You know, this is an awful lot of fine sentiment, but I get the feeling that this isn't exactly the first time someone's stood up and said "I know! We can save the game with a community project!" and everyone got together and said "Yes!" and exactly ****-all happened. Unless something's actually done about it- and by that I mean the admins laying the smack down and deleting any campaign that isn't actively, and heavily, worked on, regardless of lame excuses and screaming by project leaders about how their baby is getting killed, exactly ****-all is about to happen again. And the way this forum's going, I don't see that happening. Everyone's gotten too comfortable doing nothing and then going on about how important it is, and the admins are no longer, ah, junta-like enough to make this **** happen (no offense:D ). Hell, most other forums I woulda gotten a month's ban for the David Copperfield thing- not that I'm recommending it now or ever, I'm just saying that I was surprised when nothing happened then, that Razor's never been properly taught to show respect, that the admins themselves are among the major spammers now. Anarchist that I am, I love what it's done for the forum, but amateur historian and psychologist that I am, I know dictatorships are the way to get people to do ****.
But whatever it is, it needs to be enforced. Turn HLP, as a Freespace modding forum like it used to be, into just that- think forced labor camp, and you'd have a project. Set deadline(even generous ones) and make everyone on staff work or get cut off from their HLP supply for a month (plus time, if they don't finish it by then), you'll get stuff done ahead of schedule. There's enough skill and more than enough free time to get a dozen campaigns going, it's just that everyone (me included) is bone idle and won't do **** until they feel they have to. Summer's coming up, and for me at least it's the last summer I might be able to do this ****. Now or never.
The first step, I believe, is to get rid of this God-damned language filter.