Solver: The forums got to be Apolyton's main part now... what were they like early on?

DanQ: I often joke that Apolyton's forums began as a compliment to the main sections of the site and has since become the opposite (OK, so this hardly classifies as even 'ha-ha' funny but you know where I'm coming from (comedy is not my specialty)). To be honest, what I truly remember about the forums in the early days -- beyond the fact that they were driven by different software than today -- was the conflict between the CivII and CtP Off-Topic forums which were eventually merged into one.

That process was quite a... transition and I'm going to leave it at that.

Solver: Shortly after the merger, what were your future visions?

DanQ: Survival, quite honestly, was my primary consideration. At that point, it was not so much the hosting aspect -- GameStats was a stable and vibrant network during this time, arguably its heyday -- but rather from a coverage standpoint. As we discussed earlier, CivII albeit a classic was growing stale in terms of news, downloads and other content and in wanting to continue to cover it and CtP adequately, both Markos and I agreed that two heads were better then one to accomplish this. We also realized that the extent of the site's coverage had the potential to increase over time, although in the summer of 1998 we were not thinking anything along the lines of what we cover today. If I were able to bring my younger self forward through time to show him how far the site has progressed over what is nearing four years, he would probably laugh. Or cry. Or both. In either event, it would probably cost a lot of money to accomplish so I guess we'll never know.

 ;)

Solver: Let's get to the present now... are you satisfied by the current roles of you and Markos at Apolyton?

DanQ: In terms of our day-to-day responsibilities, I am (if you're reading this Markos and disagree, send me an email and we can exchange exclamation points ;D). There are times such as during exams or major tests that one of us will step into both of our roles for a time and this includes both preparation for, writing and sometimes even downtime afterwards. 

I will admit that at times I feel that I have been upstaged by Markos simply because of his prevalence to be present in certain areas, but I believe the opposite to be true at times as well. We both take any such exclusions with a grain of salt as we realize as much as we can try we simply cannot be everywhere at anytime and do everything while we're there. It has taken me a little while longer to reach this realization than Markos, but we're both everybody's favourite dictators all the same. :)

Solver: What are your everyday tasks associated with running the site?

DanQ: Generally speaking, whatever needs to be done and I am able to do in the time that I have I do. The same is true with Markos, I'm sure. I find that working on multiple projects in little steps is more often then not better than working on one in a huge step. These tasks include but are not limited to: news updates, forum checks, HTML work, discussion with staff members, and other stuff that I have forgotten to mention that would otherwise be written here.

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