One work I commited to in our New Year Plan is to set up flairs to help you find information that matter to you more efficiently.

To set up the post flairs and user flairs, I want to hear from you what identity you associate yourself with in regards to AR and what content you are here for.

Examples

I am a „developer“. I used Unity to make an AR app that overlays snow over the landscape seen through a phone’s camera. I’m here to ask technical „questions“ when I get stuck in Unity and to have „discussions“ on what SDKs other AR developers use these days. I also occasionally share my own work as „original content“. Appreciate the feedback I got last time I posted here!

I am an „entrepreneur“. I run a startup that sells HUD projectors to automotive companies. I am here to see concept designs to get „inspiration“ on how future will be. This is useful to planning out product roadmap.

I am an „early adopter“. I actually own a HoloLens 2 and a Vuzix Blade. I’m here to get „news“ on latest hardware „devices“ and „apps/games“.

I am a freelance „designer“. If it’s okay with others, I’d like to post some „promotions“ then and now to offer my service to potential customers in this community.

NOTE: Slicing and dicing won’t be perfect. Please feel free to propose wordings you like so that I can take your preference into account. For example, „developer“, „engineer“, „creator“, „researcher“, „maker“, „builder“ might be a set of many different titles that may work for a given person. Same for „enthusiast“, „early adopter“, „fan“. In what ways do you like to be described in a community?

Next Steps

I am going to keep this thread open at least until the end of upcoming Sunday. Then, I will read every single comment you write here to get to know you and what you want from r/augmentedreality. Based on this, I will set up post flairs and user flairs and pilot for a month, before we have another „Town Hall Thread“ discussion on how the initial set of flairs worked for you. Then, we will add the missing ones, remove unused ones, and keep optimizing our flair system. 🙂

Nice to meet you!

I am productceo, joining the mod team for r/augmentedreality this year. I want to thank dronpes for creating this valuable community, dedicated to AR, 12 years ago. For the past several years, dronpes has been occupied by events outside of this community and was unable to provide active moderation. Starting this year, I will be here to assist the mod team, to actively listen to your voices, and to make sure this community becomes what you need and want it to be!

Where are we today?

With over 25,000 members, r/augmentedreality is the world’s largest online community dedicated to AR. When I asked you through a survey last year, I heard from you that 57.7% of you are AR software creators (researchers, developers, designers), 37.5% of you are AR enthusiasts (consumers), and the remaining 3.8% of you are AR hardware creators. This breakdown explains community preference of posts. Today, most submissions are news articles or concept designs. However, most of top posts by vote count are showcase of original work from which community members derive inspiration and knowledge. We will systematically promote such „useful“ posts to better serve the AR software developers who are our most numerous and most engaged community members while making sure that AR enthusiasts and AR hardware developers do not feel left out.

I also asked you what changes you want to see. These are some opportunities I heard from you or noticed myself:

• Organization of posts: Successful communities use appropriate post flairs to organize content. Today, r/augmentedreality lacks an effective filtering system that would empower the community members to skip over uninteresting posts and get to the interesting ones quickly.
• Opportunity to learn from each other: Successful communities host AMAs and promote original content to provide unique value to the members. Today, r/augmentedreality lacks such programs.
• New member guides: Successful communities establish new member guides to help newcomers immediately reap value, save returning users time by reducing rookie questions, and set clear expectations for what kind of submissions would be welcomed by the community. Today, r/augmentedreality lacks any new member guides or community guidelines.

In summary, we need to first work on the fundamentals to become a robust community in face of expected growth as AR gains popularity, then introduce changes to systematically promote quality content that caters to AR developers and enthusiasts.

What are we doing this year?

We will do what we need to do! We will work on getting our fundamentals right, then work on increasing the value of this community in advancing your work.

Top Priority

• Post Flairs: I will review top posts by vote count from the past, then populate an initial set of post flairs. Then, I will calibrate the post flairs by hearing from you whether we have missing flairs or unused flairs.
• Promote Original Content: I will create a system to help you get attention and feedback from the community for your original work.
• New Member Guide and Community Guidelines: We will create a guide for new members to help them get started on AR and become valuable contributors in our community.

Default Priority

• AMA with Industry Experts: I will invite experts from top universities and companies to host exclusive AMAs on our community. If you are interested in participating as an expert, please contact the mod team, and I will work with you to make it happen.
• Capture of Our Collective Knowledge: We will create an “AR Awesome List” that serves as a valuable living document for the entire AR community. We will design systems to make sure you get the acknowledgement for your contributions to the document.

This community belongs to all of you. If you notice anything we can be doing to make our community a more valuable platform to you, please message me and the mod team anytime!

We will grow together!

Each of us are here, because we share the same vision for the future. We believe that AR will change the world. AR will change how any person does any thing for every person and for every thing. And we are proud to know that r/augmentedreality is at the forefront of this change.

We will defend our position as the world’s largest online community dedicated to AR by increasing the value each member gets from being a part of this community, by helping each member get the information they need to build great AR products. We will defend our position by making sure that when great AR products gain popularity and change the world for better, the developers behind them are none other than you, the members of this community!