Building a Community

[Buster's Uncle]

The Camp is in decline and their staff morale is in the toilet.  Dung Mountain is still growing, and the staff is mainly me so far - and I just don't quit.  It may take longer than there's any life left in AC online, but I'm taking a run at it.

We do not suck for content since shortly after you screwed me and we got serious about this place - but content is a forever ongoing thing, and it takes the community on the bus, which has been a long-term project of mine from the beginning.

Also? http://alphacentauri2.info/My%20Custom%20Factions/Custom%20Factions.htm  That's VERY popular, well-ranked on the search engines, and check out the two new pages - note the top and bottom bits.  All my art goodie files have the site url displaying just in case they get passed around.  I need to go do some edits at the Pond, actually.

See also: http://alphacentauri2.info/official/Sid%20Meier's%20Alpha%20Centauri.htm -as linked on the Wikipedia.

[Buster's Uncle]

Also?

Fan patches http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=14308.msg64328

Patches http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=260

Patches http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=27

And MO' patches http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=291 (this one updates all the time.)

-We've made a teeny bit of a start on major content stuff.

[Metaliturtle]

I'm not saying you don't have some good stuff, but to take on CFC you need players, and players tend to flock to new games with one or two dedicated for every 10k.  Get the 10k here and you'll have a better shot landing more 1 or 2 guys to keep the activity up.

I like the DG, AARs, etc.

Now some major content would be like an AC fan sequel, that'd be some attention getting shazbot.

[Buster's Uncle]

The  thread where scient posted a v. 2.0 beta in December http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=14141.msg64080#msg64080 also has some loose talk about a fan sequel as a long-term goal.

Incidentally, given the competitive disadvantages we have, yet passing 'poly and the Pond (and CivPlayers) combined for on-topic activity, I feel like we already won.

[Buster's Uncle]

This was posted in a thread about a mashup of an old Nine Inch Nails song with Taylor Swift's big hit of last year - worth the trip to click on the quote and have a look at the mashup in the OP, but after I posted the below, I realized this very personal essay is relevant to the things this thread is for...

...I have a reputation, and the bad parts of it held so dear in some quarters are entirely earned by my missteps and bad actions, mostly as a newb over six year ago, when I didn't understand the community as well as I thought I did, and I was decidedly less stable than I've since become.

I came here on 6 February 2012, full of rage and bleeding from every emotional orifice - probably the most unfair thing that's ever happened to me in my entire sad life that didn't involve anyone hitting or touching me had just gone down.  AC2 was sisko's side-project while we were working hard on building the AC community at WPC, and I'd only made very modest efforts to throw it a little support fairly recently.  Nothing much had come of yet; you can find posts here from 2010-2011, but not many and virtually all of substance in MP.  But I was done for good at my previous online home -my real life has been the Civ/SMACX community since early 2009- and amidst my rants and rage and nuclear swearing in the private GotM folder, I pitched getting serious about this place and making it live to sisko.  It would be a long and tedious job that would take forever, but it was just barely possible with the right team on the job (and I'll always be grateful to the GotM guys and other early supporters of AC2 - I was completely useless on the posting-activity-generating-more-activity front without a few people to talk to).

-Of course sisko said yes - it's really exactly what he'd wanted since he made AC2 two years before, though he hadn't asked.  He, he doesn't say a lot about a lot of things, so I have to guess a lot, including what he really thinks of me - but I'd venture that he believes his butthole friend BU generally means well, and is totally a machine at a lot of the things you need to turn an empty new forum into a vibrant community.  (I imagine that me thereafter turning out to have a good hand at the people management was as much of a shock to him as it was to me, a profound one.)  I don't know for sure what he really thinks of me, but I know that he knows that we're a powerful partnership - we regarded each other as equal partners as citizen workers for the SMACX community at WPC, equal when I instigated him being made moderator of WPC AC, and equal when I was later briefly promoted over his head - and equal here when he was sole owner and I mere admin, equal when I stepped up as co-owner (though I concede him ties on policy to prevent deadlocks; he's the Founder).  We worked well together beginning almost six years ago, heavily and continuously since, and he's never, ever, burned me, and is pretty much it for someone in the community that I trust implicitly - because he's proven over and over that I can.

If only he didn't have a RW life eating up his time...  (If you make a little person, you TAKE CARE of that little person, no excuses.)  So I've been running this forum all by myself for long stretches from fairly early on.  I do better when he's around, even at the stuff that's my specialties, because of his cautious counsel making me think, but I don't think it's a wild fancy of mine to say I do pretty doggon well on my own, outside forum tech issues over my pay grade, for which I do have three d00dz for that, including a fast response from sisko in rebooting the forum this morning.

