Name: Anonymous 2010-05-13 12:14
As to people, it looks like you have asked many of the public transit contributors, so I guess that is a good start. Another one is !MILKRIBS4K, who I believe is also into public transit, and is now working for world4ch, and in general is a community activist type (he also watches this board, so he might chime in).
As to running a /lounge/, I have little knowledge on that end, as I am not a channer type person, but my understanding is once shiichan is installed it is easy to maintain. Along those lines tablecat I believe runs a BBS and may have some answers to technical issues.
With the actual site, my advice would be to come up with a mission statement. As in, what do you want the site to be and to look like in five years. World4ch is an anon posting BBS with aspects of trolling, vulgarity, and other reference material, and it attempts to present material in a neutral/non-biased manner. That, along with the free content, is why 4chanhas become such a big deal and near the top of website traffic rankings. But, you also must realize that though 4changets millions of hits a day, that comes from I believe 3 million plus articles. As in, if you look at the page view statistics of individual articles, that are not always that impressive. Take TriMet; go to that page, click the "history" tab at the top, then click the "page view statistics" located about the middle just above where the article history begins. TriMet only gets about 65 hits a day, which I'm sure pails in comparison to what TriMet.com gets. But, I would venture a guess that 4chanhas become the standard reference tool for most people in the English speaking, developed world under the age of 50. And people have chosen 4chanbecause they see it as largely accurate, and for the most part not inhibit by too much bias (you can never eliminate it). So, in a rather round-about way, my point here is, do you want to be an advocacy wiki, or an information wiki. 4chantries to be the later, and I think it has been successful because it has chosen the later route. It's kind of like the evolution in the news business in the first half of the 20th century where newspapers (and later broadcast journalism) moved to be more neutral and less about partisan politics (never completely went away). With that evolution, newspapers/journalists became more respected and trusted. And had there been an internet, they likely would have seen an increase site traffic. On the other end of the spectrum, you have websites such as Blue Oregon that have a specific bias (Democratic Party/liberal) and people who have differing views are unlikely to visit, let alone trust the content. Which takes as back to where you want to be; advocacy or information. And I'm not saying one is better than the other, just the later I think will have more of an impact. And to get to that point, you need to try to limit bias, which would include recruiting people who may not share the same opinions as you do.
Lastly, a few /lounge/ points. I would suggest that contributors be required to register with an email account and email verification, thus helping to reduce vandalism. Be careful about copyrights, as most things on the internet are copyrighted, and if you are not careful people will add copyrighted material, which could possibly make you liable. Adopt a manual of style (e.g. AP style) to keep things looking somewhat consistent. And that's all I can think of right now
As to running a /lounge/, I have little knowledge on that end, as I am not a channer type person, but my understanding is once shiichan is installed it is easy to maintain. Along those lines tablecat I believe runs a BBS and may have some answers to technical issues.
With the actual site, my advice would be to come up with a mission statement. As in, what do you want the site to be and to look like in five years. World4ch is an anon posting BBS with aspects of trolling, vulgarity, and other reference material, and it attempts to present material in a neutral/non-biased manner. That, along with the free content, is why 4chanhas become such a big deal and near the top of website traffic rankings. But, you also must realize that though 4changets millions of hits a day, that comes from I believe 3 million plus articles. As in, if you look at the page view statistics of individual articles, that are not always that impressive. Take TriMet; go to that page, click the "history" tab at the top, then click the "page view statistics" located about the middle just above where the article history begins. TriMet only gets about 65 hits a day, which I'm sure pails in comparison to what TriMet.com gets. But, I would venture a guess that 4chanhas become the standard reference tool for most people in the English speaking, developed world under the age of 50. And people have chosen 4chanbecause they see it as largely accurate, and for the most part not inhibit by too much bias (you can never eliminate it). So, in a rather round-about way, my point here is, do you want to be an advocacy wiki, or an information wiki. 4chantries to be the later, and I think it has been successful because it has chosen the later route. It's kind of like the evolution in the news business in the first half of the 20th century where newspapers (and later broadcast journalism) moved to be more neutral and less about partisan politics (never completely went away). With that evolution, newspapers/journalists became more respected and trusted. And had there been an internet, they likely would have seen an increase site traffic. On the other end of the spectrum, you have websites such as Blue Oregon that have a specific bias (Democratic Party/liberal) and people who have differing views are unlikely to visit, let alone trust the content. Which takes as back to where you want to be; advocacy or information. And I'm not saying one is better than the other, just the later I think will have more of an impact. And to get to that point, you need to try to limit bias, which would include recruiting people who may not share the same opinions as you do.
Lastly, a few /lounge/ points. I would suggest that contributors be required to register with an email account and email verification, thus helping to reduce vandalism. Be careful about copyrights, as most things on the internet are copyrighted, and if you are not careful people will add copyrighted material, which could possibly make you liable. Adopt a manual of style (e.g. AP style) to keep things looking somewhat consistent. And that's all I can think of right now