What's happening in here?

[Synthlight]

Re: What's happening in here?

I get where you're coming from but I feel like this is a whole different topic altogether. Stagnant site dev and event holding =/= userbase growth. They are related, yes, but are different things to be addressed. (and no I'm not saying the event team is failing at hosting things, just including that in the statement)

It's leadership. It's personality. We need a Mario or a Sonic and we don't have that. You have that personality upfront and then everything else starts to unlock and become possible.

You guys all do a great job at what you do. But compare front page posts now to 2007. What is the difference? How are we inspiring visitors to be part of what we do and who we are as a community? We are mostly playing to content hungry existing users. *existing* being the key word. I go through the same thing in webhosting. If you try to compete with Amazon on price and convenience, you will fail. If you compete on customer service and a handheld experience, you can thrive. Obviously there is more to it than that but I think I made the point I wanted to make

[justin_ator]

Re: What's happening in here?

Having Psychoangel doing FPPs again is one of the right steps in creating more of the lost transparency that the community is looking for.

Even simply using the change log more often. That was created specifically for this purpose and was useful for that for some time, even. It was nice being able to see when X bug got fixed, and that Y was being added into the engine soon. Even song releases were pushed there.

To be honest I'd be perfectly happy to take up a role that updated the change log based on what other people could tell me is going on - it would probably bring me right back into the fold of FFR forum activity and maybe even into the game a lot more again. I've been on FFR more in the last three days from this thread (and more the last time a thread like this happened) than I have in the past few months combined. This is because I care about this community but until things start to change, I don't feel like it's something that really engages me in ways I'm interested in, or even feel like something is going on with the site.

(in case anyone is not familiar with the change log, here is the link http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/changelog/)

[TC_Halogen]

Re: What's happening in here?

To be honest I'd be perfectly happy to take up a role that updated the change log based on what other people could tell me is going on - it would probably bring me right back into the fold of FFR forum activity and maybe even into the game a lot more again. I've been on FFR more in the last three days from this thread (and more the last time a thread like this happened) than I have in the past few months combined. This is because I care about this community but until things start to change, I don't feel like it's something that really engages me in ways I'm interested in, or even feel like something is going on with the site.

This point greatly resonates with me, by the way.

[justin_ator]

Re: What's happening in here?

(good point)

I see what you're referring to, and in that context I suppose you are right. I don't necessarily feel that we need to "out-perform" another game or site, just that there needs to be engagement and transparency for the users from the staff. The events team has been the only successful ones on that front recently, aside from the Skill Rating system that was implemented a little bit back (which I will say was a good move in the right direction)

[MosaicMan3]

Re: What's happening in here?

This site succeeded not because FFR had superior features or software in general but because of the community that was rallied around it. I treated this site like a BBS from the 1980's. Like albums before people could by or stream single songs. It's a sense of experience. There was a common interest fortified by many avenues of communication. The game itself was just the flower on top of a long ass sunflower.

First and foremost, I greatly appreciate your response. However I've fully aware that FFR has become something much, much greater than it intended to be. And I genuinely applaud you and your original team for making this happen.

However this sunflower isn't the same community anymore. Yes, many of the old timers are still here, but the majority of the folks here are newish (later than 2010 or so).

We need to be proud of our past, work in the present, and plan for the future.

However we are stuck in the past. This community is different, and different in a good way. We need to embrace the change that needs to happen, and make them happen.

In all honesty not a single new player gives a damn about the past of this game and how much work was put into this game, they care about the pretty little "sunflower" that is presented before them.

Without new players a community will eventually die all together and FFR will only remain as a wiki page for my kids to stumble upon one day.

[Synthlight]

Re: What's happening in here?

...however, I'm not particularly impressed with Zageron's job personally and I have no problem calling him out on that, as someone who was reasonably high up on the staff chain.

I am sure these frustrations of yours are very true. At the same time, I have seen first hand Zag flip-flop between life and the site because he needs to and he burns out like anyone else. It's not always fair to the rest of the staff but if anyone truly gets why his involvement has been the way it has, it's me.

So how do we work around this issue? What can be done to create redundancy and provide control in a way that helps the group as a whole. This doesn't even need to be a general fix for the visitor count, game or site code itself. I am just talking on a day to day operational level.

(P.S. Thank you for all the time you have put in over the years btw. I just wanted to say that while I had the chance! )

Cheers,

Synthlight

[TC_Halogen]

Re: What's happening in here?

also, Synth is holding out on us and accidentally lost #3 in his post

[Trumpet63]

Re: What's happening in here?

