Meeting of the Minds

[Marushia]

Ok, I know that many of you are aware of Janus' long-standing absence and I'm sure many of you are also aware of the gross inactivity on Edge of Destiny as of late. Maybe the two are linked, maybe they aren't, but in any event, I'm opening the floor for discussion as to what you think should be done.

I'll also be talking with Illustrious about realigning the balance of power in lieu of Janus' absence, which will hopefully get a few things accomplished.

So yeah, consider this an open suggestions thread. I'll willing to listen to any ideas you may have.

[Lord Darkstar]

Not sure what to do really, I think I'll start to poach threads off of other forums.

[Fishy]

It has a couple of reasons.

1.) The constant bots they are nothing short of annoying and they won't let new members stay

2.) The pop-up, see one for the reason why

3.) No real discussions that anybody can join

4.) No new people

5.) No real community feeling here, seeing as half the people are gone anyways

Fix all of that and you might get a good forum again.

[Lord Darkstar]

Well we can fix the bots with the box thingy that is discussed in another thread

The pop-up, yeah I agree with you there, something needs to be done about that, unfortunly, I have no ideas

As for discussions, poach them off other forums

People will come once discussion is started and the bots/pop-ups are gone and that should also help prevent people from leaving



So, mods, fix the pop-ups and bots. Everyone else, poach threads

[Lord Sorgo]

A harder effort to fish for more members, I suppose.

And of course; The destruction of these pesky bots.

[Traya]

Why not allow moderators to ban anyone and warn everyone outside of their respective sections like at the old EoD? That way; moderators could annihalate bots as soon as they saw them; instead of waiting for Marushia or Illustrious to do it.

[Faunus]

Agreed, at least until we can get things under control again. As of now, the only three people who can do anything are IKC, Illustrious, and Marushia, the latter of whom is the only one we see much of anymore.

[Lord Darkstar]

Yeah that would help, btw where are Illustrious, IKC and Janus?

[IKC]

I'm here. Lurking.

I've not had anything I've wanted to contribute recently. I've not been in the mood to put forth the effort to spend hours on typing up posts like before.

I'm not sure what can be done to revive activity hereabouts. It's not my area of expertise. I'll think about it.

[Faunus]

At least we know you're alive.

[Lord Darkstar]

Yeah that is always good to know.

Does anyone know where Janus is?

[Marushia]

1.) The constant bots they are nothing short of annoying and they won't let new members stay

With regards to bots, I'm pretty sure all mods can at least close threads as soon as they see them. Illustrious and I are working to delete them off the face of the boards to look more presentable. However, I don't have access to the ACP so I can't really do more than that. I've been meaning to talk to Illustrious about that for some time now.

2.) The pop-up, see one for the reason why

I really have no idea about this. Again, no ACP access and keeping in touch with Illustrious is growing difficult.

Best I can say is turn your pop-up blocker on.

3.) No real discussions that anybody can join

I'll see what I can do with this. We're working on revamping the forum layout and the way we planned it would be help encourage discussions. But for now, for all concerned with this, I suggest you take the initiative and host discussions, even if they seem silly or redundant. Do some exploration into the news or do some research on Wikipedia and bring discussion of articles to EoD. It can be anything. We've got enough forum diversity for it.

I'll do better in this regard as well.

Any further thoughts on this point? It certainly is a good one.

4.) No new people

According to the stats at the bottom of the board, we've gained several active members over the last few months, though you're right in that it certainly doesn't seem that way.

Just to show you what I mean, here are the current stats:

Threads: 890, Posts: 11,949, Members: 295, Active Members: 216

I recall not too long ago when we had less than 100, so maybe we've got the hook, we just aren't reeling them in. I think if we hammer out these other points, people might be more encouraged to stay.

5.) No real community feeling here, seeing as half the people are gone anyways

I agree and I apologize for my part in this. I gave my reasons in the shout box (college and no working computer). Illustrious is highly inactive (can't get in touch with him, like I said) and I've still no clue where Janus is. The fact that both of them are the only ones with ACP access makes running EoD extremely difficult. But I will keep trying to get in touch with them. Until then, we'll make do. Thanks for the suggestions.

A harder effort to fish for more members, I suppose.

I've still got that running list of top advertisers going. No one's posted there in a while so I assume no one's been spreading our ad around.

[Lord Sorgo]

I'm usually around most of the time, but the activity is slim. The only reason I'm still around is because I'm a friend of everyone. New people who come along and notice this inactivity will turn face as quick as they came.

