SWF is OLD

[SleepyK]

asdf I had a really long well written post but work computers are suck asdjkashdkjasasd


So I've talked to tons of smashers about this as the internet has evolved. Smashboards should not be the place people come to for information. this is bad because Forums are an outdated medium of communication. We have better tools like facebook twitter and youtube and modern websites reflect this.

here are some examples

I'M USING INTERNET EXPLORERE BECAUSE I AM AT WORK SADSAFAS

SRK and other websites like iPlayWinner and Eventhubs long have since adopted the "first page has news you can comment on without having an account (also you can link your facebook and twitter to the comments)" on top of having a wiki and other crap easily and readily accessable. this also makes finding match videos much easier because you just check the front page helps out smaller tournaments and scenes etc

ON TOP OF HELPING OUR COMMUNITY AND HELPING PLAYERS FIND ASHDJASKDHAS THIS IS A GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR ONE OF YOU PROGRAMMER TYPES TO MAKE THE NEXT BIG SMASH WEBSITE (YOU COULD HAVE 64/MELEE/BRAWL/ SMASH UNIBUTTS SECTIONS IF YOU HAD THE RIERIGHT PEOPLE UPKEEP THEWE BISTE) YOU COULD MAKE OLTS OF DOLLARARS HAVNINGB WEBSITET ADS SELL CLOTHS LINK 2 SWF IF U GCAR

DOESN'T HAVE TO BE INTEPDPENDETAN SOME SWF BRO CAN MAKE SWF BETTER SMASHBREAD


also instead of using smashboards to help players find each other a facebook app would totally rule we already have fb groups for players but an app with regional ashdjkahdkas and then national announcement type things WOULD TOTALLLY MAKEM ORE SSENSE 2 FIEND BPEOPLE ONLINE THAN HEY FPRUUYM 1000 YEARSO LD

ALSO FACEBUK APP + PHONE APP LOTS OF DLLAR F44 U HUE

also youtube i wanna make a video series i talked 2 cacutus now i mhabve dolalr 4 equip but that's a different thread for me to make entirely.

 

[SleepyK]

my conveyance is *** in this post because i wrote it realyl fast cause it deleted my good post so i am angerur hope i get the right point s macross

 

[Teczer0]

Ugh, chie and her stupid bicycle kick.

I think the point is pretty clear at least to me it is. This would be cool, I know in melee disc people are trying to compile a list of FB groups to be more connected through FB.

 

[Dr Peepee]

LMFAOOOOOOOO

wtf

I don't really get it but hey if you're about improving SWF because it's old and getting outdated with what it's doing then I'm right there with ya.

 

[SleepyK]

yeah, no one uses forums anymore. go to any modern, popular website and it's pretty clear that the forum should not be the primary focus of a website. too inaccessible etc.

i have talked to too many people who don't want to use the forum and don't feel like posting but want to get in to melee.

very frustrating that we're still using a forum in 2012 to try to get new players =/

 

[Marc]

Ever since MLG took over it's been impossible to thoroughly update the website, though we've evolved a little in the past few years with the news on top.

I still feel like forums allow for more thorough discussion, not to mention guides etc., than social media. I would probably just disappear if it's going to be all about oneliner culture.

 

[Deleted member]

MLG sucks.

Your work is old.

 

[SleepyK]

you can have an active and thriving forum

as a subsection of a main website.

forums should not be the primary focus.

web 3.0 etc

 

[KirbyKaze]

I'm all for a website where I can say **** without it being censored.

 

[AlphaZealot]

Partially agree...forums have their place, it is the primary mode for discussion, if there were *not* forums, there would be little meaningful discussion of tactics/rules/gameplay/etc. other than linear threads with poor content control. Character guides, movement guides, and other things we have here catalogued on Smashboards simply can't exist at current with social media tools. I also do not know many active members of any scene that do not participate in the forums on, say, SRK, Teamliquid, Smogon, etc. Forums are effective for covering in depth discussion as a CMS.

