Why has CivFanatics overtaken Apolyton in members?

[Drogue]

As some people have hinted at, I think Apolyton's missed a trick. As Krill said:

Originally posted by Krill
CFC and Poly both suck for MP though. And poly is still better in DGs.

CFC seems to have modding tied-up, which while a thriving community, is a relatively niche market - far more people play CivIV than mod it. Others have also mentioned that Apolyton has the better community, it "feels like home". Why don't we use this to create an MP/DG community? As SirRalph said:

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
What concerns MP, well, I can't say I blame both forums for not covering it accordingly. Both provide a platform for discussions, but a true Civ MP forum demands more infrastructure like tournament organization and ladder mechanics, and it needs a very active staff of moderators dedicated to MP, which is what both Apolyton and CFC simply do not have.

Is it possible to set up this infrastructure? Could we set up a ladder, tournament organisation and have some interested people moderate and lead these forums?

I just don't see why modding is the biggest deal here, when surely MP is a huge thing that is currently uncatered for. Given our history with DGs and MP and our community, isn't Apolyton best placed to provide this?

[Aeson]

The membership numbers are google rankings, and just the presense of "civ" in CFC's name.

It's Firaxis' fault that the CIV community at CFC is more active than at Poly though...

A much higher percentage of the active Civ III strat posters were taken from Poly than from CFC. In my case playtesting lead to being burnt out on the game before it was even released. I haven't been anywhere near as active with CIV at either forum as I had been with Civ III, and that seems to be the case with most of the playtesters as well. (Though not always because of playtesting of course.)

The other thing was that the SDK was public, and that cut out the reverse-engineering of game mechanics that had driven a lot of the strategy discussions for Civ III. CFC's real strategy forums for Civ III were the GOTM/HOF, and even though some of the luster of strategy discussion was gone with CIV, the competitions are still there to drive it.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Trip

Ha. Again with the DG-hate. I spammed very rarely. Most of my posts were related to the games. And most were quite long at that. Everyone just thought DGing in general was spam so I got labelled as the worst offender.

Civ 3 was a lot of fun. Even though it's not quite the level of 4 it's still amazing, particularly for me because it was my first 'Civ experience'. I doubt I'll ever play any other game nearly as much.

And Hunt Valley isn't all it's cracked up to be. This place always smells like nutmeg, chili powder, cinnamon, pepper... or some combination of them... because the McCormick Spice Co. HQ is about a mile from Firaxis.

You're getting warmer...

[notyoueither]

Apolyton cut itself off at the knees.

Tell me who became active here with Civ3 and is an important part of the administration today or was at any time in the past. It wasn't for lack of talent. Rather, we have an aging group of Civ2 die hards and nobody else need apply.

I watched it happen as Civ4 came out. Solver did some great writing, but as far as the leadership of the site is concerned... not very much. There was no energy injected by new blood. No new ideas other than opening some new forums and... not much.

My $0.02

[DanQ]

Originally posted by Drogue
Is it possible to set up this infrastructure? Could we set up a ladder, tournament organisation and have some interested people moderate and lead these forums?

If someone is interested, willing and able to manage such a system -- as in, once it would be set-up techwise -- we likely have or can otherwise find the talent to set this up (with additional technical staff for maintenance etc. over time).

Originally posted by notyoueither
Apolyton cut itself off at the knees.

Tell me who became active here with Civ3 and is an important part of the administration today or was at any time in the past. It wasn't for lack of talent. Rather, we have an aging group of Civ2 die hards and nobody else need apply.

I watched it happen as Civ4 came out. Solver did some great writing, but as far as the leadership of the site is concerned... not very much. There was no energy injected by new blood. No new ideas other than opening some new forums and... not much.

Fair point. To add some context, we have always encouraged additions to the Apolyton staff who could, in turn, work their way up to administrative positions should they so choose and the opportunity presented itself; this has happened in the past, recent and distant, and should continue to occur in the future. We know that growth and renewal in our staffing ranks is critical to the continued survival and vibrancy of this as with any other site.

Unfortunately, fewer and fewer individuals have come forward to take the first step (joining the staff) over the years and fewer still have been able to commit for an extended period of time; more often than not their leaving was for quite valid -- usually 'real life' -- reasons, but it cut off the likelihood of their "moving up the ranks" and the untold possibilities that could have come with them.

