Community Leaders.

[Robbie]

Hi Guildies

Just wanted to let you all know whats goin on in my head over here. In the next few days, as soon as I get all the concepts worked out properly so I can deal with multiple ranks and the permissions that go with it, I plan on changing the concept of the "Moderator" group.

The moderator group will be going away for the most part, since this site is MOSTLY self-policing. The duties of the moderator, however will not be going away. Instead, I will be bestowing upon my existing moderator, and 1 or 2 additional persons the title of "Community Leader" or something like that.

This new role will consist not only of moderator duties, which up until this post has been almost no work whatsoever, but also to be an ambassador and representative of the mapping community as a whole, as well as a proverbial community cheerleader to help keep topics flowing and people talking. This is in fact a message-board, and for this site to work, we have to all be involved. I can set up a forum, but I'm not the greatest cheerleader in the world, so thats where the community leaders will come in.

Be on the lookout for this and a few other community building endeavors in the next few days.

[RPMiller]

GOOOO TEAM!!! :wink:

Neat idea Rob, and now that Simon has posted over here hopefully we'll see some more activity from the list making its way over here.

[ravells]

Excellent Idea!

One of the advantages that this site has over a yahoo list is that it makes posting tutorials so much easier. I am a great believer that if you build the tutorials, they will come (perhaps even worth having a specific list for tutorials?) - the better artists here <cough> don <cough> would make great cheerleaders by adding to a tutorial section.

Ravs

[pyrandon]

I think ravs is right [about the tutorials, that is, definitely not about the "better artists here"!!]: if we made tutorials a hallmark of the site, especially tutorials covering multiple cartographic applications & multiple purposes, then traffic will definitely increase.

But I also think, if I may say so as a rather newbie-guy, that we may be premature in thinking about that too much. I am confused as to this site's purpose: why exactly does TCG exist? Sure, it's an alternate to the Profantasy & Dundjinni sites, and that is valid, but they are both already so well-established with wonderful offerings & communities that the Guild is really just an off-brand; if that's the purpose, then I believe we are quite unnecessary to anyone other than the few stragglers who don't feel comfortable on those officially-sanctioned sites.

I initially thought that the purpose of this site could be to offer a community to other programs who have none (Photoshop, GIMP, 3-D apps, etc.), which is valid & feasible. It's also the reason I began posting here (I am a member of Dundjinni's site, but why post a Photoshop map there?)

Or maybe we could also be a harbor of tutorials of all types, as ravs suggests. This is an exciting idea: go to a site that neatly & quickly offers access to all sorts of step-by-step instructions to make city maps, dundgeon maps--or, perhaps, even 3-D renderings of things, etc. Plus we could be a discussion community for refining those tutorials, which would only increase the validity & usefulness of the tutorials we do post.

Or, a third idea for TCG--& one that follows the tagline of the site itself-- is a gathering place of "cartography enthusiasts" where we focus more on theory, history, & such of cartography. I'm not sure if most of us are qualified for this sort of academic approach, but it is an idea.

I guess in general I'm thinking the cry to get more people here is a shade premature; we should first be asking who exactly would/should come here & why, then ask how can we assure they get" fed" (which is what Ravs was getting at), and only afterwards begin brainstorming & pounding the pavement to attract new members.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, plus perhaps if anyone (Robbie especially, of course!) will say more on the mission of site? Like I said, I'm fairly new here, so maybe you've hashed this out before? I feel this is a great place & we have the seedling of an amazing community, so welcoming, knowledgable, and supportive. And that doesn't occur everywhere!

[Robbie]

Excellent points Don...And you're right, and every time you post like this you make me think, which I appreciate.

As far as mission statement is concerned, the front page explains it best...My goal was to bring together the multiple communities and discuss mapping in general as a concept. I'm not as concerned with how to do it in program A versus program B as I am whether or not idea A for a map is better than idea B for a map...follow?

The sub forums dedicated to specific programs were kind of a necessity, but you'll notice they are closer to the bottom of the list, and for that reason.

BUT, as the old-timers here will attest, I'm VERY open to suggestions. So feel free to suggest as necessary. I like your ideas, and I'm also definitely going to open up a tutorials category. Lets plan this out as a team then.

[RPMiller]

I'm guessing you'll have subthreads for each application?

It might be nice to have a category field or something where the tutorial poster could check off which applications the tutorial is associated with as well as an all category for conceptual type stuff. Then it would be simple to just search for the apps that you are interested in.

[Robbie]

Well, as we've already discussed before...I'm a huge anti-fan of forum "bloat" At first you may think the need for a whole bunch of forums is necessary, but all that does is discourage people from posting in an empty forum. I'd rather add one tutorials specific forum and set posting rules that govern the categorization of the posts. It would then be up to the community leaders and admin to enforce those rules. We don't want to get too big for our britches...we already have a LOT of forums, and I'm thinking about cutting back a little to make room for these more generalized non-segregating forums.

[pyrandon]

The "forum bloat" monster is a good point, but I wonder if the tutorial categorization idea isn't a good one--especially if tutorials are to be a mainstay/attraction of the Guild. Also, thinking as user, I'd be much more appreciative of an entire category of "Photoshop tutorials" I can browse rather than just "tutorials" that I had to wade through to find my specific application. In fact--and this may be a bit of the "bloat", I'm not sure--I'd almost say make tutorials an entire forum category, much as CC & Dundjinni are now, with the applications being the sub-threads, and within each the individual tutorials. (This is, of course, assuming we plan to crank out tutorials & encourage others to do so as well.)

Also, I wonder if we should eliminate the CC3, Dundjinni, & other app categories. Or, at least, relegate them to the far far bottom, maybe under a header entitled "Applications" with a thread for each app. Why? Mainly because they are the least-visited, least posted, &, IMHO, the least useful portions of the site. Would it be better to recategorize the forum index to focus upon actions/maps/processes rather than applications? This would also further your mission of not emphasizing app A over app B.

Also, looking at the # of posts & views in the forum, our WIP & finished maps categories are most popular; how can we highlight these & better use them? Maybe the "critiquing service" (or, at least, ability to get feedback/praise) is the choice cut we have to offer? How can we make that better, too?


Just a bunch of ideas. What do you guys think?

[Istarlome]

on the tutorial side it would be good to have two threads. one for people to post tuts and the other for "official tuts". That would be those that are particulary good would be moved to the official thread.

[Robbie]

As I was typing my last post I was already contemplating getting rid of the app specific forums. Another thought was to add tutorial forums to the existing categories...How about this...I'm going to post the current forum categorization...MY suggested forum categorization, and then all of you that are interested can post your categorization.

In the meantime I'm locking this thread and going to start a thread that is more on topic.