So, forums are not actually outdated, what is outdated is Smashboards being simply a forum. Though, I would point out Smashboards was almost always unique in this aspect. Smashboards simply needs a modern frontpage with blog style news posting, social media integration, and some type of event featuring system (basically...what SRK does).

 

[KirbyKaze]

I think SRK does a really good job with their website.

 

[SleepyK]

Let's do something about it

 

[KirbyKaze]

I don't know how to program but I'll help in any way I can that doesn't involve me paying a lot of money

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

Ok well we would need designers, writers and plenty of non-programming staff. We would also need a small amount of income to handle hosting costs.

If someone wants to start something, draw up some sample pages and describe their fuctionality. Doesn't have to be anything technical; just put down your ideas.

It is a good idea to get all the ideas down on paper before programming really starts. Honestly, programmers are not reliable decision makers.

I know php, sql, and c so I could do the site alone if nobody else steps up. I wouldn't really want that, but its an option. I think I still have an ER diagram drawn for a basic forum. The cheapest solution would be to make our own, but it would be much more efficient to buy a license to software or something.


Food for thought

 

[Isatis]

I have a whole thing to type up with Smashboards, a new platform to replace vBulletin, MLG, etc. that I will later today. Right now I wanna say:

• Forums provide a better way to present a discussion than Twitter, Youtube, and especially Facebook.

• Facebook is limited to friends, and limited in scope. You cannot draw new crowds from Facebook groups.

• Twitter is limited to 140 characters (argument size) and isn't convenient for large discussions.

• Youtube is for media.

• Google+ is the only comparable social media that can compete with a forum... but nobody uses Google+.

 

[Isatis]

Overhauling the site was one of the first things I made a priority when I became a developer... and later an administrator. The only issue was that I had limited file access and the changes I proposed were huge and ran into a roadblock for several years into today even. I do not have any way to add, modify or delete files on the site right now. If we cannot overhaul the site to keep up with popular discussion by Smash 4, this sets back Smashboards, this sets back Smash and new smashers that enter the community will be completely turned off by how limited Smashboards is right now. On top of that, the forum software we are using right now (vBulletin), is not receiving any new updates, features, that stuff: their next version (vBulletin 4) is a buggy mess that will cause more downtime for Smashboards. Even as it stands right now, as evidenced by the frequent slows, 502's, search issues we are getting, our forum software cannot handle it anymore. We need an overhaul.

I agree completely that a news section being the main part with the forums being a subsection should definitely work. This is one of the limitations in the new Smash News -- not only did I have to deal with news being a subsection (thus, it's unpopular right now), but there's absolutely no point to it. One of the arguments JV made back when I was talking to him about having a new Smash News and having it as our main page instead of forums were that Smashboards is a primarily community-driven website... and, to be fair, it completely was a community-driven website. The internet evolves rapidly now and times have to change. The concept of forums in general have not gone away, nor will it anytime soon... there are several forums I go to that have not died and get tons of new members every day. What I would propose to set us apart from Facebook would be adding new features. The first one I propose would be an interactive tournament locator using Google Maps connected to the tournament/event calendar that would get your location and show tournaments near you, how many weeks in advance, that sort of stuff. The second one, as proposed by Sveet, would be an interactive Smashboards app that would even make it easy to discuss things with other Smashers on both iPhone and Android... others would include things like a full team page for the Team Smash Bros streaming on Twitch to be easily accessible, and make something similar to TeamFortress.tv that grabs the list of streams from a Twitch team and actively shows you different streams and such.

