As for this valid focus on critical mass of users, perhaps a linked tags approach is better than a multiple-communities structure, until specific tags gain enough friction to become communities. Just thinking.

As an innocuous example of sharing data with pure bash and Arise, these people here have preserved the Trigedasleng dictionary, the fictional language from the science-fiction/young adult show The 100, after another fan site was taken down. They use a github repo as data backend, and Arise as a static-site generator for github pages. All their data are stored in lots of version controlled JSON files instead of a database. According to the authors, this democratizes the process of forking and adding data to the repository.

I think Arise is sth I had seen and at the time motivated these thoughts. It is a bash based static site generator, that, according to its docs, it is build with the philosophy of minimal language requirements as well as other dependencies.

I would argue that a solution like this is better than heavily nested JSON files, or a cascade of Ordered Dicts in Python, or even a db.sqlite that would require the user parse or query the data somehow. In fact, a user could retrieve the static site from their own distro package manager and run it in bash with minimal dependencies.

I haven’t tested this solution yet, but it looks very promising as to what I originally had in mind.

About the technical side of my response. I have difficulty understanding your concern, because from what I have seen so far, NOSTR is a protocol and has different implementations. As a protocol it is very liberal since it mostly goes on to specify the structure of the “event” data type. In the specification I saw that it specifies signing and verifying notes with private/public key pairs, but I haven’t seen yet where on the protocol level it requires Bitcoin Lightning. Is it possible that you have looked into a specific implementation which elected to use such cryptographic keys as to make it interoperate with the Bitcoin blockchain to start with? In that case, the articles linked by the project mention that the protocol is simple and can be implemented “in a weekend”. That means that instead of even forking it at all you can roll your own in your chosen framework?

I have had a look into Nostr. My remarks perhaps will start a whole other thread but I will express them. For one thing, I had a quick look at odysh some time ago, and I have left with a sour taste about the connotations of ‘censorship resistant’. Don’t get me wrong I am of course against state censorship, but I (unironically-please say otherwise) wonder if there is more to this phrase than nazi dogwhistling. Within censorship resistant social networks is there a) the possibility to mass block, mitigate harassment brigades, tag nazis, and combat other types of toxic trolling and brigading? b) is there absolutely any level of moderation possible, including and going beyond the possibility to go back and delete stuff posted by trolls, or even illegal stuff like slander, hate speech, revenge porn and worse? I can’t start a discussion about censorship resistant networks if these conditions are not met, because so much dogwhistling has, well, “smuggled” these meanings into the term, and I am reluctant towards it.

If that is the case, then it arguably be an extra step for new people to join. I fear that not many will unless already familiar with Bitcoin etc.

orm of authentication, I’d be very interested. I’m obviously not going to roll my own auth from scratch….but as I see it, tying BTC to it could prevent MANY people from giving an otherwise very promising tech a chance.

I am not quite familiar with the overlap between Bitcoin and authentication. In fact it seems I assume they are totally separate things. If you care to explain further or point me to the right resources?

Sure, I understand Matrix fine. On the contrary, I don’t get why people find it harder to switch to than Discord?

Sure, the use case is remote to say the least, but the decentralized thing is appealing. I will have to wrap my head around the bitcoin registration thing, since I am not familiar with crypto. But I did imagine something like decentralized exchange or shops as part of community organizing. In that manner you can, for instance, support web creators within a given community etc. So, perhaps the use case not that far as it initially seems.

add much richer functionality here to turn a poll into a proper group decision-making tool

This wording shapes my thought better than I did in the post.

Um, does community organizing have to be secret to be immune to trolls and bad actors?