The Campaign Builder's Guild

Thanks Hoers. I've emailed Nomadic.

I think the Roll20/Discord idea is good in addition to Reddit.

Was Google+ discussed at all? In many ways, as far as I can tell, it's become the social media platform of choice for roleplaying creator communities, and people regularly post content there in various forms. There are Communities that function a lot like forums for various development and fan groups, like Map-Making in Games or the group for Dolmenwood. I've got a little page for Hex there.

EDIT: I know the first reaction to Google+ is "That still exists?! Isn't that Google's failed version of Facebook?" - just wanted to put it out there for consideration. It became popular because Google Hangouts are really useful for games.

Quote from: Kalos Mer
Dormant member that I am, I won't venture to vote on what the community does next.  I will say I'm sad, in general, about the decline of the traditional forum, as I believe its format had some unique charms and advantages that more modern modes lack.  My own heyday was in the 2004-2006 era on the old Wizards board and here, and I can't imagine doing the kind of stuff I did then (5,000 word posts on, I dunno, orc religious rituals) on Reddit.  That said, long content posts don't do a bit of good if there isn't an active community to read them - so if change is necessary to stabilize and grow that community, it's probably for the best.  I'll follow wherever you go, and try to be a little more active than I have been in the past decade.

What is the timeframe proposed for shuttering and archiving the old site and moving to a new one?  I ask because I want to personally archive my material that's on the site but I'll be travelling for a wedding (mine) for the next week.  Should I pencil in time to do my archiving tonight before I fly out, or will the board as it is still be here in a couple weeks?

I don't see us making a move for 2-3 months, and there will be a transition period where both sites are up simultaneously. No worries there :)

Dormant member that I am, I won't venture to vote on what the community does next.  I will say I'm sad, in general, about the decline of the traditional forum, as I believe its format had some unique charms and advantages that more modern modes lack.  My own heyday was in the 2004-2006 era on the old Wizards board and here, and I can't imagine doing the kind of stuff I did then (5,000 word posts on, I dunno, orc religious rituals) on Reddit.  That said, long content posts don't do a bit of good if there isn't an active community to read them - so if change is necessary to stabilize and grow that community, it's probably for the best.  I'll follow wherever you go, and try to be a little more active than I have been in the past decade.

What is the timeframe proposed for shuttering and archiving the old site and moving to a new one?  I ask because I want to personally archive my material that's on the site but I'll be travelling for a wedding (mine) for the next week.  Should I pencil in time to do my archiving tonight before I fly out, or will the board as it is still be here in a couple weeks?

Quote from: LD
Sorry to hear; not surprised though. Also suspect that the costs are relatively high for hosting the remaining data.

Would the Domain stay? I think that is a valuable part of the site- being able to type that in and go direct rather than through some sort of "Reddit" seems valuable.

The most valuable part of the world-building kit that the CBG has that no other site has (that I know of) are the canned special formatting tools, the [ic]In Character[/ic] and [ooc]Out of Character[/ooc] and floating note box. [note]Floating Note box[/note]

That formatting made creating worlds here like laying out a PDF. Obviously though, I have not posted many new settings in recent years.

I doubt I would use the site (other than to read an occasional post) if it was solely on Reddit- it lacks those world building tools and is frankly ugly, whereas this site is elegant.
I do not know much about Discord. Does it require you to link it with other social media? How does it work?

QuoteUsing both is also an option, of course, although not deciding on a definitive new home for our community is probably not the best thing if we're trying to keep a solid community together.

Couldn't you use both and have this website be a "portal" into both- have the landing page, have the wiki, have a reddit, have a discord/IRC with the running chatbox as a supplement and lose the active forums, which I suspect are what costs the most... The reddit could be used as a written announcement for when things are happening on the discord, or when someone wants to announce that they've posted something on the Wiki, or to request access to the Wikis?

Another idea, if some people here run games on Roll20, or have an open lobby on Roll20, you could have a link to a CBG "Roll20" Lobby or get-together with posted times for gaming.
I would tentatively be interested in participating in games like Fiasco! and some of the avant garde one shot indie games. Timing obviously will be a problem though.