In April of last year I proposed moving our forum software to XenForo, as not only is it up to date, it looks more appealing, has better features, is optimized for BIG boards like this one, has its own search program so searching on large forums takes less than a second, the search engine optimizations are amazing, styling is better, plugin system simple so it's easier to code the aforementioned two ideas, there's "recent activity" and "news feeds", trophies, points, alert system, private messages are now private conversations, Facebook login so it makes it tons more easier to signup for the site without the hassle of filling things out and waiting on an email, various social networking integrations, and as I mentioned before: it's faster and taxes less on the servers than vBulletin does now. Shoryuken does this. Hell, look at 8WayRun and tell me this doesn't look appealing to you. It's user friendly and we need this for Smash 4, as we can build a great Smash site on top of the Xenforo framework.

But we can't. JV no longer works for MLG, we have no GM, and everything's pretty much hit a brick wall.

 

[Dr Peepee]

do we just wait?

are there any smaller improvements we could make in the meantime?

 

[AlphaZealot]

I'll be at MLG Raleigh. Will bring this issue up with people, maybe even Sundance or Clap.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

I hope a major update for swf is possible!

 

[Marc]

I'll be at MLG Raleigh. Will bring this issue up with people, maybe even Sundance or Clap.

Ask them about that Nintendo deal while you're at it, that **** was ridiculous.

 

[SleepyK]

yay discussion and potential progress

i'll do more talk poop when i am not at work

btw bionic! a friend of mine was making a facebook streams app thing he showed me
I would imagine you would be more apt at handling the task but it was really nifty and it would totally help smasherszszzsz

ALSO WHERE'S JV NOW D:

I have a whole thing to type up with Smashboards, a new platform to replace vBulletin, MLG, etc. that I will later today. Right now I wanna say:

• Forums provide a better way to present a discussion than Twitter, Youtube, and especially Facebook.

• Facebook is limited to friends, and limited in scope. You cannot draw new crowds from Facebook groups.

• Twitter is limited to 140 characters (argument size) and isn't convenient for large discussions.

• Youtube is for media.

• Google+ is the only comparable social media that can compete with a forum... but nobody uses Google+.

1) yes definitely which is why we still need the formumsus
2) sort of. you can invite friends to the group (georgia has had tons of new players because of this) and keep them in touch much more easily. if hte group is public then there are lots of people who can join because they are interested.
3) indeed, mostly for announcements. would be convenient
4) youtubs is totally a great way to spread messages, information about streams, tournaments.. it's actually a great way to let people know what's going on.
5) what's google+

 

[AlphaZealot]

Somewhere in Asia playing poker, last I heard.

 

[SleepyK]

oh ;w;

sounds like he's having a good time =3

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

Honestly, reddit is a great social media too. Its not as good for discussions exactly (they still happen), but its quite good for headlines, posting videos, advertising tournaments, etc.

I use facebook quite a bit for advertising tournaments and smashfests. Chicagoland melee facebook group has ~130 people and we constantly post about smash, and we can have 5 days of smash each week using that group.

These things can't ever be imitated by a forum, or at least with the changes that have been made over the last few years on this site (how the forums are laid out; for example MBR on the very bottom of the site). The site would have to be laid out in such a way that people could quickly see important things. The bar on the top of the site is a good start, but there is much more that can be done.

 

[Strong Badam]

yeah seriously can someone move MBR to Melee Discussion?

 

[Isatis]

btw bionic! a friend of mine was making a facebook streams app thing he showed me
I would imagine you would be more apt at handling the task but it was really nifty and it would totally help smasherszszzsz

I looked at it and I don't really like how sequestered in width space it is, and how small a page we would have for that. Like I said I had something similar to that and teamfortress.tv but once we get on Xenforo where I'll have a huge amount of space and the ability to pull Twitch.tv team members stuff.

I use facebook quite a bit for advertising tournaments and smashfests. Chicagoland melee facebook group has ~130 people and we constantly post about smash, and we can have 5 days of smash each week using that group.

These things can't ever be imitated by a forum, or at least with the changes that have been made over the last few years on this site (how the forums are laid out; for example MBR on the very bottom of the site). The site would have to be laid out in such a way that people could quickly see important things. The bar on the top of the site is a good start, but there is much more that can be done.

I can still bring up possible forum changes to the Senate lol.

