[Discussion/Recruitment] Reviving dead areas of the forums

[Okmin]

Group set up for discussing/organizing
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/group.php?groupid=1357

Volunteers so far:
Management
RPGs: Okmin, Thoragoros
University: Okmin, Thoragoros, Fortes, MasterBigAb
Fight Club: Okmin, Thoragoros
Other
Uni professors: T.C. (Lua scripting E/N/S2TW), Bolonsky (intro to programming)
Fight Club debaters: GrnEyedDvl, Thoragoros
RPG publicity: Okmin, Raglan, Major Darling

Recently I've noticed that there are some parts of the forums that are almost completely dead. These would be the University, Garb's Fight Club, and the Community RPGs. Now because it would be a shame and generally a bad idea to simply get rid of the places, I propose a few ways to revive them. I'll draft separate decision proposals if it's necessary to have a Curial decision to do any of these things.

Community RPGs

First of all, the RPG section really just needs publicity. Pontifex Maximus has been running the place basically on his own since earlier this year and he's done a great job, there's just not many people there. My proposal: give the place an announcement, those always attract people.

TWC University

The other two forums are a lot deader (is that a word?). The Uni, as GED pointed out, is completely dead for lack of management:

for a year or so while I was running it, we banged out several successful courses. This is something I simply havent had much time to invest in for the last year or so, and it shows. Augustus Lucifer took over running it for a while, with some input from me, but once his available time dropped off there was nobody to step up and try to get things going again.

This is a relatively simple fix - get some people to run the place! There are plenty of course ideas in the forum, and there are clearly a lot of people interested in taking the courses, so the only thing missing is management. The hard part would be finding people willing to run the Uni. Here's the job description from GED (same post):

If just a few members (3-4) of the Curia stepped up to the plate they could go out and recruit professors and help them get a course done. And the hell of it is you dont have to be a particularly technical person to handle that portion of the work. Yes, some of the classes will be very technical, but getting it organized doesnt require a technical person, just a person willing to keep everything running.

I'd do it. Anyone else?

Garb's Fight Club

And finally there's the Fight Club. For anyone who doesn't know the place, it's a forum for debate "duels" between two people instead of general open debate like the rest of the D&D forums. The situation there is pretty complicated because it's not really clear whether it's dead (not quite - maybe "chronic" or "terminal") due to a lack of interested debaters or lack of interested/willing/able management. I'll go on with my proposal assuming it's a little of both.

Clearly we have plenty of debaters in the community. They just avoid the Fight Club for some reason. Maybe people simply enjoy debating with multiple users more; I wouldn't know, I got here by modding not debating. Any debaters are welcome to comment on this. Anyway, my proposal for reviving the Fight Club has two parts: (1) if necessary, "hire" some moderators for the forum; (2) host some debating competitions/tournaments similar to the AAR and PotW contests - give out medals to winners, do it on a regular basis, let users vote on who "won" the debate, have something like "Librarian's Choice".

To avoid unnecessary argument, I'd like to point out that everything I've proposed is within the Curia's decision power.

[Hader]

I will comment only on the Uni since I don't ever visit the other two places.

Thing is, we need qualified people to teach the course on top of someone just willing to do it. As much as I would love to teach courses on skinning that other may want, I am not a good skinner at all and don't know the ropes as well as more experienced modders might.

To help that, we need ideas for courses and we need to get the attention of those potentially qualified to teach the course. I literally was about to create a thread (within the hour at least) in the Uni itself asking for ideas for courses from the community

[Okmin]

I will comment only on the Uni since I don't ever visit the other two places.

Thing is, we need qualified people to teach the course on top of someone just willing to do it. As much as I would love to teach courses on skinning that other may want, I am not a good skinner at all and don't know the ropes as well as more experienced modders might.

To help that, we need ideas for courses and we need to get the attention of those potentially qualified to teach the course. I literally was about to create a thread (within the hour at least) in the Uni itself asking for ideas for courses from the community

What I'm saying in the propose is that we need people willing to run the Uni (i.e. moderation and creating forums for the courses). And I think if we need people qualified to teach, it would be better to do a site-wide announcement.

