"Long-term goals" would be nice, the todos can become very random and sometimes you have big news you want to share (we have milestones of course) also could be combined with "a day in the life" in general I actually like seeing all the random stuff people do, gym, walks, etc. Maybe have something beyond a todo and make it different types of tasks (would be a big change don't know how it would work)
In general, all the revenue/MRR stuff would be nice to share
Past projects: The graveyard, just add it, it's good to learn from each other so maybe a postmortem?
Maybe a boost to the forum, it could use some more activity with Reddit becoming a shill fest I would love a place to help each other and learn some stuff
Techstack is a good one, simple but maybe people can help each other a little
"What they are reading "Yeah something on your profile with reading lists/podcasts/youtube channels etc. Not sure if it's a killer feature but maybe if you bundle it in a tab: What is wip reading etc.
In general, the magic of wip (for me) is that it's super small and I like to share everything here because I am with a group of people that are similar . No one is shilling their projects curious if growing that "vibe" can stay (probably with good moderation)
You had a post a while back about invites/reviewing requests etc. I think I have an invite but I have no idea who I should give it to, could we make the invites open so we can all vote for example, top votes (weekly or something) get accepted? Make it so that active users can control who gets in (maybe this is a horrible social experience or maybe it works I have no idea)
One more thing I would add is to bring in more gamification elements. I see three types of visually appealing badges. Milestones for amount of done tasks, streaks (2, 3, 4... 10, 25, 50 to help build up a momentum) and special events (perform X tasks on day Y to get unique badge).
Yeah that is also a good one, maybe also a bounty if you miss a day. Live for me gets in the way and I lose my streak. It demotivates me to restart (maybe this is just me)
@marc could we have something that I donate/pay a fine
I've gone back and forth on this, but I think I agree we should add it. The goal of the streak isn't to literally never miss a single day. It's to keep you motivated and develop a shipping habit.
I fully understand, maybe I am the only one that has this problem so feel free to ignore it. But with becoming a dad I do have days that I simply can't complete a todo
Once I lose a streak I feel sad (as I should, the system works!) but getting motivated to build that up again can become demotivating
Maybe wip can punish me in a fun way, or just make it a microtransaction hehe
(I know I could write a quick script to cheat the system but meh)
I agree on the magic of WIP. That's why I've always kept its growth relatively slow by either having the paywall or it being invite-only.
I do think it would be beneifical to everybody to get more makers onboard, but we need to do it in a slow and thoughtful way. Perhaps someday we'll have sub-wips like on Reddit, or the Twitter-like following/follower model becomes more prominent. We'll see. But it's definitely top of mind for me.
Any concrete suggestions on how we can make the forum more active?
As for the invites, you can go to wip.co/applicants and give your invite to anyone who applied.
There's a lot of people there and the UX for reviewing them isn't great right now. I'll work on that. Perhaps it should be more of a voting system where you can give your thumbs up on anyone you think is a good fit, and once they hit a certain threshold they automatically get invited. That might be a bit easier than having to make a clear yes/no decision on whether to give your invite to someone.
Yeah it's a very fine line between quality/user size
To make the forum more active you would want some sort of reward, this is hard of course because you don't want it to become Quora/Reddit shill show. A Karma score? Do upvotes/likes go to your karma? But what would that karma do, wip is not really an acquisition channel for any of us and more a networking platform
Maybe the more active and helpful you are the higher your project ranks. A little like Producthunt but instead of upvotes the maker gets rewarded for being helpful.
As someone who loved those old school forums I think there are a lot of directions you can take this, nothing wrong with only having a hundred people writing the content and the rest just lurking
I like the idea of sub/groups, there are a few real estate projects and I would love to team up with them (big markets so a lot of room for partnerships/sharing stuff etc) which can be a big power for indiehackers
"As for the invites, you can go to wip.co/applicants and give your invite to anyone who applied." - As a true developer, I did not read the manual. Just send my first invite
(this is a brain dump)
"Long-term goals" would be nice, the todos can become very random and sometimes you have big news you want to share (we have milestones of course) also could be combined with "a day in the life" in general I actually like seeing all the random stuff people do, gym, walks, etc. Maybe have something beyond a todo and make it different types of tasks (would be a big change don't know how it would work)
In general, all the revenue/MRR stuff would be nice to share
Past projects: The graveyard, just add it, it's good to learn from each other so maybe a postmortem?
