Ok one months passed by and I was able to get an overview about what has been done, what went well, what didnt went well and ive done some talks with people of the community.
I simply needed the time to where stuff needs to be improved and what is realistic to be done in 2009.
We just went through the voting of the mod of the year awards. The voting is over now and we only can wait for the results. The past month as excelent looking at the activity and the interest in SWAT. The past also was surprising as ive found out that the visitors of this site dont even know what games and mods we support. I had to realize mistakes... promotional mistakes... personel mistakes... moderation mistakes. Not big mistakes but mistakes that had negative effects on the community or at least not the expected positive effects.
I want to do changes in 2009... neccessary changes.
We have tons of projects.
Due to the work on CF half of them are on hold or only take profit of CF modding work. That really has to change. The only way to do it is to get a larger modding team.
In 2009 I intend to finish and release at least 4 of the SWAT Projects... if the conditions are good maybe even more.
That does only work with the help of the community. We need modders.
Yes I know. We get to hear "I would help but i dont know how".
What a bullshit.
I asked for help with CF and got some volunteers which never did any FL modding. Guess what they learned it. They helped working on CF... not just doing some easy work... but also modeling (based on my instructions). Nobody expects that a modder that is working in a development team has to know everything about modding... often its enough just to learn one part of it and help the entire team with it.
I also wonder that members of this community expect us to work on SWAT projects while they are not willing to help us even they have the neccessary knowledge.
It is incredible that you work on your own private mods... but it would be more incredible if the SWAT community and finally the entire Freelancer community would be able to take benefit of such modding work.
Sorry that im speaking that direct today but you also expect us to work for your pleasure.
The people working on CF can confirm that im not pushing them to do something... they decide what they can do and are willing to do. The only thing i expect is help. And yes I expect this from a member of this community... not just because the 2000,- financial risk that i agreed to when setting up this place with its servers... but also because of all the work we are doing for you.
That being said about modding in general I also have to make a decision about the mod presentations. I clearly have to admit that due to my lack of time we did not do much promotional work in 2008 with the result that we were not able to get that many new players to SWAT. This has to change... yes it simply has to change.
We have to present our work in the entire FL community, in the communities of other games we support, at moddb and also here at SWAT.
I need people which take responsibility of that. I need people which close the gap between modding/coding crew and players.
But i dont need people which do a few posts somewhere and loose the interest after that. Either we do it right or we do nothing... and if we do nothing we loose players and visitors here at SWAT.
So what do I have in mind?
The SWAT Projects have a board here on this forum... the SWAT Projects have been registered at Moddb.
Everyone being member of the SWAT modding team at least should be registered at moddb and part of the SWAT Development group. Every Project should have somebody who is updating the stuff. Mainly this should be done by the project leader.
Who are those?
OP-R8R
SimSon
RGHawk
Firewolf
In some cases it is neccessary that other people help updating the mod presentations due to the problem of native languages.
It is neccessary to keep the presentation of SWAT and moddb on the same level.... right now there is a better presentation at moddb. More content is shown there on some mods... at least i doubt that most of you have even noticed the screenshots of the other mods.
I need people working on this matter.
And no I dont want to see the people working on that matter which are already have other duties in SWAT.
Im absolutly not interested that one member of this community does more work than he/she can handle. The community is big enough... we have enough members to share the work.
How comes there is a CF guild in EVE Online actually based on our community and its members but that guild is no part of SWAT? How comes that those people dont contribute anything EVE related to SWAT?
Another mistake I did was to believe that if i hand over certain areas of SWAT to "moderators" they would really do the moderation job.
The lack of news and active converstation around other games than Freelancer is proof of it.
I definitly need to find a better way to manage the games we support. Personly i fail to see where the problem is to keep discussions about games running... to initiate new discussions about games... to involve other communities which support the same game... to search for news about the game (regulary).
If i would be moderator of just one gaming section here at SWAT (lets say Darkstar One) then I would search the net for every possible source for DSO information. I would visit those places at least once a week to see if there are any updates... i would use google to search if gaming magazines got any news about that game. And believe all this wouldnt take even one hour per week (which is pretty much acceptable considering it helps SWAT). So tell me where is the problem? Why dont we have any news? why dont we have any activity on those forum boards? Seriously we need heavy changes there and I will sort out the entire moderating structure if needed to get this part of SWAT running.
One thing you should never forget... we wont be able to play FL forever.
Forum moderation...
the forum is a mess... spam... threads which are posted to the wrong boards... thread which better should have been removed from the board due to their offensive nature.
You know me. I allow much at SWAT. More than other community admins would allow. Free speech, off topic discussions, swearing members, cross threading. Even those RP threads ^^.
Once the new CF is finished there will be a forum wide cleaning action. Ill throw out 199 of the 200 "i cant get CF working" threads. Ill throw out all the old threads about troubles between clans or with SPs. Ill throw everything out of the "topic" boards which dont belong there.
