Oppoexit Grassroots Update

"Nick Has an Exocet" (nickallain)
10/31/2019 at 12:45 • Filed to: None

There are now 80 people over in the Discord chat. I know live chat isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, so I wanted to sum up some recent grassroots efforts that have largely been happening over there.

What we know:

The issues over at Deadspin have folks wondering if Kinja is going to stick around or whether the Kinja owners are happy with indie blogs talking about Kinja ownership on the Kinja platform. No one has officially made any comments one way or another.

How some people are feeling:

This is an awesome community. When people started to feel threatened, folks came together to start brainstorming ideas about how to keep it together. That’s really freaking cool.

My own editorial here is that the days of Kinja-for-all probably has an expiration date that’s sooner than we’d all like. Now is good time to start building a life raft (or an ark) in order to keep the good times going. That’s not particularly easy, but it’s possible. The people I’ve talked to have been amazing and have not just offered ideas on how to save Oppo, but how to make it better (ideas for podcasts, expanding the live chat in Discord, social features in a future iteration, etc). That makes me excited and happy to help in any way that I can.

What’s being done:

Brian, the person who holds uber-admin for Oppo on Kinja, has secured the perfect domain name to move to if we need it.

The Discord chat has been amazing. In depth chats into oversquare vs undersquare, Brexit, space technology, and classic shitposting has been the name of the game outside of “what if” about Kinja. Link is at the bottom to join if you haven’t already.

The elephant in the room is “okay, so what if Kinja went away tomorrow?”. That’s something I’m personally very interested in. Wordpress seems like it might be a good answer so I’ve started putting together a Wordpress plugin that approximates some of the features that help make this community work (like notifications for comments/saves, user icons, the ability to be granted posting privileges, etc). There’s also the possibility to take the Oppo community to new levels (embedded Discord chat, private messages, etc) but I’m interested in base functionality first. The whole idea is to have a ready-to-eat Kinja-style experience in a Wordpress plugin.

Not to mention a commenting system that has the potential to be worlds better than the one here.

When (or better yet, if) a switch-over occurs will need to be a community decision (again, I suggest joining the Discord chat) or (equally likely) driven by Kinja no longer being an option.

More fun from Discord:

Rallydarkstrike has put together a new Oppo user map. It would be great if you could add yourself to it. There have also been rumblings of perhaps doing more Oppomeetups - which is much more likely if we know what region you’re in.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Closing

I would recommend we keep as much strife about Kinja’s owners off the Oppo site as we can. No sense rattling the hornet’s nest if we don’t have to. It will take me some time to finish the plugin (PHP isn’t necessarily my forte as a marketing person) and if we have to suddenly move, it would be great to have that ready rather than half-ass it.

We have an awesome community here. I’ve met people through here (yes, in person) that I consider friends and hope that continues. I’ll repost this in the morning Pacific Time for additional eyeballs.

DISCUSSION (48)

LJ909 > Nick Has an Exocet
10/31/2019 at 02:01

I hope everything settles down and the owners get some sense knocked into them. Kinja is a fantastic platform, even with the glitchy commenting problems sometimes. With that being said, I’ m going to s ave everything I have ever written on Oppo if its not already backed up.

Svend > Nick Has an Exocet
10/31/2019 at 02:04

I joined Discord the other week. The live chat did my head in with notifications and keeping up with comments. I didn’t know what was a reply to me that wanted a reply back or what.

If a new Kinja style platform was out there, I'd be all over it

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > Nick Has an Exocet
10/31/2019 at 02:27

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

so you’re setting yourself a nice low bar then

BvdV - The Dutch Engineer > Nick Has an Exocet
10/31/2019 at 02:41

I applaud you for building an ark for us to go if/when it goes sideways!

Will there be a way to be notified in case Kinja dies and we move to the new place? (Apart from discord?)

AestheticsInMotion > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen
10/31/2019 at 02:47

This comment has been saved by some people, and others

Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo > AestheticsInMotion
10/31/2019 at 02:50

And someone else.

Blondude > Nick Has an Exocet
10/31/2019 at 02:51

There’s also /r/oppositelock

The last time the Kinjaverse was in danger we spread the word about it so if Oppo suddenly went under we could use it as a staging location for a new site. I think it’s a good backup to have along with the Discord.

Nick Has an Exocet > BvdV - The Dutch Engineer
10/31/2019 at 02:54

I don’t know of anything in specific. I did just register: @LockOpposite on Twitter.

Nick Has an Exocet > Blondude
10/31/2019 at 02:55

Ah, that’s right! I knew I forgot something.

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > AestheticsInMotion
10/31/2019 at 03:28

You post here often

We love you like a brother.

Your comment is pending.

....we really need “ In Memory of Kinja“ error messages on this new site.

