Playgroup Community -- First Impression (Day 60)

Tools

Learned about Playgroup Community in one of the hangouts with John (@8bit), signed up for early access. I was considering using Discourse or maybe Notion, haven't really spent too much time reviewing any yet.

The first impression of Playgroup Community is that its UI seems more trendy than Discourse, and the features are more "defined" than Notion. Found a couple of small issues right away, consider that it's still in the early access phase, that's probably gonna be the norm. The responsive UI still needs some work, too. Overall, it feels quite light-weight and smooth.

The current version offers integration with Slack and Zapier. It would be nice if it could add more emojis, especially for UGC, nowadays, people talk more with emojis than text. And integration with Giphy, Unsplash or Pixabay would make it easier to find images for profile banner or forum contents.

Philosophy

With all the crazy things going on, we definitely want to build a community where everybody is accountable and be responsible for each other. So here are my initial thoughts on the basic rules for community:

• KYC required for posting. A user should be able to show whatever name or profile photos they prefer, but the account needs to be linked to an email address that links to a KYC approved account on Titans Finance. People tend to express themselves in a more responsible way when their identity could be tracked down. (Understand what KYC is here. TL;DR: KYC = verified identity)

• It is a privilege, not a right. In a community aiming to help each other, it is a privilege to be included, it's not a right. This is taken from the playbook of the DMV--driving is a privilege, not a right! Any violation could lead to the removal from the community. Having an account with Titans Finance does not automatically give the rights to the community.

• On topic. This is a forum for sharing information that could lead to improved wealth or better off financially. Anything unrelated should be taken to other forums. We should respect each other's time and purpose of being part of this community. We may consider having a #random channel for a "catch-all" for off-topic discussions, but there are other channels more suitable for this kind of chitchat.

Features

What are the most important features? I will list three of them here:

1. Easy to use search functions--over time, information overload will happen. To make any content-rich site useful, users must be able to find the relevant information quickly and easily. Sometimes, I'm shocked that some of the top popular sites have awful search experiences, where one typo could lead to ZERO search results returned. That is super frustrating.

2. Make communication easier--there are emojis that can express thoughts no words can do. Also, we all know the phrase that "a picture is worth a thousand words" and that is true. Making more emojis available and allow easier use of images. (This is something I hope IH could improve on--I have to upload images to S3 to show images in the article...) The other utmost important feature of making communication easier is often overlooked... we want to make "showing context" easy. The most obvious example is "quoting" conversations. This provides context for the conversation and is super helpful in communications.

3. A reputation and reward system that encourages the right behavior. Nobody likes to be censored. Censorship makes the recipient feel unjust, wronged, and even bullied. So instead of focusing on moderation, we want to encourage and reward good behaviors.

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I hope at some point I would be able to customize an existing community product that has all the features that are important to us! ;-) So we can focus on building products for your financial well-being.