07-31-2021, 10:04 PM
Now that I have the time, I read through the thread I will admit... Yeah, we sorta ignored the forums in the last few years even though we could do more with it, but I also wanna raise a counterpoint, just to spark some discussion.
We can probably revive the forums if we want, true, we can potentially even shift some of our focus here. But... should we?
Like yeah, we could hold the events here instead of Discord or Itch, but we lose more by doing so than we gain. For example, MFGG doesn't exactly have the infrastructure to hold a game jam at the moment. There isn't a proper countdown, there is no way to rate games and set up a rating period, there's no way to automatically list the winning games, and so on. If we decide to use the main site and the forums to host the jams we will be making things less convenient for everyone. Another example would be the Secret Santa. Sure, we can host it here, but considering that far fewer people visit the forums it wouldn't be too weird to assume that far fewer people would join and keep track of it too.
A solution to the latter would be to just make people visit the forums, but can we really force the people to do that? Like even at MFGG's peak, IRC and Skype were super active, as much as the forums, and now Discord is more popular than both ever were, and the forums are kind of a dying platform.
And looking at other posts in this thread, people who seem to want the forums back are people who are nostalgic for it. But we can't really be stuck in the past forever, can we? In an online community, old members constantly leave, and new ones replace those who are gone. If you don't have people joining to replace those who go though... that's when a community truly dies. By moving our focus to Discord and being up with the times we are just trying to stay alive essentially.
I know genuine arguments for forums can be made too, Vinny made some excellent ones I agree with, and I also have a lot of nostalgia for here too. I'm just being a hater now to justify ignoring the forums all this time to give a different perspective.
Either way though, the forums won't go anywhere anytime soon. As long as they have a reason to exist, they will, and for me, the legacy of it alone is a good reason to keep it around. It might not be our main focus anymore, but it's still one of MFGG's 3 main pillars. (Main Site, Forums, and Discord. Sorry wiki!)
And as for MFGG 3.0, yeah as Nova said we will be combining it with the main site, which I'm expecting to be HUGELY beneficial for both. It won't be 100% the same as before but I'll make sure that not only it will stay true enough to its original self, but will also have more of a purpose to itself than just being a backup for Discord and a nostalgia hub for the oldbies. We will probably share more on that more once we make more progress.
We can probably revive the forums if we want, true, we can potentially even shift some of our focus here. But... should we?
Like yeah, we could hold the events here instead of Discord or Itch, but we lose more by doing so than we gain. For example, MFGG doesn't exactly have the infrastructure to hold a game jam at the moment. There isn't a proper countdown, there is no way to rate games and set up a rating period, there's no way to automatically list the winning games, and so on. If we decide to use the main site and the forums to host the jams we will be making things less convenient for everyone. Another example would be the Secret Santa. Sure, we can host it here, but considering that far fewer people visit the forums it wouldn't be too weird to assume that far fewer people would join and keep track of it too.
A solution to the latter would be to just make people visit the forums, but can we really force the people to do that? Like even at MFGG's peak, IRC and Skype were super active, as much as the forums, and now Discord is more popular than both ever were, and the forums are kind of a dying platform.
And looking at other posts in this thread, people who seem to want the forums back are people who are nostalgic for it. But we can't really be stuck in the past forever, can we? In an online community, old members constantly leave, and new ones replace those who are gone. If you don't have people joining to replace those who go though... that's when a community truly dies. By moving our focus to Discord and being up with the times we are just trying to stay alive essentially.
I know genuine arguments for forums can be made too, Vinny made some excellent ones I agree with, and I also have a lot of nostalgia for here too. I'm just being a hater now to justify ignoring the forums all this time to give a different perspective.
Either way though, the forums won't go anywhere anytime soon. As long as they have a reason to exist, they will, and for me, the legacy of it alone is a good reason to keep it around. It might not be our main focus anymore, but it's still one of MFGG's 3 main pillars. (Main Site, Forums, and Discord. Sorry wiki!)
And as for MFGG 3.0, yeah as Nova said we will be combining it with the main site, which I'm expecting to be HUGELY beneficial for both. It won't be 100% the same as before but I'll make sure that not only it will stay true enough to its original self, but will also have more of a purpose to itself than just being a backup for Discord and a nostalgia hub for the oldbies. We will probably share more on that more once we make more progress.
![[-]](https://forums.mfgg.net/images/emerald/collapse.png)