Important Proposal to the IPFS Community

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Hello, Everyone!

It is a pleasure to meet you all! My name is Michael, and I am a full-stack web developer.

About Me

I have over six years of IT experience overall; I originally cut my teeth on data analysis and security while working for the Department of Defense.

As an ambitious individual with growing career aspirations, I decided to branch out into web development about four years ago and havenā€™t looked back. I built my first site with WordPress, and I have been on a sharp upskilling curve ever since, which ultimately led to my first experience with IFPS last year. But enough talk about me.

My Proposal

As of 01 Apr 2021, we currently have a community of 5,138 members. Which is fantastic, by the way! But at the same time, user participation seems to have grown stagnant on these forums. I joined two months ago, yet most of the posts I saw this morning I remember seeing on my first day. That is why I think we need to scale up.

Esteemed developers, contributors, maintainers, and community members, I offer you theā€¦

" INTERPLANETARY FILE SYSTEM STACK EXCHANGE "

Area 51 is a legitimate feature of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A communities, the most famous of which is Stack Overflow, a well-renowned resource trusted by software developers across the globe.

What some people do not realize, however, is there are many such communities; Stack Overflow is just one example.

The purpose of Area 51 is to act as a breeding ground of sorts for establishing new Stack Exchange communities, and anyone who is a verified member of an existing Stack Exchange site can submit a proposal for review.

Goals & Objectives

My proposal, to be more specific, is to create a Stack Exchange community for IPFS with these goals in mind.

1). Increase popularity and grow the IPFS user network.
2). Accelerate the adoption of the technology.
3). Create a more publicly available and centralized source of IPFS knowledge.

I already have the required Area 51 profile and the draft proposal drawn up. What I would need from the community in the immediate future, assuming we have enough support for this idea, is outlined below.

After youā€™ve submitted your proposal below, here is what youā€™ll need to get started:

  • 5 example questions you would like to ask on this site
  • 5 users who are willing to ā€˜followā€™ this proposal

Proposals that do not meet these requirements within three days after submission are subject to removal.

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In Conclusion

It wouldnā€™t be hard for me to recruit five foolhardy types and jump in the deep end of the pool without involving the IPFS community as a whole, but that would be neither ethical nor prudent.

Which explains why you are reading this proposal. :slight_smile:

So, thoughts?

References: FAQ Page provided by Stack Exchange outlining the details of creating a new community.

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This might be sincere but it looks like a scam. What is Area 51 and what are you proposing to do? (Iā€™m not clicking on the ā€œClick to Revealā€.)

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Continuing the discussion from Important Proposal to the IFPS Community:

I sincerely apologize for any confusion or doubt my initial post may have caused, and I have removed the ā€œclick to revealā€ aspect, which truly, was only meant to build a bit of suspense. I also added more detail to the proposal section to further clarify my idea and a potential roadmap to accomplishing it.

Also, I also just remembered that today is April Foolā€™s, so I clearly picked the worst day to promote a sincere idea. :sweat_smile:

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No worries. This is the Internet after all.so whatā€™s your idea?

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So Iā€™m assuming you are familiar with Stack Exchange sites, or at least Stack Overflow.

To summarize, my idea is to make a Stack Exchange Q&A site specifically for IPFS. This would improve public visibility, make forum moderation less stressful, and hopefully attract the attention of the developer community more effectively.

I have also edited my original post significantly to reflect a less sketchy and more detailed explanation of what I just mentioned in this comment, so feel free to take another look. :slight_smile:

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If I were on the ipfs.io team, Iā€™d want to maintain ownership of the data for all these posts. Itā€™s slightly ironic thereā€™s no platform that can store all this social media content on IPFS (afaik). I have a platform that I wrote (httpz://quanta.wiki) that stores file attachments on IPFS, but I havenā€™t even bothered to make it store the posts themselves in IPFS. I also think Quanta is the only Fediverse platform with IPFS, and also the only Fediverse app written in Java.

Iā€™d also much rather see a Mastodon instance dedicated to IPFS thatā€™s OWNED by the ipfs team (Protocol Labs) than something on StackExchange/StackOverflow or even Reddit, but nobody can stop you from creating a community and it would be likely to grow if you did. IPFS is hugely popular. Everyone in the world is talking about it. Itā€™s the core of the web3.0 censorship-resistant web we need to take back the web from the BigTech monopolies. (also why Iā€™m a Fediverse advocate)

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I completely agree with you that it would be preferable to build a suitable environment with our own technology, perhaps even modeling it in the style of SO.

I would be willing to contribute some time and effort in that direction also; I am not hell-bent on insisting that we use the Stack Exchange platform by any means.

That being said, and I believe this will eventually happen with or without any changes to our discussion forum of choice, IPFS seems poised to ultimately have a significant impact in the next 5-10 years.

I think creating an IPFS Stack Exchange could go a long way in establishing a more significant presence within the open-source community and even the general public as a whole.

Then again, I am but one developer and such ambitions will fall apart without community support. So once again, the speakerā€™s floor is open.

Regardless whether you agree or disagree, please express your opinions and speak your minds so I can gauge the popularity of this proposal.

Thank you! :pray:

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One of the things at the top of my TODO list for Quanta is to start storing the ā€œtext contentā€ of posts as ActivityPub Note JSON on IPFS (in addition to the internal MongoDB docs). Believe it or not, thatā€™s only about 1 to 2 hrs of work for me, based on what I already have.

Then Quanta would be not only an ā€œIPFS Stack Exchangeā€ but an ā€œIPFS Mastodonā€ā€¦ all in the same platform :slight_smile: Quanta is a collaboration tool, discussion forum, and social media all in one.

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Well, it sounds like you have a pretty solid platform already worked out, conceptually at least. Iā€™d be willing to work on some portion of it, too, if youā€™d like.

So if you ever need any help, Iā€™m on GitHub with the same username, @killshot13, so just hit me up. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thanks @killshot13 I will link up with you on github right now, and to others reading this, the github link is in my profile info.

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