AC2 & Forum Politics

[Buster's Uncle]

[shrugs] Sure.  They picked a style and their audience has found them.  I'm not part of that audience, though.

You know, there's something to be said for having a selection of moderation styles available - anything goes certainly has its fans, too, and I'm just glad a lot of the inhabitants of their OT aren't out there looking for a home.  We've been awful lucky about the maturity  level of the members who've found us so far.

[Unorthodox]

There's a Raider's forum I visit that's attempted that.  (specific anything goes section) It's a dismal abyss of a place now.  If they weren't one of the better offseason news sources I wouldn't bother. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah, I mentioned to someone just the other day that we aren't going to do that.  I'm not entirely blind to the appeal, but no - we just don't want those guys here.  There's places for that, and AC2 isn't one of them.

I was talking about a selection within the Civ circle of forums, not here.

[Dale]

Tell me, LA; you've been around forever - what do you think the deal is with all the splintering fora? 

(I'd really love to get DarkCloud here writing up a history of the community.  He loves that kind of stuff.)

Anyone else who's been around at least six or seven years care to speak up on your insights about this?  It's something we all need to understand if we're to avoid the mistakes of the past...

Brief history of Civ sites (I'm probably one of the few remaining who can give the whole picture):

1998: Markos & Dan team up to form Apolyton, a fan site for Civilization 2.  Previously, both held their own private fan pages on Civ2.
1999: Apolyton adds SMAC (amongst other games) to its lineup.
2000: Thunderfall moves hosts and converts personal Geocities fan page to CFC.
2000: CGN started by ex-Apolytoners
2001: GOTM and Democracy Games started at CFC
2002: Apolyton University
2005: Firaxis forms Frankenstein Beta Group from leading members from the entire community.
2006: Polycon
2006: Markos steps down as owner of Apolyton and his half of the site divided between Locutus, Ming and Rah (joining Dan).
2006: Dan starts PolyCast, Civ's first dedicated podcast
2009: WPC founded by Locutus, Solver (who left Apolyton) and Dale
2009: Dan steps down as owner of Apolyton, Plompy takes over
2011: Dale steps down as owner of WPC to form his own game company (might have been considered a conflict of interest)

I've no idea when Buster took over CGN.

Note, there's a few other Civ sites that popped up and disappeared over time.  Some may even still exist.  But the reality is, the four sites listed are the backbone of Civ community network.  Note: Colonization and SMAC (now) have their own networks.

If you want my opinion as to why CFC succeeded where the others failed, there's two very simple reasons:
1. CFC has ALWAYS had a fully committed active admin team.  Other sites have not had consistent strong leadership.
2. CFC has added lots of community based features such as demo games, HOF, mod project sites, easy to use download database, etc etc.

[Green1]

CFC also has enough traffic to probably generate a small income as well for at least the big admins. That always provides initiative for someone to stay focused.

[Dale]

Hosting costs are bugger all.  $50 a month max.