THE HISTORY... from my view
My history of communities is perhaps very different from the developers that actually got it done (I'm not a developer). So take that for what it is.

I remember 2 years ago (this month i think) I was pushing really hard to make communities happen and we (Peak Projects) had been thinking about it for a couple months prior to that, in some way or another on our own platform (steempeak.com at the time). Steemit INC had talked about wanting it to happen for a while before that but nothing (apparent to us) was happening and we knew they had a lot of other things going on and it didn't seem communities was high priority... so we were starting to take matters into our own hands. But it was this month there were some community discord audio shows where some Steemit people like Ned came in and talked about where they stood on SMT and communities and started to talk about renewed interest in communities.
Meanwhile our own team was already talking to a random developer on steem who seemed gung-ho about creating a backend structure and API that would enable communities to happen. We were throwing around a bunch of ideas at the end of 2018 and into 2019 and working with this developer. Hivemind was pretty new and wasn't being used much but we realized that using hivemind to help with this system would be beneficial so we talked to @roadscape. Maybe perhaps our indications that we were just gonna take matters into our own hands was good motivation to get steemit inc to move up the priorities... who knows.

I can't remember all the details but the short of the story is that basically we were told that the backend protocol that steemit inc had in mind to enable communities wouldn't take that much time and perhaps it would be beneficial to wait for it. When it comes down to it we had plenty of other things to work on with steempeak.com (predecessor of PeakD) so waiting wouldn't be the worst thing for us and we much much preferred a decentralized system built on a more solid DB like hivemind would be best for the us and the community.

It did take longer than expected ...We got a taste of communities at that SteemFest in November of that same year and it officially launched about a year ago around this time.

I remember being pretty involved in conversations with Roadscape about what we envisioned for communities, at least by sharing my perspective as a UI person... and then going for long stretches of time not hearing anything about where backend development and where it was at, then to all of a sudden seeing a post about it show up. There was for sure a big lack of transparency and communication between applications, users and steemit inc back in those days that I'm sure i don't have to re-hash. That's why posts by backend developers like @howo and @blocktrades have been so uniquely and wonderfully refreshing i may add. It's such a nice thing to be more involved in the discussion of being able to indicate what apps may need from backend structures... and I'll add that individuals like @howo seem very willing to help make stuff happen even now for communities.

Since @roadscape left I don't think there has been any backend development on community system... that means almost a year?

WHY HASN'T THERE BEEN A PUSH FOR BACKEND WORK TIL NOW?
On a PeakD front we have had other things to do
PeakD.com can and will be doing plenty of front end changes to community without a need to backend changes. And because there are plenty more front end things we can and will be doing this is part of the reason we haven't pushed for much work to be done on the backend protocols of the the system which communities are built on top of.
Hivemind db was getting a lot of upkeep and advancements so it was prudent to wait.
The @blocktrades team was doing a lot of work to improve hivemind including increasing the scope of what that db does and speeding it up. So it was prudent to just wait until most of that work was done and the db was stable before we started looking at what other things the db could do to help communities
THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT BACK IN THE DAY
This is where i really want to remember all the ideas we talked about... but in the end it's not a bad thing if we forget some ideas because if we don't remember them it may be an indication that perhaps they're not that needed.

THE HISTORY... from my view
My history of communities is perhaps very different from the developers that actually got it done (I'm not a developer). So take that for what it is.

I remember 2 years ago (this month i think) I was pushing really hard to make communities happen and we (Peak Projects) had been thinking about it for a couple months prior to that, in some way or another on our own platform (steempeak.com at the time). Steemit INC had talked about wanting it to happen for a while before that but nothing (apparent to us) was happening and we knew they had a lot of other things going on and it didn't seem communities was high priority... so we were starting to take matters into our own hands. But it was this month there were some community discord audio shows where some Steemit people like Ned came in and talked about where they stood on SMT and communities and started to talk about renewed interest in communities.
Meanwhile our own team was already talking to a random developer on steem who seemed gung-ho about creating a backend structure and API that would enable communities to happen. We were throwing around a bunch of ideas at the end of 2018 and into 2019 and working with this developer. Hivemind was pretty new and wasn't being used much but we realized that using hivemind to help with this system would be beneficial so we talked to @roadscape. Maybe perhaps our indications that we were just gonna take matters into our own hands was good motivation to get steemit inc to move up the priorities... who knows.

