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My Rainbow Blog

A blog by JoelR in Personal Blogs

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About this blog

The online journal of @JoelR.  My thoughts on porn trends, community management, and what it's like to run AdonisMale.

Entries in this blog

On Relaxation

There's a lot of negativity right now in the world, from market crashes and joblessness to heartbreaking stories of personal tragedy.   It's important to distance yourself between what's truly impacting your day to day life, and what's happening to the world at large.  One way to do that is to step away from the non-stop negativity by simply relaxing.  This can be 3 minutes of deep breathing at work or 30 minutes of peaceful meditation at home.  My neighbor invited me to do that with t
JoelR

JoelR

4
Milestones

On Six Years

Our community started in 2013.   It took us six years to hit 10,000 members.  It took us six years to hit a half million gallery photos.   In our seventh year of 2020, we've already hit 15,000 members and 1,000,000 gallery photos -- a remarkable achievement that demonstrates how we're not just growing, we're accelerating. It may have taken us six years to establish a foundation.  But it's to set-us up for an amazing new six years of fabulous growth.  To everyone in the community,
JoelR

JoelR in Milestones

6
Thoughts

On Marvels

This is an artist's rendition of NASA's Cassini spacecraft before it burned up in the atmosphere of Saturn.  There is marvel in the universe.  There are great spaces to cross. There are vast unknowns to explore. There are wonders to both humble and elevate us.     Earlier today, rioters violently stormed the US Capitol and interrupted the counting of the Electoral College, a procedural vote with a predetermined outcome.  The rioting only forestalled the count.  How small.   How bi
JoelR

JoelR in Thoughts

1

On Platforms

As part of the evolution of our website with the onboarding of Yahoo Groups, one of the biggest shifts that we're facing is from a community to a platform.   What is a platform?  A platform is a foundation on which other people or groups can build.   What is a community?  A community is a fellowship of people having a particular shared interest.   A platform is neutral.  A platform serves others, but has no mission by itself.  A community, on the other hand, does have a sta
JoelR

JoelR

10

On Belonging

There's a human desire to belong.  It's a natural, powerful extension of our socialness.   Our community has always prided itself on welcoming you to belong, regardless of your sex, age, gender, orientation, or other social factors that divide and neatly categorize us.  Our community contains a et a fascinating array of people who have traveled through our forums, and I continue to be amazed at the brilliant diversity of people who choose to belong in our community. For those of you wh
JoelR

JoelR

0

On Language, Limits, and Freedom of Expression

We recently opened our doors to Yahoo Groups who migrated to the site to start their clubs.  We have new clubs dedicated to a rainbow array of interests.  The language, niche, and fetishes of many of these new clubs stretch far beyond the historic focus of our site.  The onboarding of these clubs opens up a new set of perplexing and serious questions: What are the limits of this community?  For those limits, is there a difference between spoken vs unspoken guidelines? 
JoelR

JoelR

5

On Porn

There's a lot of porn out there: Porn sites receive more regular traffic than Netflix, Amazon, & Twitter combined each month. (HuffPost) 35% of all internet downloads are porn-related. (WebRoot) There's also a lot of flavors of porn.  From kink to vanilla, from midgets to size differences, there are so many different kinds.   I personally tend to be pretty vanilla.  I like straight guys (of course who doesn't fantasize about the hot straight guy??).  I like barebac
JoelR

JoelR

3

On Pride

Photo of Martha Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, founders of STAR and the first pride parades in 1989. June is Pride Month.  The Stonewall uprising was a riot started by trans women of colour against police brutality. Pride is intrinsically intertwined with a rainbow diversity of black, people of color, and trans.
JoelR

JoelR

1

On Covid19 Second Wave

Covid19 is a healthcare crisis.  And a healthcare crisis means that until we have healthcare solutions (eg. a real vaccine, herd immunity, slowing the rate of transmission, identifying vector sources faster), the economy and daily life are going to be a second priority.  I know some of you can't wait to reopen the economy; even worse, I know many people are facing severe financial hardship.  It's hard to argue with not having money to put food on the table versus an intangible virus, but I think
JoelR

JoelR

6

On Pausing

Most of us go, go, go.  We go to work, go to the gym, go back home, go back to work, go to meet up with friends, go for professional development, go for one of our countless dates and meet-ups for family members, children, siblings, or friends.   On my website, I have limited time to do stuff.  I spend all week thinking of the items that I'd like to do in the few short hours of the weekend that I have available, and when the weekend starts, it's go go go. Sometimes it's worthwhile to p
JoelR

JoelR

3

On Free Speech

Parler is a new social media platform that promises 'free speech' to users who were kicked off Twitter.  Ironically, they've posted community guidelines that are stricter than those of Twitter: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200630/23525844821/parler-speedruns-content-moderation-learning-curve-goes-we-allow-everything-to-were-good-censors-days.shtml
JoelR

JoelR

0

On Honeytrap

While I wish the website would be universally popular based on the strength of our content, I recognize that we need to build a better 'honeytrap' to capture and delight users.  This means better galleries, better content, and better resources than anyone else in the world.  This is a high bar, but not an impossible achievement and certainly one that I'm willing to pursue.   The question is how to later convert those visitors, guests, and lurkers into active members?    
JoelR