I guess what I'm trying to say is Smashboards needs content. We have to have more content. A majority of new people I've talked to say they've entered Smash on Smashboards itself, and SWF in itself is an outlet of information. Facebook is not, but it is really good for interaction. A new smasher I know of in my region thought MD/VA was dead because nobody was posting ine thread, so he couldn't see what smashfests or tournaments were going on. I have nothing against using Facebook (or groups) for social purposes, but what I keep seeing suggested is Facebook being a primary focus of information, which again wouldn't work.

Smashboards needs an overhaul and needs to become a primary focus, not Facebook. The features I suggested would help newcomers of any game find information fast and grow the scene.

 

[SleepyK]

idk fb integration would be sort of amazing for a game you primarily play with people in person

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

The reason activity is down is because of the forum layout. Honestly, I havent browsed the forums in over 2 years, i just subscribe to all the threads i think matter. When new posts happen i see right away and can reply. I didn't subscribe, I doubt I would still be posting on this site with any frequency. As it is, I talk about smash much more on facebook than swf.

On FB, new content is displayed directly to users on their front page and is searchable by person or group. Same thing on Reddit. Both of these sites also have ways to interact without posting; "like" for facebook and "upvote/downvote" for reddit.

 

[Strong Badam]

I'll be at MLG Raleigh. Will bring this issue up with people, maybe even Sundance or Clap.

Can you bring up the FC:Diamond vids?

 

[AlphaZealot]

No, they are long lost.

 

[Strong Badam]

MLG is such a good company

 

[Deleted member]

long lost lol

huge losses

beautiful butthurt

lol

 

[AlphaZealot]

Made Sundance aware of many of the issues. Clap was told as well (by Solid Jake).

Regarding FCD: it was 5 years ago, there are far more pressing things to bring up. Further, whoever made the slip up 5 years ago is, my guess, not even working at the company anymore. In that time MLG has moved to a no-dvd system, JV is no longer with the company (he was the one who delivered the disks), and has also switched to a new office, so unless it is archived in some binder in some box in some backroom in a some off-site storage area, I can't see those disks existing anymore.

 

[SleepyK]

D:

noooooooooooooooo

 

[Nintendude]

Last summer there was a thread about ways to promote Smash on the internet and that inspired me to build a Smash community on reddit. Now, a year later, the reddit community contains over 5000 people, many of whom were new to competitive Smash. I'm still really unsure about why TOs aren't promoting tournaments there.

Still, though, keep in mind that all of this happened in less than a year. It also took BARELY any effort. All I did was advertise a little bit on r/gaming, smashboards, and AIB. I tried to post interesting content in the beginning to get people interested. Eventually after just a few weeks, the community there became self-sustaining and it has been steadily growing, attracting all sorts of newcomers from reddit.

Also, I'm surprised nobody has mentioned AiB yet. AiB is basically what a bunch of you have been describing in terms of like the news headlines and stuff. It's really too bad that AiB ended up only catering to the Brawl community.

btw, is anyone here really good at customizing subreddits? I really want to headline current livestreams and upcoming tournaments, but I lack the knowledge to do it well. r/starcraft is a great model to go by (and they have over 100,000 people) and they make all of this stuff really accessible.

 

[Isatis]

the way r/tf2 (Team Fortress 2's subreddit) does it is they have a script that gets the current livestreams and then logs into reddit, edits sidebar (replaces "%livestreams%" with the livestreams), submits it etc instead of embedding something like a script that fetches it.

 

[Nintendude]

Well, that sounds awesome. Any idea how we can implement that?

 

[Isatis]

I need server access to set scheduled jobs

Other than that it should be easy as long as the sidebar description stays the same.

I can probably do it from my Reddit account (BionicK) automatically once I get file access again...

 

[Nintendude]

If you manage to get that access again let me know and i'll give you editing powers on the subreddit.

 

[DoH]

What is reddit?

getoffmylawn.gif