[Lorric]

Don't delete it. Even if for no other reason than to be able to show those who question that decision why. But it's not all bad anyway. The reading material threads for instance.

[Phantom Hoover]

That's true actually, there's nothing particularly wrong with GamDisc and it'd be a bit drastic to nuke the analogous film/TV/book threads.

[Phantom Hoover]

Do we have anyone with webdev experience who would be happy to volunteer their time to make a glossed-up brochure for FSO mods as a whole, anyway?

[The E]

Gamdisc had some of the best threads of the past couple years, I'd be very much against losing it.

[Blue Lion]

Do we have anyone with webdev experience who would be happy to volunteer their time to make a glossed-up brochure for FSO mods as a whole, anyway?

I currently have a job making webapps/websites for SSA but I'm still new and would like to see what's being used here as a base. I would not mind helping to build some functionality or design to a site.

[Phantom Hoover]

Gamdisc had some of the best threads of the past couple years, I'd be very much against losing it.

Nobody's proposing that we delete GamDisc, to be clear, what I'm saying is that there are similar good threads about media in GenDisc which are getting caught up in a quarantine for political ****posts.

[xenocartographer]

Do we have anyone with webdev experience who would be happy to volunteer their time to make a glossed-up brochure for FSO mods as a whole, anyway?

I currently have a job making webapps/websites for SSA but I'm still new and would like to see what's being used here as a base. I would not mind helping to build some functionality or design to a site.

I'm a terribly non-visual person, but if there's anything I can do on the technical side, I'd be glad to.

[Spoon]

uh dude if bubbles weren't a thing maybe all of every non-hosted mission and campaign ever posted about would not be smaller than blue planet??? just a thought~~~

Here's a thought~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BP is the most popular and inspires the most discussion because of its own merits. It takes the Freespace universe that people are heavily invested in, and adds a complex, compelling, well written story with multiple layers, that gives as much answers as it raises questions. This sparks discussion and speculation amongst the players, which creates forum activity.
In addition to the story, it also takes the freespace gameplay and makes it make sense in a consistent inuniverse way, and expands a lot of the military feeling in a natural and logical way.
It's ****ing catnip for Freespace players.

The simple truth is that no other project has accomplished the same things BP has in this regard.
Diaspora: Captures the BSG feel perfectly, but the campaign is a self-contained short story that doesn't inspire any debate. It is exactly what it is, what is there to talk about outside of telling the devs how neat the models, music and BSG atmosphere is?

JAD: Funny, witty, incredible polished and technically accomplished. Comedy and lightheartedness makes people laugh and smile, but it often doesn't invoke questions and serious forum discussions. And there are probably also a lot of player that will scoff at the notion of playing a campaign that isn't full of grim and dark and deep war despair. Gotta have big blocky grey capitalships in a post-capella setting or no go.

OldWoD: Another case of a self-contained story with few open ends to talk about. Aliens show up, you kill the flagship and win the war against aliens. Hurrah.
NuWoD: With the first episode release, the story hasn't really taken off yet, Dawn hangs around with Justice and Tempest and does mercenary things. There isn't too much to talk about here yet. I'm not that suprised there aren't 50 pages of discussion there. Of course it also has that 'oh so very icky anime influence' that seems to disgust the grimdark crowd so much. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

What you preceive as a 'bubble' is really just that easily explained. Posting in one forum doesn't prevent you from posting in another. There is not some kind of tribal war going on where you pick a side and then only ever be involved with that. Some campaigns and stories just invite more activity than others.

[666maslo666]

HLP needs an unified installer+updater+launcher, simple to use, kept up-to-date and with built-in advertising for mods. Think Steam, but for HLP content. It should handle both mods based on FS and standalone mods. This is the standard in this day and age, anything less means potential players will be scared off. Nobody but a small fraction of hardcore users is going to browse forums to find content to play. So it does not really matter how forum topics are organized.

[General Battuta]

That's basically the FSO installer, which is pretty good. Its biggest issue is that people don't understand how to launch it and have to be told to execute it as a Java thing.

[Phantom Hoover]

That's pretty silly, surely it can be bundled into a Windows binary?

[Nyctaeus]

HLP needs an unified installer+updater+launcher, simple to use, kept up-to-date and with built-in advertising for mods. Think Steam, but for HLP content. It should handle both mods based on FS and standalone mods. This is the standard in this day and age, anything less means potential players will be scared off. Nobody but a small fraction of hardcore users is going to browse forums to find content to play. So it does not really matter how forum topics are organized.

Think BattleNET!

Maybe attach it to some special SVN with access for only project heads and only to their folders? No more redownloading gigs of files just to have new, patched version? I used to release pathes to SG as separate modfolders, but this sucked. Anyway probably less, than rereleases of whole mods like BP used to do.

[mjn.mixael]

That's basically the FSO installer, which is pretty good. Its biggest issue is that people don't understand how to launch it and have to be told to execute it as a Java thing.

Ugh.. I have always hated that the installer was a Java thing. From the get-go, it's already not an easy-to-run program like any other installer I download off the internet. And it has that tainted Java name to it, accurate or not. I know there's a difference between the various kinds and uses of Java.. but I'm a tech nerd. Not everyone knows it... Java, you say? Isn't that not safe?

*google's "Is Java Safe"*

First result: Using Java is an unnecessary security risk.... blahblah the rest of the paragraph doesn't matter, the damage is done.

[xenocartographer]

[BP is awesome and mystical and people like to talk about it]

I wonder if there's a marketing opportunity here. BP would make an excellent ARG, and those have been shown effective at generating public interest. Think GRANITE HUNTER, but public and designed to not require FS-specific knowledge.

Frankly, this is where I thought you were going to go with that post, Spoon.

[Spoon]

Except for the fact that BP requires a lot of Freespace knowledge.

[General Battuta]

Yeah, BP is pretty heavily invested in the canon. Although the Morrigan stories show it can be made, uh, narratively standalone: even so I don't think a deep fictional dive is necessarily gonna attract anyone.

Unless it's as awesome as motherhorseeyes!

[xenocartographer]

Except for the fact that BP requires a lot of Freespace knowledge.

Does it, though? Certainly there are a lot of FS terms that are assumed knowledge (Shivans, ETAK, GTVA, ship classes...), but ARGs tend to throw around clearly-significant-but-undefined terms for people to figure out. A BP ARG could therefore operate as an introduction to FS in general.

I also once used BP-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off as a setting for a Mafia game, and even in that context people did a pretty good job of figuring out what was going on.

[Colonol Dekker]

I'm (completely impartially) against gendisc being removed,  but I would endorse a clean slate policy aside from a few key long running posts.

[The E]

No, just deleting or locking all the current threads and starting anew will not help, because it's not the individual threads that are the problem, but the people in them (and I will include myself in there).

Off the top of my head, GD has exactly three good threads: WHIYL, Book Club and Music. That's it. Everything else, all the political bull****, should go.

[Colonol Dekker]

Well if it's the people therein, how do we prevent simular "outbreaks once there's not a place to vent?