Forums, the bane, the boon.
Heya folks,Well I had my computer go down for a bit, but before that even happened I had a tad of trouble finding what the heck I had actually used as my username and password here. Coupled with a recent lack of material to post, I hadn't actually found the motivation to really dig for it. I'm not really a guy who will post just for the sake of posting to keep things looking fresh, I need material that is relevant for me to make it worth my time. Well... go figure, I do believe I have some new material today.
Over the last few days and nights I've had some thoughts running together in regards to communication, specifically forums, more specifically alliance forums. Now I'm a self confessed forum whore, I just checked, and I actually have exactly 4000 posts on the FIX forum at the time of this writing. I actually outstrip the next closest poster by almost 1500 posts. Yep... that is sick, you're quite correct... I think I'll run naked through the forum to celebrate.
Anyways, as you can see from the above, I love forums. However, recent events have caused my brain to start pondering things a bit deeper despite what my earnest desires for typing normally account for. So what is it that got my attention going in this direction? Some members leaving my corp, and a few from other corps in FIX. The interesting thing I found was when talking with these recently departed is that they all had one thing in common to say 'I love my corp, but I just can't deal with FIX anymore'.
Well... shit... that isn't good. It didn't matter what corp they were departing from, they all said the same thing. Logic says that there has to be a root cause that brings about such a common theme, but people were having trouble putting their finger on it. Ofc, that is what started me thinking, but this set of thoughts was a bit more nebulous than most of the ones I have. Other than my own corp forum, I've only participated in three sets of community forums.
The first forum belonged to the CFS. Good Lord above, have mercy on those forsaken souls that inhabited that dark festering pit of chaotic divergence and strife. *cough*... yeah, to keep it short, that particular forum wasn't very productive; I'd go far enough to say that anyone who read the verbal excrement enough was bound to be tainted forever towards the CFS in the future. The good news was that the CFS was full of completely disparate corps that didn't work with each other, so damage done internally to corps due to strife within was very minimum in an odd way.
Now after we left the CFS, we turned independant, it honestly was a golden age for our corp as we came into our own. We gained in prestige, power, and found ourselves owners of the station in 9CG. The only thing we were missing out on was wealth, which really wasn't surprising considering the frequency with which we managed to go out of our way to get blown up. Our relations with other corps and their members in the area were excellent; the amount of communication we handled was also very high due to station ownership, one of my personal goals at the time was to get the toughest, most pvp oriented corps in the region to base themselves from our station.
The interesting thing in this time period was that there were no forums beyond our internal corp forum. Absolutely everything my corp did was handled in-game, anytime we talked with someone it was on a personal level. Now I'll come back to this point later, because it is relevant, but moving on now...
From the time period of joining the CFS to joining the FIX, I believe we lost a grand total of zero members to other corps.
QDF formed up, and we had a forum that was provided for us by BA at the time after things were started to move along. The only people really in there were corp leaders and QDF admirals along with the members of BA who were hosting the forum area in the first place. Overall, it was a pretty peaceful place, not a heck of a lot of chatter other than the essentials.
Then FIX was born, and with it, a rather large forum indeed, these days it has roughly 35 sections to it, and any member of FIX has access to the low security areas. In the last two years it has seen almost 112,000 articles posted within it. As forums go, it's not half bad, but I'd be lying if I said that on occasion it hasn't got a little hot in there, on a couple of occasions in the past before the fallout of CODA it got damn explosive.
Time to get to the meat of this post. Communication is vital, but I believe there are better ways to do it than through a forum; when you mix the rank and file of multiple corporations into a huge communal area, there are going to be misunderstandings no matter how hard you try to reduce them. One interesting on-going project has been the development of an in-game wiki for sharing information, it really does suddenly come to mind that the benefits of this could be far superior to what I had intially considered for it. Vital information like the time of ops, when various POS are going into reinforced or what is due to get hit next and what ships are needed are all easily communicable. You want to know what is going on? Log in and find out.
That's not the real purpose of this post (to promote a wiki), the real purpose is about the focus of individuals and corporations. Going back to when I was talking about my own corp being an independant in Querious, our goals hadn't changed, we still wanted to improve the region however we were able. The difference was we took no cues from anyone, and we looked to our own business and let everyone else worry about theirs.
You want respect? Simple, you bring more ships, bigger ships, more often, and fight like a son of a bitch to keep Querious safe. Everyone wants to be respected, and whoever is taking names and kicking ass gets viewed with respect. Not all corps are the same size or the same focus, doesn't matter, it's what you can do for the region that people noticed. Got only 8 guys online, but all 8 come out to a fight... you have instant respect; don't have many pvper's in your corp but you're building ships and mods out the wazoo and providing them to friends at cut throat rates? Respect.
Don't show up, cause problems on a regular basis, can't play nice with others? Well those folks found their assets locked into the stations and their butts were fired upon the whole way out of the region in the old days. I like simplicity, there is a great deal to be said for it.
Here is the thing, when you are part of an alliance, there is such a thing as too much integration. Not just with assets and operations, but mentally. There comes a time when everyone is waiting to see what everyone else is doing, and it's an unhealthy state of affairs, things bog down fast. What it leads to is people wondering who is and isn't pulling their weight... in all truth, they shouldn't give a shit beyond the weight they themselves and their corp are pulling.
A forum provides vital communication, and a centre to a community, but it will also throw focus within the rank and file. It can also cause stress, and stress is one of those things that is a real enemy to any alliance. It's hard to get pissed off over a wiki.
In my mind, the alternatives to a forum are fairly straight forward. If you shut down the forum to the rank and file, that leaves them with only one alternative to get information... in-game. If you can combine that with information that is accessible and updated in-game, as well as being secure, simple and efficient, then a source of possible stress is removed.
Attitudes and feelings spread depending on how easily consumable they are. If it goes back to the feeling corps have that 'It's not the corp, it's the alliance I can't deal with anymore', one has to investigate the root causes and methods of prevention.
Anyways, that is my hot air for today. Time to get back in-game, focus on my corp and corpmates, and go pick a fight.
posted by Avernus @ 7:23 AM
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