Prelucid##Admin## - Saturday, October 1st, 2011 - 9:27 AM
Hi guys, I wanted to give you a heads up on stuff we're doing on the side, independent of Sanctuary, but in the future, hopefully finding a way to merge the two. We will migrate posts if the response is positive from you guys.
Phalanx (or Phalan+ as a joke) is my team's version of AnonPlus or Anon+, a project which initially started as one group's response to Google banning all people suspected of being Anonymous. Unfortunately that group fell apart and couldn't get anything done, so several rogue groups have stepped up to pick up the slack, mine included. You may see several AnonPlus appearing in the near future, but I'm only here to talk about ours.
It's part blog/part social network/part trended topics/part anonymous imageboard. We'd like to look for a way for you to monetize your work as well, whether it's coming up with a way for you to put up ads on your page, or allowing you to add sponsored campaigns or integrating feeds from other services.
We're starting to recognize the value in ownership and giving people credit for their work, which is why we're no longer developing Bastion software and moving forward with an overhaul in next iterations. It's now called Phalanx 7 and will be more personal-to-social centric.
People will have their own profile pages which consist of their posts, and instead of individual boards, it will focus more on trended topics so that there really is no limit to the topics people can filter out. It can be as general as +Paranormal, or as specific as +Slenderman. People can also exclusively post on their own pages if they want visitors to 'Tap their feed' or 'Tap dat' as our inside joke, but if they allow for public level privacy, it can appear in the trended feeds as well.
While it is more of a social network, we're Anonymous focused, so no personal identifying information is required and we will have a forced Anonymous switch to allow people only to receive Anonymous comments on their posts. There will also still be democratic moderation, so that posts in public feeds can be privatized to that individual's profile page if it's inappropriate.
Friending will work more like 'Following' and can be set to hidden so that we don't get neurotic concerns like 'Hey why don't you follow me back' if you care about that kind of thing.
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If you have any suggestions or recommendations, we're keeping an open mind as it's still heavily under development.
Sounds like a cool project. A few questions and a note. None meant to denigrate the project itself, just trying to see your rationale behind it.
1) What would be the ultimate purpose of the site, that cannot be obtained by current mediums used by your target demographics (who, as average anons, I assume use at least a few of the existing Facebook/Google+/Twitter/LinkedIn/*chan/ which covers a wide swatch of time/needs for communication on various levels.
2)Aren't the idea (as i, core philosophy, not how it is used anyways) of Following vs Forced Anon opposites? At least part of the appeal of posting as Anon on any *chan is because once you have posted you are "lost" or "absorbed" by the sea of anon, save specific speech patterns or "writing voice". Which once a conversation is finished is mostly hard to notice/pick up once again. Following, by definition, isolates a specific person from the hive and by grouping all posts for other to peruses breaks the "anonymity cover".
And the note : Anon symbol overload on your layout image...I would suggest to remove a few as the current cacophony of them makes them all loose impact.
No. 19801 - Anonymous - October 20th, 2011 - 12:13 AM
1) After Google removed several accounts on Google+ belonging to Anons, there were plans to start their own Anon+. I went to the organizing spots seeing if I could offer any help and just found them all in disarray.
The main team split up, many more groups claimed to be starting a site, but no concrete progress was made. Just too many ideas stacking that made the ultimate goal unachievable. The official 'idea' of the Anon+ platform idea is supposed to be a p2p application, much like torrents, accessed through onion servers etc... etc... All technology oriented, but no solutions that were accessible or user oriented.
In actual answer to the question... We're primarily trying to create a platform of communication that allows people to share information without the requirement of compromising their real identities. We're not trying to pander to ego, so much as we are placing emphasis on sharing dialogue. In other social networks, you have to know people to reach them, and they're just as censored as you are using their real names. Your notes (alarming/comforting/shocking) won't reach beyond people that don't have the courage to post it on their own pages. All you ever get is a thumbs up. It's not a proper platform for spreading important ideas.
2) We offer personal privacy or related features as a choice. Each person makes their own reasons to share personal updates or global impactful news. They may not even have a visible home/blog/profile/threads page if desired. It's up to them. It's about making people as comfortable sharing information as they want.
Posts and individuals can be as distinguishable from the crowd as they desire, while others may not, risking the odd case of another anon choosing to continue that person's series of threads on "How to build eco-green homes and live off the grid".
Following is really the one function that qualifies the site as a social network. Should followers choose to, they can repost information with no ties to the source, creating a cascade of connections better allowing for information to be distributed. Being identified is not what I'd consider a break of cover if it doesn't involve your real information. Nothing is stopping people from creating multiple accounts or closing their own, without traces left behind.
Last part: Great suggestion. In choosing the default profile picture, we were actually trying to get away from overusing the Guy Fawkes mask, but I suppose the two images are too culturally synonymous. We'll likely be removing some of them since we've publicly stepped downed as a contender for Anon+ via the official channels (we don't want the negative association or to be targeted by hackers now that we've worked so hard on it).
I would either keep the mask symbol on the upper left -or- the united nation of anon on the bottom right.. I would remove the "we are legion" tagline and just let the name "Phalanx" be an oblique reference to it..
Once again, only suggestions :-)
Glad to read you guys but some thoughts in the anonymous (as in, without identity, not the group) aspect of your system.
