Want to help to create a new, better LucasArts Fan Network?

[Lynk Former]

Note: If this is all tl;dr for you, skip to the title "What can I do to help?"

 

 

The introduction

 

LucasArts is no more, but that doesn't mean it's going to be forgotten. The LucasArts Fan Network, the network to which this forum belongs, is in a unique position to light the eternal flame in remembrance of everything LucasArts has done for video games.

 

At the same time, we have things to look forward to in the future. More Star Wars games are coming, and while many of us aren't thrilled that EA is the one with the license to make these games, this is still a great opportunity for all of us here at LFN to breathe new life into this place.

 

 

The problem

 

That's all well and good, but we can't take advantage unless some changes are made to this place and none of it will matter unless we can find the people to make those changes.

 

Right now, this place is built on very old foundations, a number of fan sites under various domains that haven't been updated in years and are falling apart. LucasForums itself is very much the same way, lots of sub-forums that are empty and useless.

 

We're basically running a huge ancient ship with a skeleton crew and things are slowly falling apart. The few of us left, both staff and members are keeping things together, but we can't go on like this. At some point attrition is eventually going to cause this place to collapse and we don't have the staff availability to do much of anything

 

Despite the problems, things need to change.

 

 

The hope

 

We all have to be thankful and appreciate the owners of LFN. Despite the decline of this network and the cost to them of keeping it up and running, they've continued to fund this place. Because of them, we've got a chance to do something good with this place and I for one am grateful.

 

The death of LucasArts and the acquisition of the Star Wars video game license by EA is excellent for us. More Star Wars games, no matter where they're coming from is only a good thing for us as long as we can make the most of this situation.

 

We also have people who care about this place and don't want to see it die out and would like to help keep it alive and help make it better. That's great, I'm glad I'm not the only one who wants to help this place back on its feet. I'm sure if we can band together, we can do something to make a newer, better LucasArts Fan Network.

 

 

What we're aiming for

 

We have a tonne of small fan sites under different domain names. All of these fan sites, the Star Wars ones at least, need to be consolidated into one web site dedicated to LucasArts games from the past and the Star Wars games coming in the future.

 

The ideal scenario I'm thinking is that we have three main web sites in our network. Our Star Wars gaming web site, The International House of Mojo to represent the original titles that LucasArts created and finally LucasForums itself.

 

LucasForums will therefore be the official forums for our two main fansites, our Star Wars site and Mojo and as a result, we'd need to make some major changes to the forum to match.

 

The idea I have in my mind is that we could archive all of these old forums and stop new posts being made in them and then create a new forum (not starting over, just restructuring what we have) so that everything and everyone on the Star Wars side will now be located in the one forum, the one single Star Wars community instead of many, one single general forum, one single fanworks area, a single place for our modding community. Everyone under the same roof.

 

We would, of course, transfer what we needed from the archived forums. Mods people are working on and fan works as well. As much as we need that people are still working on can be moved to the consolidated forum.

 

 

"What can I do to help?"

 

Right now at this stage, we need ideas and suggestions. We also need people who are willing to help out in some way.

 

The big issue is that we don't have the necessary active staff members to run our fan sites any more... or in this case, our one large consolidated fan site. We need a one stop shop for everything LucasArts and future Star Wars gaming related and we need the necessary staff to run that site, create articles and information pages, etc to run that site.

 

So, now that we have kind of an idea in the direction we want to head, does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how we can go about getting there?

 

Throw out ideas even if you think they may be silly. Right now, we're brainstorming and getting as many options in front of us to choose from so that we can choose the best ones and move forward from there. Also, if you have any better ideas than the general plan I have in mind, let's hear it.

 

And for those of you who would like to help further in some way, such as writing articles for us and help maintaining our fan site, let us know that you are interested and have what it takes to help out. Tell us what you can contribute if you were to become a staff member of our big fan site.

 

 

And just so we're clear: We have a number of forum staff, we're not really looking for more, the bigger and more pressing issue is to create a successful LucasArts/Star Wars gaming fan site up and running that can bring people back into the forum. Then, once we have that and the new community of people begins to form, then we can worry about forum staff.

 

However, until that happens, it won't be discussed at this point in time, especially not at this very early brainstorming stage.

 

 

One last thing...

