I was inspired by Knightwise's

episode

4109 on future-proofing HPR.

I agree with many of your criticisms, but I'm not sure that a marketing

strategy is the best way forward. Many of the most successful and

sustainable businesses and organizations have been built on

word-of-mouth.

For example I heard of Google, Zoom, Gmail, Facebook, Slack, Twitter,

Discord, etc from my IRL friends and coworkers rather than from a

marketing message. And most of the open source communities I'm a part of

(Linux, Python, Firefox, Hugging Face, etc) are successful precisely

because their success is not subject to a BigTech algorithm or

exploitative terms-and-conditions.

Most open source projects are able to build community much by actively

resisting the temptation to create a marketing message or social media

campaign and instead focusing on the authenticity and quality of their

"product" and catering to their contributors' and users niche needs and

sensibilities.

Points of agreement (Rapoport Rule

#2)

I share Knightwise's love and concern for the HPR community

I agree the intro theme song and voiceover could be accelerated and

improved

I whole-heartedly agree the comments interface could be made easier

to use

I agree that the HPR community feels like a monastery or convent.

Perhaps faith in FOSS is a kind of religious belief or value that

supersedes normal human instincts and drives.

I 100% support hackers that evangelize for HPR on their favorite

bigtech social media platforms.

My FOSS podcatcher Antennapod,

automatically skips the intro. I had to rewind in order to hear the

episode number and host username in order to compose my reply.

And I have trouble engaging with the comments interface on the HPR

site.

I wasn't even aware of comments on my previous episodes and once I did

learn of it I found it easier to reply on Mastodon rather than on the

HPR website.

As a community, I think we take it on faith that there is a place in the

world for people like us that just want to share ideas, unmediated by

shadow-banning, rug-pulling corporations and attention-hacking

algorithms. I want to have a conversation with thoughtful people. I

don't want to be engaged or monetized or exploited

A young person that is turned off after 3 seconds of retro-sounding

audio is likely to not enjoy the "sound of

woodwork (2442)" or "overlanding"

audio journals (4037) of semi-retired geeks.

Many of us know that what we do in life cannot be measured in

dollars or like button

clicks, but rather by the quality of our friendships and the

collective ideas that we share.

Zombies on Facebook, Twitter, Discord and Slack must eventually "see

the light" for themselves and come flocking to "the small

web" as they did during Xitter's decline.

HPR has been a significant positive force in my life and I would

hate to sully its openness and authenticity with SEO or other marketing

strategies (I know this is not what you proposed)

I think the enshittified

Discord network is the wrong business to entrust with our community, for

one thing, its app doesn't work on Linux

Marketing and SEO are effective tools for growth-seeking businesses,

but ill-suited for an open source community

Anyone interested in business str