Hello!

I've been a FoLC for more years than I can count now, but I am still mostly a lurker here. My friends and I recently made a social networking website called Mindkin that's also a simple game, and I convinced them to let me dedicate a copy of the site just for FoLCs - Mindkin for FoLCs (http://folc.mindkin.com) . I'm hoping it will help me and fellow lurkers here to de-lurk a bit more and really make some FoLC friends.

So the website/game works like this: you post short comments or 'thoughts' on the site and they get displayed across the screen without your name. You then mark 'thoughts' posted by other users as 'like' or 'dislike' without knowing who wrote them. Each time you 'like' a 'thought', you get a piece of that person's picture, and each time you 'dislike' a 'thought', you lose a piece. Once you get all 9 pieces, you can start chatting with them on the site.

That's it. I hope you guys will give it a try. If you're one of the first people to register, please don't be alarmed that there isn't much 'thoughts' flowing across the screen. Someone gotta start the party after all. Hope to see you guys there!

Cheers,
Simba

EDIT: The "Login as Guest" doesn't let you do much right now because we're still developing the site - it's kind of hard to let a person play a game where you connect with others when you don't know anything about the person. :p

Ooooh sounds like fun!

I'm registering right now :p

LOL! Looks like a cool way to waste time online.

Thank you, Selinde and LaraMoon and the others who have joined the website. I am so happy you are enjoying it. It's really fun for me to see L&C thoughts flowing across the screen while I work, and very fulfilling for me to see something I've worked on for the last 2 years being used in the fandom I love.

The thoughts are scaring the 1 guy on the site - he's my teammate on the project and not really a folc, so he's being shocked by all the L&C thoughts and what goes through us gals' minds.

And those of you already on the site, let me know if you guys want any new things there. I've been wondering if there is any way we can write a fanfic there together - may be we all write our ideas for the next line and whichever line gets the most 'likes' gets added. What do you guys think?

Simba

P.S. - Btw, Mindkin supports other languages so all you spanish, french, danish, japanese, <your language> folcs out there, feel free to post in your own language and ASCII art for those geeky folcs among us.

Nope. Nor do I see why you'd have offended anyone, Simba. Networking sites seem very popular and anyone who's not interested in joining simply has to...not join. I can't see a reason for anyone to be offended about you sharing your project with fellow FoLCs. That's what the folder is for, in part.

For myself, I'm not much interested in networking sites per se. But I'm impressed with the look of the site you've created - very swish! Nice and clean, too, not cluttered. Which is always a bonus.

LabRat

You didn't offend anyone, as far as I know.

I like the idea of getting to know people on their thoughts, instead of judging them (unconsciously) on looks, status, etc.
The only problem is, I think I already discovered everyone. As far as I know there's 7 people: I discovered 6, and one has only written one thought. I really hope more FoLCs join, it could be so much more fun!

I joined, but haven't had a lot of time to play around with it. You certainly didn't offend me! I'm really glad that you posted about it.

I went to the site to join and I put in an email for an invitation. It's been hours and I never got the email to finish the registration. Did I do something wrong? I'm interested to see what this is all about.

~Kristen

You didn't offend me!!
Let's see if I can register!

EDIT: Okay that worked now let's see if I understand how it works

Hi Everyone!

Thanks for all the reassurances I haven't offended you guys! I'm really glad to hear it. Selinde, I agree, Mindkin will be a lot more fun if there is a lot of people on it, especially if there is enough for there to be multiple people online at the same time. There are 12 people registered on the site now. Lauren has posted a blurb on Mindkin for me on the fanfic archive main page so hopefully more and more people will join. So, Selinde, LaraMoon, symbolicangel, camy, please check back to see who else joins!

Kristen, thanks for trying to join. Have you checked your spam filter? May be the invite is there? If you can't find it, let me know and I can look up your invitation URL in the database and either e-mail you it or post it here. Thanks!

Labrat, thanks for the compliment on the site design. We were a bit worried about it because our team is all geeks/hackers, no artsy people.

Thank you all, and I really hope anyone else who reads this thread will give it a try. And please, let me know of any suggestions and/or criticisms you may have! Thanks so much!