 

Yes, doing all of this will mean that the resulting LucasForums will not have a political discussion forum of any kind. The stance of the community would need to change to be more video game focused to encourage new membership based around people coming in who are interested in discussing LA games and future Star Wars games.

 

If you think this is unreasonable, voice your concerns... in a SEPARATE thread.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the meantime, ideas, suggestions, ways you can help out and any questions you may have are all welcome.

[Alexrd]

Regarding LucasFiles, would it be merged with any of the main sites or just cease to exist? I think the ability to upload files and mods should be an integral part of this place, but then again, I don't know how much is the hosting size and respective costs.

[Lynk Former]

Unforunately, I have very little control over that part of LFN. The last I heard, and this was some time ago now, was that ZeroXcape wants to bring it back and back to its former glroy... but again, the lack of staff availability has prevented that. I'm hoping that once we can get the ball rolling with the things I am able to work on, we can encourage other issues such as the one with LucasFiles to be resolved through a renewed sense of motivation.

 

But yeah, at this point, I'm trying to deal with things one step at a time and that we do want LucasFiles back.

[Rogue15]

Contests for prizes

 

Videos

 

PodCasts

 

Scheduled chat meetings ?

 

just throwing crazy ideas out there.

[Canderis]

My brain has yet to start to function today but, as I had said in a visitor message to you lynk, I am willing to help in any way I can. I have been learning web programming this's at year-mostly behind the scenes stuff rather than visual aspects- and I'd be willing to help with any of that. I would provide a link to my work but it's all been in an internal webapp for the company I work for. Aside from that I can contribute my knowledge of the modding community here.

 

As for ideas-the only one I have at this moment is that I think if we consolidate the forums down, the modding community section still needs to be broken up by games and, IMO, should be copied exactly as they are. Maybe make TUCE a subforum of holowan labs like the tutorials and mod requests. There are too many useful threads hidden in holowan to let go because they weren't copied. It would set modding back a lot. So many of those old threads hold secrets and answers to problems that might be rare, and can be found in a quick search.

Also, I know this is a little weird, but one of the biggest reasons I pretty much only stay in the kotor forum is the color scheme. It's very pleasing colors for me and for some reason I almost have trouble looking at the other forums because of this. Maybe we should have options to change the color scheme of the forums to your liking and keep this as an option?

 

All I have for now.

[Lynk Former]

Agreed, I think preserving the modding forums as much as possible is a good idea. There's been a lot of great work put into modding as well as the fan works section that I wouldn't want to disrupt too much.

 

I also agree about the possibility of allowing people to select between colour themes... though maybe just between a light and dark one to make things simple at first.

 

 

@ R15: All good ideas worth considering for the future.

[Rogue15]

fan art section, cause everybody love some star wars art!

[urluckyday]

I think it's a great idea to essentially consolidate the star wars games and original titles under their own separate forums.

 

Just a thought...since a lot of us have a strong connection to the work of Tim Schafer, and we already have Psychonauts and Brutal Legend on here...does it make any sense to consider including a DoubleFine forum (even if it's just under mixnmojo)?

 

I'd gladly help write some articles for some of the new sites, so just tell me when you need me!

[igyman]

I know I don't post here as often as I used to, but I do still visit this place on a regular basis and would like to provide some help, if I can. What I might be able to help with is:

 

As a web programmer with almost two years of professional experience, I might be able to help out should any development be required, depending on the technologies used for the fan site and the time frame in which things would need to be done (since this is something I would do on my own free time and, I'm sure you understand, I wouldn't be willing to dedicate all of my free time to more development work. I do enough of it at my day job ).

 

Other than that, I'm pretty good with Photoshop, so I might be able to fix you up with any new site banners and other "makeup" elements you might need. Perhaps even some basic Flash stuff, if necessary.

 

And finally, I'm willing to help out in any brainstorming regarding how the site and/or forum content could be organized, since (and this is totally subjective on my part) I consider myself pretty good at organizing things. Well, except parties, I suck at organizing those.

 

Regarding stuff that others have said, I do agree with the suggestion of allowing forum users to choose between a few color themes.

Regarding modding forums, I'd have to take a look at how it's all currently organized in order to make a proper suggestion, but in general, since this place encompasses a lot of games, even though you might have a general modding section as a root, this section should definitely be divided into sub-forums for each game.

