Community Q&A

[Astrum]

Alright, since we've had such a drastic change in the community recently I'd like to put up a thread for everyone to ask serious questions about the community. They can be anything from where what's the new website going to be like to where we're going. I don't want you guys worrying yourself into a panic thinking SG is going under especially since we're about to transition to a brand new website. So ask your questions and we shall respond. I'll update this post with all questions and answers for convenience. Please read before asking!

 

-Astrum

 

 

• What's the new site going to be like and where are we going?
  

The new website will be similar to this one. We are moving to vBulletin CMS 4.0, so our news page will actually be well formatted and useful. I know most of you don't view the front page but hopefully that will change. The new site will be much more flexible in the fact that our web page, for the most part, will be vBulletin.

 

Having said that our initial roll out will not be significantly different from the current website. Due to personal time constraints I'm not going to be able to get everything done. The theme will be similar to our current one. Slightly different, but not much really. Same basic color scheme and layout and still fairly blocky. At some point I'd like to change that up a bit, but we'll see. I'm working on a map management plugin for the new website which will allow players to submit maps to be added to servers, and AOs and upload maps directly. I'm also working on a category system which is... Well I'll give you details in a later question. We'll also eventually merge SourceBans into vBulletin. A lot of this stuff is on the back end so you guys won't notice it, but it's good =). I will eventually change the forum sections so it's not 30 pages long. I'd like to change it so that we almost never have to add a new forum again.

 

Any more specific questions about the new website?

• Something fullmetal asked: Strikes removed yes or no. Pshh, obviously no.
  

Strikes for admins or players? I doubt it. I thought we already had an amnesty policy in place, if not I would be up for one except in the most greivous of cases.

• How are you making the categories for the thread more user friendly?
  

We'll be compacting the forums and using a suped up version of prefixes (that will look nice) to make things manageable. For instance all of the gaming sections can be compacted into one single forum. Right now Minecraft is going into Off Topic because it doesn't have a forum. Worms? Where does that go? The problem is we can't just create more forums for edge cases. The basic idea behind my categories system will be to alleviate this problem so we can easily add a new category rather than a new forum. The current idea for the gaming section is to have an icon of the system (Xbox 360 logo, PS3 logo, Windows logo, etc...) followed by the genre, RTS, RPG, FPS, Adventure, Preview, Review, Other, whatever is needed really. When a user creates a thread they'll be able to select what platform and what genre this goes under. This can easily be extended to some of our other forums as well. I haven't locked down exactly how this will work yet, so suggestions are welcome.

• How can the player-base help support this transition??
  

What Ngo said. Don't panic.

• Also will we be getting more than 2 EC's, they got lives also
  

If someone is willing and capable.

• Can we PLEASE get a porn section? :

With our new web server we could host a porn site ;).

• Can we make a trolling is ok rule? I luv u long time.
  

http://www.4chan.org/

• Will we be expanding to new games that aren't CS:S or G-Mod?
  

We've tried this so many times, and we really want to. As awesome as CS:S is, we need to spread out. We've flirted with the idea before with Insurgency, TF2, etc... It just never takes hold. What we really need to do is expand to one game and stick with it, through thick and thin. We absolutely need community support if we're going to expand into other games.

• Minecraft. You should read the SA section more often.
  

When I get some time I will be setting up a Minecraft server. However, since this is an alpha adminstering it will be difficult and griefing will be rampant. Sorry.

• What happened to PB?
  

No idea,I don't keep track of it. Someone else might be able to answer you though.

• Why isn't there a bigger concern over the huge drop in player count, (abnormally low even for school)
  

There is concern, but there's not a ton we can do about it. If people decide to leave because of time constraints or they found something that fit their style better, then we can't really stop them. C'est la vie.

• Why is it this community cant hold a napalm or reg cs server down?
  

Napalm was rockin' it up in the early days. Perhaps people just got tired of it and now the only people who play on napalm servers already have their favorite server picked out. As far as reg CS I have no idea. Our community has always been about the quirky mods, which concerns me since we're trying to expand into other games, many of which are very limited in modding potential. A dark day in gaming indeed.

• Why am i not CA yet!
  

The same reason I'm not in Vegas throwing up on strippers yet.

• Black Ops server?
  

Doubtful. I'd rather go into the new Medal of Honor if anything simply because the Call of Duty franchise has jaded me so. However, it's really up to the community to decide. Perhaps we will have a poll.

• Is there a way to bring back the SG newspaper, which could be a weekly round up of major events, announcements, upcoming things, birthday wishes, and reviews of games, mods, and a submitted question section to be answered by the BD's and Garf?
  

Definitely possible with the new website. In fact it would be much easier than on our current website since we won't have to write the HTML by hand.

• Or perhaps a podcast with the big wigs at SG, with "Support the mother fucking community" as the tag line for each episode.
  

That would be rather difficult to do consider the higher-ups are spread across the world. However, I might be up for doing some podcasts. You guys would actually get to see me then :O.

• On a separate thought, may we please have a pub server again now that Spiffy has taken it upon himself to repopulate the reg server? If the script from before is still around it could let those reg players who want to jokingly scrim do so on SG servers.
  

We'll have to look at the resource usage on our dedicated servers before we do that. Honestly though, how much will it be used? Opening up a server only to have it sit empty for weeks kills me.

• Can we get a non-24/7-balloon server? Warparth preferably? Please don't say "it failed". No shit it failed, Sherlock, how would 24/7 razor work out? Or 24/7 mg_smash?
  

I'm up for it if you guys will keep it populated. Although personally I think we missed out on that train.

• Seeing as the DarkRP server will finally be taken down, when can we expect the new game mod?
  

Suggestions?

• Are you guys going to do a MOH server?
  

Maybe, if you guys are willing to play on it and we have enough people. Realistically given time zone differences and personal lives we'll need about 100 people to have it and play it non-stop for it to succeed. A dozen people won't make a server popular.

• When can we preview this test site I remember you telling us about? Test site as in the site on vb4
  

When it's done. Although you're always welcome to help if you want, bor3d.

• with the addition of vb4 can we get a fyad/oify/b/ kinda section with no rules
  

http://www.4chan.org/

http://www.tribalwar.com/

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[Chaos]

What's the new site going to be like and where are we going?

 

edit: why poop?

[Movement]

Something fullmetal asked: Strikes removed yes or no. Pshh, obviously no.

 

Back on topic: How are you making the categories for the thread more user friendly?

 

Edit to daze: I pressed post reply a bit to quickly.

[jamison.webster]

How can the player-base help support this transition??

[Daze]

Something fullmetal asked: Strikes removed yes or no. Pshh obviously no.

 

He did say serious questions..

[Metal]

Something fullmetal asked: Strikes removed yes or no. Pshh obviously no.

 

Or a process in where we under go training and re-evaluation.

Also will we be getting more than 2 EC's, they got lives also

[Neji]

Can we PLEASE get a porn section? :