I’m rather new (2nd day) and so far so good. I thought the idea of a local group in my area was interesting. I found the wiki with the list of groups and there are a few (DC area). The only problem is I have to login to Facebook. I don’t have Facebook. I know there are ways to make groups in Facebook open to the public but it appears none of my local groups are ‘open’.
So I guess my questions are:
Why are we (freeCodeCamp) using facebook for these groups? Any specific functionality that FB offers that other group/meetup websites don’t?
Any reason the groups aren’t ‘open’ to view by the public? I would be fine with the ‘read only’ aspect so I could see when the next group meetup is and maybe contact info for my local organizers.
Perhaps this would be a great project for an enterprising new coder (like myself for example) to come up with a simple platform for freeCodeCamp to use instead of Facebook? Integrate it into Github (like other aspect of fCC have).
The meetup ones are not really affiliated with FCC I don’t think. I think they’re just a bunch of campers who took it upon themselves to create a meetup for their areas based around FCC.
There are quite a few reasons I don’t have Facebook. One of the top reasons is that its becoming a walled garden for the internet (this is a perfect example). I’ll set the example and reach out to my local group (if I can?) and see if I can get them to switch over to a non-facebook group, or at the very least make it open.
Find your city on this list and click it. This will take you to its Facebook page. Click the “Join group” button. Someone from the group should approve you shortly. If your city isn’t on this list, don’t create one until you’ve read the directions.
This makes seem like it’s a requirement, specially when you are new. I actually got stuck on this part because I didn’t want to join Facebook. After a while I just skipped it not sure if my progress would be blocked because I missed a challenge.
For clarification I think there are 2 issues here, only 1 of which I’m worried about. I don’t mind that I can skip the part where I’m asked to share on social media and it doesn’t affect the certification. I’m more worried about the local groups (I should have clarified in my subject).
You don’t have to join a local group. For your information, I am volunteer FreeCodeCamp staff. I am not on Facebook. I have not joined a local group (there isn’t one in my city). I have not committed to a non-profit. I have claimed my front-end certificate just fine. I have worked with other campers. You can help out on the forums, or on a repo like the pairboard some of us are making:
You can also join an online chingu cohort (GO RED PANDAS!!!). Message @tropicalchancer for more details.
As to why the groups use Facebook? I am not sure. I do not think that any of the groups are official, or that to be an “official” group you have to use facebook. Whoever made the first community group if it was Quincy or someone else used facebook, and it stuck. If you want to create your own FreeCodeCamp group without Facebook, by all means do it. Just note, you will have to find some way to get people involved and market it.
that could be as simple as submitting a github issue and/or making a pull request to have it (your alternate/better site with advantages beyond facebook) included in the curriculum.
People can choose whichever they are more comfortable wiht.
Free Code Camp is nothing if not evolutionary. It’s never remained static for more than a week since it was founded by Quincy.
Could the admins on this forum create a Local Groups category with country and city sub-categories (like the Wiki category has language sub-categories)? Then we could post to our local group’s sub-category.
Got rid of mine when someone noticed I had only two “friends”. One of which was sort of automatically added through the first one. The first one that I hadn’t seen in years. I then realised I really couldn’t see why I had to be on Facebook.
There are 196 countries and countless cities one might include as sub-categories. The suggested solution is not practical.
The forum is great for connecting people, but it is not great for serving locales.
Some campers create Slack teams for people in their local area if Facebook doesn’t suit them. If you cannot find ones that suit you, you could make them yourself. Alternatively, the are many meetups organised through meetup.com.
I’m in the DC area myself. I stay off of FB as much as possible although at one point I did join the DC FCC FB group and at another point posted a comment (only got like one response so I don’t know how active the group actually is).
Anyway, good luck with your FCC journey. I have worked my way through the first two levels of certification already and am currently hacking and slashing my way through the back end certification so if there is any way I can assist you just let me know.
@sam.saffron is not really on our forums. He is Discourse staff. Tagging him is not going to get a response from him as he doesn’t use our forums. And, no, having sub-categories for every country/city is very impractical. I suggest creating your own Discourse forum instead of thousands of sub-sub-sub-categories.
Discourse is open-source. So if you create your own forum, you will be able to do whatever you want with it. You could let anyone create a sub-category, or you could limit it to members or regulars. You can pretty much do whatever you want. I am assuming Discourse has great documentation for permission setup
Thanks Isaac, that’s really helpful. I’ll look into doing it because as FCC grows it will be nice for people not to have to sign up to FB just to join their local group. It may even help local groups grow larger than they could on FB.
I then realised I really couldn’t see why I had to be on Facebook.