The State of SW-Fans (?)

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Before I start let me just say the purpose of this thread isn't to ruffle any one's feathers, nor is it to propose any sort of stunt thread or universe changing event or new RPing scenario in order to kick start activity. I think we have plenty of very good ideas that have been sitting on back burners or out right abandoned and trying a new one won't work if the past and recent present is any indication.

I am personally concerned that our activity has severely declined over the last few years and that it will continue to stay at this same level or get worse as time goes on. Yes, we have surges in activity and we're sort of bumping things up again at this very moment, which is great. :) I just know that we are not getting new people with any sort of regularity, and we don't seem to be able to hold onto long time members either.

Looking at other SW RPing boards this seems to be unique to us, as RPG is still pretty active and I've even noticed that people who used to RP here and there now RP there more than they do here. I'm not pointing fingers or calling anyone out, everyone is welcome to do what they want with their online time. I just want our SW-Fans to at least be competitive when it comes to new people in the RPing scene.

We probably have the easiest and most laid back character creation and RPing mechanic (common sense rules, etc), but our Star Wars roleplay has turned into one huge cats cradle of a story that is hard for even US to figure out what's going on. Then on top of that we have only a handful of RPers playing people who are in positions of power (and everyone has a lot of different characters [not saying this is bad]) so if one person goes LOA/MIA and doesn't post to a few RPs it causes everything on the board to grind to a halt.

I would love to find a way to simplify our universe - not a hard reset persay but maybe closing off some dangling story arcs and settling in on an Alliance/Imperial cold war with defined boundaries? I would not want to force people to abandon current RPs, that's not what I'm talking about.

And if new people magically appear and want to RP then we need characters to train them. And if you have someone who needs training, then you should post to your training threads - I know I am/was doing one with Serena with a bunch of padawan characters because people were complaining there was nothing for their padawans to do, only to have the padawans stop posting all together. So I don't think necessarily that it would be a problem where new people wouldn't have active masters, but I do think it's a problem that current members would just rather not post here?

Is there an underlying problem at 'Fans that I'm not aware of that is making it hard for people to stay interested in being active here? Or is it just that we're all old and busy? If we're just old and busy and aren't interested in trying to get more new blood in here, then I'm afraid that RPing here will die off all together. :(

But then, if we're just too busy to post then people posting on other boards sort of confuses me because that sort of indicates that they do have time to post.:cyduck

Just tell me - it's me, isn't it. :cry /;)

(unless it is me :uhoh )

Sorry if that was all rambly, and sorry that rambly isn't a word.

[Wei Wu Wei]

I think one of the things that sort of makes me scratch my head is that if I want to do any writing at all, I feel like I have generate my own story ideas. People on this board (myself included) tend to have very defined and narrow stories, arcs, and goals that require specific people.

Perhaps all it would take is a broader set of goals. Perhaps one of two faction-wide goals for each group in our Star Wars universe that everyone can agree on and write on.

For example: The Jedi and the Alliance are always on the move as citizens of the Wheel. Perhaps gaining ground and power enough to establish a base of operations would be a goal that any thread could work towards.

Then again, I think Open threads are an endangered species. It's rare that people just toss out a thread idea and see what happens. I feel like when we had a lot of activity people were doing some particular things, but also a great deal more open threads.

I have loads more ideas, but those are the first two that come to mind.

[Serena Laran]

I think it's hard to say "if we had more open threads people would post more" because people aren't posting so starting an open thread is asking for nothing to happen. I started a few open threads in the DC story stuff, when that was fairly active, and no one jumped in.

Establishing 'goals' is... a step in the right direction perhaps, but I'm wary of just adding another RP goal or Big Story Idea for roleplays to revolve around. In the past that has been our go to move (let's rescue Serena and there is also a huge superweapon out there we'll have to stop is the one that comes immediately to mind) but it has never really done much other than an initial surge and then the thread peters off, sometimes without even completing the first story point.

So I'm personally more in favor of having no specific goals or over arching stories. (Edit: this is to say, like a Big Event type rp, not that people shouldnt write story arcs) Establishing a galaxy wide new status quo and then letting people play in the sandbox? rather than having every RP feel like a piece of a giant ten dimensional chess game. If that makes sense? I'm not trying to slap you down, Justin, I'm glad you posted and really, I don't think we can 'hurt' the board by trying anything at this point. :p

Really, I'm curious as to what everyone thinks. Why are we stagnant? What do you think will help? What would it take for you yourself to post more? So there aren't any wrong answers because this is an opinion piece.

[Captain Untouchable]

I'm not sure that we're "stagnant" as much as "bogged down".

Just plucking examples off the top of my head, over the last few years we've had big plans with Hapes, with the Jedi/Wheel, the Independents, the Dan/S'Il Crisis, and so on, but we've never really managed to get proper traction on them. What tends to happen is that one or more of the preamble threads that are leading up to a big event will stall, and because we have a pretty laid back attitude, we'll just kick back and wait. That slows everything down, we lose the momentum, and we haven't (yet) made it to the juicy part of any of those arcs. That leaves the whole board in a perpetual state of "waiting for stuff to happen", rather than giving any of us the freedom to go our individual ways and react to stuff.

No one person is to blame for any of it: we've each had our inactivity patches because of work, life, moving, illness, babies, and so forth. The problem is that when we all started out on Fans, we were all considerably younger: we didn't have so much grown up stuff to deal with, and so there were fewer of those real life distractions/obstacles to get in the way.

Personally, I don't care if Fans is competitive with other boards or not. I've roleplayed on other boards, and while their posting activity is certainly fast-paced, they're often way too strict, uptight, and relentless. Fans is a social experience for me, and after meeting a bunch of people, doing Google Hangouts so regularly, and all that stuff... it doesn't really bother me if roleplaying takes a back seat to people just hanging out.

That said, if we do want to stir up Fans activity a bit more, I think we may have to be a little bit more ruthless. Instead of the "we leave no thread behind" attitude we've currently been going with, if a thread gets bogged down we may have to just leave it in the mud to fend for itself and push on with the main story, just so we can get stuff done.

As far as Open threads go, I personally don't like them. I see them as an unknown quantity, because I'm never entirely sure what the person wants to happen, and I'm never entirely sure what I'm getting myself into. I think a better solution is what has been happening with DC threads: there are a lot of "I want to do this - who is interested?" that have cropped up on the DC front, and I think that's perhaps a more effective way of doing it.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Personally, I don't care if Fans is competitive with other boards or not. I've roleplayed on other boards, and while their posting activity is certainly fast-paced, they're often way too strict, uptight, and relentless. Fans is a social experience for me, and after meeting a bunch of people, doing Google Hangouts so regularly, and all that stuff... it doesn't really bother me if roleplaying takes a back seat to people just hanging out.

This is me, right now. I'm happy to post here to stuff, but unless a bunch of other people are active, it can feel a little pointless. Especially when we have such large, interconnected stories.

I am roleplaying elsewhere, but I have always done that on and off for years. My interest in certain characters/stories grows then fades then grows again, I just can't help it v:)v

On this topic.. it's interesting to look back at the comments from this thread (http://sw-fans.net/forum/showthread.php?t=20943).

[Miranda Tarkin]

Right now for me my interest here has toned down a bit since the baby, though I am rping somewhere else right now. I notice that my interest goes back and forth and trying to get back into posting here was just difficult after my LOA with pregnancy issues and then my daughter.

I'm sure it will come back but I just lost a bit of drive here, though I do lurk almost everyday here to see what's going on :)

[Droo]

Perhaps we ought not to get too hung up on whether or not the site is competitive with other similar sites. Regardless of what we take from this place as individuals, it cannot hurt to seek and deploy the means to expand and improve the community we inhabit. This place is quiet, and its more regularly quiet than it is active these days, and, as we've all agreed in the past, our roleplaying surges are just part of a communal cycle we go through each year, or more. These cycles are unpredictable because they require a star-aligning turn of coincidence in which our creative enthusiasm happens to spike at the same time. In the meantime, those of us who are in the mood, so to speak, are left twiddling our thumbs with a severe case of roleplayer blue balls, so to speak. This is a most serious ailment, and one that may indeed be cured with an influx of new like-minded people with similar, ahem, creative urges.

While the emphasis for many may lie on the social side of the fence, as opposed to the creative side, I do have to wonder for how long into the future this community will be able to survive on its social strengths alone. There are, after all, better social networking alternatives. Compared to say, ten years ago, I'd quite safely assume the social interaction element of this community has been stunted by the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Rewind a week or two ago, and I was visiting this place only to find next to no new posts at all within twenty-four hours. And look at us today, a smidgen of activity and we surface from our lurkster's hidey-holes. It only goes to show what a little activity can do when given a topic to discuss or a new creative venture on which to embark.

Roleplaying participation cannot be forced no matter how tactfully we approach the matter, so the other option is bringing in new faces, but sadly, this raises the other inherent problem: what incentive does a newcomer have to revisit a community with such a low level of new content? There are other avenues of activity we can pursue, collectively or individually, which could help boost interest amongst exisiting members enough to have a knock-on effect upon a newbie's first impressions. Again, it's a question of content: what can we do here at SW-Fans to generate interest? Some people like to blog, others like to draw; some are musically gifted whereas others are simply passionate about music; there are those of us who are cinefiles and telly addicts; we have some excellent cooks, fitness enthusiasts, and comic book aficionados; then there are those who enjoy debating politics and current affairs, and there's also our small army of gaming geeks. All of this to name but of a few of our collective interests, which, if harnessed correctly, could be turned into a wealth of fun and engaging content for fresh faces and old farts alike.