PS: The Modding Registry isn't in there because I assumed from your other posts that you didn't need help. If that's not true just let me know and I'll add it.

[Hader]

What I'm saying in the propose is that we need people willing to run the Uni (i.e. moderation and creating forums for the courses). And I think if we need people qualified to teach, it would be better to do a site-wide announcement.

We still need an admin that can somewhat regularly check in to give out necessary permissions and create the necessary forums. So while having others help run the place would help, it does not cover all the bases.
What we need most is professors. Not as much a general purpose TA as you seem to be getting at.

Also see here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=447785

PS: The Modding Registry isn't in there because I assumed from your other posts that you didn't need help. If that's not true just let me know and I'll add it.

The registry is fine. Trust me if it needs help, I will ask for it. I did once and it turned out fine. Just haven't needed that kind of help since. It's running smoothly, plus I would like to keep the curia out of it for now.

[Okmin]

We still need an admin that can somewhat regularly check in to give out necessary permissions and create the necessary forums. So while having others help run the place would help, it does not cover all the bases.

I don't see Hex giving out admin rights to just anyone, but who knows, they might agree.

What we need most is professors. Not as much a general purpose TA as you seem to be getting at.

Also see here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=447785

Not really a general purpose TA if it involves admin access But if we need professors, we should go looks for professors.

The registry is fine. Trust me if it needs help, I will ask for it. I did once and it turned out fine. Just haven't needed that kind of help since. It's running smoothly, plus I would like to keep the curia out of it for now.

Got it

[GrnEyedDvl]

First of all, the RPG section really just needs publicity. Pontifex Maximus has been running the place basically on his own since earlier this year and he's done a great job, there's just not many people there. My proposal: give the place an announcement, those always attract people.

If I was forced to pick one section of the forum to dump completely, it would be the RPG section. The ratio of forums:posts is abysmal, it has caused tons of moderation headaches in the past, and absolutely nobody reads it except for those involved (sometimes they cant because of how permissions are structured) so even threadviews are terrible.

You are of course free to prove me wrong and get it generating some decent post counts. Its happened before, I didnt think the Minecraft forum was worth it when it was created, but its generated 24,000 posts in a few months time.

Thing is, we need qualified people to teach the course on top of someone just willing to do it. As much as I would love to teach courses on skinning that other may want, I am not a good skinner at all and don't know the ropes as well as more experienced modders might.


To help that, we need ideas for courses and we need to get the attention of those potentially qualified to teach the course. I literally was about to create a thread (within the hour at least) in the Uni itself asking for ideas for courses from the community

What you say is true, but I will also tell you from experience that the professors need a ton of help getting organized and getting their thoughts down in the proper sequence and using terminology/examples that students can relate to.

Sure I could teach some programming, but if all I use is terms that programmers are familiar with then you are going to just get lost and give up. This is why I have had every professor send their course parts to me and AL via PM first, so we can get some idea of how user friendly it is. Plus on the modding side both of us are good enough modders to determine if the potential professor is qualified to teach the course.

Bollonsky had/has a VB.NET class in the works. Unfortunately his machine died and he lost all his work and had to start over (assuming he still plans on holding this course). Both Squid and I were reviewing that and helping him get it structured. While it helps that both Squid and I are decent with the language, its not an absolute requirement. Lets assume that Hader had a role to play in the Uni, but had no programming experience. As long as you can read through the course and it makes sense, then you are good to go. When something doesnt make sense then you have the professor clarify it or write it a different way. And at that point you ask a few other people to review it as well, such as other professors or someone in Hex familiar with the topic.

As far as courses go, I definitely want to see more modders take some time to do some modding courses, and I love the idea of a programming course. I am basically up for anything technical, and we have a lot of technically saavy people on this forum.