I can't remember all the details but the short of the story is that basically we were told that the backend protocol that steemit inc had in mind to enable communities wouldn't take that much time and perhaps it would be beneficial to wait for it. When it comes down to it we had plenty of other things to work on with steempeak.com (predecessor of PeakD) so waiting wouldn't be the worst thing for us and we much much preferred a decentralized system built on a more solid DB like hivemind would be best for the us and the community.

It did take longer than expected ...We got a taste of communities at that SteemFest in November of that same year and it officially launched about a year ago around this time.

I remember being pretty involved in conversations with Roadscape about what we envisioned for communities, at least by sharing my perspective as a UI person... and then going for long stretches of time not hearing anything about where backend development and where it was at, then to all of a sudden seeing a post about it show up. There was for sure a big lack of transparency and communication between applications, users and steemit inc back in those days that I'm sure i don't have to re-hash. That's why posts by backend developers like @howo and @blocktrades have been so uniquely and wonderfully refreshing i may add. It's such a nice thing to be more involved in the discussion of being able to indicate what apps may need from backend structures... and I'll add that individuals like @howo seem very willing to help make stuff happen even now for communities.

Since @roadscape left I don't think there has been any backend development on community system... that means almost a year?

WHY HASN'T THERE BEEN A PUSH FOR BACKEND WORK TIL NOW?
On a PeakD front we have had other things to do
PeakD.com can and will be doing plenty of front end changes to community without a need to backend changes. And because there are plenty more front end things we can and will be doing this is part of the reason we haven't pushed for much work to be done on the backend protocols of the the system which communities are built on top of.
Hivemind db was getting a lot of upkeep and advancements so it was prudent to wait.
The @blocktrades team was doing a lot of work to improve hivemind including increasing the scope of what that db does and speeding it up. So it was prudent to just wait until most of that work was done and the db was stable before we started looking at what other things the db could do to help communities
THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT BACK IN THE DAY
This is where i really want to remember all the ideas we talked about... but in the end it's not a bad thing if we forget some ideas because if we don't remember them it may be an indication that perhaps they're not that needed.

THE HISTORY... from my view
My history of communities is perhaps very different from the developers that actually got it done (I'm not a developer). So take that for what it is.

I remember 2 years ago (this month i think) I was pushing really hard to make communities happen and we (Peak Projects) had been thinking about it for a couple months prior to that, in some way or another on our own platform (steempeak.com at the time). Steemit INC had talked about wanting it to happen for a while before that but nothing (apparent to us) was happening and we knew they had a lot of other things going on and it didn't seem communities was high priority... so we were starting to take matters into our own hands. But it was this month there were some community discord audio shows where some Steemit people like Ned came in and talked about where they stood on SMT and communities and started to talk about renewed interest in communities.
Meanwhile our own team was already talking to a random developer on steem who seemed gung-ho about creating a backend structure and API that would enable communities to happen. We were throwing around a bunch of ideas at the end of 2018 and into 2019 and working with this developer. Hivemind was pretty new and wasn't being used much but we realized that using hivemind to help with this system would be beneficial so we talked to @roadscape. Maybe perhaps our indications that we were just gonna take matters into our own hands was good motivation to get steemit inc to move up the priorities... who knows.

I can't remember all the details but the short of the story is that basically we were told that the backend protocol that steemit inc had in mind to enable communities wouldn't take that much time and perhaps it would be beneficial to wait for it. When it comes down to it we had plenty of other things to work on with steempeak.com (predecessor of PeakD) so waiting wouldn't be the worst thing for us and we much much preferred a decentralized system built on a more solid DB like hivemind would be best for the us and the community.

It did take longer than expected ...We got a taste of communities at that SteemFest in November of that same year and it officially launched about a year ago around this time.

