1. Suggestions please. You guys are all intelligent and verbose. I have some ideas which I'll outline below, but the community as a whole is a huge resource of talent and creativity. What would we like to have?
2. Be 5punky out there. This isn't just down to the code monkeys - our unique community ethos is our main draw and that's something every one of us can promote by being more visible in games. If people see us being funny, helpful, and making trolls look stupid then they might just drop in. Remember that the thing that binds us together is that we're all not arseholes, so we want to attract not-arseholes. After that, if they get the sense of humour they'll stay.
3. Chip in. As I've said, nobody can do this on their own, but if most of us do a little bit each suddenly we're making progress. Activity with visible results will provoke more activity, and by putting in some of our ideas we'll make the site somewhere unique and interesting to be. We all know it is that already, but we need to make that visible for a first time visitor.
So here are my ideas, of varying feasibility:
Return of the 5cheduler. It wasn't used a huge amount before the site upgrade, but having the option to use it was very handy, especially if we do manage to get new members in.
Return of the Disco Board. The daily threads are fine, but the disco board was a far more suitable place for it. It's less intimidating for people, and more visible.
Return of the TS widget on the front page, because seeing people on TS makes other people want to jump in. Leading to...
Return of the front page. It's a nicer landing site and has potential to be a greater portal with a few upgrades such as...
The review database. Bali got a working prototype of this up and running, and it has huge potential. Being able to click on a game/film/book and read short reviews from 5punkers is a very handy resource, as opposed to searching through forum threads. 5punkers are veteran gamers and usually of pretty good taste. I've not seen anything like it outside of metacritic, and our opinion is much more trustworthy than the internet unwashed.
A 5punky blog. We've thrown the idea around before and had a couple of goes, but inevitably we sort of lose interest. I propose that rather than having a couple of us doing it, we all have access to it. If every other active 5punker posted an article once a month we'd have a new article almost every day. I don't see even that level of traffic, but I reckon we could probably get one a week between us. Access rules could be changed later to reflect, say, post count.
RSS feeds to the front page. Just a title is enough, streaming from popular gaming and maybe entertainment sites such as PCGamer, RPS, Eurogamer. Credit given to the sources, of course. At the very least it would save me having them all shortcutted on my browser
Forum avatars. We all like them.
I realise that much of that requires web skills, and I also realise that there are an obvious few who have them. There's not a lot we can do about that, but I'm willing to learn what I can as are a few others I'm sure. It might be worth a few basic lessons to lighten the load. If the techie stuff goes in though the work should fall of and be taken over by content generation. We all do that every day in the forum, so it won't be difficult, we just have to remember to do it. I don't expect anyone to do anything, by the way. We're all here for the company and nobody should feel like it's a second job. But we love this place, right? Lets make it a better place. Who's with me?
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