Introducing the heyjohn Forum

A few months ago, I started an experiment to run a private community platform for my friends called heyjohn. I laid out my vision for what I wanted it to look like and how I was going to do it. In short, I envisioned a small, private, and highly interconnected community free of ads, algorithms, and performativity. An online space where people can be themselves and use that as a tool for connection and belonging. A place built on core values of authenticity, empathy, and trust.

Recently, I’ve been hanging out on a forum called the 32-Bit Cafe after being invited a few weeks ago. My time there has been incredible. I’ve never really felt belonging in an online community before but I fit right in on this one and have been warmly welcomed. That’s exactly what I want heyjohn to be for people. It made me realize that I chose the wrong platform for my community.

heyjohn is now mainly a forum

While the motivation and values that were the foundation for that original vision haven’t changed, the tool has. For the last several months, I have been running a private Mastodon instance that was closed off from the wider internet. I chose micro-blogging because I felt it had a good “pace” to it. It’s slower than instant messaging and faster than a forum. I specifically didn’t choose a forum because I thought it would be too much of a burden for people to actually use compared to quickly checking their Mastodon app.

I was wrong about that. I only had a few friends on heyjohn but they were only checking and maybe posting every few days anyway, about the same pace I’ve seen on 32-Bit. I think that because it is such a small group, the pace is going to be the same whether it is micro-blogging or posting on a forum. The only difference is a forum provides more space to breathe and explore.

Some forums (like the one powering heyjohn) even provide instant chat that sits right alongside the forum. That further bridges the gap between fast and slow by providing both in the same place. I can write a 1,200 word essay and also have someone ping me a quick thought about it all in the same interface.

Forums are much more advanced these days than what I expected. I’ve only ever seen those old forums that have some niche car knowledge that somehow perfectly answers my question. The forums with the weird animated smiley emoticons. Forums today are much more modern and polished. You can customize the colors and code as much as you want too.

Another feature I’m excited about is groups. In the original vision, I couldn’t (still can’t) give a good answer to who is in and who is out. It’s a private community after all but how private? Who decides who is invited to heyjohn? Groups solve that. It can be pretty inclusive because members can create a private space if they want. Rather than the party being in one big room, it’s now in a big house with rooms available for separating from the big group every now and then.

I think a word-of-mouth model is best here. To keep the community highly interconnected, heyjohn won’t be open registration. Instead, I’ll invite my friends who will invite their friends who might be a good fit.¹ This, I hope, will keep it small and exclusive while still being engaging.

The other reason I’m excited about groups is that it will reduce friction for me to invite people. I was (still am) nervous when the time came to actually invite my friends for some reason. Yes, I can totally justify and believe in what I’m doing but it feels strange asking people to join my club. I was always scared that people wouldn’t like it or my two wildly different friend groups wouldn’t get along. Again, groups can now have their own places to go if they get tired of the big group.

Overall, a forum feels right and will be a much better tool for creating the kind of community I want. This is still an experiment, however, and it’s bound to change as an actual community forms.

um.heyjohn.social logistics

The forum is operating at um.heyjohn.social which I gave myself a pat on the back for being so clever. “um” is obviously the last two letters of “forum” and as a whole it reads something like “um, hey John?”

In place of the heyjohn.social domain, I spun up a cute landing page. It has the quick version of the vision, a link to the forum, and looks like it was handwritten on a legal pad. Most of my ideas start as an outline on a legal pad and I wanted to convey that heyjohn is still just a scribbling from my brain and we’re figuring it out along the way. It will adapt as the community develops and as I sketch more ideas on my notepad.

For some quick technical details, I chose NodeBB as the software instead of Discourse or Flarum. It runs much lighter than Discourse while feeling snappier. Flarum looked really good but it wasn’t nearly as mature or fully featured as NodeBB. I liked that I was able to get up and running in about 20 minutes and fully understand it along the way. It’ll make maintaining and upgrading much more friendly for me.

Conclusion

I may have chosen the wrong tool to begin with but I learned something and I’m excited to continue learning and serving the people around me. I still hope heyjohn can be a pleasant respite from the performative and predatory online communities and “social” media that dominates the internet today.

Created: 2024-10-09

Last modified: 2024-10-09