[Crusader]

I am not familliar with your RP problems obviously since I only have my biweekly RP sessions on Google Hangout with you guys but I just want to give you three observations from lurking here:


1. The DC RP seems to go very well right now while other threads are stagnating. Don't complain about it, embrace it, maybe less RP settings and threads benefit more in the end. So maybe you should have like a focus month, term or semester where you do a certain number of arcs until you switch to a new setting and then return to this one at a later point.

2. Most complains I read on the forums here is about people breaking the loop by not posting on time and by doing so killing the flow of the thread. My suggestion here is coming straight from our Pen&Paper and I am not sure if it works for you but maybe each thread needs an appointed director that steps in for a player that does not meet his deadline to post. This way the flow keeps sort of maintained :) The directer might have a list of plot points from each character that has to be worked into the plot at some time but otherwise he or she would be free to do so with a character what he or she wants if the player does not show up.

3. Now is not the time to complain about traffic since we will have plenty of new and old members in 2 years (in JJ Abrams we trust!). We will just have to lure them in and keep them engaged then.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I'm not trying to complain about stuff just for the sake of complaining, I'm just wondering what we offer that would keep new members that come and visit us because of the interest in the new movies.

Luring them in and keeping them engaged is what I'm talking about, and I assume that our style of SW rp has a very steep learning curve due to it's plot complexity.

I'm not even really talking about DC or Mutants or the General RPing threads. Those have an ebb and flow to them and interest waxes and wanes and seems to be waxing right now which is awesome and I enjoy it.

Having a thread director or GM is an interesting idea though - it could give the thread starter some leeway as a narrator and keep things from getting stuck if someone doesn't post within say a week.


edit: sorry I missed a whole slew of posts bear with me

edit edit: It is sort of a catch 22 - can't get more content without more people posting, can't get more people posting without more content.

edit3: I agree with everything Droo said (except for the time he called me a cow, that was just mean). Obviously most of our members are totally happy with how things are here because things have continued in this state of decline for years. But if we want long term viability as a website (and YES Facebook has eaten up a lot of our interactions because hey, we can chat on FB if we want) then I think something needs to be done consciously and as a group. Maybe that means just sitting down and forcing yourself to post, whether you're particularly inspired or not, because a few RPing posts are like seeds from which activity grows.

Assuming that someone else is going to get active and kick start your own activity is just... passing the buck? And I'm as guilty of this as anyone - there's a lull in RPing or something and it takes two weeks for a thread to get a reply. I'm faced with a choice - I could reply right away or I could wait (sometimes it's even a "they made me wait so they can wait for a bit) and that just compounds the problem.

If there is a problem. If you're well pleased with Fans as it is then ....

[Dasquian Belargic]

What encourages people to hang around is fun and activity, so we just need to do more fun stuff which will in turn breed activity and thereby encourage people to stay :partyhard

[Lilaena De'Ville]

*puts a party hat on Dasquian*

:huh

[Reshmar]

As every one knows My role playing here Is generally Set in or about star ship battles. I do not stray far from these settings. I have before on many many sites but here I concentrated on Fleeting. I fondly remember getting started here and Yog giving Resh his first command. And Telan... well I learned so much from him.

I don't deal with 90 percent of the members or stories here and there are many many members here I have never said two words too, for that I am sorry. I have been one of the worst about disappearing in the past. Life can kick you at times, but I always return because you are an amazing group of people.

When I started writing here I had just quit a short but eye opening music career and was looking for an outlet for my creativity. Now music has found me again. I guess it never left, just stalled. Now I am again throwing myself into my music and this is leaving me very little time to write. But I love this site and the people here. I know making myself take the time to post is the only way I can share with you. Hell I watched most of you grow up from the background here.

As for activity and the site. I have seen and met may people who have visited and shown interest in the site and role playing here and every one gets frustrated early on by the slow pace. My question is.

Is this something that can be fixed?

Has the site reached a pint to where it is no longer attractive to new writers. It would seem this is so. Most of us here scrap out what little time we can find to write. The fact I think is we need new and younger people. most of you were teens when you started here. Where are today's teens? Where are the bulk of young star wars fans hiding?

Another thought. Think about the exposure now. 12 years ago we had Star Wars and Star Trek. Now there are 25 other universes for writers to write in. Even we have set Star Wars as a back seat kind of universe to other more current and diverse settings. Not that this is bad. I love reading the general roleplay forum, it has saved me tons in book costs. lol

Another thought. Online gaming was almost non existent 10 years ago. This could be the biggest dagger in the back to forum base role playing. Now we can talk to our friend's and slay orks or sith in real time.


Sadlly Star Wars is just not as popular today as it was 12 years ago, not even here. The internet is alot bigger now. People have more outlets for creativity and networking. gaming is real time now. Point being Making a forum base site competitive now is nearly impossible. It is Hard work. With it taking hard work for us just to post, where do we find the time to work on making the site popular. I do not know if new blood will save Fans. But I do know it deserves to be saved.

The above are the delusional babblings of a crazy old fish.

[Charley]

I've been a lazy sod and we only have one functioning computer in the house currently. I'm working on slowly getting back into things so I am open to demands of me.

[Ilias Nytrau]

I've been a lazy sod and we only have one functioning computer in the house currently. I'm working on slowly getting back into things so I am open to demands of me.

This, minus the computer issues, is me in a nutshell.

Now, on to the topic at hand.

My 'opinion', as it were, is that - at least for one thing - the front page is in dire need of updating. I hear tell that the 'infobox' was updated last in 2005? I had a read of the blurb there. It's short, and it doesn't really say anything except, 'hey, we're old, we're still here and, oh, there's a few roleplay settings.' but there's been so much that has happened since then.

There could be more detail. I agree with the fact that getting in here, as far as the story goes, can honestly be confusing unless you can needle the people that are around, that might know, more or less, what's going on, where are we in the timeline, where should I start, so on and so forth. And reaching out to someone you don't know can be awful daunting for some. There just needs to be more detail. Even if there's more of a detailed blurb and 'read the FAQ' - because some of this information could be in the FAQ, or be provided vai links to write-ups (or whatever) kept up to date. I'm just running out my thoughts here, I'm not saying that it must be this, but there does need to be more done in the way of upkeep and care.

I also think that some of the stuff on the front page could be moved around - like the recent posts, for example, is the most up-to-date thing, the most regularly updated thing and is most representative of activity. It could be closer to the top. Stuff that isn't kept regularly up-to-date shouldn't be a upfront feature.

Also, the Star Wars RP stuff and the General RP stuff could possibly do with being more visually separate in the set-up of the board. Whether that means putting them on different pages altogether or moving things around to give a more distinct divide - whatever is appropriate. Also, anything OOC could be kept in a completely separate category from the IC forums. And I'm not sure about the ooc planning forums, but maybe consider sticking them as a subforum in the IC forum they apply to? That might not be necessary, but it is a thought.

I guess what I'm saying here, regardless of my mere suggestions, is that there's a lack of info for new users (or even for the benefit of those of us that go away sometimes and come back!) and that visual appeal matters. It could be tidier, it could look more like it was cared for and that it mattered. There is nothing wrong, in any case, with wanting to be an attractive and most sexy beast. ;)

I don't know about you all, but I consider this place my home, as far as RP is concerned. :)

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I think Fans needs a big old face lift, we should make it pretty. Our style sets are so old it's really kinda embarrassing (and the newest ones are supporter only). We should go full Web 2.0 :)

[Park Kraken]

I wouldn't say that this is a problem unique to SWF - TRF has slowly died out over the past couple of years as well.

The biggest problem that I've noticed is keeping the threads moving forward. Being a fleeting type person I keep finding myself stuck in a quandry; Either A) Do a multi-person thread and watch it stall when one person goes MIA or B) Do a solo thread and get bogged down under the large weight of a solo writing project.

That being said, I don't think it would hurt to update the front page and maybe the timeline? :yum

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Just as a fyi, to upgrade to vbulletin 5 (which lets face it, we should do something as we're running 3.6) it would be $209 on top of our hosting costs for the year. If people are willing to donate toward the effort I'm sure we could hit that number no problem.

There is also a mobile suite to fully offer mobile integration for iOS and Android but that's an additional $199. Certainly as we live in the future this is also something we should probably think about even if we can't afford to do it the same year as upgrading.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I agree with most of what's been said. The front page does indeed need a big ole update, and a few new stylesets is always fun.

I also think that it might be a good idea to promote more of the stuff that we do; like the pen and paper, the Nerd events, the resurgence of the book club, the prop building and art we do, stuff like that. For new folks it might not be so easily apparent where to find those threads, but maybe if we put announcements for them on the front page, or even made up a series of banners that promote the different activities that we all engage in it'd give someone - at a single glance - a good idea of the wide range of things that actually do go on around here.

We've grown so far beyond what we started out as, and while I know that we'll never truly abandon our writing roots (and frankly we never should), I feel it's about time that we show newcomers a bit more of the spectrum of SWFans.

