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No One Expects the BobaBoard Newsletter!

Published on: 7/31/20
#development-logs

Welcome to Yet Another Edition of the "BobaBoard Monthly Logs": all the BobaBoard news you need delivered fresh to you around the middle of every month, but sometimes on the last day of it.

Whatever. Time is a social construct meant to keep us from having milk and cereals for dinner.

Unofficial title: "your designers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think whether they should".

It seems forever since the BobaBoard's pre-alpha launched, but (at draft time) it's only been ~45 days. How far we have come!

So, what happened this month? A lot. Are the bugs still there? We have swanky new ones! How is the wall of post its doing? It has expanded to cover my desk. Are you still manually adding users to the database? cackles

This month's largest challenge has been preparing the platform to welcome a larger amount of users . This largely translates into a lot of boring performance work (I'm now an expert in React's internal re-rendering heuristics) , building up the testing infrastructure, UX improvements, and... fighting an uphill battle against The Arcana thread.

The Arcana!Liveblog is the first BobaBoard thread to breach 100 contributions, which would be a joyous event were I not tasked with scaling the website.

Still, every crisis comes with its lessons: the challenge of containing the thirst for Muriel the excitement for The Arcana's heartwrenching storyline has led to the development of a new, very Work-In-Progress type of content format: collections.

Collections give users who want to drumrolls "collect content" (Twitter threads, Tumblr posts, recomendations, images, thoughts or anything else) a streamlined experience with full control on rules, categories, and, in the longer term, "look & feel". Other users can follow them (or block them forever!), filter content, and collectively contribute when enabled.

The chronological nature of the collection format, as opposed to the hierarchical one of threads, also makes it easier to an follow event with a natural time progression—let's say, liveblogging for a bookclub—without readers losing their place or bumping into accidental spoilers.

Collections will be available soon! In the meanwhile, have a screenshot of an early draft.

I wanted a demo of collections for this edition, but I'm still not fully satisfied with the user experience/look. This is why I'm late! It has nothing to do with BobaBoard-induced procrastination!

You might remember my skepticism at strict tagging systems hailed as the one solution to every fandom woe . This skepticism, however, doesn't make tags on BobaBoard an afterthought. Quite the opposite! I hope to design a tagging system that accounts for how people actually use tags in social spaces, as opposed to a system built around how people wish everyone would use them.

While tags work well for certain groups of people, content and websites, hastily-designed systems that don't account for the complex, messy nature of social interaction and content creation in online spaces can become easily overwhelming, unwieldly and their own source of conflict between users.

The work on the tag system is well underway. At the beginning of the month, "whisper tags" made their triumphant appereance. If you've been on Tumblr in the last checks watch 10 years, you might have noticed people using tags as an additional space in which to add thoughts, jokes and general commentary without "polluting" the original post.

Whisper tags are the default type of tags on BobaBoard and, while they can be used for content filtering, they do not appear in searches. By design, making a post searchable on the platform is a deliberate action the user must take by prefixing the searchable tag with !. This turns a tag into a "index tag", and adds it to the "searchable tags stream" all communities have access to.

#If you've never used whisperspace you might be like "what" or even "why" #But trust me: it's pretty great #Making whispertags an official part of the tags system presents advantages from both a technical and a social standpoint #And it's just an example of what I mean by "designing a tag system based on how people actually use them"

The balance between discoverability of content, flexibility of the platform and user safety (especially in a pseudonymous space) is a tricky one: what if I want to correctly tag my liveblog for future reference, but not "spam the tags"? What if I want to yell about my new "dead dove" interest but don't want to tag every single post with the relevant content warnings? This is another aspect where thoughtful design can help.

Boards, for example, have their own "global tags" that can be used to filter them from all searches with a single setting, removing the need to tag every post in the gore board with, well, gore. In the default board view, threads only display the (often safer) top post, and those about uncomfortable subjects can be hidden with a simple click, regardless of tags.

If you, a frequent visitor of the !monsterfucking board, would like to remain blissfully unaware of whether people want to fuck Ranamon, you can selectively hide that particular thread.

Collections also allow users to create a self-contained "categories" space, indicated with a + tag prefix, which keeps a collection easily navigable without polluting the main tags space. Within them, individual posts with larger relevance can still be tagged for global consumption with the ! tag modifier.

While this might seem complex—and good UI will indeed be crucial—building for fandom means building with two principles in mind: first, that you're inherently building for power users who will put in the time to learn the intricacies of their home of choice; second, that once you create flexible tools, fandom will bend them to its needs in suprising (and often unpredictable) ways.

The #1 most surprising thing since launching the v0 is how often I've found myself thinking, "wait, you're not supposed to use it like that"! Fandom hears ya, fandom don't care.

As usual, there are still a lot of intricacies to work out, and this is but a small taste of the direction I'm heading towards. Once more separate communities are ready to form (something we'll focus more on in the next edition), the plan is to give users further control on how their content is relayed across different spaces.

If you have ideas and opinions on building complex but nuanced tagging systems, the feedback form is always open.

But also, I know what you're are all eager to know, and the answer is "yes".

I asked Boobies—that is, BobaBoard users—what I should hightlight to our Monthly Logs readers. Unsurprisingly, the answer was drowned out by their thirst for Luigi. Yes, dear readers, the target demographic of BobaBoard has indeed been confirmed to be Luigi-fuckers.

We're a small, insular community, comprised for the most part of people who are thirsty for Luigi.

