A Mefi place for project collaborations

October 13, 2014 4:42 PM

There's been a few discussions here regarding MeFite project collaborations, and a placeholder Wiki listing page came out of it. It hadn't been active since, so I decided to add on to it to put it in line with the music collaboration listing, and create some awareness/discussion for it here. I'm guessing this could be useful for media such as art, writing, video, and podcasting.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing to MetaFilter-Related at 4:42 PM (11 comments total)

Wait: I are dumb. So would you come here to ask for help, or to host an ongoing discussion, or to show off the finished product?
posted by wenestvedt at 8:50 AM on October 14, 2014

I think the idea is to draw attention to the existence of the "project collaboration" wiki page so that Metatalk readers may look to see if anything takes their fancy (rather than suggesting that people post here for every single project collaboration idea).
posted by adrianhon at 9:23 AM on October 14, 2014

Would it be feasible to have a "Projects Talk" page like we have for Music and FanFare?
posted by Rock Steady at 10:09 AM on October 14, 2014

...he said, and then was beat soundly about the head and shoulders by an already overworked pb.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:19 AM on October 14, 2014

Yeah, the wiki page is more to let others know of a concept you already had, and that you're looking for partners. As was mentioned in one of the previous discussions, one could message potential collaborators individually, but you'd miss out on lurkers who might fit the bill. And it's a way to pitch things that wouldn't fit in Metatalk, Projects, or Jobs.

The post here was made in part to hopefully iron out what would and wouldn't be eligible. Presumably it should be non-profit and maybe non-Kickstartery.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 10:30 AM on October 14, 2014

Would it be feasible to have a "Projects Talk" page like we have for Music and FanFare?

I actually kind of wish those talk pages could get folded back into MetaTalk. Same thing with IRL Proposals.
posted by bleep at 1:27 PM on October 14, 2014

bleep: "I actually kind of wish those talk pages could get folded back into MetaTalk. Same thing with IRL Proposals."

It's not a bad idea. Has there been a decrease in MeTa volume since the PermaQueue? It seems like it to me. I think it might be cool to consolidate the Talk pages, but not IRL proposals. They are too geographically specific and too numerous.
posted by Rock Steady at 1:35 PM on October 14, 2014

That might be but then I would advocate putting those back on the main IRL page. I just think there's a glut of separate pages that need to be checked one by one inside each sub-site with the result that people don't do it. Stuff gets missed because it's outside the normal flow of clicking each sub-site and scrolling down to read it.
posted by bleep at 2:29 PM on October 14, 2014

It took 16 hours and 8 minutes for the first comment to be made in this thread. Is that a record?
posted by alms at 12:30 PM on October 15, 2014

Tell me about it.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 2:54 PM on October 15, 2014

FWIW, I actually created an online collaborative space for a project of mine and sent an invite to another Mefite who had previously expressed interest in my project. The collaborative space is currently private. The other mefite accepted my invitation and has, in fact, left a couple of comments. It is very early stage and will probably be a while before it leads to anything.

I met this mefite via chat and we previously talked about our respective projects mostly via chat and a little via email/memail. I ended up getting a Github ID to follow his project but didn't yet have a project space for my thing. And now I do have a sandbox for gathering resources and kicking around ideas.

I am not sure what metafilter can do to specifically support this kind of collaboration. One thing that needs to happen is networking. But another piece of this would be an online collaborative space for actually working together in a way that can lead to something. I liked chatting with this person but mefi chat is not a good work space. If you use certain apps, it is possible to have a record of the discussion, but there are a lot of other things about it which are just not conducive to making good progress on a project. Now that I have an online collaborative space, I hope to make better progress.

So maybe we need to talk in this thread about those two pieces: a) How do you find other like-minded mefites who might wish to collaborate on something of yours? and b) What are some already available online collaborative tools (and perhaps also what kind of projects each is likely to support well)?
posted by Michele in California at 1:33 PM on October 17, 2014