Hunting for a new home for the Fellowship

[daughter_of_kings]

It's a thing that happens in the lifetime of many families... when all the kids have left home, and the big old house starts to sound empty, echoey (totally a word) and rattly, so the parents decide it's time to move to a smaller, cozier, and less expensive, home.

So, too, the time has come for our Fellowship to think about relocating to smaller digs. There are no longer enough regulars here to sponsor and thus spread out the cost of keeping the forum, and not enough traffic to justify it. Recent problems with compatibility issues (we're running an older version of the software that's not so well supported anymore) are only going to get worse as time goes on, and Prim told me that when Treble actually did an upgrade "it would break some of our customizations and be a headache to get all the bits looking and working like we wanted them to again". So back before Christmas, Prim and I discussed moving our little Fellowship to a format easier to maintain.

The question is, to which format shall we migrate? During the brief interlude between the Decipher boards and The House That Prim Built, we had a Yahoo group. So that's one possibility. We also had a little forum that Firiel built and maintained (I haven't asked whether she'd be willing to do it again). Another option would be a blog-style home like Livejournal/Dreamwidth, or an actual blog home like Blogger/Wordpress. A fourth option would be a social media platform like Facebook.

I was going to make this a poll, but I really just want to hear your thoughts, so please reply and tell me your suggestions and preferences for our new home. If there are multiple formats that you find acceptable, please rank them.

[AnnaEstel]

As I am already familiar with them I personally would vote for a yahoo group or Facebook group.

[daughter_of_kings]

Ashlyn is having login troubles, but texted me that she votes for FaceBook or Livejournal. Blogger is a distant third for her.

[AnnaEstel]

Upon further consideration I would say Facebook over Yahoo. I recall that the yahoo group was basically like the Wibble, one long conversation. In a Facebook group, each post would be more like a Topic here, with people able to respond to just that post instead of generating one long, confusing thread.

[Strange Elf]

I am familiar with Facebook, so that would be my vote.

[MiddleEarthMunchkin]

I do like the format of a regular forum board. I know forums like Proboards and Zetaboards have free options but I don't know much about what it would take it run them.

I have also used WordPress and Blogger a bit. I know with WordPress you can add tags to posts, so it would be easy to sort and search for content.

I'm not particularly fond of facebook, although I guess I could create an account that's not linked to my real name. (I know facebook is weird about that stuff).

[daughter_of_kings]

I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that Decipher was free, back in the days when the Fellowship was hosted there. A big part of the reason we left was that they decided to have ads and it slowed things down to a crawl for folks that don't have high speed internet. I will look into Proboards and Zetaboards, but if they sell ad space, I don't think we want to go back to that. I'm also looking into one particular privately hosted option, but don't get your hopes up about that, because the odds are low.

I, too, am not fond of Facebook.

Prim has been telling me about Dreamwidth, and what she says sounds pretty good. It's a LiveJournal-style format, in fact started by people who used to work at LiveJournal and wanted to do things a little differently. It's owned by the people who started it and work there, not by a company, which is kind of cool. Also, if you want to post pictures, they host the image files too, so you can upload there instead of having to have a PhotoBucket or whatever account. It's still a blog-post format instead of a forum format, but at least there are posts and replies, unlike the yahoo group chatroom.

Thank you all for the feedback so far. Keep it coming, while I continue to research options!

[daisy gold]

I have never used Facebook,twitter or similar type of boards mostly because I do not like them. I prefer to see my friends or hear them when I chat too so never joined these groups.

However, if Facebook is decided upon I will go with it. Would it be ok for me to use my Daisy Gold name and keep my real name out of it?

[GondorsQueen]

Hello.

It's been years since I've been on here and today I finally got out the laptop and decided to visit forums that I used to frequent.

Sadly I see that this place is going the same as many others ... most folks are on Facebook and forums are dying.

I do not belong to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc, and I will do my best never to join them.

I stopped visiting forums as I moved from the city to the county and my life became full of gardening and yard work and I rarely had the laptop out and the cell phone screen was too little to view the forums on the screen for my eyes.

The times I was active on here I truly enjoyed it. I wish everyone well! I hope you will be able to find a new home and that doesn't include Facebook.

Kind regards,
GondorsQueen

[Strange Elf]

Daisy, you can just put Daisy as your first name and Gold as your surname and keep you RW name safe. I have done it myself.

[DoctorGamgee]

I would favor Facebook over other choices. However, I am so rarely here anymore, I'm not sure my opinion matters. I'll go with whatever is chosen. I visit with Varda, Frodosmiss, Anna, Firiel, Ada, Ashlyn, and many others on Facebook as friends, and find my limited time easier in one place.

[Mathom]

Although I use Facebook, I'm not fond of it.

[Strange Elf]

I would favor Facebook over other choices. However, I am so rarely here anymore, I'm not sure my opinion matters. I'll go with whatever is chosen. I visit with Varda, Frodosmiss, Anna, Firiel, Ada, Ashlyn, and many others on Facebook as friends, and find my limited time easier in one place.

Your opinion will always be important.

[Ladyhawk Baggins]

I'm part of several groups on FB. One of my groups is looking at mewe instead. It's a new FB like forum. I haven't joined it yet, as I have trouble keeping track of what I do have.

I prefer WordPress over Blogger but use both. WordPress is easier for following other people on WordPress.

Instigram is more pictures, as is Snapchat. Pinterest is too, though it's attempting to encourage dialogue among pinners.

Twitter is currently too limited by the 140 characters. It would never work for our discussions, but they're planning to change the limit.

[Linaewen]

I am on both Livejournal and Dreamwidth, and if one was choosing between them, I would vote for Dreamwidth, basically because it has fewer issues than LJ, and as daughter_of_kings explains, it is not owned by a company. With both, the use of tags is helpful for finding posts about the topic you are interested in.

Facebook is also an option I would support, if that is the direction the majority wants to go. I spend a lot of time at FB, even though I don't post much about myself, so it would be helpful to me to have it all in one place! One question to look into concerning FB would be whether or not it is a good place to post intellectual property such as stories/poetry/etc. -- especially in regards to what FB ends up having a right to when we post things. (Not sure if this is really an issue or not, but I thought I would mention it!) In that sense, DW or LJ might be better if there continues to be a desire to share writing with the community.

As AnnaEstel says, Yahoo Groups is hard to sort through, so I would rather go with another option.

The advantage to LJ/DW or FB is that there is not much to maintain once you have your account setup. A blog like Blogger or Wordpress would be nicer, but someone would have to maintain it.

Of the options that are mentioned here, my preferences are as follows:
1. Dreamwidth
2. Facebook
3. Livejournal
4. Wordpress-type blog