Channels aren’t failing because people don’t want to build or manage communities. They’re failing because Warpcast never gave channel owners and mods the right tools and features. On top of that, Warpcast is obsessed with controlling the distribution of attention instead of letting things grow organically. The average user treats channels like tags because that’s exactly how they were designed to function at the protocol level. Warpcast neglected channels for the longest time while prioritizing things like trending tokens, which no one asked for.

Community Builder. I'm wandering and wondering. Interested in decentralized, cool & creative stuff. Worked on a DAO for 5 years and looking for something new.

Agree that this is a good question. Thanks for bringing it up.

I'm one of those few people who actually does want to build and manage communities here. I've co-founded and stewarded two on FC in the past year: one in a private group chat, and one in a public channel. Both have gone well and have a core group of casters who love them, but they're also in limbo -- for two reasons:

1) lack of a sustainable economic model to support the time and labor required to bootstrap, and
2) no customizable spaces for us to carry on long-form discussions at our own (slow) pace.

Good moderation is a job just like any other, and it requires a significant time commitment (as Dan acknowledges). Until we have good options for the two issues above, the two communities I mentioned will remain in limbo, since the mods/co-founders have to turn the bulk of our attention to paid work elsewhere.

Agreed that the problem isn't unwillingness to do the work of building channels, but a lack of the right tools (and incentives).

I wrote about the situation for my channels/communities in another thread:

Agreed that the problem isn't unwillingness to do the work of building channels, but a lack of the right tools (and incentives).

I wrote about the situation for my channels/communities in another thread:

https://warpcast.com/danicaswanson/0x8dcd3d4a

Writer, senior editor, music nerd, GenX eldergoth, monastery-bootstrapper. https://paragraph.xyz/@danicaswanson https://tinyurl.com/Black-Stone-Wordsmith

I share your frustration that a lot of the time and effort community-builders have already invested has gone unrewarded. As things currently stand, founders have to pay out of pocket to cover the bootstrapping and maintenance costs of building channels that provide collective benefits to the network. That's unsustainable. 

But my reading of where Merkle stands is different. I think the team recognizes the level of work channel operators do, and ultimately they'd like to see economic models in the Farconomy to support that labor. 

However, they're not prioritizing channels (since in their current format they don't grow qDAU), so it doesn't make sense for channel-builders to invest the time in building them. At least not on Warpcast. There's some hope for mini-apps/mini-clients, but there's still a lot of work to do there.

The irony is that channels *could* grow qDAU to a level that would move the needle! But to do that we'd need the right tools, designs, and incentives, and those are all hard problems.

I don’t think the Warpcast team fully acknowledges how much time and effort some of us have already invested. It’s surprising they never recognized that incentivizing and rewarding channel operators would be a good idea. Either they don’t value the work being done, or they genuinely believe that none of the operators are deserving - that we don’t have “1% expert knowledge” in our topics. Honestly, it just feels insulting. I’m tired of sugarcoating the reality just to fit their narrative