Blog #18 - The Current Changes at LucasForums

Sith Holocron

Entry posted by Sith Holocron ·

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These thoughts are purely my own and do not reflect the views or opinions of DeadlyStream.com

 

Some random thoughts about the current changes over at LucasForums - as I don't want to clutter up a Status Update:

 

I suppose my main issue with the current changes over at LucasForums - meaning as of right now - is I'm unsure why each of the changes were actually made.

 

Items were archived and whole threads were moved over to a new site called StarwarsGamer. If the sole purpose for all the changes is to open your site to a wide range of new game enthusiasts, why are you limiting yourself to a niche group like Star Wars games? There's only one brand new AAA Star Wars game being released this year (AFAIK) so moving everything to one area seems problematic at best. To put a finer point on it, where do you think all of these gamers are going to be coming from? The new movie that doesn't have anything to with the new or old games?

 

What effort has there been to actually find where the older games are sold to drive them to your site?

 

There's no reasons clearly listed as to why each of the moved threads were moved from one place to another - and why some threads have remained where they were. There doesn't seem to an overall theme to these changes. Perhaps there's a grand vision at work but at the moment it seems a little bit like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

 

Who's in charge now over at LF? As a long timer user of the traditional LF - since 03-04-2006 - I see some familiar names promoting changes over there but I'm see a quite vocal minority of folks that I never ever heard of 6 months ago. Does the person in charge actually have a plan of how the site will look and operate in the end or is new each change being done to test out a theory? I'm not seeing the overall picture of what's going on over there.

 

Over here at Deadly Stream, we have tended to promote vocal and knowledegable folks from within the community that have actually been around for a while. I don't know anything about your new hires which makes feel a bit leery. Other than complaining about the LF site's traffic, what have these relatively new folks brought to the community?

 

I don't hate LucasForums. How could I be - I've been there almost 10 years. I'm just genuinely worried for it.


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InSidious

The changes are in large part happening because for the last 6 years or so, there has ( a ) been a sharp decline of use of individual sections of LF, and ( b ) a fairly regular crop of threads complaining that LF is dying. One of the reasons for this sense of emptiness has been the sheer number of forums for different games, each of which has a general forum, a modding forum, a debate forum, etc., each with perhaps only 2-3 members using them (or slightly more, in the case of Ahto, but still not a huge number).

 

It was largely redundant, and with the role of forums like LF as places for specific games has largely died off in favour of platforms like reddit, and with the death of LA, the time was ripe to close down redundant sections and concentrate the remaining member base in a place where they can and hopefully will actually interact with one another.

 

When it comes to nothing being explained, the explanation is right there on page one of this thread - a thread you yourself have posted in. This has been floated before as an idea a couple of times, and that thread dates to well before this process began giving an outline of what was planned. To be frank, it seems to me that if you had objections that was the time to make them known, not now that the process has already been started.

 

If you don't know who Lynk is, he's been around for long enough at LF, and has been fairly active in Ahto since at least 2010. I don't know how you can have missed him, really. From what I recall he was involved in introducing badges and setting up the TOR subsite.

 

I'm sorry, I don't get the issue here.

 

Oh, and speaking as another person who arrived on LF in the mid 2000s, we really aren't long-term users. There are people there who have been members since 1999. We're latecomers to the party by a long chalk, IMO.

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