Building a Community

[Buster's Uncle]

I believe those are pre-release publicity shots of designs later regected for whatever reason.  At least some of the factions went through earlier iterations, also.  There are artifacts of stuff like that left in the SMAC(X) art files, too.  I once pieced a regected interface design into a datapad I used in a GotM setup story, and proto-University bases and logo (from when they were the "Archons", I think) in a custom faction for another.

[Davyboy]

Archons
Labyrynth
Conclave

And there's a different Deirdre spec in alpha.txt with a point less efficiency and +25% Psi attack

[Green1]

Interesting.... Very interesting stuff. Maybe it was rejected because many folks were still having to use P1s and low end 486s at the time. Those seem to use more textures and I do not think the onboard VRAMs or Trident 4MB PCI or ISA cards would handle it. Maybe it was a smart move in the day so the game could fit on more systems.

[Buster's Uncle]

The smilies project of the last week is part of building the community, of course, just like the forum banners and getting back on finishing saving/reconstructing the Firaxis AC site.

Well, I think I can claim that the default lineup above the Reply Box is much improved, at least for consistency and organization.  I might do some organizing in the Popup yet, as that doesn't mess up other sets and isn't a big chore.  Notions for how it ought to be ordered are welcome.

A real benefit of building a site from the ground up is that some of the old hands would not like looking at my versions of certain favorites of theirs. 

All new or freshly-revised: 
  :'(    

There is always an advantage to being involved in a project when it first starts. You get tons more autonomy to tinker around as there are less toes and other folks' "space" to avoid stepping on.

Though for forums, its a slow process. One guy I know who set up one for the Gulf South mini gamers ended up having to post news items for himself for a year or two before he ended up getting community. But, since the news items were really hard to get info on events in two states, he eventually got it. Of course, he is not making a living of it and still occasionally deals with nerd wars in his little niche from other groups.

We had a lot stronger start than that when we got serious about AC2 in February, but a good six months in the middle there weren't all that different, with the typical day in May seeing nothing but me posting a few science articles.  THese things take time and stamina, which is tougher to keep up than it sounds.

Still, aside from sisko liking to put apropriate icons on threads and us occasionally moving or splitting a thread, you realize that we don't really do any moderating of people, or need to?

This is a good crowd - we just need moar! people in it.

[Green1]

This is a good crowd - we just need moar! people in it.

One of the good things about the 4x crowd is they are a lot less drama usually than, say, the FPS crowd or some of the MMO crowd. I am sure you get dummies from time to time and the occasional politics. But no where near what other gamers go through. Team Xbox anyone? In general, it is a more mature crowd. I think at one time Frogboy on Stardock forums claimed he was SO glad he was developing a wargame now  over a DotA game like Demigod was for the maturity of community.

[Buster's Uncle]

A really top-notch, smart, articulate crowd, absolutely.  That has more to do with my ongoing interest in the community and my participation thereof than love of my favorite game.  But it only takes one Aspergers case to rile things up, and we get those.  We've had good luck here so far, though.

[Buster's Uncle]

So for some reason, traffic among groups smaller than thousands comes in unexplainable clusters.  It's true on a forum, just as it was at a convenience store I spent 1991 flying solo on third shift.  There were predictable time-based ebbs and flows to the traffic, but especially during the naturally slow times of the night, two solid hours without a single customer would end with three or four unrelated cars pulling up within five minutes of each other.  They especially liked to do this as I was halfway out to the edge of the huge parking with a broom in my hand, and make me walk all the way back.

I don't think it's for any reason but that traffic comes in clusters a lot, but the last several days here have been like that.  We've had several signups by persons known to me to be persons, but less activity than y'all have spoiled me into hoping for lately.  [shrugs]  These things happen, and I do think it's just cluster traffic at work, but we have to keep on keeping on in building the place; it takes time to build a community into something large and robust enough that activity depends on no particular handful of people.  It takes time and persistence.

Being in charge and a minority North American on a majority European board (w/ a few Aussies) makes my afternoon/evening around here like third shift clerking.  It's 3:30 in the morning right now in convenience store time, quiet and lonely.

I'm not idle while I wait for Kilkakon to tell me to resume work on the Firaxis pages.  I've gotten a lot done towards getting all my backlog of graphics tutorial material ready for prime time, and have/will be posting one a day for a while.  I added three smiles yesterday, one of them original, and did a tad bit of further organizing on the above-the-reply-box lineup; I thought we needed the  and  up there a lot more than , which you can still find in the popup.  I devoted a few hours yesterday to another forum project that I can't talk about yet - and made sisko lol doing it, to boot.  I spent a couple hours today fixing up some user CP gallery avatars, and am presently dividing my time between secret project icon avatars and punching up tomorrow's graphics how-to.  This is not an all-inclusive list of my AC2 activities; I haven't booted AOE2 in over a week - been too busy.  Haven't been making any headway on my ongoing Bases file project, either, priorities being what they are.

