Where do we go from here?
If you’ve been watching this site, you know that it has completely transformed in the last month or so. We opened up a place for you to submit your thoughts about gender and your descriptions of your identities, and all of a sudden, holycrap, there’s a community here. And a generous and supportive one, at that.
Personally, I’m humbled and thrilled. What’s happening is incredible, and I want to help keep moving this energy in the right direction.
But maybe you could tell me what you think that direction is. Here are some ideas in my head…
Opening up a forum for you to have free-form conversations with each other under whatever names and pseudonyms you want to go by.
Collecting these pictures and images into a book so the message can go beyond the internet and physically into people’s hands.
Creating a structure for volunteering so you can help curate content or be a resource for people with questions/needs.
Improving the site design and technology to give you better/clearer access to the things you care most about here.
Adding other kinds of content like video interviews, stories, featuring other bloggers, … (help me brainstorm here).
What else could we do? What do you think this site needs? What would serve you best? How would you want to contribute? Do you want to just keep it as is for now and see where it naturally evolves to?
Please comment below, or send me a direct message from twitter, or email me (sarah at genderfork dot com) or use the share form to tell me your thoughts.
Thanks!!
Category: faces 11 comments »
December 18th, 2008 at 11:33 am |
I vote for a forum and a book. Cause I’d love to have Genderfork on my coffee table. ^.^”
-Simon
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December 18th, 2008 at 12:57 pm |
A book, a book! :-)
And more kinds of content is good – but keeping the emphasis on the photos…
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December 18th, 2008 at 5:55 pm |
Honestly?
I think the most-needed thing is dialogue – specifically, the ability for people who are curious and nervous and wide-eyed and scared to talk to real gender-variant individuals just like themselves (or their siblings, children, parents, friends). Maybe some sort of pseudonymous automated match-up thing, or…? There are so many people who just need to talk.
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December 18th, 2008 at 5:56 pm |
And yes, volunteer co-curators would be nice too!
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December 18th, 2008 at 8:13 pm |
I’ve looked around the site and thought about it a bit, and one thing that would be neat going forward is more tagging, so that content in the various categories could be searched more readily. Also, for photos in particular, I wonder if there’s a plugin that will let the past entries display as a grid of thumbnails, so that more are on screen at once? There’s already a lot of wonderful stuff in the archives, and letting new visitors get at it easily is important.
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December 19th, 2008 at 2:21 am |
I’ve just started reading Genderfork in the past few weeks or so, and really enjoy it. I’m sure a book would probably be pretty cool.
I think a way for people to contact or connect with each other if they felt like it would be nice, but I’m hesitant at the idea of a forum, mostly because this place is so positive, and forums seem to eventually lead to fighting and flaming and trolling. I get so discouraged at the negativity and politics and divisiveness elsewhere. Queer and gender-variant people just seem to rip each other up all the time, which is really sad.
This is one of the few places on the net that gives me a lift and helps me to feel ok about myself. I guess I’m saying that I really like the way things are and hope the positive spirit doesn’t change.
Anyway, for what it’s worth, this is just the point of view of a new person here.
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December 19th, 2008 at 3:31 am |
Genderfork has become a daily habit over the last few months. It’s been great to watch it develop. I think a forum would be an excellent idea. Any means by which people can come together, swap experiences and feel a little less isolated would be really valuable. I do think there is a danger of negativity and trolling, but there are ways and means of avoiding that. There would have to be some ground rules I guess. I think having somewhere where people who are struggling with gender issues and feeling very alone can turn to, with a degree of acceptance, would be so positive. Some kind of space where people can safely explore what they’re feeling.
What I have enjoyed about the profiles and the little thinking about gender posts has been the ability for people to define themselves, without having too much reference to generalised categories. A book as well sounds like a superb plan.
So there’s my vague thoughts.
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December 19th, 2008 at 4:10 am |
I like forum idea. I also think other types of content, like more YouTube interviews and profiles and such would be great too.
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December 19th, 2008 at 5:46 pm |
I like Rose’s idea about thumbnail images.
If you don’t go for the forum idea, one small change that I think would be good would to have a topic move back to the top of the page (apart from, say, the most recent post) whenever someone leaves a new comment on it. which, i suppose, is partly how a forum works anyway. hmm.
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December 21st, 2008 at 9:58 am |
Maybe a “recent comments” widget in the sidebar could work, similar to what stii said.
I like the way the site’s been working recently. I’m wary of forums –JF has a point–, but perhaps you could add a forum while the site keeps running as usual. Although I like Anja’s dialogue ideas better.
I like the curated content, though. You *do* have to pick among everything we send you, but I don’t think that’s authoritarian: anyone can express themselves through comments. I think you’re a great curator.
Oh, and a book would be just AWESOME.
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December 21st, 2008 at 6:26 pm |
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