Federated tribes
This is an idea I had for some time, mostly inspired by modding a medium (9K) tribe on reddit but it'd be a much, much better fit for snapzu (and an admin will actually read it). This is intended as a conversation started, not a fully fleshed proposal.
This is to help smaller tribes get a good start, help discovery, and improve cross pollination.
Getting federated
A tribe can federate another tribe by requesting it from the other tribe and vice-versa. Breaking the relationship is unilateral though.
The federated relationship
Posting from a federated tribe appear in the parent tribe. For instance, if /t/programming federates /t/rust, /t/python, and /t/java, all of their posting could appear in /t/programming without any special effort. A tribe could be part of more than one federation, for instance /t/CanadianNews could be be in the /t/Canada and /t/WorldNews federation.
It could go many levels too. /t/python could be federated to /t/programming and itself federate /t/django.
The reason why it can't be done with multi-tribe posting
Volume knob! When you subscribe to a tribe that has federated tribes under it, you could decide how much of the content of which you want to see. Small tribes get visibility from being affiliated with bigger ones (and just from people browsing the tree) but if they post half the material of the parent tribe, they don't necessarily have to be half the content that appears. Unless a subscriber wants so. It lets you tailor exactly what you want to see in your tribes.
I also expect it would lead to the creation of lots of lounges which would belong to various community (Romanian lounge, Programmer Loung, etc.) which is where community can bond together. I found myself that posting a weekly "anything goes" topic every friday really helped bring community spirit in the community I was moderating so attaching that kind of tribe could have the same effect. And due to the volume knob, people could see lots of that or little of that, as they wish.
Once again, it's intended as a starting point for brainstorming and nothing more.
Join the Discussion
A problem I could see with that would be a sort of information overload. Say I'm a programmer, but I only work in Java and C++? Wouldn't subscribing to /t/programming mean I also end up seeing all the content from /t/python and /t/django as well, even though they're irrelevant to my interests? If Python is more popular than C++, wouldn't it flood out /t/programming? And a post in /t/CanadianNews – say, a story about the results of the transit referendum in Vancouver – wouldn't necessarily interest readers of /t/WorldNews, but Canadians who also want to read news stories of global importance could subscribe to both. I think generally, content posted to more specific tribes is accordingly specific, while things posted to the more popular tribes are necessarily more broadly applicable.
I know you said readers could tailor it, but I'm not really sure what you're imagining that's significantly different from the multi-posting. One nice modifier that's already in place is that snaps move up in their respective tribes based on how many votes they get in that tribe, not in total.
It's a cool idea, but the idea as it is sounds really complicated both to implement and to use.
I was also going to mention multi-posting in response to this. With this fantastic feature, a user must always make the decision to post it in the appropriate tribes. My Python snap may also be relevant to general programming enthusiasts, so if I have evaluated it as such, I still have to make an active choice to post it to /t/programming. This way there is an extra layer of quality assurance.
Perhaps some kind of separate multi-tribe (a la multireddits) or individual custom user 'mash ups' would work better.
Yes but you could pick how much of them you want to see. By default, I would go with some of the first level tribes (so some Python in your Programming) and none of the second level (so no Django). But you could vary how much you want to see of all of that.
The problem I see with multiposting to fix that is that some subtribes would be barely visible while they should be and some would just be too heavyweight. Therefore, some tuning would be left to the user while if you multipost it's one size fits all.
A lightweight idea to start could be to name « sister tribes » which would contribute to make things more discoverable.
That's true – for readers, a mention in the sidebar/description might suffice, but it'd be nice to have a (more accurate) way to find potentially-related tribes when you're posting something, too. Hopefully that will improve on its own as Snapzu adjusts to the huge new influx of users.
Just curious, how do you browse right now? I'm really enjoying using the "tribe feed," which shows me everything from the tribes I've joined in chronological order (newest first).
I actually suggested a feature to formally link tribes earlier. :)
Making it official means it's machine readable and that brings lots of interesting possibilities. :)
If we want one, we just have to advertise as such : Snapzu, where you can edit titles. :)
Tribe feed / directly going to the tribe / frontpage.
I have a sub I moderate on the other site I'd like to bring here, I'm starting with the people who are both unsatisfied with reddit and compatible with a more snapzu approach.
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