I don't want YC to die off...

[Blitzzoshi]

Or we could place them at the top so that they're immediately visible.

Edit: Yoshikaki needs a favicon badly. Here's one:

[g!rl_k.s.a.]

What is every week we have a group project that we all do together? That might get more people here, and we might also have people want to get more involved.

[Toshi]

I can understand everyone wants this place to be the way it was, but the truth is it never will be if the long term members continue to age. The veterans are getting older and trying to win them back is going to be a lot more difficult as their priorities do not include a website forum, but I know you're not just trying to appeal to the members who are heading this way, I'm pointing out this whole "make it the way it used to be" is a load of nonsense, those days are long gone. We need to modernise big time.

My opinion. The forums are so outdated, it needs a complete makeover and new features added, you have examples above that could do with revitalising like the Yoshikaki, YCNN, the YC podcast. Leaving it as a forum alone will not grab people, it doesn't scream "we are committed" when people load up the front page. Perhaps a nice link to a complete art gallery of official Yoshi art, more events, competitions with some sort of reward, guides, advice, and not forgetting you have the IRC chat which really needs some love and attention, instead of everyone being idle all the time.

I've been here for 6 years and 3 months, that's longer than everyone (most?) who has posted in this thread, I've seen the days where this forum has been wonderful, posts mounting to hundreds a day, but now I visit the site and I just can't stay or post anything interesting here. In a nutshell, I don't feel like I fit in to the place I call my home. I would love to see this place prosper again, but it needs work doing to it.

[andrevus]

Yes the links to the other parts of the site like the IRC and the others would be a good idea to put on the front page (its a pain to dig up everything i need for Mibbit to get on #YC)

Jan 2, 2011 17:11:27 GMT -5 g!rl_k.s.a. said:

I might have an idea on how to save the forum. What about just one general topic where we can talk about whatever we want in particular that seems interesting at the time. Like maybe a topic where anything can be discussed, as one single topic.

Isn't that the purpose of "The Journal Level Three" thread?

[Matoking]

I think the fact that the whole place (forums, not Yoshikaki and such) are running on Proboards which does impose some limitations could be a problem.

There should be a place visible on every section of the site with links to Yoshikaki, IRC (or more properly, how to use it) and such, but I don't know if it is possible with Proboards.

The place does need a more descriptive URL than timyoshi.proboards.com

[PinkFloydYoshi]

Jan 3, 2011 11:16:28 GMT -5 Matoking said:

I think the fact that the whole place (forums, not Yoshikaki and such) are running on Proboards which does impose some limitations could be a problem.

There should be a place visible on every section of the site with links to Yoshikaki, IRC (or more properly, how to use it) and such, but I don't know if it is possible with Proboards.

The place does need a more descriptive URL than timyoshi.proboards.com

This is quite true. Free forum systems such as ProBoards are utter rubbish. The biggest reasons I run my other boards myself on my own servers is because I can integrate and keep the brand across everything consistent, as well as add new features as and when needed. With this ProBoards board, we're limited to the same feature set that every single other ProBoard has. We're hardly unique!

If a community is to flourish, it must have something new or unique that the rivals don't have. Look at the state of MySpace versus Facebook, Facebook came out on top because all they do is innovate and integrate according to the will of their users. MySpace cannot currently sustain themselves financially because, like us, they stopped innovating.

Going back to the reboot idea, I still half support it. It'll give us a real identity. A real brand. Not only that, but no ads either!

Going to what Toshi said, he's right in that the 'vets' have left because they have life commitments. I do, it just so happens that I still have time to commit to my duties here. The number one thing we need to be focusing on is not getting those members back we've lost, it's gaining new members. We just have to decide what age group we want to attract, brand ourselves and add features accordingly, something we cannot currently do easily. The Yoshikaki is excellent because it allows us to provide a board in which people can draw in, which is really relevent to us because most of our member base can draw absolutely excellent stuff, but not everyone can (like me, but I do look at and adore what our members do). That's where other features such as the YCNN and the YCast come in where others can get involved.

Really, what we need to do is look at the sort of crowd we've got. We've got members who do art, others who do literature (Maybe a feature to encourage those with a passion for reading and writing literature next?), others who just want to game after a day of college, university or work (Another feature we can use to arrange this stuff?). Maybe even run workshops where we can show off our creations and tutor those interested in doing similar? I'm probably the only one here who has played with an Arduino and has a City & Guilds in Electronics, and wants to build my own quadrocoptors, but I'm willing to bet there are others here who instead want to build other things. We have a Lego Mindstorms club at work during session 3 where the kids compete against other academies. There are probably others like me who look at and appreciate the fanart our members produce, but are desperate to understand how to do this themselves. I took on 3D because I couldn't draw to save my life, and as a result I follow and donate to the Blender Open Movie projects and have a lynda.com account I use to learn Blender, but there are probably others who also want to get in on the Blender action but don't know where to start.

Workshops mean people are dedicating huge chunks of their time to getting these done, but as someone who has an interest in building things with Arduino, I don't mind passing on my knowledge of the platform to those who also have an interest in it. There is nothing like getting immersed in to a hobby at the end of a not so productive day at the office.