Regarding other forum sections, since I don't frequent the political section, I for one am not going to miss it, if it's gone, but the off-topic discussion section (i.e. Ahto) and the general gaming discussion (i.e The Outlander Club) should remain present in some form.

[Alexrd]

Other than that, I'm pretty good with Photoshop, so I might be able to fix you up with any new site banners and other "makeup" elements you might need.

 

I can help with that as well. I have access to some high-res Star Wars press images.

[supreme kotor]

I'm not necessarily saying this is exactly what we need but it seemed to work for another form my friend was telling me about. From the sound of it they were in about the same spot as us. They decided the solution was to make the forum a place that you can go to for more than just the average forum. They added things such as chat boxes and etc... But I think the biggest selling point was one of the members made a flash game (related to the subject of the forum) and hosted the game there. From here two more games were made and their attendance began to rise. People discussed both the topics in the forum and the games hosted on that forum.

 

Other than that i think that this is a great idea and while I can't help with web design I would do as much as I could to help.

[Sith Sizzle]

I like the idea of having a single forum for all Star Wars games and a separate one for all other original LucasArts titles. The thing that needs to be thought about is how many sub-forums to make. Too many will make it seem cluttered and confusing, while too little and there will be too many different topics being discussed in each one. It also needs to be more personalized with the use of color schemes.

 

Regardless of how it will be laid out, there should be a few choices for a color scheme. I think for the Star Wars forum there should be a couple light side, neutral, and dark side options to keep with the theme. The light side options can have one be mostly blue with some white thrown in and white letters, and the other can be mostly white with some blue thrown in and black letters. The dark side options can have one be mostly red with some black thrown in and black letters, and the other can be mostly black with some red thrown in and white letters. The neutral options can be similar to the current theme. One that is mostly gray with some blue and red thrown in and white letters, and another one that is the same except with black letters. Since the Mojo forum would include games of different genres and themes, it can include the same amount of color schemes except they will be unrelated to the light side and the dark side. These color schemes can be very colorful, but the overall look of them will be one with a lighter tone, one with a medium tone, and one with a darker tone and each of these would have one with white letters and one with black letters.

 

I think there should be a sub-forum for each game, but they should have the name be the actual title. The current sub-forum names have personality, but it would be easier for all members, especially new ones, to be able to look and see instantly what they're looking for. I think they should all be under one sub-forum so that when you go to the main forum there isn't a huge list of games and then every other sub-forum way down at the bottom. Each of the games do not need any additional sub-forums. What I mean is if I go to the KotOR section I can have a general discussion of the game (Republic Newsfeed), discuss strategy (Padawan's Lounge), and discuss technical issues (The Work Bench and Ebon Hawk's Machine Room). It can also include role-playing and fan fiction/artwork related to the particular game. These sub-forums can all be forged into one for discussion of all aspects of KotOR and nothing more. The ones for other games can be the same way.

 

For modding there can be another sub-forum and under that sub-forum a list of all games exactly like the game discussion one. Then there can be a third sub-forum for all random discussion and within that there can be as little or as many other sub-forums as people see fit. I some what feel that under this random sub-forum there shouldn't be any others. This way people are free to discuss anything that comes to their mind whether it be other forms of media or serious topics, and aren't limited if they have something to share and don't know where to put it. I know some people are against the discussion of anything other than video games, but you have to give people somewhere, even if it's a small sub-forum to discuss their own topics. Every forum I've ever been to has one. Another one I feel is important to add is one for Star Wars movies/shows. There can be a sub-forum for each movie/show within it. I know forums tend to be just about video games and most video games don't have movies/shows, but this one does. We should be open to all aspects of the Star Wars universe and it would expand the things people have to talk about on here. The Mojo forum can have the same thing if there are any movies/shows based off of those games.

 

This way when you go to the Star Wars or Mojo forum, there will be only 4 main sub-forums: Game Discussion, Movie/TV Discussion, Modding Discussion, and Random Discussion. Under the first 3 there will be more sub-forums for each game/movie/show, and under the fourth there can be more sub-forums or none at all. Feel free to expand on what I've said, but that's my general idea.

[Lynk Former]

There are certainly a lot of challenges when it comes to restructuring the forum. This is precisely why we haven't tried to attempt anything like this since LucasForums was created and merged those numerous individual fan forums into one single mega-forum. It's a big job with a lot of complexity structurally and technically.