We need to figure out a way to boost activity, and I think I have an idea . . .

[Darin Saine]

I've been lurking for a while, not that I'm a member of any importance, but I've been around since the beginning of EoD, but most of the problems I see have already been mentioned. But the way I see it, we really need Janus back, does ANYONE at all know where he is/was? I know he said he was having satellite problems before he disappeared, but surely it doesn't take this long to fix that....

[Lord Darkstar]

I'll see if I can dig through my e-mail, I think I may have his address somewhere.

And Sorgo, what is your idea, and I take it your RP is closed?


EDIT: Marushia, at the bottom of the site, where you can click on 'forum leaders' you are said to be an admin, is this just because they have no spot for g. mod or what?

Also, I may be overstepping my bounds here, but with some people no longer actively contributing or going on the site, is it time to switch up the ranks some?

[Himo]

What makes you an active member?

[Darin Saine]

Just a theory as to what happened to Janus: He lives in Maine, and the winters up there are said to be pretty rough. He also has satellite internet, so that satellite probably got covered/broken by the snow/ice, which means we probably won't hear from him until early March at the earliest I'd say.

[Traya]

Also, I may be overstepping my bounds here, but with some people no longer actively contributing or going on the site, is it time to switch up the ranks some?

In what way? I don't see how making people Methuselahs or other such ranks would entirely help.

Unless you're suggesting that we have moderators.

[Lord Darkstar]

Yeah I meant make Maru an admin so he has more powers, make some of the mods g.mods so they have more power and/or increase the powers of mods so they can affect any section of the forum


As for Janus and the winters, I live in Canada and the winters aren't so bad that the internet is down all winter

[Darin Saine]

Do you have satellite internet though?

[Doomsday]

First thing that has to be done is stopping the bots getting in.

After that its what has been talked about already.

[Lord Darkstar]

Do you have satellite internet though?

Well no, but I am sure that even if it did go down it could be fixed before the winter was over


And yeah, I think now we are just saying the same things over again, fix the bots and the pop-up, post some new threads and people will come and stay

[Darin Saine]

As much as I hate to say this, we may need to move EoD. If we can't do anything ourselves to fix the problems, and we can't get ahold of the people who can do something, then we need to do something that is within our powers. I don't want to do this, I love this new site, but it's just something we may have to consider if Janus and Illustrious don't show up anytime soon.

[Lord Darkstar]

Well before we seriously consider that, lets first try to contact them and attract new members and create new threads. I have lately tried to create threads that I think could provoke some discussion, but it cannot be a oneman show, others need to contribute in those threads, even if is a short post

[Darin Saine]

Oh of course, do all we can before even seriously thinking of that, I've done all the recruiting I can, did it once the site started, what I really wanna see are some new RP's, as well as the Emblem project picking up.

[Traya]

Luckily, things have been sorted out now.

[Lord Darkstar]

Yeah thats good, we can wait and see how things work out

And Darin, I wasn't trying to lay blame on you (or anyone). I was just saying that this is a group effort and we all need to be involved

[Darin Saine]

Of course, I realize that and wasn't trying to sound offended :P (I rarely am lol). Anyway, I've been working on some kind of plot line, but I need a world to apply it to :lol:

[Lord Darkstar]

lol, well good luck with the world creation, if you need any help drop me a line

[Marushia]

But the way I see it, we really need Janus back, does ANYONE at all know where he is/was?

I've sent him e-mails myself, yet I haven't heard back.

Marushia, at the bottom of the site, where you can click on 'forum leaders' you are said to be an admin, is this just because they have no spot for g. mod or what?

Recent promotion, probably.

Just a theory as to what happened to Janus: He lives in Maine, and the winters up there are said to be pretty rough. He also has satellite internet, so that satellite probably got covered/broken by the snow/ice, which means we probably won't hear from him until early March at the earliest I'd say.

It wasn't until recently that the northeast got massive snow, though the broken dish theory seems plausible. Still, even I, with my busted computer, managed to find other means of contact in the last two months.

Yeah I meant make Maru an admin so he has more powers, make some of the mods g.mods so they have more power and/or increase the powers of mods so they can affect any section of the forum

Done.

Well before we seriously consider that, lets first try to contact them and attract new members and create new threads. I have lately tried to create threads that I think could provoke some discussion, but it cannot be a oneman show, others need to contribute in those threads, even if is a short post

Indeed. Highened activity is something that each member can at least do. There's still that Top Advertisers thread that no one has looked at recently. Looks like we may have to get back to promoting the site.

