PQ social media accounts [split from: Is this forum dying?]

[Laird]

I think part of the challenge is the forum as a whole is being represented, not just an individual. It's important for whoever does this to not get too drawn into interacting via the account.

Exactly my sentiments too.

There probably also needs to be some planning / discussion on how the threads will be picked.

Yes.

First, though: is there actually anybody suitable who will put their hand up for this role? @Typoz and @Ninshub are "No"s, and I'm not especially keen on taking it on either. Are you up for it, Sci? And are there any other volunteers?

Exactly my sentiments too.


Yes.

First, though: is there actually anybody suitable who will put their hand up for this role? @Typoz and @Ninshub are "No"s, and I'm not especially keen on taking it on either. Are you up for it, Sci? And are there any other volunteers?

If it’s mostly just posting links to forum threads on social media I’d be willing to try.

[Laird]

If it’s mostly just posting links to forum threads on social media I’d be willing to try.

Excellent. Let's discuss this in more detail then. I've split out this thread for that purpose. If folk prefer it or any of its posts to be merged back into the original thread, then that's fine - just let me know.

[Laird]

Well, in the absence of other volunteers nor objections, it looks like you're it, Sci.

Some thoughts and questions on how this might work:

For continuity in case we lost you unexpectedly, it might be best if on sign-up you provided our official Psience Quest email (the Gmail one). We could then click any necessary emailed verification link for you, but would otherwise leave passwords, etc, to you, and only use the email address to reset the password if we did lose you.

Question #1: which social media sites should we sign up for?

For starters, I suggest Facebook and Bluesky, and I do not want us to be on X nee Twitter. Which others do folk suggest?

Question #2: which protocols should be followed?

The first I'd suggest is one we've already canvassed: interact minimally, especially in a personal capacity. Direct those seeking interaction to the forums or at least to our Contact Us form.

The second is thread selection which you asked about earlier. I suggest simply leaving this to your judgement. You could formalise criteria if you wanted to.

Finally, the SEO plan I developed with the help of ChatGPT calls for the development of a MyBB plugin to support the insertion into threads of DiscussionForumPosting schema markup and Open Graph tags, the latter especially so as to support per-thread images via the "og:image" meta tag.

Most of the necessary data is already present or can be auto-generated, but there's scope for customisation, in particular, for setting a custom description (by default we'd use the first however many words from the first post as the Google SEO plugin already does) and custom image (by default we'd set it to the board logo) for a thread. Let me know if you think you'd ever want to customise these prior to sharing threads, in which case I'll develop that functionality, plus a little "Prepare to Share" button which will aid the process. If not, then that'll save me some effort.

That's it from me for now. Everybody else feel free to chime in.

On the one hand, the question "Is this forum dying?" certainly is related to the fact that the largest online activity these days takes place on various social media platforms. In that sense I can understand why it might be suggested that that is where we should be active too.

On the other hand, I try to avoid posting or interacting on any of those places because they seem targetted at short attention-span low-seriousness content.

As such I would not feel inclined to be involved in such activity myself - though these are my personal views and I don't mean to be obstructive or uncooperative should anyone else wish to proceed in that direction.

Yes, personally I don't use social media at all! I suppose I am a fairly private individual.

David

I'm glad my question has hit a nerve with a lot of us, but I understand the reluctance to employ social media.

One thing we seem to have given up on, is interviews with interesting people. Maybe that should be attempted, if we remember that such people need not be utterly aligned with us. For example, I wonder if any of the following might be interested:

1) Anyone from the DI, even Stephen Meyer.

2) Julie Beischel.

3) James Tour

4) Dean Radin, who has a new book coming out in the Autumn.

David