One Uru Forum

[Marten]

Shorah folks.

As the GoMe liaison to the GoW, it seems I should comment here since the GoMe became a part of the discussion

First, I want to give a few statistics. Including the GameTap and Cyan forums, the assorted URU communities presently have well over 50 distinct working forum sites, although some of those are virtually unused. Some of those sites are for non-English languages, but even so, we've got about 45 sites just for the English language.

In my opinion that is a lot of sites for a very small community. I believe that with the size of our community, it is very difficult to sustain so many forums. I think the Assembly of Guilds site was a good idea, because it provided a common place for many of the smaller groups to come together without having to set up their own separate spaces. Maintaining a presence on the AoG forum also served as a form of publicity for small groups that might have otherwise been too easily overlooked.

I also recognize that such conglomerate sites have disadvantages as well, and they aren't appropriate for every group. I think BAD is right that the GoW needs its own forum space. I could imagine the Maintainers and Writers working well together with a united forum, but consolidating one or more of the guilds' forums into the MOUL site would never have worked, for various reasons including moderation issues as already mentioned.

How this relates to "One Uru":

The role of the Guild of Messengers has been summarized in our motto, "See a need, fill a need." But that motto is the essence of every successful group. The Cartographers fulfill a need for maps. The Writers fulfill a need for new places to explore. To succeed, One Uru needs to fill a need... one that is not already addressed by any other group. That is why I believe that One Uru's best opportunity is to fill the hole left by the Assembly of Guilds. From that starting point, One Uru could identify other unfulfilled needs that fit its core mission and expand as it is capable or willing.

Presently, One Uru has a lot of forum sections that I don't believe will be used by anyone. For example, the various "Path of the..." forums are pretty well covered by the Guild of Greeters' various Age discussion categories. This is an example of a need already fulfilled adequately by another group.

It's possible that One Uru may identify needs that are being worked on, but not to someone's satisfaction. Again, I'll reference the size of our community for my argument - while competition can be a healthy thing, in too small of a group it only serves to fracture the community rather than serve its interests. My recommendation is that the people driving One Uru seek to involve themselves in other groups whose goals are aligned with their own when they see a need only partly filled and want to help better address it.

I'll finish my rambling commentary by raising a little awareness here of a project I have been working on that, from a short private discussion I had with Marcus Wheeler, seems to fit with what I understand of One Uru's goals. "One Uru" wants to help consolidate our community. My own consolidation project is Rel.to, and I'm hoping I'll be able to announce it to the community-at-large before April 10 rolls around. The purpose of Rel.to is to provide a searchable and indexed directory to the Myst/Uru community, a "home page" from which users can find the latest community news, and an efficient shortcut/keyword system that can be used to access all of the community websites (I find it so useful myself that I don't need keep Uru sites bookmarked anymore). Rel.to will be a service of the Guild of Messengers. You can visit a beta of Rel.to by visiting rel.to/proto.

What I'd like to see next is One Uru's goals, stated a little more concretely... so that I can better understand how the Guild of Messengers and Rel.to can work with One Uru, and not have any group duplicate effort.

[Nek'rahm]

Yea, I kinda added those sections to eventually be links to the GoG walkthroughs, but with One Uru's useage in question I'm contemplating different projects we could be a part of.

Still think that the AoG/UruGuilds forum setup would be what we are aiming for here. I was hoping that the GoMe could use the One Uru forum as a way of getting the Guild Newsletter along, as well as being a mainstream headquarters where the Guilds could meet to talk about co-inciding topics and matters concerning Uru.

Right now though, I'm just hoping that the GoMe and GoW will support us before we get down to organizing things together. We're also having a lot of problems with our site's setup >_>

Thanks though.

[Narym]

I was hoping that the GoMe could use the One Uru forum as a way of getting the Guild Newsletter along, as well as being a mainstream headquarters where the Guilds could meet to talk about co-inciding topics and matters concerning Uru.

The trick is, though, is that One Uru would inherently have to become well known and used enough, more so than the GoMe, in order for it to fulfill that first function. This is something that probably wouldn't happen in the short term, so it may be tricky to do.

Also, in regards to the second function, there was a seperate website where all the guilds could meet. I believe it was called the Guild Support Network, set up by Jenine. You would notice that the website no longer is in operation. There's probably a couple of reasons for this, but I think that one is that people didn't necessarily see the point of the GSW's purpose, when it was itself entirely seperate to the actual Guilds and organised with little to no consultation with the Guilds (in fact, the majority of the Guilds were still in the early planning stages at this point). I think that a communication pipeline between the Guilds would have to be co-developed with the Guilds themselves, otherwise they're likely to just ignore it in favour of their own communications lines (which, as you said, are already relatively effective).

I don't want to see yet another Uru idea consigned to the scrap-heap with all the other ideas simply because of poor planning and foresight.

[Nek'rahm]

Well then it won't die

All we have to do is get the word out. First though we have to get the site completed in it's purpose. There are many things that CAN be done and many that SHOULD be done. However, I'm really hoping that if the site can come together in the way I planned it would, it will really help to organize people together in the Uru community.

Especially in a time where new people will be coming to Uru (hopefully), I'm hoping they can come to One Uru for information about joining the Guilds and helping to move the uru community forward.

Right now though, I'm curious. Would the GoMe be interested in hosting the Guild Newsletter on One Uru if we can get enough traffic through there? For instance, posting the site and the following links on all of the Guild Websites, plus getting it around on the MOUL forums?

I've been posting the link here and there on the Myst Movie website too so hopefully we'll get a little traffic from there.

What do you guys think though?

[Tweek]

I can see what you are aiming for, when I first heard about the guilds coming back I had toyed with an idea for having a guild.org domain name. Each guild would be given a subdomain (writers.guild.org) with forums which used openID for registering that allowed the various guilds forums requiring only a single account on one forum for access to all.

However I would like to echo previous statements about being a ton of forums already, there is a huge risk of the forum limping a long if moving at all, even age old community forums like DPWR, MC, DJC, UO has seen a significant drop in traffic and posts.

It's a double edged sword in my view, on the one hand we already have various sites that group this information etc into one place, and another site of such further fragments a community that could do with coming together some more. On the other hand people like diversity in things and another site goes to facilitate this.

Now all that said, some thoughts on if you plan to proceed with the site.

Invisionfree forums tends to have a feeling of it gets the job done without putting much effort into it (not even going to get into the adverts), if you are wanting the site to be used a lot and be "popular" then it needs to look as if some effort has been put into the site, this isn't just a design thing it is also reflected in the tools you use, I'd recommend finding a place to host yourself (either a friend or paid domain hosting).

In regards to design the background of the forums takes attention away from the area's you are wanting the visitors to focus on (i.e., the content), if you plan to keep the background as such then fading it (darkening or something similar) to make it step back from the content would be a wise idea

As for the amount of forum topics, it's better to start out with a small section and add to them as the need arises, otherwise if the forums sections are not used it looks like a dead site.