On the actual RPing front, I'm as guilty as anyone else for dropping off the face of the earth in that respect. For the last few days I've been trying to recall the old days and the creative motivations that I had pulled from, and so I'm taking measures to recreate and go beyond those :)

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I've been a lazy sod and we only have one functioning computer in the house currently. I'm working on slowly getting back into things so I am open to demands of me.
So you have a functioning computer and...? :p If you had zero functioning computers that would be one thing.

edit: I would be interested in hearing what DEmotivates people. Like, you say you are lazy or just don't feel like writing, but what's the cause? Can it be fixed?

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I don't think it's an issue of complete demotivation, but more a product of us growing older, discovering more hobbies that we weren't able to afford/whatever when we were younger, and pursuing those hobbies.

[Vince]

While I don't know if it's possible, maybe have different writers write up a welcome blurb thingie that could alternate on the front page in the voices of different characters, like Salem, Decepis, Valten, Grace, Cirr, Ben, José, Saladin, the Tres Onces, the Brotherhood, and so on. This could give both new and old players alike a view of the breadth of the boards and the style of play that goes on here and maybe even some examples of rules if they're written in well, as well as perhaps sparking some creative inspiration.

[Crusader]

I would prefer a software update and I would definetly donate for it.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

While I don't know if it's possible, maybe have different writers write up a welcome blurb thingie that could alternate on the front page in the voices of different characters, like Salem, Decepis, Valten, Grace, Cirr, Ben, José, Saladin, the Tres Onces, the Brotherhood, and so on. This could give both new and old players alike a view of the breadth of the boards and the style of play that goes on here and maybe even some examples of rules if they're written in well, as well as perhaps sparking some creative inspiration.
I like this idea a lot. :D Rotating code or perhaps an image with the text on it?

...Also, the Star Wars RP stuff and the General RP stuff could possibly do with being more visually separate in the set-up of the board. Whether that means putting them on different pages altogether or moving things around to give a more distinct divide - whatever is appropriate. Also, anything OOC could be kept in a completely separate category from the IC forums. And I'm not sure about the ooc planning forums, but maybe consider sticking them as a subforum in the IC forum they apply to? That might not be necessary, but it is a thought.
A slight forum re-shuffle wouldn't hurt anything, I'm good with switching things around a bit. So like (for example):

Creative-
-Starving Artists Apt
-SW OOC Discussion
-GEN OOC Discussion

Roleplaying
-SW Galaxy
-General Roleplaying

RPing Groups
et cetera?

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

It would be nice if we could make the calender a bit more prominent on the frontpage in terms of upcoming events such as Dark Banana, Cards Against Humanity rounds, Book Club discussions, conventions, and other things like that :)

[Ilias Nytrau]

It would be nice if we could make the calender a bit more prominent on the frontpage in terms of upcoming events such as Dark Banana, Cards Against Humanity rounds, Book Club discussions, conventions, and other things like that :)

I agree with this, because we are clearly not just a role-playing community, but a community of friends that defines its relationships with each other well beyond the basic premise of the site. We are active in more ways than one!:dance

[Anna Fernandez]

Maybe like a snippet from the monthly calendar on the Portal - like the current week is displayed above the news articles and under the other stuff?

Keeping our calendar updated and adding things to it I believe any member can do.

[Captain Untouchable]

Something else to consider -

With the way our forums are currently set up, we draw a lot of attention to our Star Wars roleplaying. There are five forums on the main page dedicated to Star Wars (RP, Discussion, and the three factions) versus only two forums dedicated to the rest of our roleplaying. However, we often find ourselves in the situation where our Mutants, DC, or WoD activity equals or exceeds our Star Wars activity.

From the perspective of someone new coming in, it may look like General RP is the only forum where there is any activity: but that might represent a lot of activity, across several settings. I realise that we are "Star Wars" Fans by name, but given that we do so much roleplaying outside that box, perhaps we could reshuffle the forums to a) advertise, and b) take advantage of that?

One possibility would be to split General Roleplaying into a handful of extra forums. If we had separate forums for DC, Mutants and WoD (as well as General for the other bits and pieces), we'd have the same number of forums for General Roleplaying as we currently have for Star Wars. Anyone glancing at the forums will end up seeing more forums flagged with unread posts, so we'll look like we're more active.

We could potentially separate out some of the Starving Artist stuff as well. I like the idea of drawing attention to things like the Book Club, Dark Banana, and so on: perhaps "events" like that deserve a separate forum?

Spreading things out will mean there's a little more stuff on the main page... but by spreading our cards on the table, it'll be easier to display all of our activity.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Design idea -

http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/168/1/6/fpsmaniac_v2___portal_design_by_maqqwebdesign-d3j4zk8.png this was my inspiration

WIP:

[Captain Untouchable]

Personally, I would prefer if we avoided using image claims in the site themes. Claims can change, characters that seemed prominent to begin with can fall out of significance (or die), new characters can become super-important... etc.

I remember starting out and thinking "Who the hell are all these people?" and finding it quite daunting.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Banners can also be changed. A rotating image banner has been something that quite a few people have wanted for years.

[Taddius "Ram" Rammstein]

From the perspective of someone new coming in, it may look like General RP is the only forum where there is any activity: but that might represent a lot of activity, across several settings. I realise that we are "Star Wars" Fans by name, but given that we do so much roleplaying outside that box, perhaps we could reshuffle the forums to a) advertise, and b) take advantage of that?

Yes!

Personal opinion, I have RP'ed in "other places" and there is nothing going on here that hasn't happened. Changing the layout is nice. Personally I'm not interested in the others (DC, Mutant, etc) just the SW (now if you had an ST game going that answer may change :p). One thing that always sparked activity from previous observations and experience is opening up RP abilities. What I mean is there are other places that are so strict an Infiltrator can't enter an Imperial Garrison unless Republic Leadership had permission from Imperial Leadership (for example) but the advent of "mission lists" changed all of this.

These lists were of small 1-3 man threads of small missions that didn't have huge outcomes and were not game changers, just a simple outcome and a simple parameters. This took off like gangbusters.

Now I know that this site is lax enough for this sort of thing to be moot, but isn't there some other "mission list"(symbolic) out there?


*goes off to make the one person thread post he should have made 2 days ago*

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

On the subject of the calender:

Yes, anyone can edit in an event, but at the moment our calender is stuck in last December, heh. I think events would best be shown in two week increments, since stuff like Dark Banana is a twice a month thing.

Banners:

I also like the idea of rotating banners, and have a few ideas for different styles to go along with different stylesets. I know I mentioned it last night in chat, but I would love it if we had a sort of Adult Swim bumper texts that are quotes taken from either IC or OOC threads, or even chats (since the group chats are often a breeding ground of gigglefits).

I'll write more later, but for now I need to order my thoughts a bit better and do some hunting about for old styleset starters and unfinished graphics that I let drop off.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

I like those ideas. We definitely have an opportunity to make the front page fresh instead of something to avoid.

(Insert "We have a front page??" meme)

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Hosting costs (these are covered by the group board mods/members, so...everyone): $200
Upgrade cost: $249
Total: $449

It isn't unattainable. Getting someone to do the upgrade might be tricky though, I'm not sure what our admins are up to these days.

edit: and if I'm not mistaken any amount you donate can also be turned into supporter accounts? Perhaps as an incentive we could combine it (donate $10 toward hosting and get supporter also) for a fund raiser?

edit2
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v471/jainhollie/swfans-design-idea.jpg
did some more work on design

[Dasquian Belargic]

On the subject of the calender:

Yes, anyone can edit in an event, but at the moment our calender is stuck in last December, heh. I think events would best be shown in two week increments, since stuff like Dark Banana is a twice a month thing.

I've fixed the calendar and added in a recurring event for Dark Banana :)

Having had a quick through the admin panel, I haven't worked out how to feature it more prominently on the front page. Might be something to look into this weekend, I think.

[TheHolo.Net]

The Front page has its own admin panel. Please help me understand how you would like to more prominently feature the Calendar and I will see what can be done.

Forum software upgrades are something I have been considering for nearly two years now. Its the expense vs. reward and loss of current features vs. newly gained features which has kept me from taking action, as well as the lack of 'demand' from you, the actual users. If there is demand and people are willing to make contributions, more than just financial, we can move forward. We need people willing to learn more about any new forum software we get so that we can actually implement new styles and themes...etc. I believe that we can improve all the aspects of our site that make it fun and interesting, if we do it as a team.

I think we need to try and get something accomplished sooner rather than later, so that we can be poised to benefit from any new interest that the new SW films may generate.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I am very willing to learn all I can about the forum software so I can help implement new and old styles. My actual $$ input would probably be less than that of others, but I would like to make up for that lack in any way I can.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I can send 100 your way, and am able to learn more about the software as well.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Ditto on learning how to do stuff. I feel like I'm always pointing at you and Chris for techy admin stuff, but I'd love to be able to do that stuff myself. Add another string to my bow :smug:

Money wise, I should be able to chip something in. Not sure exactly how much, but I can definitely contribute.

[Captain Untouchable]

When you mention "loss of current features vs. newly gained features", what are we actually talking about? New and shiny is cool and all, but what sort of stuff would we lose and what would we gain? Is it mostly admin / mod functionality, or is it stuff that would have a big impact on us as mere posters?

