With the announcement of the final stages of life support for G+, many users among the OSR have searched for a replacement. Mewe appears to be the front runner. I was calling it mee wee, until someone pointed out it is the Old English spelling of mew. One of the meanings, probably the one intended by the creators, is a place used as a hideout, refuge, or redoubt. Since they display it on their site as MeWe, I did not make the connection to the word mewe, and when it was pointed out, realized I knew this. (facepalm)  [EDIT: Unfortunately, it is Mee Wee….]

Mewe silos groups and users so you can only see what others you are connected to have posted. Some have argued that the presence of one side or the other of the political spectrum is unacceptable. However, one can only see these groups and what they say, if one joins them. Mewe’s CEO is a Libertatian and their site policy prohibits hate speech. So while one may disagree with the politics on this site, those advocating violence are banned. Contract this with Minds that apparently is more skewed to one end of the political spectrum and allows all forms of speech, including hate speech. (I have not had time to look that up yet, but the dearth of those migrating to Minds is telling.)

Before I delve into why Mewe is the current best choice for a replacement to G+, let’s touch on why other options are not a good fit.

Blogroll – I plan to reorganize my blogroll and make it a page on my blog rather than a sidebar. This is only useful for blogs. Blogs are only as good at sharing information if you can find them. Blogs are where the OSR originated and were the strength of the OSR. When G+ came on the scene, it had features that made it easy to create communities around specific games, yet we could all be connected by a common love of all RPGs.

RSS is a feature that made tracking multiple blogs easy to do. When Google, Yahoo, and most other companies dropped built in support for RSS, it hurt. this made G+ even more attractive. While RSS is still available, it is still limited to a handful of blogs one follows, and makes it easy to miss out on something new, unless the blogs you follow happen to mention it.

Facebook is not good for finding content. While you might find a group, the ability to search posts is lacking. Shared files and pinned posts can sometimes in my experience, be difficult to locate. Facebook is also not popular for some as they flat out refuse to use it and have always done so. I am on Facebook to connect with those I wouldn’t otherwise connect with. However, I don’t like the functionality of the interface. I want to be able to find things when I want them. At one point G+ had a really good search feature that was throttled.

Forums & wikis while you can find stuff, you don’t have the community aspect and can’t block someone so you don’t have to interact with them. While some are excellent, some are not so nice. BBSes fall into this category.

Discord is a great option for audio for use with your virtual table top of choice. The chat feature is great in game. It also has a video component, but I have not used it. The problem is that chat is so voluminous, it is like drinking from a fire hose, and this rapid fire option makes it massively impractical for people in other time zones to participate, especially if they are on the other side of the world. The slower pace of conversations on G+ allows latecomers to catch up and even get involved. 

Twitter has a limited character count and while some manage long chain posts, it is not sustainable. Many also complain about the cesspool I find that you can block what you don’t want to see, and one can easily curate a personal group that is positive and uplifting. Still it is not a platform that entices new people. It took me a couple years to buy in to Twitter.

Reddit has been called a dumpster fire by some. The down voting or massive up voting easily hides good content from view. Reddit seems more geared towards asking a question if you want answers, or sharing how you did something. In my experience, it is not conducive to constructive discussions. I’m not sure what ability to block people there are.

Diaspora and Pluspora which is built using Diaspora are a clone of G+, but not many have gone there. Some have said that the functionality and stability is not there.

Mastodon is another G+ alternative that many have advocated in the last couple of years. Some say it is great. It has some benefits, but has not captured the attention of the majority.

Stan Shinn posted on G+ that with his experience managing large software projects, he was interested in what others wanted in a replacement for G+. More of an exploratory post. I and many other gave their input on what they’d like to see in a G+ replacement. Basically, we want the good parts of G+, including those things G+ took away from it or broke the functionality they once had.  This is what all G+ users want, whether they are  in the RPG crowd or not. Stan indicated it would not be a from scratch endeavor, but use an existing package. Mention of a Kickstarter to fund it and whether or not it is for profit or non profit are up in the air. There would be a need for programmers, admins to handle the site, and a lawyer to handle all the legal stuff.