Whew boy, we all sure do love that word "transparency". It's one of those buzz words that people use to express strong emotions, but actually doesn't result in anything actionable.

My solution: redo staff applications, and run the site like an open-source project from top to bottom; heck, nobody expects to pay for rhythm games anyways, it pretty much has to be open-source. That's my best idea for "transparency".

[Crazyjayde]

Re: What's happening in here?

#3 surely had to be the answer to the meaning of life

[Synthlight]

Re: What's happening in here?

it's that there's nobody that's taking the initiative to keep things rolling, remove people who are no long active staff and find others that are willing. There are some really super talented people on this site with coding and such.

Yeah, that just has to roll down from the top and I think is directly related to my opening comments about leadership and personality. It's a tough position to fill and way harder than anyone thinks it will be. So how do we solve that as a starting point here? There must be a way.

[noname219]

Re: What's happening in here?

Even simply using the change log more often. That was created specifically for this purpose and was useful for that for some time, even. It was nice being able to see when X bug got fixed, and that Y was being added into the engine soon. Even song releases were pushed there.

To be honest I'd be perfectly happy to take up a role that updated the change log based on what other people could tell me is going on - it would probably bring me right back into the fold of FFR forum activity and maybe even into the game a lot more again. I've been on FFR more in the last three days from this thread (and more the last time a thread like this happened) than I have in the past few months combined. This is because I care about this community but until things start to change, I don't feel like it's something that really engages me in ways I'm interested in, or even feel like something is going on with the site.

(in case anyone is not familiar with the change log, here is the link http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/changelog/)

To be frank, the changelog could really beneficiate if it was given more exposure. If someone like you want to keep it updated, it should be given more importance (by putting it on the frontpage).

[Synthlight]

Re: What's happening in here?

This is because I care about this community but until things start to change, I don't feel like it's something that really engages me in ways I'm interested in, or even feel like something is going on with the site.

This is proof of what I am trying to say. Get people fired up and engaged. We have to strike that balance of helping people stay here but generating new interest. It can all be done regardless of code, forum, site theme etc. I don't mean to sound like a broken record but I think that discussing this, you will see why what I am saying will work. The rest of the problems, (I don't mean to sound harsh) are either junior high style issues or problems that can fix themselves as a side effect of general inspiration.

[TC_Halogen]

Re: What's happening in here?

Whew boy, we all sure do love that word "transparency". It's one of those buzz words that people use to express strong emotions, but actually doesn't result in anything actionable.

My solution: redo staff applications, and run the site like an open-source project from top to bottom; heck, nobody expects to pay for rhythm games anyways, it pretty much has to be open-source. That's my best idea for "transparency".

no, it's being used because it's applicable - stop making it seem like it's less than it is; it's easily solvable with action: tell the users what's going on so that said "buzz-word" doesn't get used anymore

don't disorganize things by removing active users who are actually trying to be a part of the solution and not the problem

EDIT:

I am sure these frustrations of yours are very true. At the same time, I have seen first hand Zag flip-flop between life and the site because he needs to and he burns out like anyone else. It's not always fair to the rest of the staff but if anyone truly gets why his involvement has been the way it has, it's me.

see, this triggers my frustrations even more because I'm sure if things were actually communicated about his general situation, it might not be as heated given that -everyone- realizes this is a volunteer site

I mean shit, I've had my issues between school and work and as much as I hated to disappoint users, I did it to mitigate the damage that could have been <_<;

[_Zenith_]

Re: What's happening in here?

Whew boy, we all sure do love that word "transparency". It's one of those buzz words that people use to express strong emotions, but actually doesn't result in anything actionable.

The reason the transparency is particularly a big problem is that the people the community is looking for when it comes with transparency isn't actually doing anything actionable.

Last form of transparency the community received from staff other than the Batch and what is contained in this thread is the May Site Changes.

We are nearly done with August.

[psychoangel691]

Re: What's happening in here?

Yeah, that just has to roll down from the top and I think is directly related to my opening comments about leadership and personality. It's a tough position to fill and way harder than anyone thinks it will be. So how do we solve that as a starting point here? There must be a way.

There should probably be two people who are like "site leads" that can help things keep rolling in all aspects of the site by checking in with the various groups and bringing on people as necessary. If there's two people I think there would be a better success with it because the work can be tag teamed and not just fall apart when one person gets busy with something.

Everyone knows that people have real lives outside here, but it's the fact that nobody takes the initiative to put someone else in the place of those people to help keep things going. There's also generally no communication about it which gets the community upset.