Oh of course, do all we can before even seriously thinking of that, I've done all the recruiting I can, did it once the site started, what I really wanna see are some new RP's, as well as the Emblem project picking up.

Well, Janus' RP can't exactly run while he's not here, unless someone else wants to take up the torch and run with it.

Freeform is dead. If you wanna RP, that place is always a venue. And TPP is still up, it's just that no one's shown interest in it, despite all the dumbing down I've done. In that, I can't be a one-man show. For now, I'd recommend TPP Jr. at least until I find someone else who can mod it.

I'm also looking into this new thing that Sorgo's working on.

EDIT - Illustrious says he's going to look into the pop-up matter. He'll speak to the site host some time soon and hopefully get back to us once he's heard from them.

[Polaski]

This site needs noobs :\

[Fishy]

The only way to get new members and to make them stay is to fix this site first. I would suggest doing that first. Before even considering anything else.

[Marushia]

Well, towards that end, is anyone still receiving that blasted pop-up? I haven't seen it for some time but that doesn't really mean anything. As for SPAM threads, they're either lessenning or it just seems like they are.

[Lord Darkstar]

Actually you are right, I no longer get the pop-up. WOOT!!!

And from what I have seen, I know it sounds odd, but the more we post and the more threads we make, the less bots we seem to get. Is that possible?

[Darin Saine]

It could be that, maybe the bots only come to spam the hell out of inactive sites, we still have them (unfortunately), but they're not as rampant as they were.

[Lord Darkstar]

Possible, so what is causing the problem is that people do not post or make threads.

Conclusion: POST PEOPLE

[Nai Fohl]

So. Since I have a little more free-time now (thanks to holliiiiiiidays), I wanted to shed my 2 cents here.

Janus absence is of course a serious problem, considering that this is (basically) his board, so to say. Aside of that Janus often enough comes up with topics or posts that can start (or restart) a discussion which is a nice way to get people to post. I am, and I do admit that willfully, more a consumer than somebody who comes up with new stuff everytime I enter the board especially when I don't have much time to spent due to other things (girlfriend, job). So I'd rather reply to stuff than post new things. Even that was becoming lesser and lesser over the last few months because I was usually jammed with work which is pretty nice for my bank account but tends to exterminate my participation on the board. Well...since I have more free-time now, I'm back for more action.


Well, Janus' RP can't exactly run while he's not here, unless someone else wants to take up the torch and run with it.


The point with Emblem is that this, even before Janus absence, was somehow becoming less important. We had this nice thread to get people to develop some stuff for the game but only few did really post some work (although I don't know how much you guys have worked out for Emblem yet). I only know that the last "new ideas" reached the Update Forum about 6 months ago.

Since I did communicate with Janus rather often about the RP and have some experience as Game Master in the P&P business I'd "take the torch and run" but I really can't do everything on my own (since I don't have the time and perhabs not even the required imagination to come up with a complete RP World like Emblem would require it). And of course somebody at first would have to take over Janus role in the initial design: that would mean at least Map Creation (very important) and some work on the Elves (together with Marushia ?). The Creation Myth is pretty much done so far (see Update Forum) and the history is actually the last thing I would do considering that this would require some interaction of the different races (So maybe the "race designers" should work out there own and we put them together at the end).

Also I would like to have the other people of the "design team" post their ideas in the Update Forum (Marushia, Illustrious, Sorgo, Sandman, Traya, Darin ?) so that we can see what we do need to do next.

Maybe we're lucky and Janus returns in time to finish the work. ;)

[Lord Darkstar]

I'll help with the RP if you would like. Not sure wha tyou would want, but give me a job and a bit of background and I'll try to work something out

[Fishy]

Actually you are right, I no longer get the pop-up. WOOT!!!

And from what I have seen, I know it sounds odd, but the more we post and the more threads we make, the less bots we seem to get. Is that possible?

No...


Just luck.. I would suggest if we want to stop these bots, moving to Invision. At least they are doing something against them. To quote somebody from another forum where we recently had one of those bots

There's been some software developments for use by spammers of late. One such is what you see here, the ability to auto-spam forums with commercial messages. Sometimes they're pretty clever, and can even mask it as an innocent post, but some word, piece of punctuation, signature line or something in the post may have a linke/URL attached to it. Web crawlers for search engines like Google and Yahoo, etc pick these up and then prioritize keyword searches on the amount of time the links show up, more spam in forums read by webcrawlers, higher rankings in search engines.

Some of these spambots are sophisticated enough to read the embedded code graphics you're talking about.