I would even go for a math course, anything where you can quantify the results. Things like a writing course are too subjective in my opinion. There is no right or wrong answer, just what the professor feels. With modding, either it works or it doesnt. Same with programming or math.

A foreign language course would be very difficult as it would require some voice communication. That can be handled as there are many voice chat programs out there like TeamSpeak or Ventrillo, and I would gladly host a server for that. But scheduling would be a nightmare because our population resides all over the globe.

Maybe if we could arrange some kind of 'fight' between several fights between some of the TWC's top-brass? That might attract people.

Great! I'm going too... Should we contact GED and Ponti?

I am in for that, though usually nobody really wants to debate me. I am good for anything policital, though as you say you can get that in lots of places. I am also good for technical stuff, such as Windows vs Linux, or various other technical topics. Anything else I would have to see a proposal on.

The registry is fine. Trust me if it needs help, I will ask for it. I did once and it turned out fine. Just haven't needed that kind of help since. It's running smoothly, plus I would like to keep the curia out of it for now.

Believe me I completely understand this mindset.

[Thoragoros]

For the fight club, perhaps one of the ways we could help give the place a boost is by simply having a few of us volunteer for fights? Perhaps if we got two or three 'fights' going, the place might pick up a little? To put my where my mouth, I'll volunteer for a 'fight.'

As for the Uni and the RPGs, I would gladly help manage either of them. However, I doubt I'm qualified to teach anything in the Uni aside from technology basics such as programming, etc.., and what, exactly would be involved in managing RPGs? A simple announcement for the RPGs might work, but it would probably take a bit more than that to actually give it some blood.

[Okmin]

For the fight club, perhaps one of the ways we could help give the place a boost is by simply having a few of us volunteer for fights? Perhaps if we got two or three 'fights' going, the place might pick up a little? To put my where my mouth, and I'll volunteer for a 'fight.'

There are a couple fights going, problem is it's the same small group of people all the time So yeah, that might help, so long as it attracts people to the place.

As for the Uni and the RPGs, I would gladly help manage either of them. However, I doubt I'm qualified to teach anything in the Uni aside from technology basics, and what, exactly would be involved in managing RPGs? mple announcement for the RPGs might work, but it would probably take a bit more than that to actually give it some blood.

Well you don't need to teach (see quote in OP), you'd just be finding people to teach and helping them get their course organized. As for RPGs, that area doesn't really have management problems (most of that is done by local mods for the individual RPGs) as much as no one goes there. Basically the RPGs need a full-blown publicity campaign

[Thoragoros]

There are a couple fights going, problem is it's the same small group of people all the time So yeah, that might help, so long as it attracts people to the place.

Maybe if we could arrange some kind of 'fight' between several fights between some of the TWC's top-brass? That might attract people.

Also, maybe some kind of announcement/article somewhere that lets people know the place even exists.

Well you don't need to teach (see quote in OP), you'd just be finding people to teach and helping them get their course organized. As for RPGs, that area doesn't really have management problems (most of that is done by local mods for the individual RPGs) as much as no one goes there. Basically the RPGs need a full-blown publicity campaign

Alright then, sure, I'll give it a go.

[Okmin]

Maybe if we could arrange some kind of 'fight' between several fights between some of the TWC's top-brass? That might attract people.

Also, maybe some kind of announcement/article somewhere that lets people know the place even exists.

I like that idea. Now to find some top-brass who'll do it Maybe an announcement that we're having some kind of elite tournament?

Alright then, sure, I'll give it a go.

Great! I'm going too... Should we contact GED and Ponti?


PS: Added a "Volunteers" section where support usually goes

[Thoragoros]

I like that idea. Now to find some top-brass who'll do it Maybe an announcement that we're having some kind of elite tournament?

That might work.

Except that maybe a couple of the debates should be on something 'fun?' Like, I doubt many would come and watch if it was a debate over the virtues of Political Idea X vs Political Idea Y, since they could just go to the mudpit for that, and since it probably garner the same group of TWC's political dudes as those discussions always do. We want to attract new people this time.

