesome. I don’t think anyone from that crowd is in / around Minneapolis. I know James still drops by my blog from time to time – it’s good to know he’s still around. Give my best to those guys! 🙂
I like the idea of using the digg model. Combine it with an aggregator. I like that MXNA lets you view the most popular (most clicked) posts, but a little voting could allow badly-titled posts to get their recognition, and dud posts that only sound cool would get pushed down a bit.
Hmmm… sounds like a fun project…
I like “Flashdot” with a digg model, too. I’m not gonna even think about tackling it, but the idea is now out there. 🙂
Interesting idea.
I would almost expand it though, so that at the heart of it is more of a discussion (like a forum), but then the thread can get tags (ala delicious / flickr) and items will always be there for reference and clarification. Then add the ability for the digg model of community voting to play in for another way to view the data.
In addition, through user contributions (IE, people helping answer things or just presenting good content) the users would get ratings by proxy. That way solid contributers to the community will start to naturally have bettr overall scores. Another layer to find / recognize more trustable content, incentive for people to contribute, and possibly more lasting than something that is strictly a forum.
I think I might give it a go 🙂
I really appreciate the perspective that post provided. I jumped into the Flash community a little after MX2004 and had no real sense of the chronology and a limited sense of the history of the community. As time passed I developed a better idea of who people are but Something about the “step back panoramic” that you gave through the eyes of someone who has seen these communities come and go is really refreshing.
I guess the reality is that even the best of things will eventually get innundated by the many who have heard that it’s the best and lack the respect for the protocol and the history and even those who grew with the community will eventually inevitably feel as if they have gotten as much as they will and in turn given as much as they can to that particular community.
Thanks once again for that refreshing perspective. It makes me look at these “elders” in a different light.
Mani
3966 unread messages and counting in my Flashcoders filter in Gmail. Yeah, I think it’s time to move on. It has been for a while, but Gmail has made it so easy to just plain ignore it if I want to. Gmail is pretty handy for searching through the noise too. I often look at Flashcoders for fun though, just to see who’s ranting about what. And occasionally I see something that I can and want to help with, but that’s becoming less frequent. Anyway, Flashcoders is my crack addiction.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane Keith. I do miss the old days of FlashKit. That site was the bomb at one point.
My main flash home has always been the kirupa forum (http://www.kirupaforum.com). I haven’t been visiting quite as frequently as I used to but I learned the large bulk of my flash knowledge from there. I can’t exactly say why I’ve moved away from forum posting, maybe it did have something to do with the degradation of the community. Maybe I just got too busy. I sure learned a lot though.
Ah, yes, kirupa was / is another good one. Lower volume, but high quality. I had my own forum going for a couple years too, but it got hacked twice and then bombarded with spammers. It was too much trouble to maintain.
yup,really nice post,oh,all those memories 🙂
I think its really sad the high times of the forums are gone (probably forever),but yeah,that´s probably what happens to everything becoming mainstream sometime.
I´m a mod at FK for some years and its still kinda hard to give it up,but yeah,your post nails some good points why one is often into leaving forums.
We run a blog,too,but yup,not getting to post much else than about new games we made,projects are coming all the time keeping one too busy for much else.
What i see as biggest challenge for flash and its communities for the future is that beginners and pros should/have to be brought together in a way to actually have some ongoing next gen of upraising developers and generally having inspiration among developers.
In the old days when flash was less mighty and pretty much every user was new to it (as flash was just new 😉 ) there was this huge creative experimentation movement actually forming the communities. “what can we do with it,how can we do this and that with it?”-type. That was truly awesome.
Nowadays to me it looks like the pros are all up up and away settled with their startups,companies etc as you said and at most running a blog and partially already in AS3 hemispheres regarding the coding side.
Newbies on the other side are stuck somewhere not knowing the many blogs and trying to fiddle together their scripts with tutorials ranging from flash4 to 8..
As much as i get bored by a newby asking something which has been answered a million times before,i still feel sorry for em in between comparing how he would get flamed (if i wouldn´t avoid it as mod) compared to how helpful and “let´s solve this together”-like feel replies such a question would have triggered on the forums some years ago,probably not just leading to the newbie getting help but all learning new ways to do something at the end…
Before i get overmelancholic (too late? 😉 ),i really liked your forums,too, Keith,i wrote a mail to you asking if you could maybe bring it back,just don´t allow posting maybe;so at least all the knwoledge and chatter would be accessible,more great memories reanimated 🙂
dunno if you got that mail
cheers,
Ugur aka tomsamson
OMG! FlashPad, I was trying to remember that name like a year ago, thanks for sparkin’ old stuff. 🙂
hehe, been there, done that!!, I moved to wh, us, at the end settled in to as, now I go there just 2 or 3 times a year;)
I’ve given a lot of thought to this issue too.
Everytime a small online group starts to grow, the problems start. These problems range from the same questions being asked over and over again to vandalism and other anti-social behavior.
One thing that might help, would be to have paid staff that mentors newcomers and guides them. But one of the things that makes the online community so great is their grass-roots nature–it’s just fellow geeks getting together, helping and inspiring each other.
On blogs…a blog removes annonymity, and that helps the growth of a community.
It would be great to see real support put into online forums, combined with aggregators and blogs.