Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(

[Gandalf Parker]

Im seeing what COULD be Zen tracks.
Id love to see him log into the new forum and give his viewpoint. Im surprised they didnt include him in their poll there. I dont think the implications and effects of the Sombre incident holds a candle to the Zen incident.

[thejeff]

There are still plenty of knowledgeable people here. Questions still get answered. New players tend not to ask the questions that only the most knowledgeable can answer. They're more helpful with the deep weird behavior stuff that comes up from time to time.
And some of those who left tended to snipe at those asking what they considered simple questions. Which is not very welcoming.
So knowledge has been lost, but not the type that's useful to newcomers. And when the weird stuff comes up, we can go looking over there.

I'd be more concerned about the modding, except that there still seems to be enough interaction that I don't think much has really been lost. It's just a bit split up.

As for "long-term health", I'm aware that some people like that kind of environment and I'm fine with that. I'm sure the site will continue as long as they want it to. My experience with environments like that is that they tend to pare down to a in-group that it's very hard to break into. With few new members, the site dies as people leave for one reason or another.
I've usually seen this as a takeover of an existing site, not a splinter faction. It may well be in this situation, new people who prefer that environment can come here and build up enough cred playing or modding to get accepted over there. It's an interesting little social experiment. We'll see how it plays out.

[Gandalf Parker]

Exactly.
Everything has its pros and cons. I was actually smiling at the predictions of the wasteland death of this forum due to losses of experts.

Elites, and Experts, can actually be the death of official and distributor-run forums. Discussion, discovery, rapture, and answers on the level of the in-game tips file are its bread and butter. The impression that everything is already known, the winning strat is found, the community elites win all the public games is not conducive to sales. Im NOT saying it was done on purpose (I know the staff well enough not to suspect that) but the predictions of lost sales and dead forum were naive. Examples of the pros and cons have existed for longer than internet and have been studied by psych students for decades to be used by business students.

[thejeff]

BTW: Have I just blacked out the Zen incident? I poked around with the search function a bit, but didn't see anything explosive with his last posts.

[Knai]

I'm relatively new here. Who was Zen and what happened?

[Gandalf Parker]

Zen was a very active map maker, modder, programmer, and a very popular moderator.
He created the CBm mod for one thing. And his departure also caused a rash of sympathetic departures. For all of the reasons given why the previous banishments would destroy this forum, I felt that Zen had already been that route and more already showing that as long as there is influx of new people then this forum will survive just about anything.

Frank Trollman was another I thought was missing from the poll unnecessarily.

Then again, one of the most common parting conversations of the banned always reminds us that you can never truly ban anyone (though they rarely seem to understand that makes no difference).
But like the Dom3 song in the parody thread says...
What if xxxxxxx was one of us?
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showp...1&postcount=35

[Corwin]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Zen was a very active map maker, modder, programmer, and a very popular moderator.
He created the CBm mod for one thing. And his departure also caused a rash of sympathetic departures. For all of the reasons given why the previous banishments would destroy this forum, I felt that Zen had already been that route and more already showing that as long as there is influx of new people then this forum will survive just about anything[/url]

You must be talking about some other Zen Gandalf.

The Zen I remember was an royal as*hole and a narcissist jerk with an ego the size of a building. I think Dominions forum is much better without him as a mod. I've missed that incident you are talking about, but all I can say is - good riddance!

To his credit- he did some good stuff as a modder. But as a moderator he was a very bad pick.

All of the above is my personal opinion of course, you are certainly entitled to yours.

[Foodstamp]

Originally Posted by Corwin

You must be talking about some other Zen Gandalf.

The Zen I remember was an royal as*hole and a narcissist jerk with an ego the size of a building. I think Dominions forum is much better without him as a mod. I've missed that incident you are talking about, but all I can say is - good riddance!

To his credit- he did some good stuff as a modder. But as a moderator he was a very bad pick.

All of the above is my personal opinion of course, you are certainly entitled to yours.

History repeats itself!

[Executor]

The only downside I see, so far, is a lower game quality .
I see a lot vets are registered on the other forum, doe I don't know if they changed the team completely or still lurk on both forums.

Anyway, my point was that it's a shame to lose good players.

And the benefits from this, well, now we can organize a "new forum meet old forum" game, an all star game!

[Stagger Lee]

Originally Posted by Executor

The only downside I see, so far, is a lower game quality .
I see a lot vets are registered on the other forum, doe I don't know if they changed the team completely or still lurk on both forums.

Anyway, my point was that it's a shame to lose good players.

And the benefits from this, well, now we can organize a "new forum meet old forum" game, an all star game!

Hmmm...

I think the game thread would be over there by default, eh?