Makerlog Next and the future of the community.
Good morning, makers! ☕️
Last week on the official Twitter account we announced the relaunch of Makerlog on Halloween.
Today I am writing this official post to talk about what is going to happen and let the community weigh in and discuss stuff. So lets get right down to it.
We are rebuilding the platform and community from the ground up to reimagine and set us up for our future. The goals of Makerlog are slightly changing but staying within the original goals set out by Makerlog's creator Sergio.
The launch will happen in stages. On October 31st, a new app will be available, all users will be sent an email notifying them of how they can access and login to the new system. This system will be very bare bones, an MVP you could say. Our goal is to iterate quickly and add more features as we go, but if we don't get an MVP out well, we'll never launch.
During that time though this existing system WILL exist, and you can continue using it over the new system. However none of your stuff will translate over to the new system until you go through the onboarding of the new system.
After we've iterated a few times and feel comfortable with the switch, the legacy API will go into read-only mode for importing reasons only. The new system will be the only thing you can use.
Some stuff will break and some of you will get upset by that and I apologize, it's only temporary. Existing features if we decide to keep them WILL come back in time.
Notably what I see as the biggest issue is people using github integration. This integration in the new system has been deemed low priority due to the fact that it just floods the platform and peoples feeds with low quality tasks, which we've identified as something we want to avoid.
That also means that streaks will be disappearing. We have plans for an alternative in a karma/point system and leaderboard if you want to be competitive. You can read more about what we plan and have accepted on the Roadmap.
Feel free to comment or ask questions, I will do my best to address anything I can.
It's an exciting time for Makerlog. I never used the streak feature. Streaks needed to go/ evolve into something else.
What are your thoughts?
- Streaks will go, for those who have hit 1000+ 🔥 will lose it?
- Logging from webhooks or zapier & you will have to use the site to log.
- Can we backup to other todo tasks for: user data CSV or JSON export
- So no more makerlogbot? logging from telegram for an example
Unsure about the new points system. Streak mechanism is simple. Points system is complex - unsure how that incentivises motivation. Not seen many examples elsewhere to believe it does. Tbh I feel like creating my own personal site where I can log my tasks and all the data so far, streaks included.
@fajarsiddiq yeah true that. Why not both right? Everyone gets to choose a system that works for them or they prefer. Would have preferred the points system be beta tested to see if it works before being decided unilaterlaly, but oh well.. 🤷♂️
@jasonleow The streaks system incentives low quality tasks just to increment it because nobody wants to see that number reset. We want to cultivate a higher quality community not just a bunch of "napped" tasks flooding the website.
Not to mention the leaderboard will open up a lot more opportunities for incentives, such as a perks store where you can redeem your points for goodies like stickers, discounts on indie products, hell the top tier item I plan to have when we launch that is a brand new 16-inch maxed out M1+ MacBook Pro.
So if seeing a 🔥 with a number in the thousands is better for you than the leaderboard/perks, then I have an item to explore having private streaks.
- Streaks will go, for those who have hit 1000+ 🔥 will lose it?
Yes, they will lose it.
- Logging from webhooks or zapier & you will have to use the site to log.
This is temporary and some of this functionality will come back over time.
- Can we backup to other todo tasks for: user data CSV or JSON export
Exporting/backing up is on the roadmap too.
- So no more makerlogbot? logging from telegram for an example
This was communicated in the telegram group a year ago when we officially settled on Slack being the real-time chat medium of choice. Makerlog bot in Telegram will no longer be supported in the rebuild. You can use webhooks/zapier when that stuff comes out to build your own if you desire.
@joshmanders thanks for the clarifications. Private streaks is a good compromise, agree. Gives people the opportunity to use the motivational levers that work for them.
@joshmanders any kind of leaderboard/points system can be gamed, ppl always find a way. having said that, i'm curious how you're solving this!
@poppacalypse I have a few ideas in mind.
Every action on the new site will garner you points based on how big that thing is. Log a task, get 1 point, launch a product get 5 points, open a discussion 3, reply to a discussion 1 point per upvote.
Yes they can be gamed, but that's where having staff and reporting capabilities. It will be a lot of work, but I accept that undertaking to cultivate a quality good community.
"During that time though this existing system WILL exist, and you can continue using it over the new system. However none of your stuff will translate over to the new system until you go through the onboarding of the new system." - so after onboarding, we can still log tasks using the old site, and it will auto-sync with the new site?
@jasonleow No, only tasks logged on the new site will be on there. If you plan to use the old site until the very end, it's best to just do that until you're ready to transition over, or when the final transition happens.
Please sign in to leave a comment.