Building a Community

[Buster's Uncle]

Sigma!

[Buster's Uncle]

I'd only been moved home for not quite a week when the BE news broke, and RL duties and online have seen to it that I've never recovered from being tired.

People, I've had numerous members for weeks now pointing out things I need to do better, and my back's starting to get up.  I'm only human, and getting criticized daily for how I do my thankless job running this place is now officially old.  Just be aware that I feel like I'm getting it in the neck from all directions and too many helpful suggestions too often start to all sound exactly like "YOU SUCK!".  Please frame helpful suggestions as positively as possible, because my feelings done been hurt too many times lately, and I'm sensitive now.  Please.


It is worth noting once again that we're doing more on-topic activity than Apolyton and WPC combined lately.  AC2 is bursting at the seams with vitality and growth right now, a thing that makes me happy.  However, that also means that I've got a lot on my plate while I try to get a big project taken care of.  I'm juggling an awful lot of eggs.

Ask yourself if that PM you mean to send me really needs to be private - if it does, fine, ping away, but PMs eat up my time and aren't activity on the boards.  I like maximum feasible transparency in how the forum is run, too.

Don't post to reassure me; there's always too much chatter in this thread burying motivational addresses I really want everyone to see, and a little relief is all I need.  Instead, be recruiting members, working on projects, posting about SMACX, talking light-hearted crap in Rec Commons, and reviving MP -and all the million helpful things I'm leaving out- those are all the reassurance I need.

And posting here to talk about building the community -and how- is always in order.

I love you guys, and it's going to be okay.  This community is a-buildin'!

[vv221]

Now that's clearly a community I want to be part of!

When I first posted here (2~3 days ago?), I thought it would just be that post in the French section, and maybe a weekly check for feedback… All I wanted at the moment was to share my work in building a full archive allowing to turn an English version of SMAC to a French one (it took me several sleepless nights, I badly want it to be used!)
But it wouldn't be that easy

Being a SMACer to death, I think I've found the place I didn't even think to look for during all those years…

Am I turning sentimental?
Might be the first symptoms of sleep deprivation…
Maybe I should allow myself a good day of sleep and come back here for a good night of reading and posting.
(no, I'm not a vampire, but you know how Internet can steal your sleep away so easily)

Hey, I'm sure this forum was lacking some Linux SMACers

Did I tell you I already love this place?

[Vishniac]

I have a wish for this forum: is it possible that, when clicking on "Quote", it doesn't take you to the Quick Reply window down there but opens the full-options Reply page?

I always must copy-paste the quote and click Reply to have my smileys and everything.

[Buster's Uncle]

I don't know any way to set that up.  What I do is hit the Preview button after Quote, which loads the Reply page with the smilies and all the buttons.

[Vishniac]

I don't know any way to set that up.  What I do is hit the Preview button after Quote, which loads the Reply page with the smilies and all the buttons.

It works! 
Thanks, Man!

[Buster's Uncle]

[Buster's Uncle]

I've been thinking about the inadequacy of the capacity and reliability of our Downloads section.  It's just not good enough, and this is an area I'm pretty helpless to do anything about.  I'm not a real tech guy, more an accomplished user, and both my tech support guys have been AWOL lately with RL time concerns.  There are also other important tech things not getting taken care of...

So two questions for those strong with The Tech; what can we do about getting a better Downloads section without spending money?  And would you be interested in helping directly?  ('Cause I might not understand your answer completely, depending, let alone be able to implement it competently - I'll try to get sisko to swing by and have a look at any responses.)

In the meanwhile, I cannot too strongly urge those of you with big files hosted offsite to plaster the page with backlinks and encouragement to check out our forum.  A big part of what we MUST have a good Downloads for is as lurkerbait...

