I think there are too many A&A related websites and forums. We need to combine them all into A&A.org
@Imperious:
The best thing for somebody like you is to go on OTHER AA sites and flog our site. That would be BBG, HGD, even Amazon reviews for AA games you may add a link in the review.
Thats fine if we want to promote something we have done but if its simply to troll for membership we could find ourselves alienated from the other communities fairly quickly, some loyalties run deep. But if we have created some interesting contest, game mechanic or rule set we can peddle that on other forums it should be fine.
Have some flashy downloadable 81/2" X 11" A&A.org posters designed so members can download them, print the on a standard printer to put up at local LGS’s, colleges and etc. It should explain the services we offer such as rules clarifications, scenarios, find players and etc.
Have some contests and competitions designed as ice breakers for new and old members a like. If we can’t afford prizes then a cool banner for the winning members profile would do.
Find a niche. Find something that nobody else is doing and harness it and make it ours. On the Underground we have a over the top painting and modeling section run by a couple of outstanding moderators. There are 15-20 projects posted per week and lots of advice and pointers for those modeling in 15mm.
Loosen up on the Signature ban and allow people to create identities here on the forum. I am not privy as to why the ban was imposed but I think its time to revisit it.
I own the Trinity card database and if we have good reference content we wish to put on the site that can be done. The article can be linked back to the forum.
The main page for the site should have a larger block dedicated to the forum and what it offers and why people would benefit from joining our community.
@Imperious:
We had a lot of NON-gamers (Falk, et el) on here stirring up trouble and not producing a dang thing for the community (AFAIK, they were worse than the spammers.)
OMG F_alk was one of the worst! what a snot head.
Also: Sexual Harassment Panda, Agent Smith and I remember that Mary (whatever was her last name) was big trouble too.
Oh yea, I didn’t mean my list to be all inclusive! Hell, I can think of a character so nefarious, so devious, so power mad that I cannot even type his name in this forum (and no, I am not thinking of a guy with the letter “m” as the first letter in his name.)
Thanks for the good input FM, if the power trolls cut the chatter in this thread, we’ll be on to something.
Loosening up the signature ban (or atleast having rules for a signature standard) is a good suggestion, but we’re not likely to see that kind of expression allowed here.
Unfortunately, the most online ever is not a real number. It counts crawlers like Google and Yahoo.
Most Online Today: 123. Most Online Ever: 375 (June 26, 2007, 03:57:21 pm)
Today, I painfully noticed the listed statistic above.
Now… 5 years ago, 2007, I don’t know if the forum was saturated with far more spam accounts active/online, but even if that’s the case, our trend is all wrong.
The larger this community is, the stronger and better it becomes, there are more players to play against, higher standards of player calibre, more community activity, more flexibility in finding other players in your area, and more political “buy in” power with the game developers and so on.
So the question is… how do we reverse the trend? What idea’s are out there? More importantly who wants to join me in the cause to break our 2007 record? Or who can I join?
I’ve got some basic theories we could try, to draw more users to the site… but before I begin, who else is willing to jump in the trenches on the team?
Signatures will never come back. They make threads impossible to read. The most important thing to a forum is the ability to read a thread quickly and easily. Signatures break up that natural flow.
Thanks for the good input FM, if the power trolls cut the chatter in this thread, we’ll be on to something.
Loosening up the signature ban (or atleast having rules for a signature standard) is a good suggestion, but we’re not likely to see that kind of expression allowed here.
They make threads impossible to read.
I don’t mean to put you on the spot Dave but, how so? Is it a bandwidth issue? A page load issue? Size issue? They can all be overcome fairly easily.
It’s basic usability. A signature appears between responses and has nothing to do with the conversation at hand. On the extreme, you have large animated images between chunks of good content. I don’t want to see that crap, I don’t want to see repeated links to your blog. I want to read the discussion. I hate this forum software as it is and I refuse to make it event less usable.
Look at all the major sites and you’ll not see signatures in any commenting system. The only systems that have signatures between comments are the arcane home-grow forums, of which this is one.
What is it about signatures that people want that cannot be achieved with an avatar and the text snippet below the avatar? I’m not against customization, I’m against breaking the flow of conversation.
@Field:
They make threads impossible to read.
I don’t mean to put you on the spot Dave but, how so? Is it a bandwidth issue? A page load issue? Size issue? They can all be overcome fairly easily.
Totally agree, but also because spam accounts have been known to use the signature to convey porno and various nefarious websites. This can never be allowed to occur again.
Their is room for short messages under your avatar to use, or perhaps your avatar could convey what signatures used to do.
I think there are too many A&A related websites and forums. We need to combine them all into A&A.org
This sounds wise.
@Cow:
I think there are too many A&A related websites and forums. We need to combine them all into A&A.org
This sounds wise.
It won’t work. Every forum has its own flavor and identity. Each forum can potentially create many different kinds of content on their own platforms. If you put them all together you will loose the overall creativity. Forum owners loose control of their own vision and it becomes watered down. If we come here we cannot have signatures, if you go to the Underground we are a support forum and WotC Bashing isn’t allowed, if we go to the Forumini you play by their rules and so on.
A&A.org needs to reinvent itself and its going to take some thinking outside the box to get us there.
How about replacing the forum colors with game appropriate ones then. :P Oh wait, that’s INSIDE THE BOX (pun intended!) thinking. lol
@Field:
@Cow:
I think there are too many A&A related websites and forums. � We need to combine them all into A&A.org
This sounds wise.
