The *Unoffical* Sciforums Community Project: Morpheus

Stryder

Stryder

Keeper of "good" ideas.
Valued Senior Member
I've rewritten this post to try and be a bit clearer. I see the community here as being stuck with just a forum (sciforums, admittedly the Encyclopedia was an addition however it's more of a joke because it's content is obviously not what you'd normally find in an Encyclopaedia (Unless someone had been writing in the columns in pencil).

What I wanted to try and en-capture and enlist the help of is the community to aid in the creation making a multimedia enriched community expansion to the forums.
Obviously it's not easy to term what the site should be about or have housed within it, since it's something that the member base here would have to be more than interested by actually using it.

Obviously I'm at a bit of a dead end alone, since such a project alone is an awesome task, so this thread is about enlisting help from all those that can actually help.

So:
What additions would you like to see added to Sciforums for community use?
Would you use the additions mentioned or your own addition for that matter? (Additions mentioned by other posters)
Do you have anything you can offer such a project? (Expertise, Time, Resources etc)

I've got a name that I'd like to use for the expansion, in fact it's the only reason I got the name otherwise I wouldn't have shelled out for it. It's Scivillage.com and Scivillage.net, it's named after one of Lixlukes threads called Scivillage where a hypothetical village was lived in and built by the members of the Sciforums community. I just felt at the time that it was a good idea and perhaps could be taken a step further, by being more than just a thread but a community based activity to develop community based sites.

Ideas suggested so far:
Chat (bit like a shoutbox but larger, rather than live chat) & Image hosting
Signatures and Statistics
Larger file hosting

Any other thoughts on the subject, feel free to add them. (Please try to keep it on topic though)

[You can also find me online for discussion about this particular project by checking my user profile]
 
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Okay, as you can tell I still haven't quite announced this in plain English, which is another reason why I need your help so I spit it out so everyone can understand.

For some time people have asked for things to be added to Sciforums, things like:
Blogs, Chatrooms, IRC even picture hosting

The problem is by nature the forums is just that a *forums* and for it to change it would undermine some of the systems that spider it and advertise it. (i.e. big-boards.com) From a development standpoint, it's best left as a Forums.

For new Community related additions, expansions, tools and gadgets to be added the suggestion is that a sister site would have to be created. Now I have kind of mentioned that Idea to Plazma and hopefully it was passed onto the Administration however the ideas weren't explained very well because as you can tell I over complex what I'm trying to say and don't really have an Editor to tell me when to key it down a notch so they can understand.

I picked up the Domains www.scivillage.com and www.scivillage.net a little while back, the Scivillage name is something that Lixluke (coolskill) termed sometime back in a thread where he put forwards a hypothetical village in which all the community members participated in and built together. It was active for a bit and well is now lost in the background of the 'About members' section.

I'd like to see Sciforums community expand from where it is, so that it's no longer just a forum however I don't want to try slapping a Mamba CMS site together to be *Just like any other Mamba CMS site*, what I would like to see is people from the community here at sciforums emerge to help build the site much like Lixlukes hypothetical village. Built by the contribution of effort by the various talents and skills that sciforums possesses.

Obviously such a site will not be so serious or restrictive and would give people something else to interact with rather than burn themselves out over moderation in the forums.

So I need your help, help in regards to what you would like to see our little Sciforum's community evolve into "Beyond the Board", what niche talents members can offer to make the community they are apart of more than what it is now.

Obviously Q & A is very important for the Fledgling brainstorm in regards to conception as well as people learning what it will achieve and what they can do to aid.
 
How about you just start with a chat and pictures upload site.

We could go on from there.

As for blogs and links to personal photography sites, etc, the encyclopedia is a better bet for that.

Members could link to their blogs and photo sites on their user pages.
 
Nikelodeon said:
Sounds like an awful lot of effort.
Click to expand...