As already said, there is no shortage of things we can try, we just have to try them. We might not be able to go back to what we once were, but it might help us if we did a little innovation ourselves.

I'll be dead proud if a bunch of forum members made an army of Yoshis out of a Lego Mindstorms kit or five. Even more if an Arduino was involved!

[Yoshiken]

Sorry for posting so late. I have been in California the last 3 week visiting family for the holidays, and do not have my own computer with me. This year should see a lot more activity coming from me. I am taking much fewer classes than last semester, and so I should have much more time on my hands. The ROTC is getting a little bit busier, but that shouldn't post much of a problem.

Well, I am just going to get straight to the point. First, I think we need to take Strangie off as an Admin, and replace him with Moot. I mean, Strangie hasn't posted or logged on for months, and I think Moot is dedicated enough to really help this Forum out of the slumps. Any complaints with this so far?

Secondly, PFY, you just gave me an idea. I think the reason why we only seem to see talk and no action is because of a lack of direction on how to go about. Since starting the revival of the forums needs to start with reviving the Admins (I am at fault too), what if we had a specific task field for each Admin to cover? I mean, not everyone is motivated to participate with every board on the forum. Someone may enjoy art a whole bunch but hate roleplaying or reading fan fics. So one Admin could be delegated the task of creating activities for the Art Board (like secret santas for periods of the year instead of just winter), while another Admin has the task of creating activities for the Roleplaying Board/Forum Games.

I think with specific tasks and goals, the admins will be able to finally focus on accomplishing instead of just theorizing. With the Admins doing something, the other members of the board will then be motivated to start activities as well, and a chain reaction will follow.

I mean, we don't need an Admin to cover a task for every single board, but just for the major things of the forum, like Art, Fan Fics, Roleplaying, Yoshi's Cafe, whatever. I am not saying that their responsibilities need to just be on those specific subjects either, I am just saying that nothing will get done if we don't make specific goals and tasks for people to do. If an Admin has an idea for another board, then by all means go ahead and do it, but we should focus on the tasks we would be good at.

I think that only with specific goals will we actually get things done.

[Blitzzoshi]

Hey, I like proposals, so let's propose some stuff!

Building on what Toshi mentioned, I think the best way to build an identity is to centralize. Look at Yoshi's Corner in its current state. "Yoshi's Corner" refers to a board on Proboards. In this state, places like the Oekaki, blog, etc. are more or less just isolated offshoot projects that originated from the forums. We need to move the identity away from the Internet forum.

We can start off with a landing page. While this is considerably placeholder, it gives us a new canvas to work with. Let me elaborate.

When we link to or mention Yoshi's Corner, it's typically in reference to this forum. It was fine and good for a while, sure, but we often found ways to create new diversions, yet had trouble drawing attention to those. The other main problem was a lack of flexibility. You tell people that Yoshi's Corner is a forum. What happens when the forum vanishes? Where does the community end up?

We move our identity to this landing page, we have a place to advertise all of our events, projects, sister sites, etc., as well as affiliate linking. The bonus is that if one of these advertised items happens to fade out of existence (like the Oekaki did until recently), our presence remains unfazed. This is also an important step to migrating forums. People will search for Yoshi's Corner, find the landing site, be able to locate the new forums from there.

Not only that, but once we find ourselves able to bring enough content together, we can expand our landing site to form a main site with no loss of convenience, functionality, or presence.

I think that would help us to start off on the right foot.

[Anjil]

I like Blitzzo's idea! I've actually been thinking about this idea for a while (Read: the last couple days). A landing page could be a headquarters for the forum and all its extensions, just so that we're not a forum, an oekaki, an IRC chat, etc. floating around on the internet. Like I mentioned before, I'd like a place where I can access all these sites without having to do too much digging.

I also like Kurtis's idea. It could be like making the admins into an activities board to organize events, each admin focusing on their specialty/interest. I'd like to be able to join more group activities!

The place does need a more descriptive URL than timyoshi.proboards.com

I agree. Perhaps forum.yoshicurio.com would work better? Though I will admit that I have no idea how domain names work in this case. Could the URL name be replaced without a reboot?

[Rainbow Yoshi]

Sorry I'm such a slacker at posting. I hurt my wrist two weeks ago, so I can only type with one hand. Which is a pain. However, I have no excuse for before that, other than work and school.

I remember forever ago when each board had one or two mods specifically for that board. This is similar to Yoshiken's idea right? If it is, then I think it's a great idea.

I also think that Blitzzo's idea is genius. A landing site would be great. If we're just some proboards forum with links buried in it, we don't sound too exciting.

Well, I am just going to get straight to the point. First, I think we need to take Strangie off as an Admin, and replace him with Moot. I mean, Strangie hasn't posted or logged on for months, and I think Moot is dedicated enough to really help this Forum out of the slumps. Any complaints with this so far?

You would hear no complaints from me. I think Moot is very dedicated to the forums, and would be an excellent admin.