I remember being pretty involved in conversations with Roadscape about what we envisioned for communities, at least by sharing my perspective as a UI person... and then going for long stretches of time not hearing anything about where backend development and where it was at, then to all of a sudden seeing a post about it show up. There was for sure a big lack of transparency and communication between applications, users and steemit inc back in those days that I'm sure i don't have to re-hash. That's why posts by backend developers like @howo and @blocktrades have been so uniquely and wonderfully refreshing i may add. It's such a nice thing to be more involved in the discussion of being able to indicate what apps may need from backend structures... and I'll add that individuals like @howo seem very willing to help make stuff happen even now for communities.

Since @roadscape left I don't think there has been any backend development on community system... that means almost a year?

WHY HASN'T THERE BEEN A PUSH FOR BACKEND WORK TIL NOW?
On a PeakD front we have had other things to do
PeakD.com can and will be doing plenty of front end changes to community without a need to backend changes. And because there are plenty more front end things we can and will be doing this is part of the reason we haven't pushed for much work to be done on the backend protocols of the the system which communities are built on top of.
Hivemind db was getting a lot of upkeep and advancements so it was prudent to wait.
The @blocktrades team was doing a lot of work to improve hivemind including increasing the scope of what that db does and speeding it up. So it was prudent to just wait until most of that work was done and the db was stable before we started looking at what other things the db could do to help communities
THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT BACK IN THE DAY
This is where i really want to remember all the ideas we talked about... but in the end it's not a bad thing if we forget some ideas because if we don't remember them it may be an indication that perhaps they're not that needed.
THE HISTORY... from my view
My history of communities is perhaps very different from the developers that actually got it done (I'm not a developer). So take that for what it is.

I remember 2 years ago (this month i think) I was pushing really hard to make communities happen and we (Peak Projects) had been thinking about it for a couple months prior to that, in some way or another on our own platform (steempeak.com at the time). Steemit INC had talked about wanting it to happen for a while before that but nothing (apparent to us) was happening and we knew they had a lot of other things going on and it didn't seem communities was high priority... so we were starting to take matters into our own hands. But it was this month there were some community discord audio shows where some Steemit people like Ned came in and talked about where they stood on SMT and communities and started to talk about renewed interest in communities.
Meanwhile our own team was already talking to a random developer on steem who seemed gung-ho about creating a backend structure and API that would enable communities to happen. We were throwing around a bunch of ideas at the end of 2018 and into 2019 and working with this developer. Hivemind was pretty new and wasn't being used much but we realized that using hivemind to help with this system would be beneficial so we talked to @roadscape. Maybe perhaps our indications that we were just gonna take matters into our own hands was good motivation to get steemit inc to move up the priorities... who knows.

I can't remember all the details but the short of the story is that basically we were told that the backend protocol that steemit inc had in mind to enable communities wouldn't take that much time and perhaps it would be beneficial to wait for it. When it comes down to it we had plenty of other things to work on with steempeak.com (predecessor of PeakD) so waiting wouldn't be the worst thing for us and we much much preferred a decentralized system built on a more solid DB like hivemind would be best for the us and the community.

It did take longer than expected ...We got a taste of communities at that SteemFest in November of that same year and it officially launched about a year ago around this time.

I remember being pretty involved in conversations with Roadscape about what we envisioned for communities, at least by sharing my perspective as a UI person... and then going for long stretches of time not hearing anything about where backend development and where it was at, then to all of a sudden seeing a post about it show up. There was for sure a big lack of transparency and communication between applications, users and steemit inc back in those days that I'm sure i don't have to re-hash. That's why posts by backend developers like @howo and @blocktrades have been so uniquely and wonderfully refreshing i may add. It's such a nice thing to be more involved in the discussion of being able to indicate what apps may need from backend structures... and I'll add that individuals like @howo seem very willing to help make stuff happen even now for communities.

Since @roadscape left I don't think there has been any backend development on community system... that means almost a year?