Here on invisionfree, they do take a lot of steps to curtail this. I think you'll likely find it considerably worse when you put up your own forum on your own domain. Though, there are a lot of tools to help deal with it. You can get some patches to the popular forum software which can auto-move/delete this stuff fairly well.

Still have to be vigilant, though. It's starting to become a serious problem for many forums.

This spambot here, "softmanone"... a Google search for softmanone (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=softmanone) reveals this username signed up on 100s of forums. The search engines also read this username's profile, and listed there is the website "http://oem.softtopsite.info", already swallowed whole by the search engines. :wwe:

[Traya]

I don't forsee us moving to Invision. Vbulletin can support far more features and to be honest, the spam's dropped off recently and any that's remaining get's moved.

[Fishy]

I don't forsee us moving to Invision. Vbulletin can support far more features and to be honest, the spam's dropped off recently and any that's remaining get's moved.

I didn't say we need to move to invision, I'm just saying any drop of spam is nothing more then luck and Invision actually does a lot to stop it. Something that obviously can't really be done on this forum.

[Sandman]

Let's get Janus some internet.

I'm only still here because this has been my homepage in the hopes that Pure Evil will actually start. Ever.

[Lord Darkstar]

Well, in the absence of Janus, it is possible that several of us could work together and try to create Pure Evil on our own

[Marushia]

Well, taking twenty hours of college courses a week for the next three months won't give me much on time at the boards, though I'll still check up regularly. That said, Nai and Darkstar, if you wanna try and resurrect Emblem, you have permission. I'll even give you creative control until Janus returns if you're trully serious about the idea. OTOH, if no one is willing to put time into it, then maybe we should work on something else, like Sorgo's RTS game. (And no, I've not given up hope for TPP, I just haven't had time for it.)

The same goes for Pure Evil if any of you wants to take up the torch on that as well.

Just luck.. I would suggest if we want to stop these bots, moving to Invision. At least they are doing something against them. To quote somebody from another forum where we recently had one of those bots

Well, Illustious paid out of pocket to move us from an IFB to a VBB because we could do a whole lot more with it. I don't think your suggestion is plausible. Really, if bots and inactivity are the only price we're paying, it's still a better deal.

And yeah, we need to find out if Janus is still alive.

[Fishy]

Yeah right... Just look at the off topic forum right now.. I'd rather be on a forum with fewer functions then having to find a real post in that piece of crap...

Really unless you find a way to upgrade the security this sucks...

[Doomsday]

Yeah right... Just look at the off topic forum right now.. I'd rather be on a forum with fewer functions then having to find a real post in that piece of crap...

Really unless you find a way to upgrade the security this sucks...

Your right there.. the off topic is crazy at the moment.

[Darin Saine]

Well on the bright side, it could be much much worse. At least they're constraining themselves to the off topic section, rather than being all over the whole site.

[Traya]

Look, I think this problem is more to do with the lack of people posting. I generally see that lots of people have browsed the forum, yet not bothered to post. If you could perhaps post at least twice, it'd make this forum look more attractive and kickstart it into activity.

[Lord Darkstar]

That is a good point, people visit, yet they do not post, I know that I have been guilty of that, though I will try to do better

[Traya]

I see it again today. A load of people visit, yet virtually no one posts. Please, post!

[Fishy]

I see it again today. A load of people visit, yet virtually no one posts. Please, post!

That's certainly true I don't visit everyday because I have no reason to do so, I usually post in all threads I find interesting though...

Thing with posting is however, when you need to read through ten pages of crap to find one good post you get discouraged... Spam has a habit of doing that, anyways I suggest one of two things to stop this...

1.) Stop accepting e-mail adresses like Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail when people subscribe mass free e-mail accounts are probably used by these bots in order to get access to the forums....

2.) Rename the off topic forum, these bots likely look for some kind of reoccurring theme in all forums, and an off topic or spam forum are quite common. That is also likely why the spam concentrates itself on those places instead of the others.

[Lord Darkstar]

I agree with suggestion 2

as for #1, most everyone has a Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail, you would be excluding many people if you blocked those. I know that I have a Yahoo, and do not feel like paying for something when what I have works fine


#2 though, yeah good idea. Can't hurt to try.

[Traya]

Actually, the second proposal of Fishy's was brought up in the staff forum; but only Marushia replied.

[Lord Darkstar]

Oh, didn't know about that

But either way, I feel it is a good idea and could be tried out.
Does the staff have any other ideas that you have discussed?