I have been trying it out... but I never stay on very long because I run out of credits so fast. I think that if there were more ways to earn credits and participate that maybe more people would be active at a time.

Hi Jojo-da-crow,

You can earn credits by 'disliking' some thoughts or else waiting until the start of the hour. You use a credit to 'like' a thought and earn a credit by 'disliking' a thought. That's to keep people from liking every thought and just collecting picture pieces of everyone.

Thanks for giving Mindkin a try. See you on Mindkin!

Simba

I know... but but... I like all the thoughts so far. LOL

*is having fun with it*

I think I fall into the category of wanting to collect picture pieces. But there really haven't been any thoughts that I've disliked so I'm not going to feel too bad about it!

I think I've identified 2 people already. As long as there pictures match their avatars here. Mine doesn't (mainly because I couldn't figure out how) so that may be a disadvantage to figuring me out.

~Kristen

Hey everyone!

Wow, we're slowly but steadily growing on Mindkin. 20 users so far!

Several of you mentioned you aren't getting a response to your chats messages. It is working - we just tested it and we see in the logs that all your messages have been delivered. But may be there's some confusion with how to read the messages - the tabs in the chat window will turn orange if they have new chat messages, you need to click on it to see the messages. May be the person receiving your message is confused by this and didn't click to read the message. Please try again, may be your Mindkin will respond this time.

Someone posted in the ThoughtStream that they wish there's more you can do there on the site. We've been thinking the same and have been trying to design a way to play the captions game or hangman or guessing the title/author from fanfic quotes there. Any other games or activities you guys are interested in playing there?

Please let me know any suggestions you guys have. I'm always happy to hear ideas and will try my best to put them in.

Simba

EDIT: Oops, we just realized the chatting on Mindkin isn't working for offline messages. So so sorry about that. :rolleyes: We're trying to fix that now and send out all the chat messages again. Will post when done that. So embarassed.

I would like to see this up and working but many of us (me included) have sort of given up on the idea because there weren't enough people to get it working. Three credits an hour isn't very many, especially if the original user only posted nine or less thoughts to begin with. It is hard to wait the twenty-seven minutes it takes to come up with nine thoughts when you only have three credits an hour. It's even harder to wait a whole hour when you haven't discovered anyone. It is also less likely for us on the FOLC-site to dislike thoughts because we already have one major thing in common.

One thing I like is discovering people. In fact, I don't like disliking thoughts because I may end up not being able to discover someone I otherwise might like. (If I dislike only one out of nine thoughts, then I like them more than I dislike them. Make sense?)

Since the good people at Mindkin have been very open and supportive of our feedback, did anyone else have anything to share?

Elisabeth

I'm resurrecting this thread to remind my fellow mindkins to come back!

http://folc.mindkin.com/Default.aspx

there are currently 61 users on the site, but so many people have only posted a few thoughts, and if in frustration waiting for credits we've disliked someones only thought, they still don't get found.

I have run out of thoughts to like, and hope by reminding you, you'll come back and be entertained by the thoughts.


Some notes (that I hope I figured out correctly)in case you gave up in confusion:

Blue thoughts are made by Boys. Pink by Girls.

You may sometimes notice a shortage of thoughts to choose from- simply like or dislike everything you see, and more will appear (I don't see any, because no one is thinking anymore).

If it shows on top of the screen one user online, that is you.

If someone else is online, it will say 2 or 3 or whatever (not that I've seen that because of the time I tend to be on)

To talk to someone, scroll down through your found mindkins (9 or more pieces), and if their bubble is coloured, click on their bubble to start a conversation. (I don't know if that will automatically show up or not though, they might have to look for you in their list as well).


Desiree, who is pleading for you to come back!

Can't rememeber my user id. I'll sign in under a new user.

Umm, may someone invite me pls?

I'm way late to the convo, but I've found that I have to manually put in my user id and password, instead of just double-clicking and selecting from the drop-down. Also the reset password seems to be quirky.

BTW, it's been fun seeing some new faces in there, even if there's never anyone around to chat with when I'm in there. It's fun to discover new people.

Be sure that if you do try it out that you stick around long enough to leave at least nine thoughts.


Elisabeth
who would find it a drag to have to rediscover SuperRoo (who has SuperRoo as a User ID, btw)