 

However, the thing I think most people are losing sight over is the fact that this network is a lot larger than people realise. The HUGE problem being overlooked isn't the consolidation of the forums, but the consolidation of the fan sites themselves.

 

There are a large number of fan sites, all made by a large number of different people over the years, all created and maintained differently... we're talking a decades worth of work spread out over all of these sites and formatted in a number of different ways.

 

We're talking information, guides, articles, the works... and while we can back them up so they're not lost forever, we can't really archive those sites as they are because a lot of them are broken and falling apart at this point.

 

The big hurdle is to recover all of the work that has been put into those sites and try to renew/restore them into the larger consolidated mega-fan site... and this takes a A LOT of work, far greater than the work that would need to be put into creating a new forum structure.

 

 

 

 

@ supreme kotor: The flash games idea is interesting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EDIT: Since forum structure is a point of concern for many, in the future, I'll post up an idea of a consolidated forum structure (as a site map) in this thread or a future thread for people to look over and see how it looks so that we're covering all of our bases and giving our modding and fanworks community the spaces they need to do their thing.

[The Doctor]

Note: Reposted with permission from Lynk Former with moderation points removed to avoid debate in an idea-driven thread.

 

I've had my issues with this place. Boy, have I had issues. But I'm not the stunted, frustrated adolescent I was back in 2005. I genuinely lament the potential friendships I let my immaturity prevent me from making with some really awesome people. There was actually a time I'd have loved to see this place fail, because all I cared about was my own selfish satisfaction. That's nowhere near the case anymore - I feel I owe this community, its members, and its leaders something in return for all the drama I've inspired over the last 8 years. Drama that likely only still matters to me, probably.

 

I think part of what keeps an online community thriving is the sense of... well, community. The very thing that's kept many of our older members, myself included, coming back even just as lurkers is what we need to focus on in order to make this place hum again. It has to be about more than the games and movies. Anything we can do to encourage the forging of relationships with the people behind the avatars should be our top priority.

 

I feel we need something a little more personal sometimes than the "Getting to Know You" thread. I know the old SWKnights website had a chatroom, and I know that many members forged friendships through it that stand quite apart from LucasForums itself now. And yes, I'm aware that one or more the people in this group became a problem for a number of members who felt excluded, alienated, paranoid, blah blah drama blah. The point is that it was not the existence of these friendships that led to the ensuing drama. The problem was that these perfectly wonderful people were forced to take their discussions and growing social circle to a more technologically reliable medium inaccessible directly from the forums themselves, creating the illusion of an exclusionist clique. If we could find a more reliable way of engaging each other in chatroom style discussions, I think that alone could go a long way towards making the community feel a lot warmer and more approachable - as it is now, all a new member sees is the dozens of different message boards each with a dozen or more areas with hundreds or thousands of topics. It's a little intimidating making your first post, regardless of how you do it. It's a lot easier for someone to say hi in a chatroom and get their feet wet, as it were, before diving into the forums themselves. I know for a fact that such chat interfaces exist for vBulletin, as I've been a member of vB forums that've used them in the past. There must be one that would allow for friendly, open conversation with simple moderation tools.

 

I could be accused of bias when it comes to the creative boards here at LF. They're where I spent a great deal of my time over the years and where I met a number of people who are still my friends today. But I think part of what drags that section down is the stigma surrounding fan fiction, fan art, and text-based roleplaying. These kinds of boards need more than just someone to enforce the rules - I mean, the rules are pretty minimal in such boards. Basically so long as you don't involve genitals, your post is basically in the clear. What they need is leaders. Story builders to inspire new worlds and characters (Star Wars/LucasArts related or otherwise), community organisers to properly coordinate contests and events, and experienced artists/authors with the tools to help people who want to become better at what they enjoy. Make these boards a destination, not just a side show or extra feature. A properly cultivated creative community can stimulate any themed discussion boards. Let a creative community grow around and expand on an existing idea or universe, and you've got the makings of a thriving forum for years to come.