WHY HASN'T THERE BEEN A PUSH FOR BACKEND WORK TIL NOW?
On a PeakD front we have had other things to do
PeakD.com can and will be doing plenty of front end changes to community without a need to backend changes. And because there are plenty more front end things we can and will be doing this is part of the reason we haven't pushed for much work to be done on the backend protocols of the the system which communities are built on top of.
Hivemind db was getting a lot of upkeep and advancements so it was prudent to wait.
The @blocktrades team was doing a lot of work to improve hivemind including increasing the scope of what that db does and speeding it up. So it was prudent to just wait until most of that work was done and the db was stable before we started looking at what other things the db could do to help communities
THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT BACK IN THE DAY
This is where i really want to remember all the ideas we talked about... but in the end it's not a bad thing if we forget some ideas because if we don't remember them it may be an indication that perhaps they're not that needed.

THE HISTORY... from my view
My history of communities is perhaps very different from the developers that actually got it done (I'm not a developer). So take that for what it is.

I remember 2 years ago (this month i think) I was pushing really hard to make communities happen and we (Peak Projects) had been thinking about it for a couple months prior to that, in some way or another on our own platform (steempeak.com at the time). Steemit INC had talked about wanting it to happen for a while before that but nothing (apparent to us) was happening and we knew they had a lot of other things going on and it didn't seem communities was high priority... so we were starting to take matters into our own hands. But it was this month there were some community discord audio shows where some Steemit people like Ned came in and talked about where they stood on SMT and communities and started to talk about renewed interest in communities.
Meanwhile our own team was already talking to a random developer on steem who seemed gung-ho about creating a backend structure and API that would enable communities to happen. We were throwing around a bunch of ideas at the end of 2018 and into 2019 and working with this developer. Hivemind was pretty new and wasn't being used much but we realized that using hivemind to help with this system would be beneficial so we talked to @roadscape. Maybe perhaps our indications that we were just gonna take matters into our own hands was good motivation to get steemit inc to move up the priorities... who knows.

I can't remember all the details but the short of the story is that basically we were told that the backend protocol that steemit inc had in mind to enable communities wouldn't take that much time and perhaps it would be beneficial to wait for it. When it comes down to it we had plenty of other things to work on with steempeak.com (predecessor of PeakD) so waiting wouldn't be the worst thing for us and we much much preferred a decentralized system built on a more solid DB like hivemind would be best for the us and the community.

It did take longer than expected ...We got a taste of communities at that SteemFest in November of that same year and it officially launched about a year ago around this time.

I remember being pretty involved in conversations with Roadscape about what we envisioned for communities, at least by sharing my perspective as a UI person... and then going for long stretches of time not hearing anything about where backend development and where it was at, then to all of a sudden seeing a post about it show up. There was for sure a big lack of transparency and communication between applications, users and steemit inc back in those days that I'm sure i don't have to re-hash. That's why posts by backend developers like @howo and @blocktrades have been so uniquely and wonderfully refreshing i may add. It's such a nice thing to be more involved in the discussion of being able to indicate what apps may need from backend structures... and I'll add that individuals like @howo seem very willing to help make stuff happen even now for communities.

Since @roadscape left I don't think there has been any backend development on community system... that means almost a year?

WHY HASN'T THERE BEEN A PUSH FOR BACKEND WORK TIL NOW?
On a PeakD front we have had other things to do
PeakD.com can and will be doing plenty of front end changes to community without a need to backend changes. And because there are plenty more front end things we can and will be doing this is part of the reason we haven't pushed for much work to be done on the backend protocols of the the system which communities are built on top of.
Hivemind db was getting a lot of upkeep and advancements so it was prudent to wait.
The @blocktrades team was doing a lot of work to improve hivemind including increasing the scope of what that db does and speeding it up. So it was prudent to just wait until most of that work was done and the db was stable before we started looking at what other things the db could do to help communities
THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT BACK IN THE DAY
This is where i really want to remember all the ideas we talked about... but in the end it's not a bad thing if we forget some ideas because if we don't remember them it may be an indication that perhaps they're not that needed.