Proposal 6C: Plans for the future of WildFyre

Hi everyone!

After the survey and other feedback given to us via the app or in the Telegram chat, we're announcing changes.

We've nicknamed this the proposal 6c—because it's the third version of the sixth solution we've discussed. Now, all of us staff have agreed on what it will be: and if you all like it, that will become the official long term plans for the future of WildFyre.

The first major change is that, by default, the area selector is gone. Which means, the default view of the app has every area, not just the one you select. Of course it will still be possible to browse only one area at a time, if you want to.

World Area

As requested, we will introduce a World area. When browsing it, it will show randomly posts from every existing area, for your urges of randomness.

Feed

When you first use the app, the feed will be exactly the same as the World area: fully random.

As you browse it though, you will be given the option to choose a priority per area—you could say you don't want anything from the area “technology”, or a very small amount, or a lot more! There's no magic here: you will just be able to select a priority, and the feed will show randomized content according to that priority.

Do you really hate politics but still want to see the occasional post once in a while? Now you'll be able to, without having to switch areas.

Search

After much debate, we will include a search feature—you will be able to search for everything you've seen, so you can easily find that one post you really liked, without fear of getting spoiled.

Ranks

Posts will have a rank—as they get more popular, they will earn a better rank. This is part of our objective to increase feedback from the app: you'll be able to know more easily which of your posts were popular or not.

Nested Areas

You might have heard about an “Area Proposal” being discussed? Well, this is why: the big part is how the Area system will be reworked.

Areas will be able to be nested. It means that the list of Areas will be a kind of family tree, if you will. The roots will be the language areas—each language will get its own—and everything else will be branches coming from these.

Why did we choose the roots to be the language areas? Because this way, every part of our community can talk in their own language without any problem.

But don't worry, that doesn't mean we will split the community: thanks to the World and Feed areas, by default you will see everything randomly, so you won't miss out on anything. If you want though, you can reduce the priorities of other languages areas in your feed so you only see content in the languages you choose.

And no matter what happens, when you need true randomness... The World area will still be there.

User Areas

Anyone will be able to submit a request for the creation of a new area. For example, when creating an area in English, it would send a poll in the “English” area.

If enough people vote for the creation of the area, it will automatically be created.

This way, it will possible to create new areas specific to some topics—but it will require the your approval, so we don't end up with a massive spam of areas.

The goal is to reduce moderator action to the minimum: as long as an area is not illegal or against the ToS, the community is in full control.

Posting

But, with so many areas, what if we have a post that makes sense in multiple areas? You will be able to post to more than one area (but no more than 5!).

As spreading is area-specific, it's possible the post will be very popular in one area and unpopular in another: the popularity of one post doesn't have any impact on the other areas this post is in.

Also, users cannot see the same post twice when they browse in World, Feed or even a specific area. Posting to multiple areas is just a way to broaden your audience, it will not result in any spam for anyone.

Every time someone extinguishes your posts, your spread decreases by a little in that area—so don't always post to many areas, as being off-topic can make your next posts very easy to kill off.

Cross-Posting

WildFyre is about spreading... And so far areas have always been seen as a boundary through which nothing can spread. When this proposal is implemented, all of that will change.

Based on the rank of a post, a post will be able to spread to neighboring areas. For example, if there is a “Technology” area, and two children areas “Smartphones” and “Computers”, a very popular post in “Computers” will start to appear in the “Technology” area—and if it's again really popular in “Technology”, it will be able to spread downwards to “Smartphone”.

Even when Cross-Posting, ignites and extinguishes are dependent on the area. Being popular in “Smartphones” doesn't mean it will be popular in “Technology”, especially since people cannot see the same post twice.

You can think of it as if you posted to more than 5 areas—except it's automatic.

Spread Map

Every post will have a virtual map of its spreading through areas. In each area, dots will represent the users who saw the post.

When you post to an area (or multiple), you will be able to find those areas as circles on the map. Within those, grey dots will appear, that represent the users who will see your post (the number of which depends on your spread).

As users see your post, the dots will turn blue or orange depending on whether they extinguished or ignited—and for each that ignited, their spread count will be added of grey dots.

It will become easy to know what a post's popularity is, and to know what its path was.

Thanks for the amazing years!

That is everything we've been discussing for the past months. If you have any comments/ideas, please give us your feedback so we can discuss it.

Please keep in mind though, these features are not going to be here soon. Right now, these are just ideas—if you like them, they will become our official roadmap for the future. That way, you'll know exactly what we're working on. Sadly, most of us have a ton of work currently (and one of us had a baby!) so development will take time.

If you're really curious, we have a Google Doc file which contains all the area proposals we've had, so you can see what the ideas we thought weren't good enough were, and what we thought about. This document is an internal notebook though, so don't expecting formatting or nice explanations, it's all about technical details. If you're still interested, you can find it here.