[:1]Hi Everyone
As you have probably noticed I have been dong quite a bit of work on the site over the past four weeks and I am planning to really push the site to the forefront once again. With GW2 still some time off from release still but with a Beta starting at some point this year, I am looking to really make this the top spot once again for GW2 news and info.
So why am I telling you this? Well, after some discussions with Elly about what we are doing on the network, there are some areas we are winding down on, such as WoW which we no longer really want to cover on IncGamers.
I have been doing a lot of hands-on time with new and upcoming MMOs in the past month and I feel that GW2 is probably the only one that is doing anything innovative or interesting with the genre. I also know there is a great community here on IncGamers which could be growing.
With all this in mind, what I want to do is get the community fired up and involved with site so I am looking for news posters in particular. As many of you know we lead the way when it comes to everything Diablo and I want to bring this site up to the same quality with as much information to the community as possible.
Thalanor has been helping me with the news for around a month now but we need more bodies on the case as I feel this is an area lacking in the GW community right now.
So I am throwing it out there, if you want to really help drive the site forwards and get involved drop me a PM.|||I am also very enthusiastic when I see the future potential of GW2.
I can only second this. As GW2 gets closer to release, news will undoubtedly pick up and we will need more able bodies to help post things more quickly!
I would love to work in a larger community team to help improve the quality of the news distribution to the larger GW2 community.|||I think it would be great if Incgamers could be a go-to GW2 community! And I love how there is now more content on the main page. But please, remove the centered text on the main site, it is a total pain in the butt to read anything longer than a couple of lines..
Most importantly I think is to give the GW2 forum a more prominent space. I do like how GW1 and GW2 are the same communities here, but I think the GW2 part should be beefed up to take front row. And even further integrate the forum with the main site. Maybe have a separate news subforum where all the comments go? I think that would be a good way to a) get site visitors to the forum and b) get forum visitors to read the site news items.
Basically, my help will mostly consist of butting in on format and organization rather than producing actual content, at least to begin with..|||Quote:
But please, remove the centered text on the main site, it is a total pain in the butt to read anything longer than a couple of lines..
I'm not seeing any centered text? Couldn't be bothered to crop, but here's what mine looks like (with the page zoomed out a lot):
Spoiler|||Currently I am looking at it from work (IE8 bleh) with no local settings of any kind. It is centered :(
Will test when I get home (Chrome and Firefox) to see if it is different.|||Quote:
<snip>
He's checking guru! GET HIM!|||Okay. So. Now that I've thought about it more.. Driving Incgamers forward, huh?
I hope you'll allow me to make a candid post about this subject, then.
News is nice and all, since there are people that don't check twitter, facebook, and guru. But posting news on the main site isn't going to do much to increase activity in the community and forums. Here's one of your biggest problems: Our GW2 section is TINY. Guru came out with an entire forum for Guild Wars 2, and what do we have? Two little subforums, with a promise that we'll have more as the game "gets bigger." Well guess what. The game is bigger. It's time for more GW2 stuff now. Hell, it's time for more GW2 stuff yesterday.
If possible, both sections should be in their own collapsible forum section. Collapsible as in right now we have "Guild Wars 2 Discussion Forums" and "Community Central" and to the right of those headers there is a [-] button which you can click and hide the subforums. We should have the entirely of Guild Wars 2 under one of those, and the entirely of Guild Wars 1 in another, this way people who wish to see GW1 stuff can just hide the GW2 stuff, and vice versa.
The profession forums should be sub-forums to minimize clutter. For example, similar to how the PvP forums are currently set up:
Guild Wars 1 Discussion forums -> PvP Forums -> (Game type subforums here.)
Guild Wars 1 Discussion forums -> Guild Wars 1 Professions -> (Profession subforums here.)
This also applies to GW2, of course. We know what all the classes are, get subforums for them, or stickies, or something. Then the overall profession forum could be for any discussion which doesn't explicitly involve one class.
Guild Wars 2 Discussion forums -> GW2 Professions -> (GW2 profession subforums here.)
Along the same lines, we should have comparable subforums for GW2 things. GW2 Q&A. GW2 community works and media. GW2 subforum with official news links as they pop up from gw2.com or what have you. Or instead of the posts on the main site having their own comment system, make them link to a GW2 news subforum, and have any news posts also crosspost right there in the forum. ..That was worded incredibly bad, but hopefully you understand what I mean. Basically there'd just be a "Main site news" subforum, and say, right now the first post on the main site is this:
http://guildwars.incgamers.com/blog/...ideo-interview
So the content of that entry would be posted to the subforum with the same heading to allow people to comment on that news item right here in the forum.
And speaking of crossposting and discussion, figure out what you want the "main" discussion forum to be. We used to have a CDF, and now we have a GW1 CDF and a GW2 CDF. Nuke one or the other. You've been making all your general posts in the GW2 CDF, so I'm assuming that makes the GW1 one irrelevant in your eyes. Merge the two. Anything interesting that happens in GW1 specifically (such as Winds of Change and other Live Team content) can be talked about in the PvE forums if such a need arises.
