I posted a few months ago asking if there would be any desire for such a social platform, on which I had a lot of wonderful feedback from you guys. So I thought I'd write this post to let anyone that's interested know that it is being built, and you're welcome to lend a hand!

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[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 16 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I loved this cheeky comeback.

Why not reinvent the wheel? I’ve already learned a great deal in just starting this project, and I’m excited to learn a great deal more.

Your energy is infectious! I'll be eagerly following this project

[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 5 points 4 months ago

😀 that's great to hear! Thanks

[–] mesamunefire@lemmy.world 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Interesting, hope it goes well!

[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 3 points 4 months ago

Thanks! Worst case scenario is that I'll learn a lot and have fun doing so.

[–] Terrapinjoe@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This is an amazing idea. I've toyed with the idea of creating both subject specific and geographic specific groups for my interests but it's a clunky solution. For example, I like birdwatching, but I want to know what people are seeing around me, not on a continent away, so being able to join a centralized 'birding' group then narrow it down geographically would solve the problem of having to create potentially hundreds of sub groups. Same for politics, news, restaurants, etc.

[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 2 points 4 months ago

Thanks for this! 😃 I have been going back and forth on the idea of providing the end user with the ability to create their own categories. I was wondering whether it would be better to have an Other type category which the admin can react to and create categories as needed, but your post has pushed me back to the idea of allowing category creation. I think if I do implement that, I'll have a switch for it, so that the instance admin can choose.

[–] technomad@slrpnk.net 3 points 4 months ago

For sure, can't wait to see how this comes along and the useful functionality it will hopefully provide!

[–] erlend_sh@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

This sounds great!

Are you familiar with the local-first tenets? Seems like a natural fit for the local nature of your app:

https://youtu.be/NMq0vncHJvU

[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Hey, I gave this a watch but their use of the word 'local' doesn't match mine in this case. When I use the word local, I'm referring to a geographic area, or at least a server that represents a geographic area. It looks like when local-first talk about local, they're referring to interaction on a device. It would be nice to be able to have habitat not require an internet connection to queue a post, this is a great idea and I'll look into that, but their point on "it should still work on device if the remote server is down (or even disappears forever)" I don't believe is possible when we're building a community platform. Or, at least, if such a thing is possible, I wouldn't know where to begin. I appreciate the heads-up though, I love that such a group exists.

[–] erlend_sh@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Yeah I get that. What ‘works’ means in the context of local-first is flexible though. This might provide a useful framing: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/offline-is-online-with-extreme-latency/

In any case, you’re definitely right to focus on your specific use case first without trying to fit it into any specific paradigm. I’m excited to follow Habitat’s progress!

[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 1 points 4 months ago

I haven't, but I will absolutely look at this on the weekend! Thanks so much