My Board

i dont like the idea of the "debate" fourm... all the ones in the past and the ones i view every other day get way out of control...

but you have a person put on the job - like who checks it every now and then and can just take action f it ges out of control.

[b][i][color=\"gray\"][font=\"tahoma\"]I think it's a good idea provided it is watched very diligently, otherwise it will end up the same way as TCN's "Rant" forum was, just an area to abuse. Just lay down some strict rules at the start of it, and say that there will be no tolerance for breaking them.[/b][/i][/color][/font]

Hey - TCN's rant forum was fun. I made a topic in there about a certain Ozzy and it had about 20 pages in less than 24 hours /biggrin.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':D\' />

did any of you read the description on The Firing Range when I originally made that section ... hmmmmm? /blum.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':P\' />

The Firing Range
Feel the need to rant or have a debate? Step in here but beware, there are rules to follow. Please read the pinned "Read Before Posting" Guidelines inside.

Hey everyone, after looking over the forum and I of course noticed a massive decline in activity here. My question is what is lacking, are there things that need to be done that others have not been able to do as of yet to regain the traffic once had here? I see a lack of activity and added to that, no means of motivation toward activity increasing projects, what once was called 'the list'. Anyways i guess what's going through my mind at this point is it's time to hang up the account and say good bye to this place as it begins to grow slower and dustier by the day. It's not to be in anyway negative to any of the members here, as i find it unfortunate for this place to have become so quiet because i have found it to be a good resource for many different categories of learning, and a good place to submit things that i have learned and would like to share. also, every time i come here be it 3 months apart or daily for a while, i am disappointed to find that i havent really missed anything because nothing's really going on here. I would say this message is more a goodbye to the forum then anything. I have those few on messenger who ive come to know over the years here but i find that as we all have said less and less here, that level of social engagement is reflected on messenger as well which is of course fine, and not stated to induce a greater level of communication but simply to show that this place has in the past been a great way to get together and share some common and some uncommon knowledge and that the experience of teaching and learning as a community here will be missed, though it's not something that has happened all at once, it all died down in my eyes here. The phoenix i remember when it was created for killanet and now i see just how well it suits this place. I think this place is a great resource and that it will continue to be for a while until the technologies evolve into an entirely new set of applications and protocols. Thanks for all the good times.

Sean

I'm sorry to see you leave, Rift - I think that as many of our staff and members grew and got jobs or became immersed in school priorities changed. While I am a bit saddened that the community has become slow, we have been developing a new site which is growing in popularity but at this time doesn't have the banter that went on here. We are considering moving the forum over and integrating it with that project, but that is still in consideration as we consider all of our options. Time will tell.

Sorry to see you go, sean. I wish the community hadn't gotten so slow, but I guess that's what happens when everyone goes off to school, gets a career, etc... /cry.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':(\' />

havent talked to any of you in a while... rift is right, its too bad most people had to move on to other things. but i know killanet will find its place on the internet and become more popular than ever... it'll probably just be in a completely different direction. i dont know the next time ill be on this board but i hope to see a lot of new things the next time i am.

peace

I've been reflecting on what Rift had to say up there ^^^ and the only conclusion I can come to isn't very definitive. I freely admit that Village Gamer is now my primary focus, and while I do still put some of the international gaming news on KillaNet, we don't have the same focus that we used to. That said, it takes a community to build a community, so I put this out to all of you - are you willing to help restart this community, or are we going to consider integrating it fully into Village Gamer and take on VG's primarily Canadian focus?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer:

I really do miss the activity we had on KillaNet /smile.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':)\' /> We were all so close knit together but since we were all young (well besides our ancient tami haha) we all sort of grew up and got jobs, went to school.... I'm willing to rebuild the community, but will this stretch you thin, Tami? I think you've got quite a plate full on VillageGamer already.... I wouldn't want to see you get burned out.

I will also admit my focus has shifted from Killanet to my own education and learning. One thing I really miss is a place to post my artwork and get comments on it. I've tried to post my artwork on here recently and I only get maybe 1 or 2 comments if any but back when KillaNet was a thriving community, I would get a few page fulls of comments about my artwork. There's always deviantART, but no one comments there unless you make anime lol

Honestly my time is very constrained. Between work and school I have a lot of deadlines I have to meet before I can even think of opening up a different page on the internet other than my school's website. But if we were to rebuild the community I would make an effort to post as often as possible...... I can't let my post count get lower than anyone elses than Tami's on here /blum.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':P\' />

I think diverting attention away from VillageGamer to bring KillaNet back to where it was would be a mistake. At this point I would say keep VG going and get it to a more self sustaining point where it is not just us (Tami) adding content. What we do with KN until then could be one of three things: let it die completely, keep it open but let it stay stale, or bring it more in line with the VG mission.

If we bring KN into VG it would always be possible to split it off again if/when traffic picks up, but I do not want to sacrifice any of the effort put into making VG better to get KN going. Turning KN into the forums for VG or something of the sort would be my choice; but leave a section or two that aren't related to Canadian gaming. Maybe one that is worldwide gaming and one for things that are not related to gaming. They do not have to be big but just there.

I'd agree with Jim - make it forums for VG but have a bit for wider scope.

Would suggest an upgrade to version 3 during the move and obviously a new skin would be needed /unsure.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':unsure:\' />

Having the current posts archived would be nice, lots there for both sentimental and reference value.

I'd be around to help out with some of the forum stuff if needed.

YEP!

It's obvious that the KN community has died out. Just like Josh said, all the staff and users were in the same age groups and moved on to other schooling/degrees and what not. Just as I would hate to see KN die, I would hate to see all our efforts in VG that's becoming more and more popular get put aside for something that is pretty much outdated news and technology.



My best suggestions are these:

Move the relevant content of this forum over to the VG forum, and redirect traffic from here to there.

Do our best to get up the new skin of VG that we have sitting there - unless we just don't want that now and need something a little different. With that said - incorporate the new skin to the new forum.(just as Scott said)

Start focusing in on the gaming stuff more closely - change Digital Storm Lan to Village Gamer's Lan ... or something or other. Granted people know DSL, I think VG needs to be ... JUST VG - no blogs, no nothing other than what it is.

Hosting obviously needs to stick around, but I think this is the only thing that needs to stick. The rest can go honestly. It's costing money and not being used.

Put efforts into building scripts that strip release dates from the sites we get them from to have them pretty much come up in VG automatticly or once a week (cron job to run the script?).

I have more but no time right now. Will talk more later!

One of the barriers to the new ipb is all of our custom coded areas - they don't upgrade well, as Josh already found out. I've taken note of all of the suggestions, and will be pondering for a few days - it's not like there is a real rush, but things do need to keep moving forward.