Quoteso the current setting threads that exist on the CBG will probably have to be hosted on an external wiki,

If that is done... maybe give some thought to the "rights" issues. On certain external wikis, the rights revert to the wiki host rather than the person who posted the settings. As I recall, back in the day that was an important point and it certainly would present some issues to be throwing some peoples' work into the public domain or other people's ownership without their permission

Toward the archive issue: Would you be hosting the data from certain boards in a static form- e.g. the data from the Campaign Creation subforums? Personally, I think everything else could probably go zap (with the possible exceptions of Contests and Fantaseum), but those subforums are special.

Thank you for your service sparkletwist and Nomadic for the hosting (and Ishmayl before you!)

I'll be keeping the domain regardless of what we end up doing - this was initially so that we could return to a discrete website if we someday end up with a much larger userbase again, but you raise a good point about redirecting.

The unique formatting options will be missed, but I think there are options to get around that at least with Reddit (quotation blocks, etc.).

I am not terribly familiar with Discord either but I've used it - if we moved to it we'd start looking like several linked chatrooms (you'd be able to create one to discuss a topic or setting).

Things are definitely still up in the air as to what solution we're going to use, and we want to take our time with the transition so as many users as possible are aware, and so that we pick the right combo. I'll look into using the current webpage as a redirect for one or both services. The big issue right now is finding the best way to continue supporting people posting settings into what is currently a forum thread. I think this'll work on Reddit with a few growing pains, but we'll trade out ease of user control for a little more mod management in order to do it.

Nomadic is currently looking into archiving all of the data based on the current state of the database. Depending on what he finds and what he can pull it down in, we might take the entire site and strip out the unneeded stuff, or if it proves difficult, then what I might end up doing is writing a web scraper specifically for the site and notify everyone via email/private message to list everything you want saved. I know there are a lot of users who haven't been around in years, and even those of us who are still regulars have dead projects (just look at my history), so when we make that decision it could quickly end up that a lot of people don't have that much they want to save.

As for your blog Steerpike, Nomadic did mention that he had other stuff hosted, and I can't recall if it would be affected by this (EDIT: it might) but you should confirm with him anyway (I'll ping him too).

An additional note about all of this: when I floated the topic of a transition with sparkletwist and Nomadic, my vision for the near-future was a three-way split of the existing service into:

1) A subreddit (for the "Campaign Elements and Design" and "Dragons Den" type conversations)
2) Discord or Roll20 (for Q&A, active discussions among small groups, and games)
3) Possibly a Google Drive or other cloud service for storage of some stuff

Again though, we don't want to end up muddying the community by doing so. My goal through all of this is to find an alternative that is as simple to use as possible while also allowing people to create and post content in mostly the same way we do now. I have some ideas, but I won't broadcast them until they've actually been tested.

I think this is probably good news, in a sense. Personally I'd favour reddit, where I hang out somewhat regularly already, and which feels closest to the existing site.

I'm curious what steps, if any, I'll need to take to ensure my blog (http://bearded-devil.com/) stays up. It's currently on the same server, although Nomadic took care of all the back-end stuff. It may be best for me to reach out to Nomadic?

Sorry to hear; not surprised though. Also suspect that the costs are relatively high for hosting the remaining data.

Would the Domain stay? I think that is a valuable part of the site- being able to type that in and go direct rather than through some sort of "Reddit" seems valuable.

The most valuable part of the world-building kit that the CBG has that no other site has (that I know of) are the canned special formatting tools, the [ic]In Character[/ic] and [ooc]Out of Character[/ooc] and floating note box. [note]Floating Note box[/note]

That formatting made creating worlds here like laying out a PDF. Obviously though, I have not posted many new settings in recent years.

I doubt I would use the site (other than to read an occasional post) if it was solely on Reddit- it lacks those world building tools and is frankly ugly, whereas this site is elegant.
I do not know much about Discord. Does it require you to link it with other social media? How does it work?

QuoteUsing both is also an option, of course, although not deciding on a definitive new home for our community is probably not the best thing if we're trying to keep a solid community together.

Couldn't you use both and have this website be a "portal" into both- have the landing page, have the wiki, have a reddit, have a discord/IRC with the running chatbox as a supplement and lose the active forums, which I suspect are what costs the most... The reddit could be used as a written announcement for when things are happening on the discord, or when someone wants to announce that they've posted something on the Wiki, or to request access to the Wikis?