[TheHolo.Net]

I cannot answer that in a way that would be correct or even close to complete right now. We have somewhere on the order of 10 to 30 custom hacks in this software alone, not even mentioning the other three pieces of software which we have managed to successfully hack together with the forums. (Wiki, Gallery, Portal page)

Really, to be able to answer it would have to mean that we were 65% ready to launch the new software already and it was nearly setup and tested. The only way to know what features we cannot replicate is to actually try.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I would guess it would be like when we upgraded last time and we lost the ability to have custom titles that were forum specific. Older hacks (the ones we use with our older board) aren't always updated to work with newer software.

But then again, there are newer hacks that could do similar things, or even different ones that we might want to add.

Like, I love the "who read this thread" hack, but if it has to be sacrificed to upgrade the board to modern standards then it's something I'll get used to.

[Crusader]

Since I never paid for the forums so far I went ahead and donated a bit for the necessary upgrade.

[Droo]

I'm willing to contribute dosh and time, I have a little experience with vBulletin 4.0.4 when we setup the short-lived website for the SWTOR guild.

Also, I'm willing to contribute more to this discussion, but first, food!

[Captain Untouchable]

I can probably contribute a little money, though how much depends entirely on when it actually needs contributing. I've got plenty of time I can contribute too - I've done a little bit of MediaWiki and vB before, so I'm happy to chip in as and where I can / am needed.

[TheHolo.Net]

Please use the "Donations" link in the left sidebar for any software update donations. Also, please send me a PM letting me know who donated what. We still get supporter requests/contributions via the donation link, and would prefer to keep them separate, at least logically, for now.


EDIT: Additional info -

I think software + mobile is the best option.

If we raise more funds than needed for the software, we should use the extra for advertising/promotion of our site once its all setup and running.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Makes sense to me. I will be broaching the subject of possibly free money laying around our account once we figure out how we're paying rent. >_<

[Dee]

I'll be able to make a decent contribution as soon as my tax refund comes in (hopefully within the next few days to a week).

[Lilaena De'Ville]

As every one knows My role playing here Is generally Set in or about star ship battles. I do not stray far from these settings. I have before on many many sites but here I concentrated on Fleeting. I fondly remember getting started here and Yog giving Resh his first command. And Telan... well I learned so much from him.

I don't deal with 90 percent of the members or stories here and there are many many members here I have never said two words too, for that I am sorry. I have been one of the worst about disappearing in the past. Life can kick you at times, but I always return because you are an amazing group of people.

When I started writing here I had just quit a short but eye opening music career and was looking for an outlet for my creativity. Now music has found me again. I guess it never left, just stalled. Now I am again throwing myself into my music and this is leaving me very little time to write. But I love this site and the people here. I know making myself take the time to post is the only way I can share with you. Hell I watched most of you grow up from the background here.

As for activity and the site. I have seen and met may people who have visited and shown interest in the site and role playing here and every one gets frustrated early on by the slow pace. My question is.

Is this something that can be fixed?

Has the site reached a pint to where it is no longer attractive to new writers. It would seem this is so. Most of us here scrap out what little time we can find to write. The fact I think is we need new and younger people. most of you were teens when you started here. Where are today's teens? Where are the bulk of young star wars fans hiding?

Another thought. Think about the exposure now. 12 years ago we had Star Wars and Star Trek. Now there are 25 other universes for writers to write in. Even we have set Star Wars as a back seat kind of universe to other more current and diverse settings. Not that this is bad. I love reading the general roleplay forum, it has saved me tons in book costs. lol

Another thought. Online gaming was almost non existent 10 years ago. This could be the biggest dagger in the back to forum base role playing. Now we can talk to our friend's and slay orks or sith in real time.


Sadlly Star Wars is just not as popular today as it was 12 years ago, not even here. The internet is alot bigger now. People have more outlets for creativity and networking. gaming is real time now. Point being Making a forum base site competitive now is nearly impossible. It is Hard work. With it taking hard work for us just to post, where do we find the time to work on making the site popular. I do not know if new blood will save Fans. But I do know it deserves to be saved.

The above are the delusional babblings of a crazy old fish.

There are a lot of good observations in here and one is that the advent of World of Warcraft put the first huge dent into our member base and many people who got wrapped up in that never came back, and some did but it took years.

Attracting teens and young college students should be (I sound like an old person but I'm in my 30s now) a priority if we want to stay viable as a community.

[Captain Untouchable]

Most of the people I've roleplayed with over the last decade or so have been adults. They've been people who work in offices and like to sneak off a post or two when work gets dull. They're people who have kids, and want something to do in the evenings when they can't leave the house. A fair chunk of those people have been guys, whereas by contrast quite a lot of Fans roleplayers are women who started at younger ages.

Like Resh says, people nowadays have all manner of other outlets to soak up their time. Rather than targeting a specific age bracket, maybe we should look at exploiting some of those other outlets. A lot of people roleplay using Tumblr, which isn't all that different from roleplaying on a forum. The SWTOR community has a whole bunch of Star Wars fans who use the internet to interact: maybe there's a way we can appeal to them. Maybe there's a way we can work Youtube to our advantage.

Also, like Resh points out, "Now there are 25 other universes for writers to write in." Yes, we are "Star Wars" Fans, but we roleplay in other settings as well: perhaps we need to embrace and advertise that a bit more prominently - forum themes based on other settings, more roleplaying settings out on display, targeting fans on game sites for other franchises, setting up "affiliates" with roleplaying sites that aren't just about Star Wars.

And lets not forget where the site started out either: we seem very focused on pushing the roleplaying aspect of the community, but Fans began as a movie discussion thing. Maybe another approach would be to try and attract people to that side of the community, and then encourage people to give roleplaying a go once they're through the door.

Diversify and thrive. That's the sort of thing that marketing people would tell us to do.

[Zereth Lancer]

I see this discussions turning into two general sides here. One wants to innovate and step up; whatever it takes to bring in new members and get this place hopping again. The other side wants to change things too, but doesn't want to sacrifice what is already here; a long lived community where socializing trumps purpose. These are both really great things and both warrant a board devoted to just that. However, I feel that these are two very different boards and are not something that can coexist together.

In my ten years of internet roleplaying I've been all over, tasted a lot of flavors of roleplay and stuck my thumb in a lot of genre pies. The roleplays generally move to the flow of media, and right now the hip thing is Avengers. I've been roleplaying in and out of Marvel related roleplays for years now and I can tell you that the popularity comes and goes with the movies, and following the hot success of Avengers the genre is really pumping right now. Starwars hasn't had a new release in quite some time and I don't think the Clone Wars cartoon generated a new generation of Starwars writers. So beyond simply picking up new members we have to complete with the other genres with compelling worlds to write in. I mean, Science Fiction alone has quite a few worlds all it's own with strong followings; Firefly, Doctor Who, etc; all with their own roleplay boards.

If I had to say there was any single thing wrong with SW-Fans it's a lack of identity. We are a Starwars board. It's in the name. But we have the general roleplays and a strong focus on community at the price of everything else. So what are we, exactly? Are we a starwars roleplay, a community hangout, or a do everything board? I really think that, at the end of the day, that's the question that needs to be answered before we move on to anything else. Any attempt to strengthen the Starwars side of the board would likely damage the strong community side of the board.

I really don't know what the modern Starwars roleplayer looks like. I know in other genres I've written in the majority of the writers are college girls, and the ages of all members are usually between 18 and 24. Hell, I've been on boards where I'm the oldest person. At age 24, I'm the oldest. Sure, you get the rare old fart kicking around but the majority is fairly young. Also, the female to male is like 4 to 1. That's what my experience has been at least. I've written on something like... 15-20 boards over the last ten years, encompassing all kinds of genres including Starwars, Firefly, original Fantasy, Marvel/DC, and a few other original boards.

A face lift is a great idea, but at the same time I have to ask why we are paying for this service? This is the only board I have ever written on that people paid to host. I've wondered why we haven't just up and gone to a free host. Is it because we have so much archived on this host, are afraid to lose a few features, or something else? $200 a year isn't a terrible lot if spread out between the membership, but somehow I bet that Ogre has forked up most of the cost over the years. I'm pretty sure I've never contributing more than a hundred dollars total over the ten years I've been a member here, although granted I started when I was 14 and didn't have any money to my name.

Bottom line is we have a lot of members with different ideas of what they want out of this board, and I really don't think we can appeal to everyone. Me, I would love this board to be more focused on the Starwars roleplaying at the cost of everything else, but that's just me and how I feel about it. That's where my time has been invested. And there are people who prefer the community areas, or the general roleplay, or whatever. When you pan the camera back and look at it from afar it starts to look like there really isn't a single solution to this. I really don't think we should sacrifice the community; what this board was founded on, for the sake of strengthening any single quality. But if we want to pull in new members, writers especially, then we need to work on our image, our identity, and get us to the place where people can take a glance at our front page and thing "Hey, this is a cool looking starwars board." because every time I've suggested this board to a friend they come away not quite sure what they are looking at.