[Solver]

Is it possible to set up this infrastructure? Could we set up a ladder, tournament organisation and have some interested people moderate and lead these forums?

I just don't see why modding is the biggest deal here, when surely MP is a huge thing that is currently uncatered for. Given our history with DGs and MP and our community, isn't Apolyton best placed to provide this?

I agree that these are big things, but unfortunately, demogames are more niche than modding. Firstly, fewer people are interested in DGs than in mods. Secondly, no one is going to search the web for a place where DGs are held. People generally find out such a thing exists *after* joining a forum, unlike, say, mods and scenarios, the existence of which is known beforehand.

But yeah, that's one area where we're not inferior to CFC. We ave as much PBEM activity going on as they do, and our DGs are more active. I guess this is, at least in part, thanks to many PBEM players being the old Civ2/CtP/Civ3 veterans.

Tell me who became active here with Civ3 and is an important part of the administration today or was at any time in the past. It wasn't for lack of talent. Rather, we have an aging group of Civ2 die hards and nobody else need apply.

Who is a part of administration doesn't really matter in this context. What matters is that people like you became active here with Civ3. That's you, or Aeson, or Arrian, or Jaybe, or Dominae or Vondrack. These people became active (or mostly so) with Civ3, and stuck with the site. Many of these people moved on to become testers for Civ4. Then there's Trip, who became very active with Civ3, and moved on to be a Firaxis intern and later full-time employee.

For Civ4, there are less people who stuck around here after registering or becoming active for the game. I can name a few, but not as many as for Civ3. We had LOTS of new registrations around the time Civ4 came out, and for a few months afterwards, but most of those people posted a few times and are now gone.

[DanQ]

Originally posted by -Jrabbit
Poly no longer supports the Mac community.

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
I remember when 'Poly had a separate forum for Macintosh-based Civilization games *and* a moderator for it.

Yes. I remember too; unfortunately, over time its activity diminished for whatever reason(s). We also used to have a staff member that managed CivII on the Mac content, and another for CtP but they disappeared suddenly without explanation some years ago.

Originally posted by Sirotnikov
I think that poly is a bit outdated in its design and has workflow problems...

poly has tons of information but it is poorly presented and often 'hidden'.

It has to do with the site design - graphical and content wise.

Originally posted by Octavian X
the apolyton.net site, on the other hand, is sometimes hard to navigate, while new content remains relatively hidden in a bland looking news menu.

Indeed. Work continunes behind the scenes to rectify this obstacle as time and staffing permit.

Originally posted by Drixnak
Doesn't really matter anyway because unless they get their act together and make civ 5 a real civ game, both sites will eventually die out.

I respectfully disagree on that front.

Originally posted by Solver
You must subscribe to BanThemPLUS for that.

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Develop some RSS feeds for the news and actively solicit other civ related sites to use your news feeds. That'll increase the visibility of Apolyton.

To confirm there is a single RSS feed for news already, and for PolyCast productions.

[Lancer]

All is lost, there is no hope and doom is upon us.



Actually that's too upbeat and I don't want to appear overly optimistic.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by DanQ
Fair point. To add some context, we have always encouraged additions to the Apolyton staff who could, in turn, work their way up to administrative positions should they so choose and the opportunity presented itself; this has happened in the past, recent and distant, and should continue to occur in the future. We know that growth and renewal in our staffing ranks is critical to the continued survival and vibrancy of this as with any other site.

Yes, but Thunderfall actively recruits new people as mods and gives them a real sense of ownership at that other site.

I don't know how effective another batch of news editors or other errand boys will be.

When it came time to have Civ4 forums, who were the moderators? Rah and Solver? No knock on these guys, but where was the fresh blood, new ideas, and energy in positions that are seen to count (both by the person in the position, and in the community as well)?

Unfortunately, fewer and fewer individuals have come forward to take the first step (joining the staff) over the years and fewer still have been able to commit for an extended period of time; more often than not their leaving was for quite valid -- usually 'real life' -- reasons, but it cut off the likelihood of their "moving up the ranks" and the untold possibilities that could have come with them.

I understand. However, how many are willing to put in years to 'move up the ranks' of a site with an established and well entrenched hierarchy?

I can see what you want to do, but I question the applicability of a corporate structure to an internet community if creating a dynamic, vibrant area of interest is desired. It seems too ossified.

Something I think Thunderfall has done very well is recruit, and not wait for them to ask, as well as give people recruited a sense of ownership that motivates them. They in turn motivate others and help create more activity.