Well it can be, if of course a person wants to make the effort. It doesn't mean if you don't want to make an effort that you wouldn't be able to be apart of it. It's just I know that some people out there are better at doing a number of things that need to be done than I ever could, they might be interested in aiding.... or not :(
 
S.A.M. said:
How about you just start with a chat and pictures upload site.

We could go on from there.
Click to expand...

That's not a bad idea, I know we need to start somewhere simple and work our way up. Obviously it makes sense to do that and is kind of what I had planned, however I haven't exactly voiced that. The problem of couse is working out what thing to start with.

For instance I created a subforum for 'Requests', if someone said "I'd like sciforums to have it's own Newsgroup/Usenet server, is it possible?" the question would be met with various points.

For instance is it Viable? are people going to use a Usenet service provided for them, or do they have one they are already using that they aren't going to part with?

If enough say "Yes they would give it ago", perhaps it's possible to 'Trial' however as a trial it's likely that the bandwidth available would be limited because of cost and the service could be sucky to begin with. If the userbase didn't metabolise, then the project would be cut short as there is no point pouring resources, money, time and effort into a project that isn't going to be successful.

The same sort of structure of questioning can be applied to any other additions that people put forwards.

So a Chat site? If you mean Chatroom, is it Viable? Would people use it?
 
Nikelodeon said:
Well, good [enc]luck[/enc]
Click to expand...

I'm sure we could find a use for you Nik... you must have some secret talent that you've never mentioned, perhaps a collector of oddities or a connoisseur of fine wines... who knows... although using the site in the future could just be enough on it's own
 
I've changed the first post to make a bit more sense (I hope).

You have to understand that before me is a giant piece of granite with no shape, I stand before it with a plan in my head of what it *might* look like and I can chip away at it, I know I could have it done quicker with aid, however to explain to potential onlookers how they might aid chip away at this granite lump is difficult. They will obviously contribute and the idea I have for what statue I was developing might malform based upon their inputs. I'm not concerned if the direction is different from the initial concept, but it would be good to at leat get more than just "chip at then" across to the members here at Sciforums.
 
S.A.M. said:
How about you just start with a chat and pictures upload site.

We could go on from there.

As for blogs and links to personal photography sites, etc, the encyclopedia is a better bet for that.

Members could link to their blogs and photo sites on their user pages.
Click to expand...

yay!

+1
 
Okay if we go with Chat, Do we want it user friendly where anyone can use it from a browser or do we want to use something like IRC where some members might prefer to chew broken glass rather than use?
 
Stryder said:
Okay if we go with Chat, Do we want it user friendly where anyone can use it from a browser or do we want to use something like IRC where some members might prefer to chew broken glass rather than use?
Click to expand...

nah..nobody is ever around at the same time.

Should be like a 'troll' thread here. Present to participate in at any hour. and later re-read so that tea comes out of your nose.
 
Interesting idea, and good luck with it.
As for me, it would be enough if these forums were in plain-text, so I have no need for anything else here, but really, good luck and I hope you get something good out of this!

I'll contribute if I'll see something I'm competent in.

Cheers
 
That said, blogs are an interesting idea and would probably be popular if there's additional button for sciblog under member's name or in the profile. Everyone could have a free rant and have their little soap box.
 
Well from what Spurious suggests, Chat would be like a Shoutbox, just a lot larger in the sense that whole posts could fit in it.

That would be simple enough to create, I could test run it with my forums login to see how cross domain login's function (I don't think the forums security would be undermined however there might be the problem of 'Spoofing' the poster to a chat screen. But only if it's not coded correctly).

I was thinking of a 'Village Idjot' award scheme, but soap box scheme could work too.

I guess my overall idea was that some of the tomfoolery that happens on Sciforums should be somewhere else, but not in the nasty sense, what I mean is it should have it's own unique place, what better place than a village?

However the problem is my perception of tomfoolery could be different from that of someone elses. Still keep the ideas and interest coming, I'm sure the foundations can be laid as soon as we know what we're building ;)
 
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