Perhaps to move in the direction of strengthening the identity of a starwars board, has anyone ever considered moving the general roleplay off site so we aren't drawing attention away from the Starwars? There are plenty of free hosts that could be utilized to host all of them, together or separately. This in itself could lead into creating entirely new communities of writers. The Mutant roleplay could probably ride the Avengers coattails into success and DC-themed roleplays are always favorites. With the proper advertisement they could easily pick up people unrelated to SW-Fans. And as a result it would clean up the face of SW-Fans and maintain that "this is a Starwars board" appearance at the cost of breaking up the community a bit. My two cents, anyways.

[Droo]

We haven't been just a Star Wars community for a long long time now, and I think it's too late, and too alienating, to change that now.

Going back to what I originally said about the wealth of interests we have across the community, this seems to have been picked up on a few times throughout this thread, so it seems there's quite a few of us on the same page. Speaking of pages (did you see what I did there?), the front page can be made to do a lot of the work in advertising the broad spectrum of activities that go on here. And it should get more love, and then consequently, more traffic. Maybe it would be an idea to establish a team to keep the front page updated with new articles and content as often as possible; members of such a team would specialise in one area, such as roleplaying, or art, or the book club, or Dark Banana. That way, we're immediately showing visitors that this is who we are and this is what we do; selling the community as a whole, not just for roleplaying, and not just for Star Wars.

Since we all seem to be in agreement with regards to software upgrades, portal and forums rearrangement, and boosting the sites overall swankiness, I'll say no more on the matter - it's great that we're heading in that directional already.

When I setup a guild for The Old Republic, I had a very specific idea about what I wanted to do with the website/forums, and it is relevant to what's going on here because the question I was asking myself was: what can we do, as a group, to show visitors that, of all the similar communities out there, this is the one to come back to? What can we offer that stands out and is different? There was going to be a gaming blog, Let's Plays, a Twitter feed, and a gaming livestream on top of all the usual features a gaming guild has to offer. The problem I faced was that I was over-ambitious and basically had too many balls in the air and not enough fellow jugglers. That is simply not the case here, we're up to our necks in people boasting remarkable talents, and it's time we showed that off a bit.

This would all be content created and submitted voluntarily, but to be honest, we create the content here anyway - look at the cooking threads, for example, and the presentation there. Why not show that off with a recipe of the week/month, complete with those wickedly mouth-watering pictures. We could even, with a little ingenuity, have a sci-fi, fantasy, or other-themed recipe of the month: there's a ton of Star Wars alcoholic beverages that have names but are yet to be invented! But on top of the cooking, there's film and football discussions, complete with predictions - why not feature that part of the community? I'm sure Peter would enjoy doing the occassional Let's Play video, too. And how about some photo albums for all those Nerd meetups to promote the social aspect of the community?

Back to roleplaying, so many interesting ideas have been proposed in the past that it would be a shame to let them fall by the wayside. I'm thinking of the character/roleplayer articles, or top five stories of the month, and I think at some point even the idea of news reports was raised. The community generates a great variety of content already, all we have to think of is how to re-package it and use it as a fun selling-point.

[Captain Untouchable]

+1 to what Droo has said.

What we seem to have done in the past is gone "this forum is not important: lets consolidate it with another forum". Star Wars Amalgam, for example. We very rarely go the opposite way however... but potentially, we could use that as a way to help advertise what we do. Maybe we need a separate Sports forum for football / baseball / car stuff / etc. Maybe we could split out the Dark Banana / Roleplaying / etc stuff into a Clubs & Activities forum. Maybe food appreciation threads could go in the "Starving" Artist's Department?

It doesn't necessarily matter if we numerically post more, but the more of those little yellow "This forum has new posts in it!" icons we have, the more active it's going to look like we are.

Another thought that Droo gave me: on a lot of gaming guild websites, they have a blog integrated into the website design. As it stands, our news articles are just a particular forum that's echoed on the front page. When we look into upgrading the forum software, could we perhaps investigate the idea of a blog for news purposes? That would keep any monthly character / roleplay focus stuff a little bit separate for the forums. And, if anyone wants to do Let's Plays, game reviews, or anything like that: we've got a place nestled in the community that can do that. Maybe someone wants to do a book review for all of the Book Club books, so it all ties together.

I'm guessing that adding a blog is probably one of those "I won't know if it's possible until I try and do it" questions for Ogre, but it might be worth considering at least.

We have a Facebook group, but we only ever use that if and when the forums go offline. Does anyone have any ideas on other ways we could use that, to beef up our multi-media platform?

Also, in the vein of beefing up our calendar... we went through a phase where we had a gargantuan AIM chat pretty much every weekend. Is this something that people are too busy for nowadays, or is it something that we could make a regular, scheduled thing? Is it something that we could perhaps look at migrating to a chat room, so that people can just stroll in rather than needing to get an AIM invite, (would be more accessible to new people) or perhaps something like Teamspeak so that we can voice chat instead of text chatting?

[Droo]

Publishing blogs was most definately a feature of the front page for vBulletin 4.0, it was quite an easy to use system, too. You could write and save numerous articles on the blog, and then assign each one a publish date, whereby they wouldn't appear until a certain day of the week/month, allowing you to organise your output.

[TheHolo.Net]

A face lift is a great idea, but at the same time I have to ask why we are paying for this service? This is the only board I have ever written on that people paid to host. I've wondered why we haven't just up and gone to a free host. Is it because we have so much archived on this host, are afraid to lose a few features, or something else? $200 a year isn't a terrible lot if spread out between the membership, but somehow I bet that Ogre has forked up most of the cost over the years. I'm pretty sure I've never contributing more than a hundred dollars total over the ten years I've been a member here, although granted I started when I was 14 and didn't have any money to my name. We have tried to run these forums on 'free hosting' and 'close to free' hosting in the past and found it to be disastrous in both functionality and performance. Our combined site data footprint is too large and unwieldy for such a scenario. The host we have now is not very expensive compared to some of the choices we have made over the years, and is proving to be a very good fit for us.

Due to this reduced cost, I have been contemplating lowering what I label as the 'member forums hosting fees', the $200 annual donation drive we have each year, which members of our staff can confirm that I have not asked for in 2013 as of yet. All of this discussion regarding a facelift has steered me away from lowering that fee right away due to the additional software costs and time needed to do an awesome job of upgrading both our software and with it, our site feature list.

Yes, its true that over the years I have financially invested more funds and administrative time (server side) than anyone else, but I am not complaining. It is something I enjoy and would like to continue enjoying. I want to provide a place for this site's members where they are comfortable and have a good time. Change is part of high-tech and the Internet, therefore change is something that we must embrace and move forward with if we want to stay an active community.

My personal lack of social participation in either roleplay or standard discussions leaves me in a place where I cannot confidently make many of the decisions that need to be made regarding how to draw more people here, yet keep the site identity that we have established over the years, but I will listen to our members and do what I can to please as large a group as possible. This has to be done as a team.

Here are some quick personal thoughts on features that I am fairly certain the new vB versions brings to the table which will be good for our future.

1. Some kind of Facebook and/or other social media integration. Possibly Twitter, Linkedin and/or some others.
2. Better support for mobile and tablet platforms (iOS and Android)
3. A built in blogging system

I think the first two possibilities alone are enough to warrant the expenditure of funds and effort. While its true that things like Facebook and mobile platforms could drastically change in the near future, I believe we need to be in a place to better embrace these newer methods of capturing attention and providing options and site exposure to our site's users and the internet at large.

<b>Will there be some sacrifice of things we already have and are comfortable with? </b>

Yes, almost definitely, but change is inevitable and really must be embraced to foster new user participation and interest as well as provide the possibilities of generating new found interest from our existing and 'on hiatus' membership.

<b> Do I know now what those sacrifices may be? </b>

No, not yet, but I think the risk is justified.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I'd just like to echo what Droo said. We've got a lot of talented people here from all walks of life, and it'd be criminal to not let them show off.

As for a sports forum, I know that at one point in the past I'd proposed it but at the time it was not a feasible addition. Perhaps now it's time to revisit the idea.

[José Luis Flores]

SW-FANS INC. Board Meeting must COME TO ORDER!

[Lilaena De'Ville]

:gavel <-- look what I found!

I like that we will be able to have blogs which will encourage articles and things like that.

Splitting the board into separate sites might be a good idea if we had twenty RPers who only RPed in the general settings and twenty others that RPed Star Wars, but we pretty much do it all. As it is we are what we are and making it more apparent what it is that happens here or CAN happen here is a step in the right direction.

Having a 'sports' forum and a "box office and other media" forum is a good idea. It's not readily apparent that we have sports discussion at all.

Cleaning up the topic tags/adding more is something to think about too. For instance if we had a sports forum we don't need a sports tag we might want individual tags (soccer/basketball/football/golf haha) instead. That is nitpicky stuff though, and not really important when we're just talking about the broad strokes of what we want the board to look like and function as.

[Kelly Perris]

Speaking of separate forums...

Don't you all think it's time that things like 'Mutants, Unite' and 'WoD' have their own forums? Here's my reasoning.

General RP is a breeding ground for new ideas. We're never going to stop coming up with things we want to play around in, we have such amazing, awesome imaginations. There have been countless new scenarios that have come up over the years and... well, a lot of them haven't had the staying power and have died off. But MU and WoD have.