JoelR

4

On Gifts

https://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/to-build-community-an-economy-of-gifts/ A beautiful quote on a 'gift culture,' a culture that underpins the entire foundation of AdonisMale and what goes back to the original mission of our community: to share beautiful photos of men. The most important part about gift culture is that the reward comes not from taking or consuming, but on the very act of gifting itself.  In a community, the more that you put in, the more that you receive.   Wha
JoelR

JoelR

2

On Crisis

Obstacles and challenges are a part of life, and the more severe the challenge, the more that we're tested.   There are those who freeze up and become negative, blaming the world.  There are those who rise to the occasion.   What kind of person are you?  Who are you surrounded by, and are your friends empowering you to make the most out of this situation in spite of the crisis?   
JoelR

JoelR

2

On Overchoice

Users usually like choices.  Except when the choices become overwhelming.  Some implications for community design: One of the dangers and challenges of a community such as ours is not in offering too much, but in organizing it within too many choices.  Users need to be able to navigate with a clear and simple design, and part of that means constantly considering the dangers of adding 'yet another' new category or section.   How experienced users navigate is very different t
JoelR

JoelR

2

On Size

There are life stages to a community: inception, growth, maturation, and then mitosis.   When do you know when you switch from a new community to a growing community, or from a growing community to a mature community?  When does it become more important to protect the existing members than to welcome new members?  
JoelR

JoelR

3

On Minimum Specifications

Usually in an organization, there's a set of minimum specifications ("specs.")  It's a minimum set of requirements that the task, objective, or product needs to meet.   Most of us spend our professional lives rushing to meet those minimum specifications before we go onto another project with yet another minimum specifications.  On and on.   I'd like to think that as AdonisMale grows, we're not racing to the minimum.  We try to climb to the top and even if we can't quite get there, we s
JoelR

JoelR

1
Community Management

On a Thousand Little Steps

Building a community happens in both big ways and small ways. We've undergone big, identity-shattering transformations that have catapulted us into new directions, new content, and new groups of people.  We've also undergone thousands of tiny little steps, every day to grow the community in more quiet ways.   I try to not lose sight of the 'thousand little steps' to improve: the tiny minutiae that - on their own - may not seem like a lot.  But compounded over time, they add up.  Each i
JoelR

JoelR in Community Management

0

On Timeliness

One of the evolving ideas in the back of my head is the need to ensure timeliness and relevance of the website.  Many users came from places that shared content that were popular a decade ago.  Interests, tastes, studios, and actors have changed.  What was popular ten years ago may still retain a sense of nostalgia, but the activity and interest in the subject will naturally decrease over time.  Modern users search for new pornstars, new studios, and new scenes.   I haven't fully come to te
JoelR

JoelR

3

On Free

What's the price of free?  So much of the web is free.  Free information. Free tutorials. Free services.  Free platforms.  Users expect everything to be free and unlimited.   There's a cost to all of that, whether or not the cost is apparent to you (the end user).  The cost can be time, energy, and volunteer contributions by a user.  The cost can be hidden, through the selling of your user data, privacy, and location  The cost can also be redistributed: some users pay for everyone else
JoelR

JoelR

1

Post vs Contribution

Our community platform invites users to upload, share, and write through multiple ways.  Some are more useful than others.   Someone that shares a thoughtful, nuanced opinion that challenges other users or decisively adds to the collective knowledgebase is a contribution.  Someone that shares how they're feeling today is a post.   For some users, the 100 limit is a race to the lowest quality posts with a goal at the end.  For others, it's an invitation to fully participate
JoelR

JoelR

2

On Popularity

Popularity is a function of both intensity and time.  What was popular last year is different than what is popular than this year.   One of the challenges of our community software is that it measures popularity since the time of the items' creation.  An item that was created 5 years and collects 1000 votes is considered more popular than item that was created only 1 month ago and collect 800 votes.   But which one is actually more popular, at this time?  How would you display it,
JoelR

JoelR

0

On Goals

I was recently asked by a friend how to start up a community in three months.   Okay. Why did he choose a deadline of 3 months?  What kind of community does he want?  What are the objectives of his community, and how does he want to empower his members?  What kinds of content can he offer in his community?  What kinds of features, customizations, and technical interactions does he require?   Until you have the goals, you won't be able to create a strategy.     When we mo
JoelR

JoelR

0

Tale of Two Communities

There are two fundamental kinds of communities.   Community of Users The focus is on the users, and the social interaction between users.   This usually emphasizes features centered on the users like profiles, status updates, a membership directory, user albums, user blogs, and user-published content.  The user is there to broadcast his perspective, and shares his personal perspective.  Even though other users can comment, the primary focus is on the individual's original content.
JoelR

JoelR

1

On Control

For the people who have been forced to stay at home during the age of coronavirus .... There are some who can find serenity in their lives There are some who panic, who fall to the social anxiety and overwhelming negativity I've certainly bounced between both myself.  In the early stages of the coronavirus in the first week of March, several of my friends who are medical doctors privately warned me that Covid-19 would be bad, and that I should stock up on food and non-peris
JoelR

JoelR

0

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