WildFyre

Visit the official website (using the Wayback Machine).

WildFyre was a social network built on the idea that content, not users, should be the focus of the platform. By adopting an algorithm entirely based on mandatory voting, WildFyre could enjoy a community that was more engaged than most social networks, but also more conscious of their impact on each other.

The concept was simple: a user would see a single post at a time, and they would have to vote by "extinguishing" the post (which did nothing) or "spreading" it (which would show it to 4 additional users) before being able to view another one. It was not possible to go back to a previous post except by remembering its URL.

Using this idea, WildFyre could work without doing any user tracking nor collecting any data.

My involvement

I joined the project in 2017, a year after its creation. My goal was to implement an Android application, which led to me discovering Kotlin and its early Multiplatform capabilities. At the time, I was in my first year of higher-level education, and I had to learn everything while the project was growing.

In mid-2019, WildFyre became a non-profit organization, and I joined the Board of Directors. However, COVID would kill the free time of everyone involved, and all members moved on to other projects. In 2023, the project was officially sunset.

This project was my first experience at community management, and I'm very grateful for everything I was able to learn as well as the ability to have real users to interact with for my first real programming project.

A spiritual chain

WildFyre was not the first iteration of this idea. Sola did it before it, and Plag did it even before.

In 2015, I was a Plag user during its golden age, and met many people who would become lifelong friends and mentors as I was just starting to gain an interest in programming.

Although my involvement in Plag (as a translator) and later in WildFyre were minimal compared to everything I've built since, they will always stick to me as my first experience with a real project, leading a real community.

As of 2023, the next link in the chain is Fyreplace. I wish them the best, though I doubt I will stick around to find out myself.