[ete]

If there's an extension or relatively intuitive config change available which would fix the problem, I'd almost certainly be able to get it working. If, however, as I suspect the problem is with something deeper in the server (AC2 has slightly inconsistent page loading, hinting that there's something generally wrong with the server's connection which could easily interfere with downloads, especially big downloads) the best route would probably be to change servers.. which I could also probably do/help with, but would take some effort and is definitely not happening until I get home (if done I suggest: copy over software, test it out, shut down/editing posting here, copy over db, test new server, and only if everything works right actually shut down the old server, and keep backups anyway). Out of curiosity, I took a look at the current host to try and compare it to some I've been recommended. Their main page (http://www.wildcard.net.uk/) says has site under construction, which is not super reassuring.. it'd be handy to have the price per month and a couple of general statistics for the site (bandwidth, total storage), plus know if anything else is hosted on the server if going that route. Oh, and OS would be nice too.

Other option: Keep track of available downloads on the forum or wiki, but have the actual file hosted off-site. So people did not actually visit other sites, just the download came from them. Disadvantage is on forum it would be super annoying to maintain the indexes by hand, and on wiki people have to upload elsewhere then edit the wiki to get something up. Both also lose the ability to easily count downloads and a degree of handy integration with the forum.

Edit: Looked around more I would not be surprised if host was the issue. They've got a site saying they'll have a site soon, but the links to their twitter/blog show total two tweets and one blog post from 2013, nothing from 2014. Maybe they just don't pay much attention to web presence, but if they're into hosting it seems pretty neglectful to have quite so little. Infrastructure decay?

[Buster's Uncle]

I suspect we're bumping up against the server package's limit lately with the recent activity surge - I've been getting more errors.  Money is a problem - the server bills really add up.  The traffic is such that we could probably break even if we took on some ads, but I doubt the next level of server capacity would only be twice as expensive, even shopping around, and we're up against all we're willing to go out of pocket.

My guess would be that better extensions would be hard to come by - our SMF forum software is crowd-sourced, and they don't tend to jump all over it when someone reports a problem limitation.  The entire mod/admin interface is, frankly, a poorly-integrated mess, and no use complaining.  It, however, has the considerable virtue of the price being right.

I will direct sisko's attention here...

[vv221]

Money is a problem - the server bills really add up.  The traffic is such that we could probably break even if we took on some ads, but I doubt the next level of server capacity would only be twice as expensive, even shopping around, and we're up against all we're willing to go out of pocket.

I'd rather give some money to help soften the cost of hosting the forum, than seeing our nice place polluted by ads.
I won't make a difference alone, but I hope I'm not the only one willing to help here!

[Buster's Uncle]

All kinds of hassles involved in accepting donations, not least that it's not an ongoing renew stream, but the begging for contributions would be ongoing.

[vv221]

All kinds of hassles involved in accepting donations, not least that it's not an ongoing renew stream, but the begging for contributions would be ongoing.

Sorry, my English skills left me for the part I've put in blod…

Here in France, accepting donations can sometime be such a mess than it ends up costing more money than what is raised through the said donations.
From what I understand, it's not really better where you are…

I wish I had the skills to provide real technical help with hosting problems, but all I can do today is providing my full moral support.

[Buster's Uncle]

Keep participating in the community -activity draws more activity- and you've contributed in the most important way.

I had a typo.  It should have read "ongoing revenue stream".  -That's business-speak for I'd rather have $20 dollars a month from AdSense than $50 from you today.  I don't want all the complications that come with accepting donations and having to ask all the time forever.

Ads on forums suck, but I can get them to not use the political ads on us, and nobody cares about the rest - you stop noticing, quick.

[vv221]

Okay, I got your point and I think I could live with it
Anyway, with my custom browser I don't see a lot of ads on the Web: any cross-site request is blocked by default and I have to allow them case-by-case.

Should this forum rely on ads for supporting hosting and bandwidth cost, it'll go in my (very small) whitelist of sites allowed to use such cross-site requests.
(might sound a bit pedantic, but I nearly never do this unless I truly want to support the said website)