I've been reading all the feedback and really appreciate the detailed thought everyone has put into this.
Re: new format...
After reading the thread and talking internally a bit, it's clear to me that although Mastodon might very well be a great platform for an art community, it isn't really what Pixelation is unless we radically redefine it. To that end, I think we should set aside that format in favor of investigating other formats moving forward. It's important to me that we only change the format in ways that embrace what is in line with what Pixelation is.
I've been looking into more modern forum software to see if there's a good fit.
https://flarum.org/ looks really appealing to me and is moddable. I like its clean presentation, mobile-friendly interface, and it's use of tags as forum sections. But at the end of the day, it doesn't *really* provide much that we don't already have with the existing forum software without heavy modification which can also technically be done on SMF. There's not much immediate value to switching.
Vinik mentioned Imageboards, and I've been looking into it. At first glance, it definitely has a lot going for it that would be great:
- Images are first class citizens
- Content is presented immediately rather than obscured behind text links
- retains a forum-like thread structure
it also has some downsides:
- Very much stuck in the 90's.
- Focus on anonymous features of "chans" rather than members/membergroups/etc
- lack of moderation tools
After all my searching, I am amazed that there has been no modernized take on the format.
This really leads me back to the idea that if we really want a format that works well for Pixelation, I might need to write it from scratch. That is no small feat and would likely take many months before we can try a public beta.
I'll continue searching and thinking about this, but in the meanwhile, like Atnas said, we need to work with what we have now and start making proactive changes here that we can then leverage into whatever technical future pixelation might have moving forward.