It won’t work. Every forum has its own flavor and identity. Each forum can potentially create many different kinds of content on their own platforms. If you put them all together you will loose the overall creativity. Forum owners loose control of their own vision and it becomes watered down. If we come here we cannot have signatures, if you go to the Underground we are a support forum and WotC Bashing isn’t allowed, if we go to the Forumini you play by their rules and so on.
A&A.org needs to reinvent itself and its going to take some thinking outside the box to get us there.
No WOTC bashing there? Is that what you want here? If not, then we’re on the same page. If so, you don’t think it’s fair to criticize a company for creating so many board mistakes when asking for my money? All the WOTC bashers are still buying its products. I wasn’t sure the inference of that comment. Just wanted to give you the opportunity to clarify.
No there is no WotC bashing on the Underground, we don’t whine about stuff, we fix it! No, I don’t want to merge forums. My point was you can’t consolidate all the forums together successfully without splintering the groups and you just verified it by your statement. Frankly if A&A.org is struggling why should successful venues move here? So lets forget consolidating forums together and find another more creative homegrown solution.
Everybody complains about signatures but nobody has an explanation why they are a good feature. I, personally, try to stay away from forums with signatures because it burns my eyes to have to read that crap between posts. Create a forum profile to advertise your cool minis repaints or whatever. I don’t need to see them every time you say something.
We struggle with the same problems that many forums do or have at some point. Not because we’re special but because forums are intrinsically broken at this time in internet history. They are archaic, out-dated, and have not advanced since 1999 (that’s 13 years) but there is nothing else.
I both agree and disagree with the statement about forums and identities.
Agree: different games in the same continent, different contents with the same game. To me, that makes a lot of sense. Also a very small group of folks in a smaller region sorta makes sense too, although email sometimes does good enough for that.
Disagree: does there really need to be 2 North American based A&A forums dedicated to the board game? No. I might agree that the board game forums and the minis forums could live independently. But why are there 2-3 major minis forums for a game that may or may not continue? I don’t really buy the flavor and mission of the forums thing. You can create a sub community of players within an existing board. The true problem is this moderation thing. The community should be the moderator, not individuals. Look at StackOverflow, they have a vibrant community that works and there are it is “moderated” by the community.
Forums are broken. I don’t have a quick fix.
In regards to signature lines I agree with David 100%. I don’t want to have threads broken up by repeats of a signature line. If one must do this one can copy and paste something after every post and endure the negativity that would be forthcoming from the rest either expressed or internalized.
Background colours specific to each flavour of the game for each sub-forum would be kind of cool touch.
I have seen signature lines work (Larry’s site for one) but then, it’s differentiated. The problem here (reading wise) wasn’t the signatures, it was the format of the page. If you want my unqualified opinion.
Do I want them back? I dunno. We got rid of some of the more ludicrous individuals finally, so the reason of getting their vulgarity out of signature lines does not exist anymore. Do I think we should have them back? Nah. To be honest, we survive without them.
Karma was just abused ROYALLY.
As for fixing the site to draw more users, I’d say bring the TripleA folks over for your more users but more importantly FIX THE FRAGGIN TRIPLEA GAME with all the glitches, memory leaks and incorrect rules! Sorry, personal rant there. I’m boycotting the program again until they fix it - sick of getting 2 or 3 game turns in and having it crash. Better to go back to Play by USPS!
I’ve heard that lots of people try to create new accounts, and that they are deleted for being suspected of “spam” or “bots”.
I’ve noticed lots of people complaining that they can’t seem to make accounts here. And that is only the ones who able to find a way to complain. I would think that 99% of people who’s first account is deleted, just don’t come back at all.
Perhaps using better captchas and giving players the benefit of the doubt by allowing all new accounts, would help increase the user base?
(i also agree about signatures, I don’t like them most of the time)
But, as WOTC and Hasbro are finding out, boardgames are dying out for the replacements demanded by this newer generation.Â
I agree that electronic games have lots of attraction for some poeple, but I wouldn’t go as far as saying that board games are dying out; if that were the case, BoardGameGeek would be a dying website instead of the highly active one it is. When hex-and-counter games became all the rage a few decades ago, hobbyists similarly predicted that miniatures-based wargaming would soon die. Instead, it became one gaming niche among many – a smaller one than in the days where miniatures games had a monopoly, but still an active hobby with its devotees and with companies catering to it…including WotC, when it launched A&A Miniatures just a few years ago. New forms of gaming aren’t necessarily replacements for older types; I think of them more as supplements and alternates that cater to different tastes.
Not because we’re special but because forums are intrinsically broken at this time in internet history. They are archaic, out-dated, and have not advanced since 1999 (that’s 13 years) but there is nothing else. Forums are broken. I don’t have a quick fix.
Could you expand on this a bit by explaining in what way they’re broken and outdated? I don’t see how those two adjectives apply to our forums here, which I find highly valuable.
Is this still happening? Right now I’m only deleting accounts that never login and ones that have never posted within the past 90 days.
All they have to do is post once to introduce themselves and all is good.
I’ve heard that lots of people try to create new accounts, and that they are deleted for being suspected of “spam” or “bots”.
I’ve noticed lots of people complaining that they can’t seem to make accounts here. And that is only the ones who able to find a way to complain. I would think that 99% of people who’s first account is deleted, just don’t come back at all.
Perhaps using better captchas and giving players the benefit of the doubt by allowing all new accounts, would help increase the user base?
(i also agree about signatures, I don’t like them most of the time)
