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Article: Gamehackery: EN World: Community of Ideas
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<blockquote data-quote="EricNoah" data-source="post: 6061186" data-attributes="member: 4"><p>Thank you for a thought-provoking article! Here are some random thoughts from the pre-EN World days...</p><p></p><p>It certainly was an interesting time to be a webmaster, an information curator, and (I guess) a community builder. I never, ever intended to build a community, though. To me it was all about sharing information about the game. It never occurred to me that people would want to gather and talk about "my" stuff and then continue to hang out and talk amongst themselves. What a wonderful discovery that was - I have indeed been blessed!</p><p></p><p>My original site was basically a flat HTML site; when I was invited over to the RPG Planet hub, the people there constantly wanted me to switch to a database system where I could post news items with no need to futz with formatting, etc. I turned them down and retained the flat HTML - partially because it was what I was comfortable with, mostly because I had more flexibility to display information the way I wanted to. </p><p></p><p>There was no connection between the news pages and the forum, not in the way EN World is today (for example, there was no ability to comment directly on news stories). The two systems were not integrated. I do wonder what the site would have been like if I'd had that option. And Russ's move to blend the two into one has been a good one overall, I think. Though I believe Russ might personally enjoy a more hand-crafted approach to the news side of the business. </p><p></p><p>The community survived several different incarnations of forum along the way. One early forum of ours was essentially one long thread. Yikes. I think there are many EN World members still around who remember how much traffic we brought to the RPG Planet forums - so much so that we often crashed them, and their tech support guys would just turn off our forums to let the other hosted sites have some up-time. </p><p></p><p>I do wonder how I would tackle a similar project in today's landscape. Twitter and Facebook would probably have a place, but probably only as "alert" systems to draw viewers back to a hand-crafted page. </p><p></p><p>While I made some money from the site (both from Amazon.com links and direct payments from RPG Planet), it was never enough to even consider the possibility of doing the site as a full-blown business. That Russ is able to break even is remarkable to me.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EricNoah, post: 6061186, member: 4"] Thank you for a thought-provoking article! Here are some random thoughts from the pre-EN World days... It certainly was an interesting time to be a webmaster, an information curator, and (I guess) a community builder. I never, ever intended to build a community, though. To me it was all about sharing information about the game. It never occurred to me that people would want to gather and talk about "my" stuff and then continue to hang out and talk amongst themselves. What a wonderful discovery that was - I have indeed been blessed! My original site was basically a flat HTML site; when I was invited over to the RPG Planet hub, the people there constantly wanted me to switch to a database system where I could post news items with no need to futz with formatting, etc. I turned them down and retained the flat HTML - partially because it was what I was comfortable with, mostly because I had more flexibility to display information the way I wanted to. There was no connection between the news pages and the forum, not in the way EN World is today (for example, there was no ability to comment directly on news stories). The two systems were not integrated. I do wonder what the site would have been like if I'd had that option. And Russ's move to blend the two into one has been a good one overall, I think. Though I believe Russ might personally enjoy a more hand-crafted approach to the news side of the business. The community survived several different incarnations of forum along the way. One early forum of ours was essentially one long thread. Yikes. I think there are many EN World members still around who remember how much traffic we brought to the RPG Planet forums - so much so that we often crashed them, and their tech support guys would just turn off our forums to let the other hosted sites have some up-time. I do wonder how I would tackle a similar project in today's landscape. Twitter and Facebook would probably have a place, but probably only as "alert" systems to draw viewers back to a hand-crafted page. While I made some money from the site (both from Amazon.com links and direct payments from RPG Planet), it was never enough to even consider the possibility of doing the site as a full-blown business. That Russ is able to break even is remarkable to me. [/QUOTE]
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