They're not suited for General RP anymore. They are their own beasts. Sure, we stop writing them here and there, the attention of the board shifts, but they never die. Both MU and WoD have been with us since 2006 (beginning of '06 for WoD, end of '06 for MU) and they're still here. That's nearly EIGHT YEARS, people. They're not new anymore, not very 'general'. We still love them and still will for a long time to come.

What I'm saying here is that RPs that have proven themselves, ones that have staying power deserve their own space. Also, that we should have some sort of standard by which to judge if an RP in the General RP forum is ready to 'leave the nest and fly', so to speak. And let General RP be the 'breeding ground' that it is.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

^^^ This I like and am in favor of. :)

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Speaking of separate forums...

Don't you all think it's time that things like 'Mutants, Unite' and 'WoD' have their own forums? Here's my reasoning.

General RP is a breeding ground for new ideas. We're never going to stop coming up with things we want to play around in, we have such amazing, awesome imaginations. There have been countless new scenarios that have come up over the years and... well, a lot of them haven't had the staying power and have died off. But MU and WoD have.

They're not suited for General RP anymore. They are their own beasts. Sure, we stop writing them here and there, the attention of the board shifts, but they never die. Both MU and WoD have been with us since 2006 (beginning of '06 for WoD, end of '06 for MU) and they're still here. That's nearly EIGHT YEARS, people. They're not new anymore, not very 'general'. We still love them and still will for a long time to come.

What I'm saying here is that RPs that have proven themselves, ones that have staying power deserve their own space. Also, that we should have some sort of standard by which to judge if an RP in the General RP forum is ready to 'leave the nest and fly', so to speak. And let General RP be the 'breeding ground' that it is.

Very good idea, I say. I'm especially keen on the notion you've put forward that a setting must have staying power (measured in years) for it to qualify for its' own forum.

[Captain Untouchable]

Cleaning up the topic tags/adding more is something to think about too. For instance if we had a sports forum we don't need a sports tag we might want individual tags (soccer/basketball/football/golf haha) instead. That is nitpicky stuff though, and not really important when we're just talking about the broad strokes of what we want the board to look like and function as.

More "tags that make sense" is a good idea. Maybe it would make more sense to add tags that can work in more than one forum, though? For example, News and Event and Poll can be used in Gaming / Box Office / Sport / etc. Maybe there's a catch-all tag that would work for the "NFL Pick 'em", Box Office predictions, and that kind of thing across more than one forum.

Almost certainly something to talk about in a separate thread, but I didn't want to not say something and then forget. :uhoh

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Cleaning up the topic tags/adding more is something to think about too. For instance if we had a sports forum we don't need a sports tag we might want individual tags (soccer/basketball/football/golf haha) instead. That is nitpicky stuff though, and not really important when we're just talking about the broad strokes of what we want the board to look like and function as.

More "tags that make sense" is a good idea. Maybe it would make more sense to add tags that can work in more than one forum, though? For example, News and Event and Poll can be used in Gaming / Box Office / Sport / etc. Maybe there's a catch-all tag that would work for the "NFL Pick 'em", Box Office predictions, and that kind of thing across more than one forum.

Almost certainly something to talk about in a separate thread, but I didn't want to not say something and then forget. :uhoh
Like a "contest" tag? I like it. We could start a "topic tag" discussion thread after we decide what shape the forums are going to take.

[Captain Untouchable]

Don't you all think it's time that things like 'Mutants, Unite' and 'WoD' have their own forums? Here's my reasoning.

...

What I'm saying here is that RPs that have proven themselves, ones that have staying power deserve their own space. Also, that we should have some sort of standard by which to judge if an RP in the General RP forum is ready to 'leave the nest and fly', so to speak. And let General RP be the 'breeding ground' that it is.
I also totally agree with this. I'm not sure we necessarily need to have a set-in-stone standard to judge stuff though. Is this something that is going to happen often enough for us to have hard-and-fast rules, or is it something we can discuss as a group on a case by case basis? If it's something that requires X Years of activity, then we probably aren't going to have to cross this bridge again until X Years from now, if DC/Fallout/one of the other settings survives that long.


On a separate note, has Fans ever considered assimilating another community as a way to bolster our numbers? Not necessarily Star Wars communities (I imagine integrating their storylines would be tricky), but maybe there are some small-but-good Firefly, Star Trek, Babylon 5, (insert scifi franchise) communities out there on free boards, or maybe small roleplaying communities on non-roleplaying boards (a lot of MMO sites seem to cultivate RP activity) or what have you that might be interested in being absorbed into Star Wars Fans. They'd get to be on better-equipped boards and part of a much larger social community, we'd gain an influx of new writers, and potentially there'd be some cross-migration between the two groups.

Just a suggestion: no idea if this is something that has been tried previously with negative results.

[Jedi Master Carr]

I am not really into roleplaying, so I won't try to get into that discussion (some of the ideas are interesting though). I will say having a separate forum for sports is a good idea. It might help get some more discussion started. I know I would participate in those discussions.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I am not really into roleplaying, so I won't try to get into that discussion (some of the ideas are interesting though). I will say having a separate forum for sports is a good idea. It might help get some more discussion started. I know I would participate in those discussions.

Awesome. :)

Also I think we're talking about rearranging/adding/subtracting forums, so any input as to what the main forums page ends up looking like is good. Trying to make things more clear as to what we do here, and less confusing.

Like, you aren't involved in RP but you can have opinions on if our board layout makes sense or if you just get confused when you look down the page. :)

[Kelly Perris]

More thoughts on forum structure:

Take a look at the forums. Notice anything... oh, perhaps a little strange, that might not make much sense? If you don't see it, let me explain...

1) We have group forums for the separate Star Wars factions. However, our SWRP forum just says, basically, that it's the SW forum for RP, rather than what it really, is - the galaxy outside of the factions, for stuff that doesn't really go in the faction forums. It honestly might be just a little nitpicky thing, but that forum could do with being redefined.

2) Non-SW forums right in-between the 'vaster galaxy' SWRP forum and the SW faction forums. I can't believe I didn't see this until now, but it's honestly a little weird looking. It looks... wrong, to be honest. SWRP should be grouped closer together with the faction forums, allowing for more visual separation and - let's face it, a less confusing loooking board.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I think a change, especially if adding more non-SW Rping forums, in the order of things and where the 'breaks' are between sections of forums is good.

Also, does anyone think the Gallery is worth keeping? We have facebook now for if we want to share pictures between each other, so the gallery hasn't been used in years.

[Kelly Perris]

Also, does anyone think the Gallery is worth keeping? We have facebook now for if we want to share pictures between each other, so the gallery hasn't been used in years.

Toss it! Make it walk the plank! :shakefist

[Dasquian Belargic]

How about putting the Star Wars factions as sub forums of the main SW RP forum?

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I think subforums might be something to think about for the future but the group boards have their own subforums so then we are looking at the Russian Nesting Dolls sub sub subforum thing. For right now maybe just re-ordering it to:

----Star Wars Roleplaying (category)
- The Greater Galaxy (current SW Rping forum)
- Rebel Alliance
- The Empire
- Dark Side board (whatever we rename KA to)
- Group Archives
- Star Wars OOC Discussion

----General RPing (category)
- Mutants Unite (maybe rename this scenario? its always seemed like a clumsy name to me)
- World of Darkness
- The Breeding Ground/General RPing (various RP)
- General RP OOC Discussion

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I'm all for the gallery defenestration. Just let me pull off my dotnets before it all gets axed. I'm fairly positive I have all the files, but I want to make double sure first.

[Captain Untouchable]

How about putting the Star Wars factions as sub forums of the main SW RP forum?

The downside there would be that, if we split out MU and WoD, we'd be displaying a lot more General forums than Star Wars forums on the front page. While I definitely think we should display General RP more, it might be best if Star Wars still has the biggest "market share" of the front page.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I think subforums might be something to think about for the future but the group boards have their own subforums so then we are looking at the Russian Nesting Dolls sub sub subforum thing. For right now maybe just re-ordering it to:

That works for me.

[TheHolo.Net]

We will not be deleting anything from these forums.

Our future incarnation may not include certain things, but nothing will be deleted from here. Our future incarnation will be separate but the same. Its complicated but that is my current plan if we move forward.

I do not delete things.

Edit: This is in response to removing the Gallery, which if decided may not make the transfer to new software, but will remain accessible in some way as an "archive" kind of like our old forums.

Please note that I also plan to merge all of the text based data from ClassicFans and this forum into our new solution if we can raise the funds and move ahead with the project.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

O thank goodness.

Glad I'm not the only one who doesn't delete stuff.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I think not deleting things is fine, I didn't mean to permanently delete all gallery items, just that it didn't need to be a current feature of the boards. So I believe we're all on the same page.

