Note: this document is likely to be a ever-evolving WIP.

What is BobaBoard trying to do?

BobaBoard aims to create a social space to experience transformative fandom with friends, sitting at the cross between older, more-anonymous web-spaces and modern social networks.

What are BobaBoard's Principles?

• No single person, business or organization should be a bottleneck in people's ability to experience fandom collectively. The platform must be resilient against those who seek to corrupt the principles it's built upon.
• The interests of "high profits"-driven corporations will, for the foreseeable future, be at odd with the freedom of marginalized communities (and especially sexual minorities).
  • If nothing else because in order to get access to most VC money or payment processors you have to keep an appearance of respectability.
  • Corollary: capitalism-driven fandom is also at odd with the transgressive, revolutionary origins of transformative fandom.
• The "next home of fandom", if there even should be such a thing, should embrace interoperability between different servers and services, and the principles of the open internet. We must demand that our social spaces outgrow walled gardens.
• Fandom is best done in small groups. A fandom space should be fun whether there's 50 or 6000 people on it. Single-community spaces, like most modern social networks, are generally ill-equipped to healthily sustain hundreds of thousands of users.
• Fandom platforms should reward people who take the time to learn their intricacies. While more casual fans are welcome, fandom spaces should target the needs of people who understand fandom culture and lingo.
• While we're silly, and provocative, and don't take ourselves too seriously, BobaBoard aims to build on solid engineering principles with high professional standards.

What's BobaBoard's end game? What are we working towards?

Giving people in fandom a safe space they can mold to suit their needs and ethical principles. Enabling the creation of many of these spaces at scale, interoperable and multicultural, with a high degree of customization. No central government, but (aspirationally) a fandom-led organization that can provide a stable public platform with professional moderation, and technical support/infrastructure for personal spaces.

See: mastodon.social/masto.host/mastodon software.

What other Websites is BobaBoard taking inspiration from?

Note: this isn't a list of planned features, but a collection of guiding ideals and ideas as we work towards the future.

• Discord: there is a reason fandom is on Discord now. Self organizing spaces, with good moderation tools, customizable and flexible enough to accommodate diverse needs. There's a lot about it that doesn't fit fandom, but it works for small groups pretty well.
  • Another good aspect of Discord is its embracing of gamer culture and power users while still being accessible to a more general public (see: bots ecosystem, powerful keyboard shortcuts, granular moderation options...).
  • An easily digestible parallel is: BobaBoard Communities (Realms) = Discord Servers, Boards = Channels. The biggest difference is BobaBoard Communities aim to be able to exist in a decentralized environment.
• Dreamwidth/LiveJournal: for DW, especially, the ethos and principles, including transparency, open access, and a focus on balancing freedom of expression with respect. Lots of good features around groups and friends. Kinkmemes. But also carrying the torch of "avatars culture" and long meta discussions. The coexistence of communities and personal spaces.
• Early ~2010s Tumblr: multi-medial, highly expressive, chaotic, sexually free, and with an underlying social-justice driven conscience.
• Reddit: group setting, moderation tools. Interesting features to look at like flairs, badges/coins, etc. "The front page of the web".
• Twitter: separation of multiple personas *****(in Twitter's case usually private/fandom/professional accounts)*, and the ability to jump across them. While Twitter doesn't facilitate this by design, people have morphed it to suit their needs.