Stef Schrader > Nick Has an Exocet
10/31/2019 at 04:20

I have no idea how to use Discord, TBH.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Svend
10/31/2019 at 06:14

Usually if somebody does a direct reply to you Svend, they’ll type @Svend (for example) in their message, it get s highlighted and you’ll get a direct notification for it. You can turn off notifications for all but direct @you or @everyone messages. :)

vondon302 > Nick Has an Exocet
10/31/2019 at 06:28

Thanks joined.

Svend > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
10/31/2019 at 06:29

Cool. I’m on Discord, DriveTribe and joined the OPPO on Reddit.

TheTurbochargedSquirrel > Stef Schrader
10/31/2019 at 07:18

It’s basically slack.

TheTurbochargedSquirrel > Nick Has an Exocet
10/31/2019 at 08:01

I believe ForSweden still has the account info for the old @oppositelock1 twitter account.

MKULTRA1982(ConCrustyBrick) > Nick Has an Exocet
10/31/2019 at 08:45

This is all great work, thank you and I will add myself shortly. Kudos to everyone for finding solutions so quickly

Nibby > Nick Has an Exocet
10/31/2019 at 08:46

hopefully this doesn’t go the way of your slack

Chuckles > Stef Schrader
10/31/2019 at 08:57

I just tried discord for the first time last night. It’s pretty straightforward, especially if you’ve used something like Slack before.

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > Nick Has an Exocet
10/31/2019 at 09:06

Haha I know who the marker in BC on that map must be!

Mercedes Streeter > Nick Has an Exocet
10/31/2019 at 09:22

And if you must vent about the owners on Kinja , there are actually blogs for it like DeadspinRIP or SplinterRIP .

A few threads here and there are on here are one thing (after all, we are an off topic blog) , but we don’t want a good chunk of our content to become shit talking the owners. That’s how we probably end up in their crosshairs.

MoCamino > Nick Has an Exocet
10/31/2019 at 09:32

Having the Discord channel available as a regrouping area is awesome. I’m definitely not a live-chat person, but knowing I can sign in there to figure out where to join Oppo2.0™ is a good thing.

Stef Schrader > TheTurbochargedSquirrel
10/31/2019 at 10:04

Ahhhhh.

Also, if we move to a separate platform, I think any subject’s fair game. The thin-skin herbs in the room only have control of their own network.

TheTurbochargedSquirrel > Stef Schrader
10/31/2019 at 10:08

Anything’s fair game when the inmates own the asylum.

Stef Schrader > TheTurbochargedSquirrel
10/31/2019 at 10:09

Hell yeah.

mcseanerson > Nick Has an Exocet
10/31/2019 at 11:30

Wow, I was just thinking of coming back here because I’m getting burnt out by the next two successive life rafts I had moved on to and now you guys are leaving. Maybe I’ll follow you guys. (It’s Mcseanerson btw, I just like screwing with the fact that Kinja lets you impersonate people)

TheTurbochargedSquirrel > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen
10/31/2019 at 12:04

404 error page needs to be a a Kinja’d gif.

Nick Has an Exocet > mcseanerson
10/31/2019 at 12:24

Trying to keep things the same as possible! I don't think anyone wants to leave, really. It's just a potential future that someone stomps us out.

Nick Has an Exocet > Nibby
10/31/2019 at 12:26

Yeah, discord is much better.

Discerning > Nick Has an Exocet
10/31/2019 at 12:53

This is the first I’m hearing of the discord chat. Still not sure what it is.

Or maybe someone else mentioned it recently because of something? I can’t recall. Oh well

Snuze: Needs another Swede > Nick Has an Exocet
10/31/2019 at 12:57

Nick, thanks again, you are doing gods work. You and Maxima, TAE, etc. All the really talented people. It’s amazing.

Dash-doorhandle-6 cyl none the richer > Nick Has an Exocet
10/31/2019 at 13:04

Thanks for all of this.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > mcseanerson
10/31/2019 at 13:10

We’re not leaving Kinja Oppo unless it gets shut down suddenly. The other stuff is just a ‘what if’ backup in case this goes down. :)

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > MoCamino
10/31/2019 at 13:12

That’s the idea!

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > BvdV - The Dutch Engineer
10/31/2019 at 13:22

You can add your email here:

https://oppositelock.com/

BvdV - The Dutch Engineer > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com
10/31/2019 at 13:25

Thanks, done!

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > Nick Has an Exocet
10/31/2019 at 14:16

Let’s just copy the kinja source code onto our own server and reverse engineer it.

Or maybe we just all pitch in $5 and buy kinja.

And while we're at it let's make an oppositelock app.

benjrblant > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
10/31/2019 at 14:20

honestly, i’d probably rather leave on our own time. kinja’s terrible all the time and it might not be pretty if they yank the plug overnight.

AddictedToM3s - Drives a GC > Blondude
10/31/2019 at 15:39

This is honestly the best solution. Slack and Discord don’t allow for full stories and images. Slack let’s you do threads but that’s not the de facto format and it serves as more of an enhanced IM.