Thoughts on reviving the forums a bit

schmocke

schmocke

New member
Hey guys. Since Zophar´s Domain stuck a bit lately, I would like to hear your thoughts on how to revive the forum. Active mebers are rare nowadays and only replying to one post wonders isn´t the real thing, I guess.
My suggestion is to create a recurring Highscorecontest, similar to a contest we have on a german forum. It´s called "ScoreMaster" and gains much fun. The rules in short: The ScoreMaster chooses a game from any System and genre. Of course, it should be a game, where you can play on Highscore. He defines the difficulty (if chooseable), Continue or not etc. Then he shows his score (image attachment) which is set as the "Masterscore". The Masterscore stays untill the current round is over. The "ScoreRunners" have two weeks to beat the Masterscore. You gain points, if you do so but also if you only join the current contest. Points are gained as followed:
ScoreMaster gains 5 points if he´s not beaten in two weeks.
ScoreRunners gain 1 point for joining the round, but the three ScoreRunners whose Scores are near to the MasterScore gain 3 points.
The badest ScoreRunner gains 0 points.
If a ScoreRunner beats the Masterscore, he gains 5 points and the ScoreMaster falls down to 3 points. In that case, all followers only get 1 point and the last one still 0 points.
After the round, the new ScoreMaster chooses a game. If the Masterscore hasn´t been beaten, the next follower is the new ScoreMaster.
An "All Time Highscorelist" shows the ScoreMaster of the year later.
What do you think about it? Is that a way to gain more activity here!?

Excuse me for my English. I tried to make it simple :)
 
Well, maybe, but I'm not sure that it would draw new people or not (just because people would need to find out about the place first). I tend to drop the name at times when I'm out on the Internet at large, but I'm only one person. :p
 
Well, I agree that such a contest wouldn´t gain more members but perhaps more activity of the already registered ones or more community flavor. It´s still one idea. Thread is also mentioned to collect some ideas on how to revive Zophar´s Domain. I know this site since the late 90s and it´d be sad seeing it dying.
 
It's been dead for years. The only way you're going to revive it is to come up with the $75,000 it will probably take to transfer ownership to someone who's willing to put in the necessary effort to rebuild the entire thing from scratch.
 
I'm just being realistic. The forums do not generate income, so it's in the owners' best interest that they remain as dead as possible.
 
schmocke: your idea reminds me of those old trading cards that came with Nintendo Power(I think) so long ago that gave like 3 different challenges for the game that was on it.

The Drunken Hacker said:
I'm just being realistic. The forums do not generate income, so it's in the owners' best interest that they remain as dead as possible.
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This is so true it's sad.:crying:

Plus this place will never make a profit, as it's a site based on hobbies. It will stay in limbo for as long as it tries to make a profit.

for my 2 cents in design:
Blog like sites make me sick. Especially instant site programs, like Druple.
I feel real fond of the pouet.net site. Yes, I know that their content is nothing like this place, but some of the options that it gives for prods is just fantastic! The rating system, comments, new uploads on the front page, top ratings, the custom search that makes it easy to find what you are looking for (and it doesn't use google), and the sort.
Fully custom made for what it is. That is exactly what this place needs for its huge database.
 
This site has turned a profit in the past and very easily could again. As for the huge database, it's not really that big and 90% of the content is useless. What it needs is a complete deletion and rebuild from scratch, data and design.
 
I have the dim feeling that you´re a confirmed pessimist instead of a realist. Sure, this site is almost dead. But we have fresh updates nearly every two days and I doubt that 90% of the content is useless. Instead of making exorbitant conclusions give us some good ideas, Mr. Realism. ;)
 
I offered my ideas to the owner of the site. I offered to rebuild the entire site free of charge. He wasn't interested in putting any work whatsoever into the site. Nothing is going to change other than maybe the entire thing being shut down once all of the ROMs are removed from the ROM section. (If you look, you'll see that all Square & Enix games were removed several weeks ago.)
 
The Drunken Hacker said:
This site has turned a profit in the past and very easily could again. As for the huge database, it's not really that big and 90% of the content is useless. What it needs is a complete deletion and rebuild from scratch, data and design.
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I remember someone downloading it and it came up to 13 gigs or something like that. Its not that big because the files are small, but there is alot of them.

I don't like the idea of deleting anything. I know most of the content is outdated emus but I feel like it's a bit of history that should be preserved.
I'm a bit of a pack rat.
 
I'm going to assume that the 13gb refers to the file archive because that would be pretty massive for a database, which is what I've been talking about.

Isn't the history thing much better covered by Emu Wiki?
 
The Drunken Hacker said:
I'm just being realistic. The forums do not generate income, so it's in the owners' best interest that they remain as dead as possible.
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Yeah, it surely is painfully obvious that he cares nothing for the site, especially since (and I didn't know this part until you pointed it out) some of the ROMs from the ROM subdomain were removed recently. It's even more painfully obvious then that he's just completely ignoring all of us here on the legitimate side of the site.
 
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Edman had nothing to do with the ROMs being removed, that was done by the host after someone CC:d them on an email providing Square-Enix with all of the necessary information for a DMCA takedown notice. (The scripts are apparently autogenerated based on the files in each directory, so there's no need to edit the HTML when a file is deleted.)

According to Edman, the co-owner refuses to do anything with the site because of the lack of income and Edman apparently isn't able to do much with his 50%. But at least he did renew the domain for 2 more years when I pointed out it was expiring next month.
 
The Drunken Hacker said:
Edman had nothing to do with the ROMs being removed, that was done by the host after someone CC:d them on an email providing Square-Enix with all of the necessary information for a DMCA takedown notice. (The scripts are apparently autogenerated based on the files in each directory, so there's no need to edit the HTML when a file is deleted.)

According to Edman, the co-owner refuses to do anything with the site because of the lack of income and Edman apparently isn't able to do much with his 50%. But at least he did renew the domain for 2 more years when I pointed out it was expiring next month.
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Ah, figures...should have known it was the host. Well then, since you're talking to him, tell him to get in here. He's apparently ignoring every single one of us.
 
schmocke said:
I have the dim feeling that you´re a confirmed pessimist instead of a realist. Sure, this site is almost dead. But we have fresh updates nearly every two days and I doubt that 90% of the content is useless. Instead of making exorbitant conclusions give us some good ideas, Mr. Realism. ;)
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If you can find more than one non-dick post by TDH in a day or two, I'll donate the site 5 bucks...
 
i dont know but im new on the forums and i have a somewhat popular website and i could tell everyone on it to come over here. also, im going to be more actvie if possible
 
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