Still, I don't want to leave your own thirst for BobaBoard news stay unquenched. While I could talk about the many features launched ("spoilers" indicator on text/images, tags, better thread management, hiding/muting of threads...), about the first ideological conflict splitting our community ("should chicken be washed before cooking?"), or about the time I accidentally brought the whole website down for a harrowing 15 minutes, I've put my foot down and asked Boobies to do my job express themselves in their own words.

This feels like I'm showing all my cards about how harrowing writing this edition has been. Sorry, folks, it's been A Month™.

Here are some selected quotes from the survey:

  • On Anonymity: "The anonymity means I don't have to worry about "did that sound totally stupid was that just redundant oh god now everyone knows what an utter hack I am" type intrusive thoughts as much. It rules that even if I de-anonymize myself in a thread (by posting my own art, for example) I can get a "fresh start" in another thread. The anon system rules!"
  • On Anonymity: "[My favorite part is the] anonymity. It's reassuring and makes me feel more open about my thoughts and opinions."
  • On the Format: "I love the general format of being able to sort by content (board) and feeling like we're all contributing to what we love, something about the threads format really reinforces this feeling..."
  • On the Format: "I think the contribute vs comment buttons are interesting and the boards concept in general is cool and organized. I appreciate there being a board for when you just want to vent but not bother ppl (like !salt and !brains). Tags are useful and it's nice to segregate comments from actual tags with the !"
  • On Development: "I'm surprised at how fast BoBo is being developed and growing, honestly!! New features I might expect weeks down the line are happening almost daily?? It's so amazing..."
  • On the Environment: "It’s a good quiet that doesn’t have me checking my phone or laptop for the current buzz word of the day unlike some other websites. It actually lets me relax and take in things at my own pace and just ignore it if I want to. NGL my anxiety has decreased by switching my focus to boba. I actually DO things now. Wow.""
  • On the Environment: "[What surprised me is] the amount of time I spent here tbh. I don't even spend a lot of time in fandoms anymore (bc it's tiresome), but it's nice to see ppl genuinely talk about the things they love even if I have no idea what they're talking about. It's the chaotic wholesome environment I missed from 2012-era tumblr."

    I'm the BobaBoard lead dev and this is my favorite thread on the platform.

Last month I asked groups of friends who wanted to create their own community to reach out. While some of them have indeed become part of the "Congress" ( look, that's what a group of Boobies is called ), I realized there's still a lot of work to do before separate communities can sustainably exist. So this month we're focusing on stress-testing community features by engaging in a time-honored fandom tradition: book clubs.

BobaBoard's first experimental Book Club will begin later this month, and feature the community diving into The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System .

Why a Book Club? First of all, the community needs a common piece of media to thirst over bond over. Second, the popularity of the !liveblogging board has shown both the limitations of the platform (cfr. The Arcana thread fight) and revealed its possibilities. Collectively consuming media in a truly asynchronous fashion (that is, with people reading at their own pace retaining the ability to catch up with previous discussion) remains difficult on present platforms. Will the group-based nature of BobaBoard fare better? Will slow readers be able to avoid spoilers? Will people sprinting ahead be able to unleash their newfound love for the characters without ruining other people's fun?

These are the features being worked before the book club can begin (and succeed):

  • The ability to mark spoilers [done]
  • The ability to chronologically follow someone's dive into a subject, retaining the place they last stopped at (presumably, the same chapter they're at).
  • The ability for people who are ahead in the reading/don't mind spoilers to begin creating, consuming and collecting content on the subject without ruining slow readers' fun (that is, a good tag filtering system).
  • Some way to pin posts/make rules easily accessible/finally fill the boards' sidebars.

All these features would have happened anyway. But what's better than working toward something truly enjoyable (and practical!) to build them out the right way?

Look. I could come up with excuses—there's a story behind this, I swear!—but let's just cut to the chase: BobaBoard's next internet-wide event, the "Draw Your Fave Getting Sexy with Thomas the Tank Engine" Day, will be held on August 26th. Rules and prizes to follow.

Me @ my marketing mentor when they ask what the fuck I'm doing (jk, I don't have a marketing mentor. Clearly.)

This month we began the onboarding of more volunteers. Until now, the volunteering process (like the acquisition of new users) has mostly been through word of mouth, personal networking and hanging out in dark corners of the internet ready to pounce on potential candidates. Of course, we will soon need to move to more sustainable methods of recruitment.

While there is no formal process yet, we created a volunteers survey . This is not just a survey for unpaid positions (though we won't turn down any free help), but a way to understand the talent pool we have access to. If we have a budget to spend, we'd rather spend it within the community.

Onboarding volunteers is a process that takes time and energy away from development. If you fill the survey, you might not be contacted until the moment is right. Of course, filling the survey is non-binding, and you'll always be free to decline.

So, what positions are we looking for? Of course developers (especially frontend/React developers) are always the scarcest resource, but, really, think outside the box! Would you be available to draw a celebratory fanart for an event? What about writing a volunteers onboarding guide? What about yelling at me to write the newsletter so I don't end up sending it out on the last day of the month? The possibilities are endless! The most we ask is that, if we carve out the right task and timeline for your work style, you're able to bring it to fruition without much handholding.

...and that is all for this month! I hope this late edition entertained you and gave you a taste for what's to come. As usual, if you have question you want answered, my email is all yours . If instead your question/feedback is best left yelled to the wind, the appropriate form is always open.

See you next month!