Now, it's obviously unavoidable to avoid this issue, even though it feels like I'm beating a dead horse, but really man.. there's a lot of unrest happening among posters in regards to the way things are being run recently, and something has to be done. A good start would be to clean up the mod team already! Hitting the mod list I can see at least 5, maybe 6 inactive mods depending on how long a time frame you wish to call inactive. You have to think, what do they really offer? Just look at how Guru used to be (well, still is). Aside from the trade forum mods, damn well every mod there was/is prolific both in and out of the game. Inde herself really knew her ****, as well as JR, lemming, fenix, Sierra, Faer, skuld, and so on and so forth.
You can't have these inactive people kicking around forever. Perhaps they're friends of yours and you don't want to demote them while they're MIA, and right this very instant it may not matter all that much because the forums are relatively inactive. But you're going to need people to look after the new subforums, and if you don't know who, then start asking for nominations, post a vote, I don't care anymore, just do something. It drives me bat**** crazy to see mods that have been inactive for years, and any offers and nominations go completely unnoticed when it would have really mattered, years ago.
Also you might want to look at updating the site rules, since I highly doubt they've been changed since Prince Rurik was still alive. This was brought to my attention after someone had their post deleted and was yelled at for intentionally posting things with the intention to piss off community members and the mod team. The post in question was a link to gaygamers.com. This angers me off two-fold. See, I don't care if you try to delete my posts and censor me, as it's been previously established that 7% of the mod team is out to get rid of me. Whatever. I get it. But when my gf posts a completely innocent link in attempt to foster discussion, and gets *****ed at for being childish and trying to "foolishly start something", it tends to irk me a lot more. Secondly, it makes me wonder if the mod team has something against gays, as that seemed to be the main point of contention. I know that's still popular in parts of America, but in basically any other part of the First World, that's what's known as discrimination. And for a game with a reasonable large *** community, it certainly doesn't look good to be deleting perfectly reasonable posts to a site like that, let alone to even have the word "ga y" blocked.
If that's what flies around here these days, and that's what you want enforced.. then.. Again. Site rules. Might want to look into them. And this isn't even touching on the other issues that have risen in regard to this. If you're honestly unaware of the situations lately, I'm sure there are 10-15 people off the top of my head who would be more than willing to fill you in via PM. I'm usually the one that goes all Martin Luther King in public and risks assassination while the rest nod and silently agree out of fear for their accounts.
And speaking of forum going-ons, why not engage with the community some more? Most of the time when I see a post of yours, it's a new thread with site news. Take a page from Bella, as one thing that's awesome about her is she often would post as a "person" rather than an admin. Be it a topic about Warcraft, Diablo 3, ritualist boobs, skills of the day, or pvp. Don't be a stranger!
Anyway.
That'll do for now. I'll update if I think of anything else.|||Quote:
Okay. So. Now that I've thought about it more.. Driving Incgamers forward, huh?
<snip>
shawn, I could not agree more with just about everything you said.
The only thing I can add is that I miss the gwo of old, when it really was gwonline.net. However, so much has changed since then, for better or worse.
One thing I'm all for removing the ignore function. How can you possibly have mature, civilized discussions about a subject when you are being ignored by other users in the very same topic, therefore they can not see your post? To me, it seems like a very immature thing. A good portion of the "drama" that started recently is basically ALL because of the ignore function. There are people on this site that I am not particularly fond of, but they do present some good info at times.
In fact, I think the forums would move forward partly if the community as a whole would straighten up. If the elitists would remember that at one point they didn't know what they were doing either, and if the trolls would cut it out, this place would be a hell of a lot friendlier. I don't post much outside of the alliance forums anymore because I feel like some "elite" jerkwad is going to flame me for no reason (I probably wouldn't seeing as I really have no reputation here...as far as I know. If I do, I hope it's good...). I'm a 6 year vet of Guild Wars and if I feel like I'm going to get flamed, how do you think new people who ask a question that is common knowledge to most of us feel when they get flamed or called a total noob for not knowing said "common knowledge".
That's all I have.|||Hey, you forgot your Shawn!
Anyways, yea, I agree with much that you said (some of it even was exactly what I said). But I also think that a lot of work is being done as to improving so the situation is not quite as grim, although there is still much left to do.
I will say though, that priority one, before getting more content creators, must be cleaning up the forums.
Set up more (MANY MORE) GW2 subforums.
Get a proper NEWS forum (news from both incgamers and other sources)
Streamline GW1/GW2 forum formats (i.e. the same naming system, hierarchy etc)
Ask for nominations for mods for all these subsections.
Once that is in place I think it will be way easier to both get more visitors and also add content in a structured way. Basically, get the foundation right before starting to build ;)|||Have to echo what shawn said. Guild Wars 2 is the big thing now, time to gear up for it. He has other good ideas too.
Original ideas... ideas... hmm...
OTF as a third sub-forum?
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