The biggest reason Mewe is the front runner at the moment, is the sheer number of G+ users who signed up for me in the past two days. That momentum got the attention of the EVP Product Director.

To me, Mewe is laid out on the screen like Facebook, but the posting and group options remind me of G+. The chat option available to each group reminds me of Discord. Mewe requires each person to be connected like with Facebook, unlike G+ where you can follow someone without them also following you. You can’t see a group’s description until you join it. Some don’t like that. Mewe also has strong blocking functionality, so if a user is banned from a group or you block someone, they can’t see your stuff.

Mewe is free for general use. Up to 8 GB of space is available for images and other files. You can easily see how much space you have used. I recommend hosting images elsewhere and linking them to Mewe if you are an artist. The fees for more than 8 GB seem in line with other services with free disk space at general levels. 

Today, Jason Hardy, the EVP Product Director of Mewe jumped into the group chat of The Great G+ RPG Exodus group to find out why so many new users appear. That group has about 500 members at the time. Jason was gracious and forthcoming about many of the concerns and features we had in G+ that we’d like to see.

The end result is that we learned upcoming features that are in the works independent of the G+ announcement yesterday. The following was copied from what a user shared to their page from what was mentioned in chat c. 2:30 PM EDT today. 

• Pages appear to be coming soon
• Public posting will be around in November-ish
• Video chat will be Q1/Q2 of 2019 

In the chat we also noted some nice to haves that may or may not have been added to their roadmap:

• Attribution on shares
• Grouping of contacts aka “Circles”
• They’re looking into chat based dice rolling (Jason didn’t know what a dice roller was and asked for examples.)

My biggest concern about ensuring this doesn’t become a place information goes to die is answered by Pages and Public posting. Right now, all posts are private. If others can’t see what your group is about and a sample of what goes on their, why would they want to join? 

Another concern is the paucity of non-male games. We want all who enjoy games to feel welcome. It is on us men to do a better job of ensuring women feel comfortable. Some of our brothers at the table require additional coaching on manners and socially acceptable behavior, even if it is online. 

I posted a question asking for comment on why users there don’t want to use FB as a G+ replacement. Here are some of the replies:

• FB is a horrible platform that exploits users 
• Facebook are extremely careless with their user data and do their best to make money by selling information on their users, which is seldom in the interests of their users.
• Facebook works in an unknown way. What ends up in your timeline is decided by calculations no one understands that have tons of negative effects: you miss stuff, some opinions are under-represented, other are over-represented, post that make you react quickly are favoured over posts that require reading and understanding…
• It’s simple, FB I use for people I actually know – friends and family. There’s no way to segregate interests from the stream of content my friends and family generate, and they surely don’t want to see my gaming BS.
• There’s too much hate and drama on both Facebook and Twitter. Whenever my wife or family members are on FB, they constantly bitch about someone or other. It  is a volatile and toxic place. Plus, I don’t want to be bothered by people who don’t share my interests. Here I can select what and who I’m surrounded by. Politics, religious views, and hate speech have no place in my hobbies.
• Yeah— on Facebook, you get contact requests from people you know but don’t necessarily want to hang out with, and it would be rude to deny that you know them. There’s no such expectation on any other social network.

Matt Finch posted on G+ and Facebook that he is coordinating a panel discussion on YouTube to discuss the future of the OSR without G+. Some have hoped it means a return to the glory days of blogging before G+. I’m not sure that will happen. I rushed this article a bit as I wanted it out there for consideration before this panel occurs. These are my quick observations and if Mewe comes through with the plans their EVP Product Director shared, then my main concerns regarding functionality will be resolved.

You can find me on Mewe here.

Update: [October 10, 2018] The founder of Mewe answered some questions about the direction of Mewe on a G+ thread here.

Update: [October 10, 2018] Matt Finch hosted a Panel talking about the OSR response to the G+ shutdown announcement. I was one of the panelists.