Save Shmups forum from mediocrity

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Incidentally, Gus spotted my earlier post and contacted me himself, asking for his posting access to be limited to High Scores and Strategy section only. I obliged, and while he can now read this thread, he's unable to reply to it. If that's not a great form of self-censorship, I don't know what is.

A very commendable action, we are all dicks at some point, I know I have in the past. The main thing is that you are making some self reflection is a very good thing.

I'll try to improve my own posting aswell.

[O. Van Bruce]

Incidentally, Gus spotted my earlier post and contacted me himself, asking for his posting access to be limited to High Scores and Strategy section only. I obliged, and while he can now read this thread, he's unable to reply to it. If that's not a great form of self-censorship, I don't know what is.

Kinda extreme but if that's what he wants...

[DJ Incompetent]

I'm ok with locking the creation of new topics and new replies to Shmups Chat and Off Topic from June to November every year.

I knew of a site that ended their forum and would bring it back once in awhile for a few weeks. The results were kinda like christmas time and everybody had thoughtful things to say and lots of noteworthy things were discovered. It was a successful practice.

But I guess there's no guarantees the bullshit wouldn't just spill over more into the other subforums, or likely #shmups. *shrug* Worth a shot?


As things are run the way they are now, I am able to find a small nugget of interesting info every other day. I like how efficient Cave-STG is run, but I get the sense of community stagnation there once in awhile because it's so efficient. It's not really the site's fault. It really is that news doesn't come often for that site's scope. I guess this forum always seems like the place to be because something is always going on...be it good or terribly, terribly awful.

I'd suggest that we need a better way to store information, e.g. a wiki.

shmupswiki.com

[Randorama]

DJ: Ok, then I think that we need to start blending the wiki and the new & old material on this board in a more "organic" way. I am having a look at the wiki, now.

[shmuppyLove]

DJ: Ok, then I think that we need to start blending the wiki and the new & old material on this board in a more "organic" way. I am having a look at the wiki, now.

Expanding on that, I have always admired SRK's ability to constantly generate new and interesting content. There is so much stuff there, even if you never go into the forums.

[DJ Incompetent]

I'll try to catch you up.

The original plan of the wiki was/is:
1. Every relevant game we knew about would get a page. (Basically being Xenocide Files the deuce, but actually updated)
2. Every game page would have a massive (checklist) template pasted into it. This was to guide contributors more toward completing the wiki entry in a way that would make all information most easily comparable with other games (which is one of the biggest issues people end up having with wikis).
3. I would actually update the shmups.com Xenocide Files like I said I would.
4. If users informally felt that the information on a particular game is "complete", the page would be locked up from editing (and likely a shortlist of moderators/admins would doublecheck the page). If we agree the final draft is good, I would copy the draft to the shmups.com's Xenocide Files.



What went wrong? We never totally agreed on what the step 2 massive game page template would be. I think we got hung up on how people defined difficulty styles like "memorizor", "manic", "danmaku", etc. and how we would do tagging of comparable terms people would be actually searching for like difficulty, release date, orientation, etc..
Meanwhile, my home computer died, the debate derailed, and I couldn't follow the trainwreck at work, so DevilManOzzy (rightfully) took over the project and just focused on getting the wiki spam-free and pretty. He was successful, but we found out the community basically really wanted a nearly-finished wiki to add on to, not an empty wiki to build from scratch. A few people have gotten small balls rolling, but I'm pretty sure some form of big push is needed. And the ball is prolly waaay in my court to bring back all the project threads and say, "fuck it, this is the game page template, I made template pages of just the top 25 games of all time, I copied all the info I know into those pages. You party-people fill out the rest!" and see where we end up.

Years since all that, I got a new computer, wife, cats, and house, but have been runnin' the @shmups twitter with Elixir in the meantime. I do all that from work so I can contribute to somethin' actually manageable. That got pretty successful, so I've felt slightly less guilty dropping the ball three other places. Home freetime is not what I used to have anyway, so I dunno how well I can play Web Janitor, which is really what this project comes down to.

And that's where we're at today. Storytime overrr!

references:
Malc gettin' shit started: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=28236
Debating that big game template: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=28553
Derails into difficulty and god this project sucks: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29029 (I think there's a second thread but I forget)
The next "hay we should do a wiki" attempt in strategy and then Devilmanozzy is all like, "goddammit" http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=35796

[Randorama]

DJ, I am thinking hard on what we could do. In the meanwhile, I am having a look at my old STs. I think that we can do something interesting, but at the moment I am staring at the dots and figuring out which is the order by which we need to connect them.

And I need to sleep, hence the weird post (!).

[AntiFritz]

As far as a wiki is concerned its definately something I think should be done, quite frankly the ST section is a mess of info spread over a number of threads/posts and the community would benefit from it all in a cental location.

I feel I don't have enough authority/knowledge as far as content is concerned but if a suitable/easy to use template was created it would definately help with people just going in and adding small snippets of information where applicable.