I learned a very long time ago to be careful about bragging, but it's obvious to anyone that I'm a man of many talents, and not trivially talented at a great many of them.  It's something even people who choose to be my "enemies" freely concede.  I don't let my arrogance out to play in obvious ways (I hope) very often at all, but arrogant I most assuredly am, and I daresay no one can rationally argue that I haven't earned it, indeed, proved over and over that I have excellent grounds to be my own biggest fan - if also my greatest critic.  (Believe me, I have "BU sux" covered better than all my haters ever put together -perhaps even including my late father shouting "THINK boy!  Use your noggin!" forever- I know better than to talk about that much, too, putting a big target on my back as admitting my shortcomings too enthusiastically would.)

Well, I'm proud, sinfully proud, Paradise Lost-Satanically-proud, about a lot of things I do and have done, but this right here, this forum and the people it's made of, THIS is my masterpiece, this is its own Oscar, Pulitzer, Nobel prize to me.  AC2 is the thing I'm proudest of in my entire 50+ years of life.  It was born of my arrogance and monolithic, not-entirely-realistic, ambition.  And hard work.  And persistence.  And HOPE.  And my ambition has only grown with success, coming to extend to the larger online Civ community with the realization that all our best interests are ultimately intertwined.

I juggle and dance and sing, balancing a million needs and concerns and many many many long-term projects -and others not so long- all connected to my grand plan, rarely so much a plan as riffing, playing by ear - much of it doesn't show, but I'm filled with gladness and hope that what parts of my song you can see and hear look and sound as good as they do.

I love you people and this. is. my. LIFE.  Your happiness here is almost as much a goal to me as is my own, the two being inextricably intertwined.  AC2 is my instrument, my heart, and my blood runs through it as I play my song.

Watch the video; I don't look like Ms. Swift, but that's me.

I've got this Muusic playing in my mind saying it's gonna be all right!

[Buster's Uncle]

See my pride!  Enjoy the song!  -That's not actually a joke.

[Buster's Uncle]

It cannot have escaped your notice that the Shop has seen a major expansion in what's available to spend your fake forum money on.  Major cleaning up and revamping of the themes/skins available has been done, and the project's not quite finished yet, but a manageable 14 themes are available for your use, including SMAC and SMAX themes, and they all work.

-And just yesterday, DrazharLn fixed up/organized/streamlined the page-top menu, and the terms in the navigation links/breadcrumbs at the top and bottom of all pages make a lot more sense.

There's also been a lot of performance enhancing tech stuff done that doesn't show, but makes page loads faster and more dependable, again all thanks to Draz.  More of that is coming, and soon -date not yet determined, but soon- we'll be migrating to a new server host.

---

Now, where you come in, aside from enjoying all the benefits of this hard work, is the same thing I've been talking about since before the OP of this thread; you can take ownership of your part of this community with helpful feedback on all the improvements, and even more, with activity - and, dare I say it, some modest efforts to get the good word out about AC2.

I worked my way up the ranks to forum management and ownership like anyone else.  Communities are made out of people, and I worked hard for years as a citizen content/activity generator and recruiter before I drifted into management, something you don't need mod powers to do at all.  First thing you do is show up regularly and take interest in what's going on and what people are saying.  Second, you join the conversation.  Creating game-related content and reaching out to people you know who ought to fit in is a plus, but posting substantial posts is where it's at.  POST.  Don't overthink it, just post and have a good time.

Having a good time is the name of the game.  What can you do to have a good time and enhance the good time of others (the latter tending to create a positive feedback loop)?

Speak up and be heard, and do pitch in on building this community.  Take that power into your own hands.  You're all doing very well, and I only ask MOAR!

[Vidsek]

  I've been following the recent site graphics and function discussion and work.    Saw what it was before and what you all have turned it into.  Didn't comment much since I'm clueless on the nuts and bolts.

  Great result!!  Cleaner, easier to use, I have a theme that doesn't hurt my eyes, and I'm happy and grateful

  You're more than aware of how it all improves the chance that new folks will like it here and join our community.

  So, once I have enough site money, will I be able to buy and gift you all virtual electric stimulation of your pleasure centers?

 

[Buster's Uncle]

...If I knew how to make that, I wouldn't need a hobby...

[DrazharLn]

Have you tried opium?

[Dio]

Have you tried opium?

The potential to misconstrue this question remains pertinent.

[Buster's Uncle]

Draz sees himself as a Nietzschian ubermensh -seine macht ist maximal- to whom conventional morality does not apply...

[DrazharLn]

Meine macht ist maximal!

[Buster's Uncle]

Ja, ja...

[Buster's Uncle]

I've begun to climb out of the blahs recently, and I wonder if the membership would like to bring up any projects beneficial to the forum for when I have enough energy to take a few on.

Right now, the only thing that jumps out at me as needing doing is editing the Beginners' Getting-Started Strategy Guide for Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri / Alien Crossfire into a short .pdf.  The idea for that project, frankly, is click-bait to promote the forum.

Any other ideas?  It doesn't have to be strictly promotional - what's good for the community is good for it...