What do you all think of a feature to bring the listeners of certain podcasts together and integrating that into AntennaPod.
For example, for a podcast like The Daily, we can create a 4th tab in the playing now screen (after chapters) where users can see the latest comments about that episode and click through to a topic on this forum.
The topic is created and initially seeding with the title [podcast] - Episode
When there is no topic yet for an episode, the first user can create the topic directly from AntennaPod
There are downsides, because we have to decide on whether these comments are moderated or not.
The upside is that we will drive up the usage of the forum and ultimately the user community not AntennaPod and a pretty unique feature
In short: I think it’d be a nice feature to have integrated comments in AntennaPod, and also to use it to drive users to our forum to help build an AntennaPod community. But it’s not within our project’s remit. Have a look at Possibly a way to get podcast comments? - it requests kinda the same and my reply there would be applicable here, too.
Well, if it’s on our servers (which won’t be possible - see the linked post), it would certainly have to be moderated. We don’t want the AntennaPod brand to be associated with hatespeech and stuff like that. The time needed for that moderation is one huge downside. A second big downside is the extra resources the project would need to host this. A third the responsibility as a (then to be) data controller.
Can’t argue with that In my reply in the other post I share how I think a comment section could be implemented without requiring AntennaPod’s infrastructure (though it wouldn’t lead users to our forum).
Also (apart from the things @keunes mentioned), I think that having episode comments in this forum would make it a lot harder to follow the content that the forum was originally meant to be used for: discussions about bugs/features of the app. Even when using a specific category for those, things like main page or search would be filled with tons of posts.
Another thing to consider would be that Google enforces strict rules on user-generated content in apps. I am not 100% sure but I think this would require only publishing the app for adults.
Personally, I’m NOT in favor of this idea. In addition to the things mentioned above, there are far too many podcasts (and too many languages) to do this or moderate it successfully. Not to mention, many podcasts already attempt to drive their listeners to specific locations to share comments.
In my opinion, I think it’s better to support content creators where they want for what they do and support the AP Team where they want and for what they do. Besides, if AP is to remain unbiased and independent, this would quickly complicate the situation.
Aside from openly opposing hate speech (which I strongly support), I’m glad that the AP Team does not share opinion about podcasts. I know there are many podcasts that exist that I find daft and banal, but that are not hateful or cause harm, that many other people enjoy.
This made me think; maybe the Podcast Index’ Podcast Namespace (that extends the RSS standard) could include tag for ‘discussion’ or ‘comments’. @tenkara_vt If you feel like it I would let it to you to create an issue in their GitHub repo. If not, I would be happy to do so
In my reply in the other post I share how I think a comment section could be implemented without requiring AntennaPod’s infrastructure (though it wouldn’t lead users to our forum).