> What signal, Chris? I count barely ten Diplomacy posts per month
> here.
Busted. I was being deliberately provocative... but in a *good*
way. :-)
> There's no discussion of strategy.
It's rare. I'd like to see more. Just because other newsgroups shout
"read the archives" at any reasonable question doesn't mean that we
have to do it too.
> No FtF or RT meetings scheduled anymore.
RT moved completely to Yahoogroups when it moved off the judges. I've
been using a group to try to organize FtF in Phoenix, AZ for a couple
years without success. I'll start cross posting my RT and FtF inquiries
here.
> Rarely do people post for replacements
> compared to the number of games langui****ng for months on the
> Pouch Listings page.
One big problem was the "reconstruction" games on USAK. Now that those
are cleaned up, however, there are still a lot of old games floating
there. My pet peeve: Huge games like chaos and void that start after 6
months only to have half the board go CD the first phase.
> The Pouch itself (which I love dearly) is
> plagued with broken links.
Re****t them! Seriously. I jump right on anything in the Email or Online
section when I'm not AFK for an extended period. I fixed a lot of
things when I first signed on for the task, but I don't have the
wherewithal to spider those huge directories.
> The last comparison of traffic on the
> Lowe judges compared to other judges was very disappointing.
There are very few GMs. Some of us got tired of the difficulties
policing games (especially Dip Pouch Queue novice gunboat - ouch!) on
the older judges where the player registration database precedes some
of the security features of the judge 1.5.0 code. As a result, you have
new judges running that have been set up by myself and others with
little or no prior *nix administration. We've been distracted from
starting games by the many other concerns of running a server and
learning a new OS. I'm easing into it, because I have some long term
scheduling concerns, but I expect to see 80 games running on USAK
before summer. I'll also be starting other judges to handle niche games
so that USAK can remain a general purpose public judge.
Sure DPJudge has 800 games, but how many are active? As for other
adjudicators... Where do I look up stats?
> Yes. We need more volunteers to maintain the Diplomatic Pouch,
> handle the queued newbies waiting for games, and to keep things
> moving, but the question I would pose for this thread is, "Has
> interest in Diplomacy declined enough to threaten closure of some
> online resources?"
I, for one, am opening more resources under the theory of "If you build
it, they will come." That means additional judges to segment the market
according to interest (the way additional channels segment the
television audience) and the creation of forums that are geared towards
exposing a broader audience to the hobby.
> It may be that certain forums are quite slow (here and Cat23 come
> to mind),
> but others are quite active. Perhaps it is just cyclical, though
> I suspect
> the advent of a lot of full-featured Dip bulletin boards, and the
> convenience and ubiquity (a 50 cent word there!) of yahoogroups
> may tend to make the decline here somewhat more lasting
>
> And if they are better fora for fostering discussion, so be it. The
> traffic will be driven by the quality of content.
....and traffic is the talent pool for generating content.
I never realistically expected to start a new newsgroup. The discussion
so far is good, however. In addition to such great initiative, I'd also
like to restart a FAQs rewrite discussion and create a finished
do***ent that can be auto posted at regular intervals.
Chris
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