And ill finally set up new moderation rights. I expect that the moderators keep the boards clean (which does not mean to lock every "heavy discussion" but to move thread where they belong or to remove double threads (I seriously dont think we will need b-day greetings from 2005 or old solved hangman games). Nothing gets deleted but moved to forums recycle bin.
For 2009 I also intent to do changes on the forum software. Mainly due to the recent crap at TLR I meanwhile feel the need to include an age control into the SWAT forum software. In the past years the punani section was used more or less to post nice pics as long they were only of erotic but not pornographic nature. Keeping it that way i think we still should restrict that content to those which are 18 or older just to be on the save side and to make SWAT a bit more family friendly.
Site content.
At the moment I see that the members of this community help to cover the moderation (active moderation) of the already existing site content I am willing to expand SWAT into new games. I already have some very interesting ones in mind. But like i said.... I want to see that the existing stuff gets activly covered.
CF rules!!!
A matter I see in a critical way... I mean some of the statements done in the past years comparing CF with other mods. SWAT is a international gaming community supporting Freelancer and other games. And fairplay should belong to our policy. Yes CF is part of SWAT. Yes CF is good. And yes you like it. I allow the freedom of speech and i allow that you post your oppinions. But considering the fairplay I have to warn you that i will not allow anylonger that players of this community call other mods "crap" or anything else. The mods of other communities have the same right to be presented here as others and statements like "your mod cant mess with CF" wont be tolerated.
Fairplay... more i dont expect. You still can express your oppinions as long you stay fair.
SWAT sites
With the development of CF we also started working on a new CF site. While i created the design concept, huor has build the most part of the site structure and im very sure that we will find some people helping us to fill the new site with content so we can replace the old one with the official CF 1.8 release.
Thats the beginning of the site restructuration.
The SWAT main site will get some new content about the already existing games... and as already mentioned new game sections if you manage to fullfill the conditions.
There are other old SWAT sites which also need to be updated. Sites which need new design.
Ignoring the BG site (coz that will have to be my job) there are sites for other mods/games which either need to get updated or build. I intent to share the work that has to be done with the community as i know that many of you have much experience building websites.
But that is a matter id like to discuss later.
Coming back to the CF site. Id like to outsource the ASF/CSF RP discussions since i really get bothered by the "we won you suck" "no you suck coz you outnumbered us" mentality. Many RP ideas start with very nice RP stories followed by 10 sites of stupid comments and discussions. It bothers me to read those comments and it bothers to read unfair statements which destroy the entire RP.
The ASF/CSF RP and the normal Server roleplay (moderated by the GR) will be presented via blogs that can be viewed on the new CF site. Every clan, every RP faction (ASF/CSF) can present the roleplay based on their personal views, undisturbed by rants and unneccessary comments. The resulting RP story can be contrary to each other but thats just what different views are and the players can read different from sides of the same story. I expect to prevent much argueing on the forum this way and increasing RP since the clans and factions dont need to discuss their views but actually play the RP then.
Ergo: less stupid discussions, clean roleplay, more rp on the server.
Forum games
I intend to initiate monthly competitions on the forum games. Which means to reset the scores after one months and running game sessions. The player with the most highscores in one month wins the session. This should make the forum games more attactive again.
Important topics
Sticking threads is a good way to answer important questions before players need to ask via new threads... unfortunatly many of the threads are outdated... sometimes new ones are needed. Thats something that also have to be done in 2009.
Together with this "update" I had the idea to include a basic overview over SWAT with the registration mail that the users will get or at least a redirect to a site on the forum where new members can see the structure of SWAT so they dont need to search for the right board for their questions (eg. the SWAT Portal board is absolutly not for off topic stuff or mod related questions).
FAQ
some users worked on a SWAT FAQ last year... due to my limited time I was not yet able to include it to the site. I even have to search for the file meanwhile but this is something that has very high priority and will be added as soon ive a bit more time.
GR
as already announced on a different thread there are going to be changes on CF
I will not again explain that stuff since we already have that other thread... but this is definitly coming very soon together with many other changes on CF
Since I intent to be on the server and do my duties as GR leader and BG member I will need even more help with administrating and moderating SWAT and its projects.
Promotional tools
hardcore SWAT members also need hardcore tools... starting with custom SWAT browser toolbars and other tools... maybe even RSS
That will be optional gimmicks we will offer at SWAT.
For staff members I might unlock the mail accounts so these people can use SWAT mail accounts for the work they are doing.
SWAT mod database
Oh yes we have something like that. But since january 2008 nothing has been changed there. This is a feature id like to extend/rebuild in 2009. But there i need the help to find a good working php script which can take over the job and help with adjusting the code.
Id like to give all modding teams out their the chance to present their work for the games we support. They should be able to create an account and publish descriptions, features and images.
Many changes in 2009... I believe those are not wrong ones. And I need you to help me.
You also have to understand that I will not stay leader of this community until the end of time. The day will come that a team of staff members will lead SWAT. The sooner you start helping SWAT the better for the community.
