Admins: What are your experiences with TCB?

Hello, we (some german activists) plan to start a project like TBC in german language and I would like to ask the admins of TCB to send me their experiences with running such a project. Some ideas:
- What mistakes did you do?
- What problems did you encounter and how did you solve them?
- How many people should be involved in the "core team"? What skills are needed?
- How did you do the "marketing"?
- Would you do it again?
- Are users satisfied or do they all stay at/go back to Facebook in the end?

Thank you,
Nicholas

It's just my opinion, here, feel free to discuss with other people around.

- What mistakes did you do?
Imo, main one is we extrapolated the rate of incomers over the 1st month.
We ended up with a server that was way too costly, and had to migrate twice.

- What problems did you encounter and how did you solve them?
Too long to reply in a few sentences Better if you come with more specific issues.
PS : but we solve most issues by debating in thematic team(s) and/or in general assemblies.

- How many people should be involved in the "core team"? What skills are needed?
Hard one, depends on what your "core team" has to do.
Here, we have several "core" teams made of network users :
- like 5 technicians (linuxians) + 3 network managers (phpfo
- 5 or about moderators accessing sensible functions (requires patience)
- 10-15 watchers making sure voted charter is respected (lotsa attention)
= makes like 30ish people in all with (skills).
That doesn't count the various thematic work teams that existed and/or still exist.

- How did you do the "marketing"?
It's been done mainly by newsletters/web, but also by paper & other networks.

- Would you do it again?
Definitely, even if having more active (!) participants would make automanagement way more fluent.

- Are users satisfied or do they all stay at/go back to Facebook in the end?
Depends on people ; globally people that come here go on both and find infos here they wouldn't get in FB.
Some got back to FB because the moderation doesn't exist there, while we don't allow extreme-right crap around.
You also have a minority that only use TCB as they have all they need here, and they appreciate that spirit.

Hope that replies to your concerns

What a pity tcb is not yet in differents languages, it would be better be all toghether in the same exchange site to make world become better...
Maybe multilanguages tcb will work before you start your, you know?

I suggested to the TCB team to make TCB international/for whole europe in the early days and also offered my help. Sadly everything stayed focused on french users.

(Btw, thank your for the answers on my first post. Our main problem right now is to get the $299 to start working on it.)

Sure, there are many things to do. There are many People who can translate, but this is now a technical problem, and that need time to do, if it's possible. I don't think as you do it's definitively lost even if TCB actives people are just a few, and have so mutch to do. If not only you but many other people could make their part, not only to translate but to do everthing have to be done, insted of being consumers (I would'nt mind if these consumers where not so often very actives insted to criticise) I think we are a lot to hope international link.

Atm, TCB interface (= not the user posts, of course) is translated in 10+ languages - except for the main page. Test this from your account prefs.
But more deeply, i'm not sure that centralizing all fight(er)s on 1 worldwide website is neither safe nor realistic (i can explain more if not obvious).

As Chico suggested, it would be better to have separate spaces with infomationnal interaction (eg : with technical tools like RSS, etc).
We can start thinking about this, even if right now we don't have that many people to make a huge amount of new dev/coding ...