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#ImproveMinds

BunjamanAug 16, 2019, 10:42:17 AM
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Introduction

Even though Minds has been around for a while the site is still very much in its infancy. You can see this with all the bugs around but also with all of the necessities Minds still needs to incorporate. Whether it be something they're already working on or something they plan to work on in the future as witnessed on their roadmap. Unlike Facebook, Minds is a community driven platform, the people working on Minds always keep this in mind when they work on newer updates although it does feel like lately they're more distant. So they do try to listen when the community say they want something. If you're anything like me, when ever you run into a block here on Minds you think of ways to overcome it, whether it be new features entirely or ways to improve existing ones. You may write your idea as a response to a similar question in the H&S group or you may think of an idea and never do anything about it. Since I've been here a while I've come up with countless of suggestions, but have lost track of them and since they were just response replies a lot of the time, they are now lost. So this blog post is a way for me to revisit the ideas I come up with and to further elaborate on them as I think of new ways to tweak them. It's also nice to get a quick overview in a list form.
This list will be updated as I come up with new ideas.

Suggestions

General Minds suggestions

Polls: I don't think this one needs an explanation, it would just be nice to be able to setup polls to interact with the people who follow you in a more interactive way.

Grid view in Discovery: Just like when you are browsing through your folders on your pc, you'd want to view the content depending on what it is. If you need to know details you have it in list form, if it's pictures of video you might want to have it shown in icons and even in different sizes depending on how much you need to scroll through. Well I basically would love to have that same sorting mechanism in the Discovery tab here on Minds. I spend a lot of time scrolling without feeling like I get a lot from it. I got the idea to implement this from the app version of the site, where it sorts the posts in a picture grid so you could quickly see if any post caught your attention. If you could then have it sort by images, by text only posts, by video etc. etc. I feel like right now text posts gets drowned out by the more eye catching image posts, so being able to sort for them specifically would make it easier to "discover" them.

Demonitized "badge" in boosted feed. Suggestion by @roo3story:
With the token system and soon to be Patreon like nature of Minds a big appeal of this site for creators would be the monetary value and exposure Minds can give them. As long as it could be verified demonitized channels could get a badge letting people here on Minds know that they could use support since youtube's ad program doesn't suffice. 

2 kinds of paywall: One being the monthly payment we have now but then a new one that would be a one time payment. You can just wire once now and not do it on a month to month basis, however doing this gives you access to all posts behind that paywall token tier. Creators could then have the Patreon like monthly subscription for behind the scene stuff for example and then a one time payment for a more concrete "product".

Edit blog description. Suggestion by @MadChad: Instead of it displaying the first words in the blogpost, you could a brief synopsis of the blog to give people a better idea of what the post contains. This would couple great with a blog behind a paywall since people could know what they were paying for before hand. 

Audio support ie. embed or upload audio. Suggestion by @moonlit45: This feature would make it easier for musicians to share their work but also radio/podcasts show. Support embed of Soundcloud, Spotify and the like. 

"Circles for 'friends' ". Suggestion by @moonlit45: Being a platform to support creators and supporters of said creators who are kicked off from other platforms or people just looking for something else is a great place to start. However Minds really likes to see themselves as a competitor to Facebook. The reality though is that most people on Facebook are there to have an easy connection to their friends, following creators and pages comes second and is a "nice to have" feature. So Minds need a way to sort out your real life friends from the channels you interact with online. I know private Minds channels are in the works and can be followed here, but I'm not sure if you are able to have friends sorting on public channels in that. 

Mute channels and groups. Suggestion by @showme_whatyougot (Channel is marked "e"). Sometimes you don't want to engage in something a channel shares or maybe and entire group. The block function can feel too harsh because it's not that you want to stop others from seeing your content nor stop them from engaging in your content. Being able to mute channels and groups would solve this problem.

Reminds as nested comments: A way to make cross platform conversations more accessible to OP and the people engaging in a certain topic. To read more on this topic click here.

Group related suggestions

Remind to group: Another pretty self explanatory suggestion, one that I've had ever since I joined. Right now if you want to share a post in a group the work around is to copy the post url and paste it in a new post in a group.

Flag posts, comments and chat that goes against group guidelines: As far as I can see when you want to report or flag something it's only stuff that goes against the Minds guidelines or rules. Meaning that it is a Minds representative who judges whether or not it goes against their ToS. However what if you have a group with a lot of members who are active, there should be a way to flag/report comments to the moderator and not a Minds staff member. It'll make the experience for the user better since they can see what they came for and it makes it easier for moderators to delete or moderate groups. 

Boost related suggestions

Fixing Boosts with a new feed: A feed where you pay for interactions instead of views. The payments would be p2p. Click here for full explanation.

Indicate that a boost offer remind is a boost: This would make it easier in my opinion for creators to accept more boost offers as a potential new revenue stream, since viewers will know that it's a boost and not necessarily a viewpoint the channel shares.

Continuous sidebar boosts: As it is right now there are around 5 or so boosts appearing on the right side of the page. So when you scroll down the page there are no more boosts. The suggestion is pretty straight forward, just let there appear more boosts as you scroll down.

Token related suggestions

Buying Tokens from creators: Essentially this suggestion is exactly as it sounds like. A new revenue stream for creators, a way for people supporting creators to feel like they get something in return and thus incentivize more people to support the creators they love and therefore more creators will join. For full explanation click here

Accepting/Declining wires. Suggestion by @rodfather: If you for what ever reason would like not to receive tokens sent to you, you'd be able to decline the wire.