Folks, I've made it out to the far edge of the parking lot, and gotten some sweeping done; it's past time a few of you pull up for cigarettes and Mountain Dew to make me walk all the way back  inside.  It keeps me sane and motivated, if not as productive in the short term.

But please don't rob me.  That would be rude.

[Green1]

As far as community building.. god, AN is huge for an industry site. Sisko would do well to study it even if the subject matter is alien to him. That is a WELL DESIGNED forum. The best industry forum I have ever seen with tons of features. You can even friggin bookmark topics. The articles are connected to FB! It is not pron. trust me, you do not want a nurse. they are drama queens. And.. they are all married. Being a male in a female dominated field is not all roses AN is not just RN, either... you have LPN,MHT, PCT, and CNA. All post and write industry articles.

[sisko]

But as far as community building.. god, AN, is huge for an industry site. Sisko would do well to study it even if the subject matter is alien to him. That is a WELL DESIGNED forum. The best industry forum I have ever seen with tons of features. You can even friggin bookmark topics. The articles are connected to FB!..

we have some FB integration on our site too. you can connect your AC2 account with the FB one through your profile and then you can share/send/like every thread on the forum.
also, threads from certain forum section are automatically replicate on the AC2 facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/alphacentauri2info/231706663564067 (we could use some likes in there..)
on the bookmarking, i think i can install here a such a plug-in if you guys think this is a must have.

i guess i have to register to AN to be able to see all the features available. we're talking about allnurses.com, right?

[Green1]

Yeah. The big change is the way they do thier articles. They link articles link to FB, so you get more readers. The articles are also user generated.

FB for gamers tends to be a bit less effective. Most gamers have 2 FB profiles- a IRL one and game one. Thankfully, FB and forum handles are not linked. I could see people on AN getting fired for some of those posts. Those folks over there, though are addicted to FB.

The second thing that is cool is they have a "bookmark" function. The way they have it on the panel is very cool.

[Unorthodox]

The advantage AN, and the Halloween Forum for that matter, have is they are industries that don't wax and wane in interest or popularity.  They steadily grow.  From what I can tell of AN, they are also very focused in their content. 

Gaming sites, however, have something of a life cycle.  The only thing that could really increase the community here QUICKLY would be an actual game coming out.  Honestly, we'd have to make that ourselves (and call it something else) if I understand all the state of things.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm not sure I want AC2 to grow THAT quickly - when we got serious about this place in February, my thinking was that it would probably take a year or more to get where we are now.  But communities change too much if they grow too fast, and I like the tenor our community has now.  I'd be very happy if we got to, say, four times the activity after six months to a another year.  -Whatever reaches that critical mass that the community would keep going on healthy if I dropped dead.

It's actually a more realistic goal than it sounds like for a forum focused on such an old game; there are thousands and thousands of SMACers out there that have yet to find us.  We just have to persevere with what we're doing and make everyone welcome.  If we stay on top of making it a good forum, my goal of being able to converse and read new posts all day without doing much else, is slowly coming into reach. [mad scientist gleeful handrubbing and maniacal expression]

[Buster's Uncle]

Nobody minds if I move the community building talk to where it belongs, right?

[Buster's Uncle]

Articles.

We could use more Articles, and there's a place you might want to pitch in to building the community.  Look at some of the stuff that's mostly the older threads in Theory of Everything.  Write something thoughtful like those, post there, and also submit in our Articles section, where sisko might approve it to publish if it's good.

If you think you have the analysis/knowlege under your belt, but not the English writing skills, I will help you and not care about credit.  We can use articles about almost anything - hardcore playing strategies, most any sort of how-to (though ones about modding should go in Modding, and I'm most of the way through a series of Graphics tutorials - we could use more on the tech end) a look at the comparitive power of various weapons - you name it.

SMAC(X) is a fountain that you can drink from always, without ever drinking it all.  Deep thought, written up, is welcome.

[Buster's Uncle]

I asked t-ras, as our second CMN, to step up his leadership in MP a couple of nights ago while sisko was asleep.  (You'd be surprized how much time we have to spend working that doesn't show in running this place, and sisko needed a deputy in MP for relief.)  He has impressed us with his enthusiasm and energy so far.   

So first off, let's hear it for t_ras for stepping up and doing his part!     


Secondly, he's emarked on an ambitious interactive, eductional AAR playing all the factions initially.  Give it some attention, and help him out with comments and advice.  The latest talk is that once factions meet, someone needs to take one over - we're still working out the details, but volunteers will be needed for the first MP AAR I've ever heard of.  I think this is an exciting idea, and can't wait to see how it turns out.