 

In the same vein, a community focussing on any specific theme - be it gaming, movies, television, or whatever - needs leaders who do more than just enforce the rules. And I don't think this community's leaders have been given the proper tools to be leaders beyond rule-related buttons. Disney's acquisition of LucasArts is probably the biggest news to happen to Star Wars since the prequel trilogy, and the news was broken in the form of a link to a third party website, in three or four different threads scattered across multiple forums about different elements of the same basic thing. I guess this comes down to the forum structure that's already been acknowledged multiple times as being outdated. But it's more than that - not only should we have one place where all discussions about these different elements can be seen at once, but we need people who will actually gather information as vital to the community's interest and tell people about it themselves rather than simply posting a link to a third party website and inviting comments. We should be the place people use as a source for such information, not a place where we say "I'll believe it when a reputable source says something". We should be a reputable source.

 

That's all I can think of for now. Though I'll definitely have the matter on my mind over the coming weeks, for sure. I'm definitely eager to help this place become a destination for fans again. It's a shadow of what it once was, but it's not too late to restore it to its glory days again.

[igyman]

However, the thing I think most people are losing sight over is the fact that this network is a lot larger than people realise. The HUGE problem being overlooked isn't the consolidation of the forums, but the consolidation of the fan sites themselves.

 

There are a large number of fan sites, all made by a large number of different people over the years, all created and maintained differently... we're talking a decades worth of work spread out over all of these sites and formatted in a number of different ways.

 

We're talking information, guides, articles, the works... and while we can back them up so they're not lost forever, we can't really archive those sites as they are because a lot of them are broken and falling apart at this point.

 

The big hurdle is to recover all of the work that has been put into those sites and try to renew/restore them into the larger consolidated mega-fan site... and this takes a A LOT of work, far greater than the work that would need to be put into creating a new forum structure.

 

While it would not reduce the amount of work needed, considering my own experience at refactoring existing code of a well-established project and improving it to support additional functionality and be more maintainable, I'd say the smart route here would be to create this mega-site (or rather a mega-web-app) from scratch. All and any uploaded files, articles and whatnot can then be moved to this new structure with relative ease (it would be tedious work, make no mistake, but it would not be too difficult), as long as the new site is well-designed with an architecture that supports everything it would need to support (i.e. file upload/download, blog-like articles and whatnot, user accounts, different user roles and permissions, you fill in the blanks ).

[Lynk Former]

@ igyman: Yup, that's the plan, though there's still a lot of useful information that can be taken from those old sites and transplanted to the mega-fan site. To be perfectly honest, this entire idea of renewal I've posted in this thread isn't a new one, and I've had my own thoughts and ideas about this for quite some time now.

 

I even know exactly what the name our of consolidated fan site will be, though... I'm keeping this information close to the chest right now because it's all just a jumble of very unorganised notes right now and some wacky ideas. I don't want to start revealing details until I'm more organised and actually have something decent to show.

[purifier]

Just throwing these two things out there, which may or may not help.

 

How about a thread & forum ignore system for the members. Which can be used by those who don't want to see certain types of threads/forums and don't want to mistakenly get involved or post in any future discussions of those particular threads/forums, they don't like or having regret they already did before. Something a lot of members here might appreciate in the long run, especially after they feel or wished they hadn't participated in particular threads or forums. Reason I'm suggesting this is because I noticed some members here had regrets posting in certain forums in the past and it could be a way to keep certain forums around for the members here who like those specific forums, but keep other members here from seeing forums they don't like or want to see. (I noticed they were working on something like this at vbulletin.org, btw )

 

 

 

Maybe a thread rating system. Some people think they're useful, some think they're not. I don't know. But it could be something a little less suggestive than the usual 1 to 5 star rating thingy, as in having a plain and simple "like" button at the top of the thread instead, which indicates how many members like the thread overall. The 1 to 5 star rating might be a little too informative.

 

Anyway, that's all I got for now.

[LDR]

I said I'd do anything to help, and I intend to back it up. I essentially made a basic layout of a possible new LucasForums design based on what Lynk and a few others pointed out.

 

 

Show spoiler

(hidden content - requires Javascript to show)

http://imageshack.com/a/img20/3695/69d7.png

 

It's pretty rough, but at least we could get a basic idea of what we're trying to do.

[Sith Sizzle]

I said I'd do anything to help, and I intend to back it up. I essentially made a basic layout of a possible new LucasForums design based on what Lynk and a few others pointed out.

