(I sent this proposal via email to contact@ and I was encouraged to share it here, which I'm doing just removing some personal details about me.)
Hi! I'm icaria36 on Mastodon and other places. I contributed some ideas to Funkwhale years ago, in its early days.
Anyway, I am promoting a proposal to create an online forum to support musicians joining the Fediverse and to improve cross-project collaboration. In fact, it's happening. Mirlo, Banwagon and The Indie Beat Radio are on board already (I have no relation with them; I just asked them) and now I'm reaching out to others to see whether they wants to be there from day 1.
TLDR;
A Discourse-based forum to support musicians onboarding to the Fediverse and to music publishing compatible platforms. Also to support collaboration between devs and tech people in general developing and contributing to these platforms. I have the skills and the basic budget to found and fund it, but I won't try alone. So I wonder if this would be interesting for Funkwhale (for starters), with the hope that this would bring that critical mass.
IN MORE DETAIL
Discussing and collaborating in "microblogging" format is limiting. "Musicians on the Fediverse" is an ambitious goal that require lots of coordination and support across people and projects. Mastodon discussions alone won't cut it.
So what do you think?
Full disclaimer: I have no economic interest here. I have a fulfilling and well paid job (it's not a secret but I keep it separate from my hobby/activism). I just share with you this passion for music and the Fediverse.
I guess I have missed the most important part: a web forum, what for?
Open collaboration between individuals and projects toward a Fediverse filled with good music, listeners, and amateur and professional musicians, producers, DJs (etc).
Knowledge base and community support especially for musicians with better music skills than Fediverse / tech skills, willing to use the Fediverse to promote their music, meet their listeners, find collaborators...
Why Discourse? Not only is the best tool for the task, it is also not foreign to many musicians, especially the ones we can find easily on the Fediverse nowadays, thanks to https://www.elektronauts.com/ https://llllllll.co/ and others.
It is also Fediverse-friendly - https://meta.discourse.org/t/activitypub-plugin/266794
OK SO WHAT'S NEXT?
I have been thinking further and I have a rough plan:
Get a domain. Done: socialmusic.network. Nobody needs a discussion about domain names. 🙂 This one has a clear and neutral scope, no brand/trademark issues, and yet it is flexible to do whatever inside it. Worst case scenario, we get another domain and I have wasted 10€.
Get confirmation of participation from Mirlo (DONE), Bandwagon (DONE), Faircamp (waiting), The Indie Beat Radio (DONE), and Funkwhale (here now). This is how critical mass can start building up.
But confirmation to what?
To have a forum category about your project as part of your official channels where you commit to at least answer questions about your project. And whatever else you want to do there, optionally, up to you (post news, start discussions, run surveys... maybe there are ways to automate / RSS stuff).
To be open to participate in cross-project discussions about music in the Fediverse, with folks from other projects who will commit to the same. We don't need to force these conversations, but if a project (including you) wants to start them, it would be good to know that the others are willing to follow up.
To join the bootstrap of the new space as testers, so we can build it according to your needs. I invite you to get more involved, and I will need to find more people for administration and moderation, but this is optional, and ideally I'll find people who aren't superbusy with their project already.
Meanwhile, this is what I will do:
Set up a Discourse instance open to whoever wants to join the bootstrapping phase (which I estimate could take a month). People joining can start learning / testing the features, propose improvements, suggest ideas, and start publishing their news, questions, discussions, etc. Discourse is rock solid so whatever content is published will remain. In terms of stability we will start on a production server from the beginning.
Lay out the forum structure. My initial proposal, which can be discussed and improved, and Discourse offers the flexibility to reorganize as needed. The names aren't final, just to get an idea:
- Help for musicians - for musicians that want to give the Fediverse a shot.
- Musicians - If you are a musician publishing your music on the Fediverse, you can create your own topic and post there whatever you want. People can discuss about your music in your topic.
- Music platforms - this is where Funkwhale, Mirlo, Bandwagon, TIBR, Faircamp, etc, have their own category.
- About socialmusic.network - to contact the forum maintainers and discuss the website / project itself.
- General - of course, every forum needs a General category for anything not fitting the above and abiding to the code of conduct.
With a forum with this skeleton and almost empty, announce the project bootstrapping inviting anyone to join.
Lots of details to polish, but I think this may work with a good ratio of effort required and feedback obtained to see if there is enough interest to create this community space.
What do you think? If you're in, I'll let you know about who else is joining for day 1, and I will invite you to the forum as soon as it's open.