[Captain Untouchable]

----Star Wars Roleplaying (category)
- The Greater Galaxy (current SW Rping forum)
- Rebel Alliance
- The Empire
- Dark Side board (whatever we rename KA to)
- Group Archives
- Star Wars OOC Discussion

----General RPing (category)
- Mutants Unite (maybe rename this scenario? its always seemed like a clumsy name to me)
- World of Darkness
- The Breeding Ground/General RPing (various RP)
- General RP OOC Discussion

That's pretty much what I would have suggested. Either that, or -

Creative (OOC)
- Starving Artists' Apartment
- Star Wars RP Discussion
- General RP Discussion
- Archives

Star Wars
- Star Wars RP
- Rebel Alliance
- Galactic Empire
- Kuklos Ataxia

Non-Star Wars
- General RP
- Mutants, Unite
- World of Darkness

That way, we can keep tabletop roleplaying like Dark Banana and so forth sort-of grouped together with the other creative / gaming / etc stuff.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Please note that I also plan to merge all of the text based data from ClassicFans and this forum into our new solution if we can raise the funds and move ahead with the project.
This idea I love, because for one I don't like how when I visit the Classic Fans board to look up something it always signs me out on the main board. Would this add to our total board posts, because I hope so, so that people can see how much content we really have since our inception.

[Zereth Lancer]

Also, in the vein of beefing up our calendar... we went through a phase where we had a gargantuan AIM chat pretty much every weekend. Is this something that people are too busy for nowadays, or is it something that we could make a regular, scheduled thing? Is it something that we could perhaps look at migrating to a chat room, so that people can just stroll in rather than needing to get an AIM invite, (would be more accessible to new people) or perhaps something like Teamspeak so that we can voice chat instead of text chatting?

On the other board I write on we have a Skype chatroom set up, and it allows anyone who's been invite just the once to write in it whenever without having to be invited every day. Perhaps not the perfect solution, but definitely something that could be set up for the time being. I know I haven't participated in any AIM chats in awhile because I just don't use AIM all that much anymore as Skype has taken over as my go to chat program.

[TheHolo.Net]

Please note that I also plan to merge all of the text based data from ClassicFans and this forum into our new solution if we can raise the funds and move ahead with the project.
Would this add to our total board posts, because I hope so, so that people can see how much content we really have since our inception.Yes it would add to our total post count, combining what we have here with what we had there.

[Reshmar]

More thoughts on forum structure:

Take a look at the forums. Notice anything... oh, perhaps a little strange, that might not make much sense? If you don't see it, let me explain...

1) We have group forums for the separate Star Wars factions. However, our SWRP forum just says, basically, that it's the SW forum for RP, rather than what it really, is - the galaxy outside of the factions, for stuff that doesn't really go in the faction forums. It honestly might be just a little nitpicky thing, but that forum could do with being redefined.

2) Non-SW forums right in-between the 'vaster galaxy' SWRP forum and the SW faction forums. I can't believe I didn't see this until now, but it's honestly a little weird looking. It looks... wrong, to be honest. SWRP should be grouped closer together with the faction forums, allowing for more visual separation and - let's face it, a less confusing loooking board.


YEs! Glass breaking....

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

In the vein of merging and archiving, would it be at all possible to archive Meras and mesh it in with Fans? Or would the access masks and other accounts registered there cause too much of a headache to fool with? My first instincts would be that it'd be too much trouble, but I figured I'd ask since we more or less don't visit there with any amount of satisfactory frequency; though on the other hand we do have a fair amount of roleplays over there as well.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I think Meras is better separate as it has always been, but that's just one opinion. It was only affiliated, and not really... Well, it's not my site anyway, it's Dani's now so even if it were possible it would have to be something she wanted. Right?

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Well, a while back she put out feelers to see if anyone wanted to take over the hosting fees from her, and I said that I would if no one else came forward.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I guess the RP posts could be merged into the RP forum here, though I don't know about all the OOC content...

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Yeah, the RP stuff was mainly what I was thinking of. There is a crapton of OOC stuff that we don't need, IMO.

[TheHolo.Net]

Merging Meras and Fans is considerably more tricky than merging ClassicFans and CurrentFans, but is probably possible if private forums are left out of the merge. The user ID #s do not match between Meras and Fans, making the access masks impossible to transfer. Forums to house the transferred content would have to be created or decisions regarding where to put the non private posts would have to be made.

I would lean toward probably not a good idea, but not impossible.

[TheHolo.Net]

That made me realize a potential issue with merging Classic and Current Fans. I should probably transfer the content without mapping the user accounts. There have been so many character name changes that it could potentially make that content really confusing, disrupting its integrity.

This means that post counts would transfer, but not for user accounts, just the forum's totals. Example: My current post count of 17XX would not be increased at all when the data is imported.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Darn it, I was sort of looking forward to regaining 12,000 posts. :p

[Enedra Myrrhe]

HA! No posts for you :p

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Merging Meras and Fans is considerably more tricky than merging ClassicFans and CurrentFans, but is probably possible if private forums are left out of the merge. The user ID #s do not match between Meras and Fans, making the access masks impossible to transfer. Forums to house the transferred content would have to be created or decisions regarding where to put the non private posts would have to be made.

I would lean toward probably not a good idea, but not impossible.

If it's more trouble than it's worth, I would say that we just leave it be. The more I thought about it over the course of the day, coupled with mulling over what you'd said really just made me think that even attempting to do any sort of transferring would be time consuming and ultimately not worth it.

On the subject of Meras itself, I will save that for its' own thread after we get the rest of the meat and potatoes hashed out for here.

Although, I do think it might be nifty if we had a new incarnation of the Lady's Lounge at Fans :)

[Selinica Miriya]

Although, I do think it might be nifty if we had a new incarnation of the Lady's Lounge at Fans :)

I totes agree with this. :yum

[Brenneka Gavran]

I have absolutely no idea what that even is...but I like the sound of it.

[TheHolo.Net]

If it's more trouble than it's worth, I would say that we just leave it be. The more I thought about it over the course of the day, coupled with mulling over what you'd said really just made me think that even attempting to do any sort of transferring would be time consuming and ultimately not worth it.

On the subject of Meras itself, I will save that for its' own thread after we get the rest of the meat and potatoes hashed out for here.

Although, I do think it might be nifty if we had a new incarnation of the Lady's Lounge at Fans :)I think the possibility of transfer should be brought up again when/if I am able to transfer ClassicFans to the new software. Once I have a good handle on the transfer process, it likely will not be that difficult if it is something we want to try and accomplish.

[Park Kraken]

Can we have this if the girls get the Lady's Lounge?

<a href=/imagegallery/showphoto.php?photo=208&limit=views>Link to image</a>

[Dasquian Belargic]

Alright, so it seems like getting together funding is our main goal right now. Once we have that, we know what we are able to do in the way of upgrades and beyond.

On the topic of reorganising, what about..


Welcome to SW-Fans
- Newbie Forum
- General Discussion
- Operations and News

Hobbies
- Star Wars
- Box Office
- Sports
- Gaming

Creative (OOC)
- Starving Artists' Apartment
- Star Wars RP Discussion
- General RP Discussion
- Archives

Star Wars
- Star Wars RP
- Rebel Alliance
- Galactic Empire
- Kuklos Ataxia

Non-Star Wars
- General RP
- Mutants, Unite
- World of Darkness

... with some name changes ofc.

[Reshmar]

Alright, so it seems like getting together funding is our main goal right now. Once we have that, we know what we are able to do in the way of upgrades and beyond.

On the topic of reorganising, what about..


Welcome to SW-Fans
- Newbie Forum
- General Discussion
- Operations and News

Hobbies
- Star Wars
- Box Office
- Sports
- Gaming

Creative (OOC)
- Starving Artists' Apartment
- Star Wars RP Discussion
- General RP Discussion
- Archives

Star Wars
- Star Wars RP
- Rebel Alliance
- Galactic Empire
- Kuklos Ataxia

Non-Star Wars
- General RP
- Mutants, Unite
- World of Darkness

... with some name changes ofc.



I like everything but the "Non-star Wars"

Could it be "Other roleplaying" or General Roleplaying" I just do not like the way "Non- " sounds or looks

Again crazy fish

[Ilias Nytrau]

The categories should be named 'General RP' and 'SW RP'. The main forums under each of these should be something like 'The Breeding Ground' for Gen RP and 'The Great Beyond' for SW RP... or whatever. I'm open to ideas for names. :)

[Captain Untouchable]

I really like splitting out the Hobbies. Maybe "TV & Box Office" though, since we do discuss both?

Maybe "Other Settings" instead of Non-Star Wars? The only thing with a themed name (eg. Breeding Grounds) is that you then need to explain what it's for somewhere instead of it being instantly obvious. I think Jenny has the right idea keeping Star Wars RP and General RP clear and matching.

What about "Introductions" instead of Newbies? Could then double up as the place where all/most of the FAQ/rules/etc stickies go.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Welcome to SW-Fans
- Newbie Forum
- General Discussion
- Operations and News

Hobbies
- Star Wars Analgram
- Box Office and Other Media
- Sports Hangout
- Gaming (this would include pen and paper games like your Dark Banana stuff right?)

Creative (OOC)
- Starving Artists' Apartment
- Star Wars RP Discussion
- General RP Discussion
- Archives

Star Wars
- The Greater Galaxy (forum description would make clear this is the main sw RPing forum)
- Rebel Alliance
- Galactic Empire
- Kuklos Ataxia

Other Settings
- General Roleplay
- Mutants, Unite
- World of Darkness


^^^my ideas on the names, but the layout is fine by me.

[Captain Untouchable]

- Gaming (this would include pen and paper games like your Dark Banana stuff right?)

