Fractalforums

We all share a passion for fractals. Each coming from different areas.

-Mandelbulb Maniacs are the Art-Community providing great tutorials
-Fractalforums is the Mathematics/programming and background branch. (a new admin-team took over, modernizing it, you are reading this on the not yet public V2 relaunch)
-Fractal.Institute focusses on scientific research and philosophy. (new site 70% finished)

Each one does a great job in its own area.
And I think we can achieve even more if we pull together!


We probably all share the view that fractals deserve more attention from the mainstream.

We are all at the very moment working on new, better sites.
To me it looks like the perfect point in time to form what is know as a triad. Which is necessary to achieve greater goals - Like bringing fractals the place in history they deserved and that Benoit Mandelbrot envisioned.
Together we can do this.


Our common goal should be no less than to unite the worldwide fractal community and to bring all the diversity of fractals art, math and research back to the mainstream.



Let's work together - shared work is half the work while multiplying the positive.





What do the parties need most?

-Fractalforums (FF) needs: More activity, which has been declining over the years
-Fractal.Institute (FI) needs: A supporting community
-Mandelbulb Maniacs (MM): We don't really know what you need, but I'm sure we can help and support you in many ways (see below). Just let us know!





What can each party do for the other?

(Just a short brainstorm, I'm sure you find some other ideas for a fruitful exchange)

FI->FF
Fractal Institute will set a link from each of it's encyclopedia articles to either the general fractals in real world-board or an matching thread, encouraging discussion and new findings. Basically replacing FI current own forum (or comment system) with external FF-Board.
This gives Fractalforum new users and activity.

FI->MM
Fractal.institute could link to Mandelbulbmaniacs Facebook & Tutorials in the Softwaresection and all articles featuring art so all visitors interested in art are directed there.

FI<->MM
Guest articles, interviews to improve the steady flow of good content on both sites.

FF->FI
Fractalforum community is encouraged to help and endorse fractal.institute to create a complete encyclopedia.
The Encyclopedia as well as the youtube channel "WTFract" need constant input to create a steady flow of high-quality and well researched infovideos on fractals. A direct connection and discussion platform with FF-Community and the deep knowldege about fractals accumulated at FF would help incredibly.
I will post things here anyway, but much more prefer if especially the Youtube-Channel became a community thing.

FF->MM
Collab "Best image of the month" of FF and MM. (see thread here)

FF->MM
Contest takes place at FF. Winners are presented officially in beautiful gallery at MM. (revive the calendar idea? with a bigger,serious publishing goal?)
Nice contest, Images featured, drawing worldwide attention. Best of the bests always do.
Goal should be: If fractal images are linked anywhere, it's THESE best of-links. With easy access to buy them for your home -->money goes partly to artists and partly to the communities for infrastructure.
(Sidethought: Concentrated "publicity" actions, like posting such a best of the year gallery at Reddit whoadude or imaginary landscapes and upvote them collectively. Making us heard.)

FF<->MM
we have many older but very experienced users here who don't do facebook - this would give both sides a better chance to exchange valuable knowledge and beautiful art.

FF->MM
Fractalforums has an experienced forum staff and can provide a "holiday"home for a large group, high traffic, forum which can host HD images and act as a great way to link MB3D's group with the creator of the program as well as introduce other fractal software to their community.
Actually linking the Art-Community with the people who come up with the software and formulas simply is a good idea!
We have fast and unlimited hosting on our server.
If you are looking for hosting, there is more than enough space to even host the whole MM Website for free (of course everything stays in MM control)

FF<->MM
Also merging the FF anual art contest into one big yearly, global contest could be a good idea.


MM ->FI
MM could share the wtfract-videos and make them sticky for the day they are released.

MM <->FF
MM could use Fractalforums as discussionbase for all those discussions that are not m3b tutorials - all the other programs, science, whatever comes to mind.
The communities from fractalforums and MM could plan and create tutorials here together using discussionthreads.


...feel free to add your own ideas




To me this sounds like a win-win-win situation for all involved. Wth little investment or risk for anyone involved.
So why not?


"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has"
Margret Mead

okay, now that 1Maniac has joined and to my great joy is very positive towards the idea some more thoughts from my side.

Fractalforums could create a dedicated board with childboards that are under moderation of the MM-team or FI
FI and MM would have a nice home for lasting discussions without having to set all those things up themselves.
And the added users will probably participate in other discussions too and give FF the boost of activity it needs.
I can't speak alone for the whole FF-Team but this sounds like a good idea.

Hello everyone!
We are happy to participate in this great idea! Teaming up is always the best way to get the farthest!
Looking forward to work with you!

It would be great to have Fractalforums.org as home for discussions that arise from the articles at fractal.institute.
We tried to integrate a wordpress forum but it has too many flaws and is only causing problems.
And it should bring quite some activity to fractalforums in return once the ball gets rolling.

Directing those who are interested in creating fractal art from our software/tutorial section to Mandelbulb Maniacs is a good way. We thought we should have this section - but especially the amount of tutorial and additional work makes this a great choice for us too.

I already shared an article from FI to our Mandelbulb 3D Facebook page and then discovered that your old name fractalogy.org was still being used on this page! https://www.fractal.institute/universe-procedural-fractal/

Hello everyone!
We are happy to participate in this great idea! Teaming up is always the best way to get the farthest!
Looking forward to work with you!

It would be great to have Fractalforums.org as home for discussions that arise from the articles at fractal.institute.
We tried to integrate a wordpress forum but it has too many flaws and is only causing problems.
And it should bring quite some activity to fractalforums in return once the ball gets rolling.

Directing those who are interested in creating fractal art from our software/tutorial section to Mandelbulb Maniacs is a good way. We thought we should have this section - but especially the amount of tutorial and additional work makes this a great choice for us too.

I support this endeavor. I know quite a bit about the algebra behind non-Mandelbrots. (Mandelbrots are included, but they're not particularly important.)

And from my own experience, I know that teaming up lets you go far. I have a fractal-themed e-mail thread, and I'm encouraged to send them by the fact that I have 18 members (most of which are adults I'm familiar with.) I often give them the latest fractal discoveries I make.

GreenTexas,
I would be interested in seeing one of those emails. I have almost 10,000 Maniacs in my group and if I post you email to the group along with how to get it, I think I could substantially increase your readership.

Hi all,

I'm Matthew Haggett, the main admin for the Facebook Mandelbulb Maniacs group & owner of Mandelbulb.com. I've just been in touch with Fraktalist about collaboration and look forward to getting some ideas going.

I built Mandelbulb.com in 2014 and have let it idle for most of the time until this year due to some life issues. I've recently had a new custom WordPress theme built, done some content updating, and added a new site admin who is working on more. I'm going to be working with Bernard on getting some cross linking and content sharing going on between Mandelbulb.com and Fractal.Institute and hopefully using this forum as a communication platform.

I don't know who all is on this thread. Please @ me here or feel free to connect by email or on Facebook. matthewhaggett@mac.com Facebook.com/matthewhaggett … send a note if you connect on FB so I know to accept.

Have a great day,
Matt

Good to see you here Matthew!
@me doesn't work in forums, but you can activate email notifications by clicking on "notify" next to the reply button on bottom right.

Looking forward to hear your ideas and thoughts and get things going. 

Would love to see more here on this and hopefully at each site .