A plan.
Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2014 8:47 am
I'll start off by saying I'm not a persuasive person by any stretch of the imagination, but nor am I going to try to be. My goal here is only to present the facts in a blunt and easily understood fashion so a solution can be found. That said, objectivity is hard when I'm certain everyone has some sentimental attachment to this community. I know I've cultivated one since I joined this out-of-the-way board two years ago in February 2012. Things were pretty great back then, I have to say. Communication was open, the ship design subforum was active, and we all reveled in our own ignorance of just how feasible the project we all gravitated around was.
But times have changed. As a whole I think we've come to accept that these things we ask for, these things we stage endless debate over - they aren't as simple as some coder just walking along and waving a wand to make it all happen. In fact, many of us have reached the conclusion that this project may not even become a reality, or at the very least not how we envisioned it back when it was pitched by Mackeroth in 2011. And as a result, through the various conflicts, through the three forum switches, through at least ten different minecraft server 'invasions', this forum is dying. It's bleeding members, and there are none to replace their potential valuable input to the life of this community. Where there was once three people online at any given time, now there are only bots. If this path is not strayed from, pretty soon there will be nothing left but a handful of reluctant hermits squabbling on a biweekly basis.
Part of the reason this is the case is because of the site changes. I assign blame to myself for the first occasion, in which I promised a more functional site only to sweep the rug from under everyone later on, causing a ton of confusion and misdirection. However, when I reuploaded the site to the hosting provided by Tau, it was under the assumption that he would do his utmost to maintain it. This has not been the case. User registrations are fundamentally broken at the moment, so even if people wanted to join and contribute to discussions, they are unable to do so. And recently, Tau has spent money that would have gone toward hosting the site on a radio set. Can he really be blamed? Not at all, it was his cash. But I have to express a degree of irritation that his negligence on both counts has left the forum in a sorry state of affairs. New people have never been able to join (creating a stagnant forum), and hosting for it expires next month along with the domain name fc-mod.com. If nothing is done this board will just vanish, both in terms of online presence and userbase.
I don't want to see that happen. I don't think anyone does, really. So let's do something about it.
I'll start it off - this seems like an opportunity to me to transform into something that isn't reliant on continued development on the mod to survive. I've pitched the idea of a gaming community before, as has Iv, but on both occasions it was just kind of...ignored. I don't think we stand to lose anything from it, and with the domain name expiring it's cost effective to get a more fitting url as well.
But times have changed. As a whole I think we've come to accept that these things we ask for, these things we stage endless debate over - they aren't as simple as some coder just walking along and waving a wand to make it all happen. In fact, many of us have reached the conclusion that this project may not even become a reality, or at the very least not how we envisioned it back when it was pitched by Mackeroth in 2011. And as a result, through the various conflicts, through the three forum switches, through at least ten different minecraft server 'invasions', this forum is dying. It's bleeding members, and there are none to replace their potential valuable input to the life of this community. Where there was once three people online at any given time, now there are only bots. If this path is not strayed from, pretty soon there will be nothing left but a handful of reluctant hermits squabbling on a biweekly basis.
Part of the reason this is the case is because of the site changes. I assign blame to myself for the first occasion, in which I promised a more functional site only to sweep the rug from under everyone later on, causing a ton of confusion and misdirection. However, when I reuploaded the site to the hosting provided by Tau, it was under the assumption that he would do his utmost to maintain it. This has not been the case. User registrations are fundamentally broken at the moment, so even if people wanted to join and contribute to discussions, they are unable to do so. And recently, Tau has spent money that would have gone toward hosting the site on a radio set. Can he really be blamed? Not at all, it was his cash. But I have to express a degree of irritation that his negligence on both counts has left the forum in a sorry state of affairs. New people have never been able to join (creating a stagnant forum), and hosting for it expires next month along with the domain name fc-mod.com. If nothing is done this board will just vanish, both in terms of online presence and userbase.
I don't want to see that happen. I don't think anyone does, really. So let's do something about it.
I'll start it off - this seems like an opportunity to me to transform into something that isn't reliant on continued development on the mod to survive. I've pitched the idea of a gaming community before, as has Iv, but on both occasions it was just kind of...ignored. I don't think we stand to lose anything from it, and with the domain name expiring it's cost effective to get a more fitting url as well.