Another idea, if some people here run games on Roll20, or have an open lobby on Roll20, you could have a link to a CBG "Roll20" Lobby or get-together with posted times for gaming.
I would tentatively be interested in participating in games like Fiasco! and some of the avant garde one shot indie games. Timing obviously will be a problem though.

Quoteso the current setting threads that exist on the CBG will probably have to be hosted on an external wiki,

If that is done... maybe give some thought to the "rights" issues. On certain external wikis, the rights revert to the wiki host rather than the person who posted the settings. As I recall, back in the day that was an important point and it certainly would present some issues to be throwing some peoples' work into the public domain or other people's ownership without their permission

Toward the archive issue: Would you be hosting the data from certain boards in a static form- e.g. the data from the Campaign Creation subforums? Personally, I think everything else could probably go zap (with the possible exceptions of Contests and Fantaseum), but those subforums are special.

Thank you for your service sparkletwist and Nomadic for the hosting (and Ishmayl before you!)

As many of you have likely noticed, Nomadic has been very busy and not been around much, and he doesn't see that situation changing soon. So, he has decided to hand Hoers the reins (no pun intended... ok, I admit, pun intended) as admin of the CBG. I (sparkletwist) will retain my current role.

Bigger changes are also in the works. The CBG has been home on the internet to many of us over the past 12 years (feel old yet?) and while our recent one-day surge in activity proved we do still have an active community around here, it is also not exactly a controversial idea that the amount of activity here has declined quite a bit since its heyday.

Recently, us three admins met on IRC and discussed the future of the CBG. Unfortunately, the CBG's current forum and wiki software is quite old and it needs significant upgrades and overhauls, and none of the three of us are able to undertake such a project right now. Combined with the decline in users, and, to be honest, the decline of internet forums in general, it is unavoidable that the CBG's days in its current form are numbered.

Therefore, we have decided to move our community to an existing social media platform. That frees us from most of the maintenance tasks that are necessary when we run our own site, and also grants us access to a wider pool of users from which we can potentially grow our membership. As Thor once said, "[The CBG] is not a place, it's a people." The end of our current site need not be (and I hope it is not) the end of us. 

Currently, we are most strongly considering Reddit and Discord.

Reddit is more similar to a traditional forum, while Discord is more of a persistent chat room more like an extended version of our Shoutbox. Both are more suited to discussion rather than hosting content, so the current setting threads that exist on the CBG will probably have to be hosted on an external wiki, or on Google Docs, or something of that sort. The good news is that this is not necessarily a big problem, as there are far more options in this regard than were available in 2006 when the site started.

Both of the platforms we are considering are strong, established communities with a wealth of tools available. Neither one is exactly like what we have now, but both are much wider platforms and may prove to be a better long-term solution. Using both is also an option, of course, although not deciding on a definitive new home for our community is probably not the best thing if we're trying to keep a solid community together.

No matter what we do, the wealth of material on the existing CBG's forum and wiki is not going to totally disappear, of course. We're looking into some way to continue to make the CBG's current content available as some sort of archive. More information on this will be forthcoming as we figure out what we're going to do. While we can assure you that your content will not simply disappear into a black hole, the archive may not be quite as convenient to use as a live site, so you may also save your own copy of any content of yours that you want to keep.

We're also seeking feedback from the community on what you want going forward, such as what platform you'd be most comfortable with, or if there's some other option we hadn't yet considered. While we don't have as many active users as we once did, there is still a small but active community here, and we don't want to take any step that would alienate that community. Hopefully, we can instead take steps to keep our community healthy and even start to grow once again.

The CBG is dead. Long live the CBG!

Thanks! Just realized today that I hadn't updated markers here. Hahaha.

Now that sure brings back some fond memories.

QuoteI think there is some material missing from this, but it may be lost forever. Think of it like that burned patch in Beowulf or a missing reel.

ha.

Thank you greatly!

QuoteKaius - You! Shaman! Undo your work, or die. You have blinded me.
* Kaius  points slightly to the left of one of the shaman menacingly

One of the shamans mutters a hex.  Your vision clears.

Ah, the imperiousness :D