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What should HLP 2021 be?

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karajorma:
So the last time the admins, moderators and project heads had any serious conversation about HLP's future appears to have been nearly four years ago. It seems like we're more than overdue for a conversation about it. And this time, in light of the changes that have happened since then and the drama of the last month, I'd rather we made it public.


In the last couple of years we've seen more of HLP's action move from the boards to the discord. That does partly raise the question of what is this board for, and how can we make it better? As we move towards 2021 and away from this horrible year, I want to know what people expect HLP to become and how willing they are to help achieve it. I have some ideas and I'll be looking over the previous threads for ideas on what can be done and we'll see how much can feasibly be implemented.

Some things that are planned include


* Reevaluating the way HLP is run. We already have a split between community and technical admins. I'd like to see this boundary increased so that those admins who are there to deal with the technical running of the site do that, while the rest of us concentrate on working with the community to make this place better
* Hiring more people to deal with the technical issues and community outreach that we require
* Updating the rules of the forum so that they are clearer and less prone to being gamed
* Talking to the individual projects heads to find out what they need from us
* Working on HLP's presence away from the boards. We have a Twitter, Facebook and Youtube channel. How are they used? How can we use them better?
* Looking at the main website. How can we change that into something that will attract new people?
Any ideas will be gratefully accepted but can people please make an effort not to bog the thread down in discussion over a single point. That has often been a problem in the past. And the whole point of this thread is to avoid making the same mistakes.

Strygon:
I'd like to offer a few suggestions based on the list you wrote about looking at HLP as a whole.

- Social Media Aspect: I've been almost completely unaware of the existence of the HLP Twitter/Facebook/Youtube, and despite being one of the more active members here, I was actually very surprised to find all three actually existed.
The core problem is that neither of the three accounts really try to make people aware that it exists. They just post news and that's it. Social Media is a ruthless desert where everyone fights for attention, so it'd help to make their presence a bit more "aggressive". Perhaps by generously using appropriate space related hashtags on Twitter can already help improve its presence (lord knows it helped me with my art account, for how little I used it).

- Main Website: The question "What are the boards even good for?" is one I see occasionally tossed around. So far their main point is to act as a bulletin board for mods, how to install them, etc. But it doesn't have to be that. Something to engage the forum population, get them interested, organise friendly modding competition to inspire fresh modders, bring back the monthly HLP Newsletter. Stuff like that.

I'd write more but I also need to work towards my studies a bit. Expect more later.

MatthTheGeek:
- Delete PolDisc. Won't expand here, see relevant thread.


- On the point of the forums' usage: I agree that most of the daily activity has moved away from the boards and towards discord. The forums' main role, as far as I can tell, is as a place for announcements, releases and status updates. There are a lot of people that are very active on discord (and on modding-related stuff, not just general discussion) and haven't posted on the forums in years.
I don't think this is necessarily a problem, but more of a natural movement (forums in general are a very 2001 internet phenomenon), so the way I see it, any evolution of the forums should try to accompany this trend rather than desperately try to fight against it.


- On a similar subject, I think it would be wise to add links to the forums and the discord (and possibly social media as well) directly on Knossos. Announcement feeds on a Knossos "main page" would also be nice to have.
The reason is that, last time people checked the download numbers for FSNebula, turns out that there's a LOT more downloads than forum or even discord activity would suggest. More than ever, knossos seems to be the forefront of player activity, and this should be leveraged.

Grizzly:
Everything I wanted to say was said better by Math

The rules as they are right now are pretty solid. I think the main issue with people trying to game them is that those people were admins and had an eagerness to game them in their favour.

I like how we looked at the frontpage and it was changed into something that was less attracitve then we had before :P
I'll try to make a mock up later.

With Twitter and Facebook it's probably a decent idea to get into contact with games journalists and make them retweet your stuff. I remember when Dominic Tarason made a FS2 post on Rock Paper Shotgun and I'm quite sure that did a lot of work. There's various people out there who are interested in mods.

Also, I will have to point out that if you google "Freespace Open" you end up on the FSOInstaller website, and that's just bad.

karajorma:
I'd really like to see that. The goal with the mainpage was to make it into something that attracted people to the game. I don't think this one does that even if it tries harder than the last one (which honestly was a mess).

I used the Team Fortress website as an example of what I'd like to see. Feel free to start a new thread about the mainpage and what it should look like if you want to discuss it. 

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