I was just wondering if you guys are preparing yourselves for the end of the Anticipation Era and the start of the Kickstarter Era. That is, things are going to change rather dramatically once the Kickstarter fires off. Perhaps even before then. I-Novae Studios is going to raise their hand in the midst of the crowd and say “We have a dream”. Assuming all goes well for them in their Kickstarter, there are going to be a ton of new faces on the forums. All our past discussions and speculation will have been swept away, to be replaced by the features, promises and artwork presented in the Kickstarter.
I wonder if this sleepy little town that we’ve created for ourselves will survive even a day or two once the Walmart construction starts. Regardless of the ups and downs, it’s been entertaining, and I wanted to thank folks for that before the earth movers arrive.
I think this ‘problem’ is partly what prompted the creation of “The Old Guard” group. Or at least that’s how I will be treating it, as a snippet of nostalgia amongst a greatly expanded community.
No doubt the change will be jarring, I may not be particularly active on the forum these days but I will have very fond memories of the current community as I do for the old forum. And yes, thank you too.
Yes, change will come, and it will hit hard. There will be a lot of people wanting a lot of things, and a lot of discussions will take place that have already happened a million times before 'round these parts. There will also be a lot of people who show up for a few weeks, excited about the new pew pew pews, and then go away until closer to launch.
The huge culture shift is going to be jarring. I’m worried that Discourse is waaaaaaaay too open to allow pocketed little sub-cultures, which means the main page will be overrun. I don’t think a little group of self-identified hipsters is going to have any impact on that.
The culture shock will fade, though, and the community could really use a shot of new blood. The rush of optimism that could come with a successful Kickstarter, too, would be a really nice change, so my fingers are crossed for more than just INovae’s sake.
I want to look at this as an opportunity, so I’m going to try and fix up my website (it’s been broken for over a year now… how the hell did I let that happen?!?), and make sure my hosting bills are all paid up before the noobs start showing up.
I could set up a forum on the JENI website. I’ve tried it before, but it never quite meshed with the Joomla theme. If it weren’t integrated into the site, that wouldn’t be an issue.
I really wanted to get an IPB license, but they’re stupid expensive, especially once you tack on some of the bells and whistles that I wanted. It’s still the plan for once I find a real job (short term consulting contracts really, really suck), but it’s definitely not in the cards in the near term.
Discourse’s “flat” design makes that mostly pointless, except to hide the “old culture” away. Those posts would just get lost in the shuffle.
Taking things off site would have a similar effect, and would really work to limit the number of people who are willing to engage in those discussions. You just have to look at the IRC channel to see that in action.
The change in tone here will be as unavoidable as it is inevitable.
As to the masses: we’ll survive. Somehow. For some of us there will at least be the lounge which isn’t immediately available to newcomers, but currently it is just used for changing the title of a thread.
Discourse doesn’t need to be flat. There is a category filter for a reason. I also think fracturing the community isn’t a good thing.
Lets just continue like we used to and see what the newcomers say. Point them to existing threads, etc.
We can alleviate some of the “trauma” by pinning certain threads. E.G. a basic “Suggestions” thread in the suggestions category, for the basic small suggestions that are inevitably going to appear in floods when the forums take off. Not that everybody will only post in there, but it might be worth trying out.
There is a “Lounge” subcategory available for certain members, although it’s barely used do to the pretty free reigns the low member count has allowed us. Maybe we could move certain “Ye Olde Threads” threads there or something, E.G. The Old Contributions Topic.
If worse comes to worse though, this forum has the best search I’ve ever seen.
On another note, we could really use a dark theme.
I didn’t know you had a website besides the CL! URL?
No doubt will we be overrun, but the question is how diluted our forum culture will get.
Clearly the old guard should mandate a mobilization of the anti shitposting squad in order to encourage more interesting discussions, enforce high quality posting through callouts, and generally prevent forum slide. We should begin pre-writing posts for our stockpile of quality writings and then deploy them as needed.
You know, this forum has a “stop tracking” feature which i’ve used for those forum spam threads (three words etc) so it doesnt show a new posts bubble, i’ve also found the setting of the control panel that makes the forum behave properly and keep track of new posts in all threads, and what threads are unread, without explicitly defining each thread. but it would be nicer if i could hide certain threads entirely somehow. Discourse would have to add support for that though, won’t they.
Or even better, a wiki! It would be much easier to refer too and helps keeping track of information provided by the devs (Ofcourse with the notice that any provided information is subject to change).
Maybe we could move certain “Ye Olde Threads” threads there or something, E.G. The Old Contributions Topic.