Maybe something gaming related? Like, RPGS vs shooters, or TW style strategy vs Dawn of War style strategy. Something that people could enjoy, instead of become anxious over?

Just an idea.

Great! I'm going too... Should we contact GED and Ponti?

Them or Beli, I'm guessing.

[Thoragoros]

@ Okmin

Put me down as a Volunteer for the fight club as well.

[Bolkonsky]

I'm still working on the programming class, now that I have my laptop. In fact, I just uploaded Lesson 2 (before I saw this thread. ) I can't make any promises, because I'll be working almost full time this summer, but perhaps in the future I can have a more advanced .NET course.

@GED

You should do Mac vs PC.

[Okmin]

@ Okmin

Put me down as a Volunteer for the fight club as well.

Done.

I'm still working on the programming class, now that I have my laptop. In fact, I just uploaded Lesson 2 (before I saw this thread. ) I can't make any promises, because I'll be working almost full time this summer, but perhaps in the future I can have a more advanced .NET course.

So I can put you down for the Uni?

@GED

You should do Mac vs PC.

Mac vs PC is on the same level as politics

[Bolkonsky]

So I can put you down for the Uni?

Well, considering I currently am doing something there, sure.

[T.C.]

There's probably little demand, but I can offer a Lua course. Or to apply it to TW, scripting for E/N/S2TW. Two birds with one stone even; if there is demand.

Edit: It would be nothing quick though. I have lots of other commitments, which caused my last attempt at a course to fail

[Okmin]

I'd take that course if you did the TW scripting part.

[Raglan]

I would want to object to dumping the rpg sections of the forums. Though its mainly only gstk that has anyone. And i'd probably agree the organisation of them with subforums is a little over the top, there is a solid group of regulars who only visit the site for that area.

We also regularly do get new people looking in. Though admittedly not in large numbers. I do believe with some publicity it would become more active. I have no idea of how things are judged wortwhile. But GSTK has hundreds of posts a day.

[Okmin]

You are of course free to prove me wrong and get it generating some decent post counts.

That's the idea

I would want to object to dumping the rpg sections of the forums. Though its mainly only gstk that has anyone. And i'd probably agree the organisation of them with subforums is a little over the top, there is a solid group of regulars who only visit the site for that area.

We also regularly do get new people looking in. Though admittedly not in large numbers. I do believe with some publicity it would become more active. I have no idea of how things are judged wortwhile. But GSTK has hundreds of posts a day.

So going on the assumption that the RPGs forum doesn't get deleted, any ideas on how to get more publicity?

[GrnEyedDvl]

I'm still working on the programming class, now that I have my laptop. In fact, I just uploaded Lesson 2 (before I saw this thread. ) I can't make any promises, because I'll be working almost full time this summer, but perhaps in the future I can have a more advanced .NET course.

One of these days I would like to do a database course, with some advanced .NET stuff too. One of these days I will write it.

You should do Mac vs PC.

They still make Macs? Well wonders never cease.

There's probably little demand, but I can offer a Lua course. Or to apply it to TW, scripting for E/N/S2TW. Two birds with one stone even; if there is demand.

Edit: It would be nothing quick though. I have lots of other commitments, which caused my last attempt at a course to fail

Lua would be great. Its not my best language but I can definitely read it and at least help review any course you offered.

I would want to object to dumping the rpg sections of the forums. Though its mainly only gstk that has anyone. And i'd probably agree the organisation of them with subforums is a little over the top, there is a solid group of regulars who only visit the site for that area.

Subforums are very over the top in the RPGs.

I have no idea of how things are judged wortwhile. But GSTK has hundreds of posts a day.

Link me to that one please?

That's the idea

So going on the assumption that the RPGs forum doesn't get deleted, any ideas on how to get more publicity?

Its not going to get deleted, just wishful thinking on my part. However I currently AM going through every section of the board and counting forums/posts/threads. We definitely have to trim some stuff so we can expand and try new things.