2004: Apathy Newsreel
Yes it is time where I go through the events of the last year, well the online ones at any rate as reality is even more dull.
According to my calendar this entry is the twenty-sixth made this year so I don't have much to base things on, next year I'll have to post more just to let myself know that each week was really that dull and to gloss over it swiftly in this summary.
The year started quietly and with little activity, the initial interest in Suikoden IV had waned with a lack of new information so people dropped away again.
Early on the only real interest story was the demise of Suikocastle; it wasn't that unexpected but it did surprise those who were not paying attention, or simply were blindly optimistic.
Unfortunately the aftermath of which was a spate of people blaming other sites and the like for bringing it down; some profiterring by those who were trying to advertise their site to the now homeless board members; a situation repeated several times over as sites sprang up and vanished or scrapped boards and restarted them over and over again.
Suikosource hit one of its quiet phases, people were not especially bothered by this so long as any Suikoden IV information released was relayed promptly.
As such I decided that I wanted a website of my own to play around with, and one without the restrictions imposed on a free webspace package; so I decided on a concept which I'm good at ranting about and obtained a URL and hosting.
Unfortunately I lack web-design skills and interesting content generation, mainly because I'm too lazy to learn the former and write the latter.
Things continued thus for some time, most of the time spent with my website was dealing with server moves and finding hosting when things went wrong. Then I had the joy of trying to get a board working. Actually the latter doesn't seem too difficult; especially when compared to getting people to use the damn thing.
The summer saw anew admin join the Suikosource ranks, and it did not take long for KFCrisrpy to move from someone who had no idea about what to do, and thus kept asking for guidance, to join the ranks of those who ignored me completely.
Anyway most of the year in fact was spent trying to get feedback from other associates on two seperate projects. Proving once again that the committe process is a daft idea, especially online. Considering the ironic political backdrop where those "civilised" nations try and get the "backwards" ones to adopt a democratic process; meaning that they will be able to spend hours arguing and not being able to make a decision, like the rest of the world does.
The entire year seemed devoid of interesting discusion topics at Suikosource: anything with promise was swamped by dross, flooded out of prominence, or corrupted by those who berated people for having their own opinion.
In such circumstances I retreated to safer ground, defining rules for the Suikoden IV material at the site and how things will change at certain points; otherwise I more or less kept out of things, interferring only with obvious rule breaking.
At first I did try and admonish those who were being irritating, but for every success there were at least three replacements so it felt like a pointless exercise after a while so I never bothered.
Eventually we let people in to the forums, not that many turned up, so I really need to work on advertising to anyone who may take an interest; unfortunately I'm not good at selling an idea, especially my own, so that may be as useless in the future as it is now.
As for Suikosource, well my incessant nagging led to the suggestion of someone to co-ordinate the efforts being made to help drive the site forward. Despite me pointing out that no-one pays attention to me and suggesting someone else for the position, most of the rest of the administration decided I was best suited for the role.
Since then no-one has directly come to me with anything; and most of them still ignore my nagging for information, help and the like; no change there then.
Actually there have been a few ideas set in motion; most of which have not come to fruition, or look likely to in the near future. Of those that have happened I have been almost routinely ignored by everyone else as well.
For example we set up an email for members to contribute material, I was probably too heavy handed with the rules for submission as all I've had is a few people asking if we'd accept something (none of which ever submitted it) and one piece of fanart. Unforortunately I wasn't looking for fanart, but it would probably be one piece more than if I'd requested fanart directly.
As the year drew to a close nothing really changed much; board members if anything became even more stupid, the only ones displaying any intelligence used it to criticise the running of the boards and topics became even more dull and predictable.
Since it is now technically 2005 I'll post this and wait with dread the joys that the US release of Suikoden IV will bring from a bunch of board idiots who never read any rules or guidelines stated.
According to my calendar this entry is the twenty-sixth made this year so I don't have much to base things on, next year I'll have to post more just to let myself know that each week was really that dull and to gloss over it swiftly in this summary.
The year started quietly and with little activity, the initial interest in Suikoden IV had waned with a lack of new information so people dropped away again.
Early on the only real interest story was the demise of Suikocastle; it wasn't that unexpected but it did surprise those who were not paying attention, or simply were blindly optimistic.
Unfortunately the aftermath of which was a spate of people blaming other sites and the like for bringing it down; some profiterring by those who were trying to advertise their site to the now homeless board members; a situation repeated several times over as sites sprang up and vanished or scrapped boards and restarted them over and over again.
Suikosource hit one of its quiet phases, people were not especially bothered by this so long as any Suikoden IV information released was relayed promptly.
As such I decided that I wanted a website of my own to play around with, and one without the restrictions imposed on a free webspace package; so I decided on a concept which I'm good at ranting about and obtained a URL and hosting.
Unfortunately I lack web-design skills and interesting content generation, mainly because I'm too lazy to learn the former and write the latter.
Things continued thus for some time, most of the time spent with my website was dealing with server moves and finding hosting when things went wrong. Then I had the joy of trying to get a board working. Actually the latter doesn't seem too difficult; especially when compared to getting people to use the damn thing.
The summer saw anew admin join the Suikosource ranks, and it did not take long for KFCrisrpy to move from someone who had no idea about what to do, and thus kept asking for guidance, to join the ranks of those who ignored me completely.
Anyway most of the year in fact was spent trying to get feedback from other associates on two seperate projects. Proving once again that the committe process is a daft idea, especially online. Considering the ironic political backdrop where those "civilised" nations try and get the "backwards" ones to adopt a democratic process; meaning that they will be able to spend hours arguing and not being able to make a decision, like the rest of the world does.
The entire year seemed devoid of interesting discusion topics at Suikosource: anything with promise was swamped by dross, flooded out of prominence, or corrupted by those who berated people for having their own opinion.
In such circumstances I retreated to safer ground, defining rules for the Suikoden IV material at the site and how things will change at certain points; otherwise I more or less kept out of things, interferring only with obvious rule breaking.
At first I did try and admonish those who were being irritating, but for every success there were at least three replacements so it felt like a pointless exercise after a while so I never bothered.
Eventually we let people in to the forums, not that many turned up, so I really need to work on advertising to anyone who may take an interest; unfortunately I'm not good at selling an idea, especially my own, so that may be as useless in the future as it is now.
As for Suikosource, well my incessant nagging led to the suggestion of someone to co-ordinate the efforts being made to help drive the site forward. Despite me pointing out that no-one pays attention to me and suggesting someone else for the position, most of the rest of the administration decided I was best suited for the role.
Since then no-one has directly come to me with anything; and most of them still ignore my nagging for information, help and the like; no change there then.
Actually there have been a few ideas set in motion; most of which have not come to fruition, or look likely to in the near future. Of those that have happened I have been almost routinely ignored by everyone else as well.
For example we set up an email for members to contribute material, I was probably too heavy handed with the rules for submission as all I've had is a few people asking if we'd accept something (none of which ever submitted it) and one piece of fanart. Unforortunately I wasn't looking for fanart, but it would probably be one piece more than if I'd requested fanart directly.
As the year drew to a close nothing really changed much; board members if anything became even more stupid, the only ones displaying any intelligence used it to criticise the running of the boards and topics became even more dull and predictable.
Since it is now technically 2005 I'll post this and wait with dread the joys that the US release of Suikoden IV will bring from a bunch of board idiots who never read any rules or guidelines stated.