Dark Banana isn't a game that someone else has made that we're discussing: it's a story that we're making ourselves, which is why it's at home in the Creative section of the forums (where it currently is). I think those threads would be out of place in Gaming, and I think that's why we've currently chosen to have it somewhere else. :)

If it isn't fine where it is (Starving Artists'), would it be useful for us to have a forum for events / clubs / groups / things? Somewhere that's got the Book Club thread, the planning for the next Nerd event thread, and all that stuff under one roof?

[Lilaena De'Ville]

It is a game though? You guys can put it wherever you like, I was just making a suggestion.

[Crusader]

Could the Starving Artist Department get a different name that would make it more obvious that we do P&P RPGs in there?

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Crusader's Pen&Paper Man Cave

[Miranda Tarkin]

I'm still debating on giving up Meras.... but the point is moot since it couldn't really merge well.

[Morgan Evanar]

I admit this place hasn't been a priority for me lately beyond making sure shit doesn't explode. Those of you who follow me on Facebook know that I've been doing pretty much Everything But Fans. I'd like to do things, but each time I ask if I'm up in anything I hear crickets.

Right now I have a car project that's occupying the majority of my attention. I'm not always available on AIM but you can usually hit me on Google Chat, as it's tied to my phone. ca.casale vat gmail dot com

I'll review this later in more detail and add my thoughts. There are a lot of :words:

[Dasquian Belargic]

Starving artists apartment should get a rename IMO. The most activity it actually sees is from Dark banana, so I think we should keep dark banana in there.

[Aimee Connors]

We could rename it "Gaming"

;)

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I'm admittedly keen on SAA, but I know with a little brainstorming we could come up with something else if we so wish.

'Artist's Medium' or 'Artistic Gradients' maybe?

Or something to denote the fact that yes, there's more than just simply just Sigs being generated here?

[Dasquian Belargic]

I'm trying to think of something that encompasses arts and crafts and such.. instead of suggesting, at a glance, that it's purely an art related forum.

Arts and Activities? Make and Do / Makers and Doers?


We could rename it "Gaming"

;)

Quiet you.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

'Artistry'?


Edit - I'm seriously at a loss as to what else to call it. Starving artists is such a universal term :shrug:

[Dasquian Belargic]

That might work. I wish I could think of something that incorporated the 'activities' element into it, since that's what Dark Banana really is, but hey ho.

What about bumping this forum up into the Hobbies category. since it's essentially about hobbies anyway?

[James Prent]

I think putting it into Hobbies makes a lot of sense, all the writing drawing, etc are all hobbies.

I like the new arrangement! Has a good flow, I think.

[Droo]

I really like the Artist's Medium or, preferably, The Artist's Medium for a forum title. Also, Holly:



Hobbies
- Star Wars Analgram
- Box Office and Other Media
- Sports Hangout
- Gaming (this would include pen and paper games like your Dark Banana stuff right?)


I have to ask: what kind of hobby is a Star Wars analgram? What you do in private is your business and should most definately stay that way!

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I just left the name the same as it is for a catch-all SW discussion forum :o

[Droo]

Yes, but you typed analgram, not amalgam.

[Dasquian Belargic]

On an unrelated note, someone write a forum blurb for the Mutants forum pls.

[Captain Untouchable]

Pretty sure Amy Pond was an analgram?

Oh wait, kiss-a-gram. I get those two confused. ;)

I never liked Star Wars Amalgam as a thread name. It's weird to say out loud, and while it makes sense to us because we know we used to have multiple threads for Star Wars stuff, it might seem odd. "Everything Star Wars" would seem a bit less clunky to me personally.

Do we still need it though? Playing devil's advocate here, even with new movies in production Star Wars only gets a handful of threads, and there's not really anything that wouldn't fit in Box Office or Gaming. Perhaps we could just switch to using the SW tag in one of the other forums?

[Dasquian Belargic]

Do we want to revisit this poll (http://sw-fans.net/forum/showthread.php?t=20538)? I'm happy to keep the Star Wars forum around for the time being.

[Ilias Nytrau]

I'm content to keep the Star Wars forum. :)

[Droo]

I voted for the removal of the Star Wars forum back then, and I'd probably do the same now, but with the boom of Star Wars as a rekindled movie franchise, I think it's wise to hang onto it now and see where things go in the near future. It will probably see a lot more action in the coming months/years.

That said, renaming it would be nice, I cannot abide the word "amalgam" and "Star Wars Amalgam" just doesn't roll off the tongue at all - it sounds like a science module.

Edit: Surely, if we just call the forum "Star Wars" then its position in the Hobbies section, plus its description, should tell us everything we need to know.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Oops, I misspelled it, you're right. Calling it just "Star Wars" is fine, I don't think anyone will be confused. :p

[Captain Untouchable]

What is "Other Media" supposed to mean, in the context of the Box Office forum?

The description for the forum talks about music and the arts. However, our threads about Book Club and reading comics are in the General Discussion forum, as are some of the what are you reading / listening to threads.

Are we putting these threads in the wrong place (do we need to move them?), or do we need to update the title / description of that forum to better reflect what we actually use it for?

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Books and music are supposed to be in there, yes, we have been putting them in the wrong place.

[Captain Untouchable]

Books and music are supposed to be in there, yes, we have been putting them in the wrong place.

Based on those forum descriptions, yes.

Personally though, if there's any discrepancy between how the board is structured and how we are using it, I feel that the board should change to fit us: not us change to fit the board. If we're posting book/etc stuff in the "wrong" place, is there a reason for that? Lack of clarity / understanding of what the forum is for? Are we worried that such threads will get lost in the already-quite-full Box Office?

[Lilaena De'Ville]

On an unrelated note, someone write a forum blurb for the Mutants forum pls.
I was thinking about this, but did we want to possibly rename the mutant RP as well? I just don't know what to, so unless anyone has any great ideas...?


Are you a Mutant, or are you a Mundane? Choose your side as the conflict between humans grows, and countries are changed by the emergence of the X-gene. (loosely based on Marvel's X-Men) ? i don't know maybe

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Books and music are supposed to be in there, yes, we have been putting them in the wrong place.

Based on those forum descriptions, yes.

Personally though, if there's any discrepancy between how the board is structured and how we are using it, I feel that the board should change to fit us: not us change to fit the board. If we're posting book/etc stuff in the "wrong" place, is there a reason for that? Lack of clarity / understanding of what the forum is for? Are we worried that such threads will get lost in the already-quite-full Box Office?
Sports have their own place now though, so it isn't as full as it used to be. *shrug*

edit: Should we keep the Supporter forums or just deactivate them? (no deletion just... archiving)

[Captain Untouchable]

On a lot of the forum themes, sticky threads don't stand out very much. You get the Must Read text, but that's about it.

On the Nual theme however, sticky threads stand out a bit more because the background behind them is darker. Would it be possible/feasible to tweak the other themes to echo that, so that our important new guide/welcome threads are a little bit more visually separated from the regular threads?

[Morgan Evanar]

Jace: it would be, but it is kind of a pain with the current style system we have. We're currently evaluating some other options.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

http://www.sw-fans.net/forum/showthread.php?t=23230 Supporters should look at this thread.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

We are a little below halfway to our upgrade $ goal already! If this was a Kickstarter remember your reward for donating is supporter status for your accounts (I'm not sure if you can get just one account or as many as your donation/$10 is).

Random thoughts:

We are listed on the third page of the google search "World of Darkness roleplay"
We are not within the first 11 pages of the google search "Star Wars Roleplay" - maybe registering a new domain with starwarsfans in it (to direct to the SW-Fans.net domain) might help this? I don't really know how google searches work but I feel like we should at least show up in a search for Star Wars roleplay. Consolation: TGC and swRPG don't show up either. Epics does, but on page 11. We're all doing something wrong! :P
Facebook page for the forums?
Tumblr for the forums? How would that even work.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I think we should focus on actually improving the forums before doing anything else.

[Zereth Lancer]

Any chance we could get an update on the funding for the board upgrade? I just donated and was curious as to how close to our goal we are.

[TheHolo.Net]

Total: $330
Goal: $500

[Droo]

Payday for me on Friday. I'll be sure to chip in then.

[Zereth Lancer]

My initial donation was small because I didn't know where we were in our goal. I'll more than likely donate more sometime soon.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Payday for me on Friday. I'll be sure to chip in then.

ditto for me, only I get paid on Tuesday.

[TheHolo.Net]

Total: $430
Goal: $500

[Droo]

Payday for me on Friday. I'll be sure to chip in then.

Actually, scratch that.

[TheHolo.Net]

I updated the total in my last post. I copied and pasted the wrong thing early today and didn't review after posting.

EDIT: Of fairly important note:

All supporter donations are currently multi-purpose. Applied as upgrade funds and supporter and the opposite also holds true. Upgrade funds donations get supporter status.

When we go above what is needed for software we should use any extra for advertising/promotion.

Updated totals:
Total: $500
Goal: $500

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Congrats everyone :)

[Dasquian Belargic]

Thanks for you generosity, everybody.

[Atreyu]

Congratulations on the successful fundraiser. :)








(and whilst we may all now be older, boring, have jobs and other responsibilities, there is one very good benefit compared to our younger days - we now all have MONEY :D)

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Speak for yourself, :lol

(Well, I have money, it's just all spoken for :x )