 

 

Show spoiler

(hidden content - requires Javascript to show)

http://imageshack.com/a/img20/3695/69d7.png

 

It's pretty rough, but at least we could get a basic idea of what we're trying to do.

I actually like your idea better than mine! Having a whole separate forum for everything that has nothing to do with playing Star Wars video games since that should be the forums main focus. However I think that modding shouldn't be included in the same sub-forum as the game. This is because me and other people might just want to read about gameplay and things of that nature sometimes and it would be hard to do that when people are posting numerous mods every single day, making other types of new posts hard to find.

[LDR]

I thought that the 'all existing sub-forums' would be easier than listing every single thing.

 

Well, everything would be in its own separate subforum in the KOTOR subforum. For example, there would be one section dedicated to modding (which would have sub-forums under that for WIPs, questions, tutorials, releases, etc). Another would be dedicated for bugs and glitches. And yet another would be dedicated for basic gameplay discussion. And finally there would be one for just talking about the lore and the era of the game.

[Lynk Former]

I've been silent the last couple of days in this thread but I'm actively working on the design of the consolidated mega site.

 

I'm thinking of going for a magazine-like layout for the home page. Something that looks modern and attractive but can also be viewed on a mobile device. If you click the link in my signature and go to my site, you'll see what I mean. Restore your browser window if it's maximised and then drag the window width down below 800px wide and then below 400px wide. You'll see that the site design changes slightly to conform to the narrower width... or just view the site on your smartphone, probably easier, but it's better to see the change happen before your own eyes to get what I mean.

 

As I said, getting this site up will take a lot of work and we're going to face the obvious challenge of coming up with content for the site due to the lack of actively played Star Wars games at the moment.

 

We're going to need content for this megasite and we're going to need to have it coming at regular intervals... and it's going to need to be something good that gets people to the site. We need content that is worth reading that makes the reader want to come back to the site again after they've discovered it for the first time. It needs to be the kind of site they bookmark and check regularly... only then will they be encouraged to click the "forum" button and join in the community.

 

We need all types of articles, game reviews, hardware reviews (say, for a good mmo mouse to use with swtor?), random pictures from games in image galleries, a game modification spotlight, a fanworks article highlighting a great fanwork, general star wars articles, advise and tips for running old lucasarts games on newer machines, reviews of much older star wars games, a retrospective on a particular series, perhaps a roundtable discussion of some sort? ...and a lot of other things...

 

There's room for a lot of content just as long as we have the people to write that content and put in the time and effort needed to produce them.

 

In fact, this is a great opportunity for people because if you're interested in producing content, this new megasite will be great for you.

 

 

 

 

So, for the people who are interested in contributing to the mega site and becoming a staff member of the site, what kind of articles would you write? Let's throw out the ideas and what you think you'd be best at. Let us know of your interest and maybe there are other things you can do to contribute. Maybe there's someone out there who has what it takes to edit other peoples articles so that they can iron out the terrible grammar... I know any article I write is going to need a lot of ironing out lol.

 

The bottom line is that we need this site to make an impact, we need to get it out there and we need to make it relevant and last long enough on its own merits until the first of the new generation of Star Wars games are released.

 

The plain truth is that we have no active staff here at LFN any more. If we're going to make this place a success again, we need new blood. And the best candidates are people here in our own community to take up the flag.

 

Who knows, perhaps you can make this a learning experience and maybe gain some experience from this to use elsewhere...

[Pho3nix]

Bigger avatars!

[Lynk Former]

I was thinking the exact same thing Bigger signature image would be nice too.

[igyman]

Regarding that large text in your previous post, Lynk, if you need a grammar Nazi, I'm your guy. I also wouldn't mind trying my hand at writing a review on the odd occasion.

 

As for avatar size, in terms of pixels, I don't think we need to go too larger than what we have now, but it might be a good idea to increase the avatar file size a bit (for those who like animated gifs and such) and/or add a resizing/cropping feature to image upload.

[The Doctor]

I'd be more than happy to promote and help stimulate interest in a reborn community's fan-made media. Until we get new official stories and games, fan work is really all we've got. Fan fiction in particular gets a bad wrap, but it can be so much more than just angsty sexual re-pairings or wall-of-text Revangasms. And we've got some really great contributors here already whose work deserves to be shared with a wider audience.