[Anjil]

Well, I am just going to get straight to the point. First, I think we need to take Strangie off as an Admin, and replace him with Moot. I mean, Strangie hasn't posted or logged on for months, and I think Moot is dedicated enough to really help this Forum out of the slumps. Any complaints with this so far?

Yeah, no complaints from me either. Judging from the text below where Strangie's avatar is supposed to be, it seems like he's left on his own accord anyway. Moot has stuck to this place since its beginnings, so I think he'd be a great candidate for replacement.

[Blitzzoshi]

Jan 3, 2011 19:33:41 GMT -5 Anjil said:

I agree. Perhaps forum.yoshicurio.com would work better? Though I will admit that I have no idea how domain names work in this case. Could the URL name be replaced without a reboot?

That URL could probably redirect to the forums (at least while they're off-site, if we plan to stay off-site, that is).

Subdomains are generally easy to work with when it comes to replacing them and what-not. Top-level domains, on the other hand...

[Moot]

Jan 3, 2011 18:51:12 GMT -5 Blitzzoshi said:

landing page

I tried this idea with YCNN back in the day, linking to all the YC bits in one place but we all know how that turned out. I think the main problem with that was - which may or may not have been mentioned already - is the lack of guidelines on how to actually run the thing. I basically gave people free reign to post stuff they thought would be relevant, but I'm not even sure if I made that clear. As most everyone knows who has me listed on any sort of IM service, I'm not exactly the greatest communicator in the world.

Maybe a blog type arrangement wasn't the best thing to use, but I didn't (and still don't) know anything about fancy content management systems or that sort of thing. On the other hand integrating a blog into a CMS would be a pretty good idea at communicating any events we'd have going on, such as secret satans, game tourneys, art jams or whatever else we could think of.

A website would give us an actual internet presence which can't be a bad thing, as right now YC is some proboard with a bunch of other stuff just floating around on the internet. For example, googling for "yoshi" brings up YoshiArt as the third result. Ideally YC would be further up in the results but that probably won't happen while we're just some anonymous proboard.

Before all that though, we should at least organise all the YC bits into the forum header, if that's even possible. I don't know how gimped proboards is in regard to editing the layout though, and the newsfader is kind of clunky for that purpose.

I think I rambled a bit here, but with any luck somebody will be able to decipher this verbal diarrhoea into something actually readable!

_{also thank you guys for the admin recommendations}

[Matoking]

Jan 4, 2011 11:09:14 GMT -5 Moot said:

Before all that though, we should at least organise all the YC bits into the forum header, if that's even possible. I don't know how gimped proboards is in regard to editing the layout though, and the newsfader is kind of clunky for that purpose.

Exactly, pretty much the only official spot where Yoshikaki is visible is just a newsfader that flashes every two seconds, kinda poor for that purpose.

[PinkFloydYoshi]

I really don't have the time right now to commit to completing the YoshiCurio project, so if Yoshi's Corner wants to rebrand as YoshiCurio, I honestly don't mind. I've had the domain now for four years, shame to let it go to waste.

As for look'n'feel ideas, I'll post some designs a little later tonight for people to mull over. Freelance Web Designer may mean unemployed, but as someone who is employed I can still ream off something fresh.

[Blitzzoshi]

Jan 4, 2011 11:09:14 GMT -5 Moot said:

I tried this idea with YCNN back in the day, linking to all the YC bits in one place but we all know how that turned out.

That wasn't exactly a landing page though, and it also wasn't on a domain or webspace that we owned. It didn't really congregate all the different sites together, either. Again, everything was more or less isolated.

The big draw to the landing page (on our own domain) is that we can make it into anything we want. If something doesn't work, we can try something else without having to change our location at all.

[andrevus]

I don't know what i could do to help out with but i want to help keep this place alive...to bad i don't know what to post about (also thats what i like to see (as of 4pm jan 4th i saw 5 online members 1 staff and 4 guests thats already 10 things are picking up even if slowly but they are)

[g!rl_k.s.a.]

Is there anyway that we can start recruiting new members to come here so that we can get them to help revitalize the place?

[g!rl_k.s.a.]

Jan 3, 2011 9:32:11 GMT -5 andrevus said:

Yes the links to the other parts of the site like the IRC and the others would be a good idea to put on the front page (its a pain to dig up everything i need for Mibbit to get on #YC)

Jan 2, 2011 17:11:27 GMT -5 g!rl_k.s.a. said:

I might have an idea on how to save the forum. What about just one general topic where we can talk about whatever we want in particular that seems interesting at the time. Like maybe a topic where anything can be discussed, as one single topic.

Isn't that the purpose of "The Journal Level Three" thread?

Well maybe we can sticky it because I haven't seen it.

[Enrique]

Jan 5, 2011 23:30:05 GMT -5 g!rl_k.s.a. said:

Jan 3, 2011 9:32:11 GMT -5 andrevus said:

Yes the links to the other parts of the site like the IRC and the others would be a good idea to put on the front page (its a pain to dig up everything i need for Mibbit to get on #YC)



Isn't that the purpose of "The Journal Level Three" thread?

Well maybe we can sticky it because I haven't seen it.

It's in the "Yoshi Fan Journal" section of the board.