Maybe a boost to the forum, it could use some more activity with Reddit becoming a shill fest I would love a place to help each other and learn some stuff
Techstack is a good one, simple but maybe people can help each other a little
"What they are reading "Yeah something on your profile with reading lists/podcasts/youtube channels etc. Not sure if it's a killer feature but maybe if you bundle it in a tab: What is wip reading etc.
In general, the magic of wip (for me) is that it's super small and I like to share everything here because I am with a group of people that are similar . No one is shilling their projects curious if growing that "vibe" can stay (probably with good moderation)
You had a post a while back about invites/reviewing requests etc. I think I have an invite but I have no idea who I should give it to, could we make the invites open so we can all vote for example, top votes (weekly or something) get accepted? Make it so that active users can control who gets in (maybe this is a horrible social experience or maybe it works I have no idea)
One more thing I would add is to bring in more gamification elements. I see three types of visually appealing badges. Milestones for amount of done tasks, streaks (2, 3, 4... 10, 25, 50 to help build up a momentum) and special events (perform X tasks on day Y to get unique badge).
Yeah that is also a good one, maybe also a bounty if you miss a day. Live for me gets in the way and I lose my streak. It demotivates me to restart (maybe this is just me)
@marc could we have something that I donate/pay a fine
I've gone back and forth on this, but I think I agree we should add it. The goal of the streak isn't to literally never miss a single day. It's to keep you motivated and develop a shipping habit.
I fully understand, maybe I am the only one that has this problem so feel free to ignore it. But with becoming a dad I do have days that I simply can't complete a todo
Once I lose a streak I feel sad (as I should, the system works!) but getting motivated to build that up again can become demotivating
Maybe wip can punish me in a fun way, or just make it a microtransaction hehe
(I know I could write a quick script to cheat the system but meh)
Yes, I'll add badges. Good and fun idea!
A lot of great ideas here. Thanks!
I agree on the magic of WIP. That's why I've always kept its growth relatively slow by either having the paywall or it being invite-only.
I do think it would be beneifical to everybody to get more makers onboard, but we need to do it in a slow and thoughtful way. Perhaps someday we'll have sub-wips like on Reddit, or the Twitter-like following/follower model becomes more prominent. We'll see. But it's definitely top of mind for me.
Any concrete suggestions on how we can make the forum more active?
As for the invites, you can go to wip.co/applicants and give your invite to anyone who applied.
There's a lot of people there and the UX for reviewing them isn't great right now. I'll work on that. Perhaps it should be more of a voting system where you can give your thumbs up on anyone you think is a good fit, and once they hit a certain threshold they automatically get invited. That might be a bit easier than having to make a clear yes/no decision on whether to give your invite to someone.
Yeah it's a very fine line between quality/user size
To make the forum more active you would want some sort of reward, this is hard of course because you don't want it to become Quora/Reddit shill show. A Karma score? Do upvotes/likes go to your karma? But what would that karma do, wip is not really an acquisition channel for any of us and more a networking platform
Maybe the more active and helpful you are the higher your project ranks. A little like Producthunt but instead of upvotes the maker gets rewarded for being helpful.
As someone who loved those old school forums I think there are a lot of directions you can take this, nothing wrong with only having a hundred people writing the content and the rest just lurking
I like the idea of sub/groups, there are a few real estate projects and I would love to team up with them (big markets so a lot of room for partnerships/sharing stuff etc) which can be a big power for indiehackers
"As for the invites, you can go to wip.co/applicants and give your invite to anyone who applied." - As a true developer, I did not read the manual. Just send my first invite