Building a Community

[Buster's Uncle]

We tried ads for a while earlier this year - sisko didn't tell me when he gave up, so I don't know much except that they weren't making much money.  I don't have an awful lot of money myself, but server bills are cheap compared to cigarettes, and I'll be okay.  I do not spend money casually -I'm cheap, which is why I have any money- but AC2 is important to a lot of us.  It's worth it.

A lot of how you do in the community is up to you.  English is a barrier, but half or more of the members here aren't native speakers, and everybody understands that you're trying.  Keep trying, and your English will improve - recruit more Italians who can get by in English, too, and you'll have more people to talk to and to help with that.

P.S.  Nobody here's dispensable, but it would suck if sisko got hit by a bus and I had no way to take over and keep going - that's why I stepped up and took on half the expenses.  Now to get this place so healthy that it would survive without me...

[Buster's Uncle]

As has been discussed at length in the BE folder, a new game can be a danger to a fan community as well as a building opportunity - witness what happened to the Civ forums after Civ5.  But this is a HUGE opportunity for all of us, and please never forget that.

We’re all over everyone getting excited; the BE announcement drove more than double the usual activity over the weekend, and several new members signed up and have posted.  This is all good, of course.  We can expect more over the next six months, as new developments arise.

If Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth turns out to be good, Alpha Centauri 2 Forum stands to benefit enormously, being uniquely positioned for a game like BE.  If not, well - -

We can still win big.  I always knew there was a lot of love for SMACX out there among the CIVillians, but I’ve been very struck by HOW MUCH since the announcement Saturday morning.  A lot of people have been reminded of SMACX forcefully, and no few have been pulling out their old copies to install on their current rigs.  I have seen it happening.


So what does this mean to we, the hard-core SMACX fans already in place, and what can we do to benefit our community?


No matter how satisfying BE turns out to be -or not be- we need to stay the course, only more so.  Keep playing SMACX, posting about it, modding it, reporting bugs, posting AARS and fanfic, playing MP games, being good to each other, and all the things we already do to make a good fan community - only do even more of it.  -Right now, six months from now, in-between and on into the future,  however BE turns out.

This is an extraordinary opportunity to build, to get more people in here posting to entertain each other - we only have to keep making a nice place to hang out.  BE will draw a lot of people to have a look at our inline home, so let's pretty it up; SMACX will still be there and still rock, no matter what.

We can do it.

[NewAgeOfPower]

As has been discussed at length in the BE folder, a new game can be a danger to a fan community as well as a building opportunity - witness what happened to the Civ forums after Civ5.  But this is a HUGE opportunity for all of us, and please never forget that.

A question- what happened to the Civ forums?

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, everybody was very VERY excited about ciV, much much activity happened - and about three weeks in, most people concluded that it sucked.  Then as much of half the membership at various places wandered off.  Sucked almost all the activity out of the WPC AC section, for example, and those people didn't come back to SMACX when disappointment set in.  Mart was in the middle of running a SMAX demogame, then 5 happened and it ended with pretty much just him and Vishniac.

We need to do us a Demogame here, BTW.

[Valka]

As has been discussed at length in the BE folder, a new game can be a danger to a fan community as well as a building opportunity - witness what happened to the Civ forums after Civ5.  But this is a HUGE opportunity for all of us, and please never forget that.

A question- what happened to the Civ forums?

They got more than a little uncivilized. I was a moderator there at the time, and very glad that the Civ V forums weren't my assigned area.

[Buster's Uncle]

Now, I didn't see any of that at Woopcie.  I suppose that explains the obnoxiously aggressive moderation I'm seeing now in the most casual and brief of skims in the CFC BE folder.

[Valka]

The Civ V game brought in a flood of new posters, some of whom had NO idea how to behave on discussion boards. Naturally, some of the old-timers got annoyed at that, told them off, and when infractions should have been handed out, ainwood said, "Oh, don't infract them too badly, they might get mad and leave." 

It was a madhouse. I was doing A&E at the time - trying to sort out the rules for that, since it was pretty new, and getting the hang of OT. Somebody asked if I'd consider Civ V and I said no - mostly because I've barely played Civ III (and honestly feel that Civ moderators ought to be familiar with the games whose forums they moderate) and the rest because I just didn't want to have to deal with being nice to a bunch of rude twits who had no concept of manners. I know it's a moderator's job to be diplomatic, unbiased, tactful, etc., but some of these new people just went out of their way to be obnoxious.

So if the current staff is being strict from the get-go with this newest game, I don't really blame them. It's easier to let up on the rules later, than crack down later when it's been unusually lenient early on.

This all said, I haven't even looked at the new forum there - just collapsed it, since I don't do much there anymore, since the email notifications quit working.

(sorry, I know you prefer to leave other forums' problems there, but a question did get asked...)

[Buster's Uncle]

No problem; that's educational at my favorite hobby.  As I said Saturday morning

It's the kind of problem you WANT to have, yes, but I sincerely dread the thought of too many newbs at once.  We've formed a forum culture that's exactly the way we want it - except I've never drummed up as much activity in the Rec Commons as I'd like.  I just desperately don't want to spend a lot of time banning rude kids, and no way that wouldn't happen unless we failed very badly at capitalizing on this...

[Buster's Uncle]

This reminds me to mention, in fact, that my mostly-official policy is - well, you know I consider newb-bashing a hanging offence, but -and you'll clearly recall the specific case I have in mind- some people demonstrate that they're pure poison pretty quickly.  If you can't make it 10-20 posts without creating problems, some animals are more equal, and you're not one of them.

It is a profound mistake to abuse the rest of the members pretending otherwise.

[BU Admin]

Activity was already on a mild upswing when the BE announcement caught us by surprise, and it's driven a lot of traffic.  Member visits have roughly doubled, and people are posting.  Alas, the news has not paced out to give us new dribs and drabs to keep up BE interest directly, but it's still inspired two SMACX mod projects that have stirred up a lot of excitement.  New member sign-ups are on the rise, and an unprecedented percentage of those are actually posting.

This is exactly what we need to be doing - keep SMACin'.  Get our house in good order, so we can retain some people drawn by BE whether it turns out to be good or not. 

Where we're not doing as well is in MP - I've done what I can to encourage a resurgence, but the MPlayers have to do that for themselves.  It would help if everyone would go take an interest in the effort to get a Democracy Game going.  It would also help if I got off my dead butt and got the GotM in the works out the door.  We need more GotM  scenarios.

We need more AARs.  Everybody loves AARs, and Planet Tales could be busier w/ new fanfic.

I realized today that we have more on-topic activity than Apolyton and WPC combined - two places with enormous advantages over us.  So we're doing great, but we can do even better.  BE is coming.

[Geo]

I'm sorry, a lowtime is comin' a-up for me. Travels limits SMAC'ing time.

[Buster's Uncle]

All you have is all the community can ask...

[Buster's Uncle]

gwillybj posted an invitation to come check out AC2 to two modders on a Usenet group today, and to that I say

 
 
 
 
 

...Who have you invited?  Know anyone?  Miss anyone from the old days?  Know of a place SMACers would see an invitation?  Filling our ranks with good people to post and entertain us is always in order.

[Geo]

 

[Sigma]

Hello Gentlemen