Or, I could be wrong. This is simply upping my ante from $0.02 to $0.05.

[Lancer]

That's a risky investment.

[Jaguar]

Back when Civ3 came out, I made a thread in A/C saying that CFC's Creation and Customization forum, with all its categorized subforums, was a much better system than Poly's Civ3 Creation and Civ3 Files forums. If I remember correctly, you couldn't even make threads in the files forum, and you had to wait for a mod to move your completed file thread over from Creation to Files. It was a really cumbersome system, and anyone could see that CFC's was much better. Mark disagreed, and said Poly's system was good as it was.

By a couple years from then, none of the serious mods were based on Apolyton, and CivFanatics had a really active Civ3 modding community. I had joined CFC out of necessity because there were mods I liked that were developed exclusively over there, and I wanted to give feedback. I think that's the catalyst for CFC's higher membership. And I really think it happened because they had a much more convenient forum for user-created content.

[Jaguar]

Oh, one other thing. CFC's front page runs circles around Apolyton's.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Apolyton cut itself off at the knees.

Tell me who became active here with Civ3 and is an important part of the administration today or was at any time in the past. It wasn't for lack of talent. Rather, we have an aging group of Civ2 die hards and nobody else need apply.

I watched it happen as Civ4 came out. Solver did some great writing, but as far as the leadership of the site is concerned... not very much. There was no energy injected by new blood. No new ideas other than opening some new forums and... not much.

My $0.02

Yes, but Thunderfall actively recruits new people as mods and gives them a real sense of ownership at that other site.

I don't know how effective another batch of news editors or other errand boys will be.

When it came time to have Civ4 forums, who were the moderators? Rah and Solver? No knock on these guys, but where was the fresh blood, new ideas, and energy in positions that are seen to count (both by the person in the position, and in the community as well)?

I understand. However, how many are willing to put in years to 'move up the ranks' of a site with an established and well entrenched hierarchy?

I can see what you want to do, but I question the applicability of a corporate structure to an internet community if creating a dynamic, vibrant area of interest is desired. It seems too ossified.

Something I think Thunderfall has done very well is recruit, and not wait for them to ask, as well as give people recruited a sense of ownership that motivates them. They in turn motivate others and help create more activity.

Or, I could be wrong. This is simply upping my ante from $0.02 to $0.05.

All very true.

In Civ3 times, we had a lot of people at the helm, who just were boss but didn't do anything. Markos started a GOTM effort here, but it died out after the second or third game not for the lack of interest, but because the moderator went AWOL. People played, people turned in results but there was nobody actually collecting and posting results. Markos was serving in the army at this time, which is of course a good reason for his absence, but bloody hell, he did know he was serving for a while and couldn't do his duty, so why did he not promote a successor? Of course people got ticked off quick for not having their effort honored. Many went to CFC and started to play GOTMs there. I did too, for a while.

Other forums, like Civ2 (Ming, rah) and CtP/CtP2 (Locutus, Solver) had their fair part of active people organizing things and having the power to do so. But if I remember correct, the moderators of all Civ3 forums (except demogame minimods) were MarkG, Ming, rah and Gramphos, and frankly of all these only Gramphos did do considerable work for the Civ3 community and even he limited his activity to the modding community. All else showed up only if abuse was reported, and even then helped rarely (just reminding the invasion of "I-iz-l33t" or however he was spelled or the countless invasions of the CtP2 trolls).

And Civ4, with the exception of early Solver, who did do some good work (not anymore since quite a while) is not much different. Real life is of course a good and honorable reason not to care about a website, but if you know you won't have the time to get things running, why not step down from the high horse and give people a chance who do have the time? And preferrably quick, before they get bored with Apolyton and switch to a more active site.

Like CFC.

[Robert]

The problem of Apolyton is that the Off-Topic is to many members (most members?) the most important section.
People don't care about the civ-content of poly and go for that to civfanatics, and like others said, people aren't contributing to the civ-factor here.

Something else: Apolyton isn't only focussed on civ, it also does a lot of other games that may be connected, but aren't civ. Civfanatics focusses on civ, that makes the site more interesting for true civ fans.

[Jon Shafer]

(So as not to be completely negative)

One thing that's definitely improved is the quality and frequency of Civ news being reported here. Many times I myself will discover things having read them first on Apolyton. I think that can be something that's played up as well.