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#Post#: 939--------------------------------------------------
IS THE CHESS VARIANT FORUM DEAD?
By: Asher Hurowitz Date: September 30, 2018, 6:44 pm
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Hello,
What happened to all of the activity we had on here earlier this
year? While some remains, It has at the very least taken a huge
dive. Do any of you know how we can get activity back up?
Thanks,
Asher
#Post#: 940--------------------------------------------------
Re: IS THE CHESS VARIANT FORUM DEAD?
By: ebinola Date: October 1, 2018, 5:42 am
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For me, life has picked up again and I've not got a lot of time
to play chess and variants. I've been lurking, just not posting.
Honestly, what catches my attention nowadays is when Steve
starts posting about Final Wars again on the forums or on reddit
and then disappears off the face of the earth. Say what you want
about him and his mannerisms and his opinions, I think the
game's brilliant and I hope it gets the recognition it deserves
in the future.
I think I've also said this before - most people that want to
play correspondence games are either going to use the Chess960
forum on chess.com or Jocly. There's no reason not to use them
at this point. Correspondence games make up to 95% of all
activity on the forums, which, while I've said how I feel about
that, is an impressive statistic.
Holistically, this forum's a node that makes up a larger active
network of people that share a common interest. Sure, it's
inactive for the time being, but I can't think of going to any
other forum to discuss historical chess variants. Can't deny
yourself the fact that you've connected people.
Something that I think would make the site better - and I'm
going to say it to save H.G. from banging on about it any
further - is to have interactive diagrams. I don't know the
limitations of Create a Forum's software but if you just had
some kind of widget or extension to set up a board in a post
like chess.com, that would significantly increase this forum's
functionality. People wouldn't have to go through the falderal
of editing the board in Paint (or however it's done nowadays)
and you'd save storage space. Start simple with chess, or thai
makruk, don't stress about move legalities, then build up to
more complex games. H.G. has shown that it is technically
feasible - but if it's not doable within the limitations of
Create a Forum, then I'd consider hosting the forum with some
other forum software, like phpBB for example.
#Post#: 941--------------------------------------------------
Re: IS THE CHESS VARIANT FORUM DEAD?
By: HGMuller Date: October 3, 2018, 7:31 am
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Yes, the forum is totally dead. The initial activity might have
seemed large, but it was due to very few people. When you were
not offering something they could not do just as well or better
(and for a larger audience) elsewhere, they left. It takes
effort to keep people returning to a forum, you need to offer
them something that makes it worthwile. This could be a large
and active community, giving fast and knowledgeable response to
your postings, but initially you won't have that. When the
technical possibilities of the forum then also are inferior to
what is offered elsewhere (no support for diagrams or games as
chess.com has, upload quota saturated, making it extremely
cumbersome to show images), there is no incentive to stay here.
As to having diagrams: the technical support for this forum
hosting site ensured me this would be possible, and in fact
rather easy. The catch is that you have to be forum admin to do
it. I have done a similar thing on www.talkchess.com , where,
after an upgrade to phpBB 3 they had lost the old functionality
for embedding diagrams. But there they were willing to let me
become a board admin, so that I could perform the necessary
actions (defining 'custom BBcode tags', and put some text in the
header of forum pages). I can only make a difference when people
allow me to make a difference...
#Post#: 942--------------------------------------------------
Re: IS THE CHESS VARIANT FORUM DEAD?
By: Asher Hurowitz Date: October 4, 2018, 9:55 pm
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HGMuller I have made you a temporary admin to insert the code.
Thanks so much!
#Post#: 943--------------------------------------------------
Re: IS THE CHESS VARIANT FORUM DEAD?
By: joejoyce Date: October 7, 2018, 10:23 am
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I come for interesting conversations and ideas, to talk design
more than tactics and strategy for one particular game - unless
it is representative of a particular type of variant. Like many,
I will push my own ideas, but unlike some, I won't only be here
to push my game. Make it interesting for more people like me and
HG to participate.
"With the lights out, it's less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us"
-
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTWKbfoikeg
#Post#: 944--------------------------------------------------
Re: IS THE CHESS VARIANT FORUM DEAD?
By: HGMuller Date: October 10, 2018, 7:55 am
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[quote author=Asher Hurowitz link=topic=147.msg942#msg942
date=1538708132]
HGMuller I have made you a temporary admin to insert the code.
Thanks so much!
[/quote]
Unfortunately this seems not to have worked. I am 'global
moderator' now, which probably means I can edit other people's
postings, but I have no access to the admin control panel where
I could change the looks of this forum.
In the mean time I developed a server-side CGI program that can
render pieces and whole-board images from SVG image files for
the pieces. (This type of graphics is scalable without loss of
image quality, so the user can request any size he wants.) This
produces images that are static on the client-side; to have
anything interactive there you really would have to embed a
JavaScript program in the forum pages, which could then run
client-side. But the latter is non-standard, while the forum
does allow to embed images.
So let me try if it also allows embedding of images from a CGI
'script':
[img]
HTML http://winboard.nl/my-cgi/fen.cgi?f=tyevxkoeyt/llllllllll/10/10/10/10/PPPPPPPPPP/RNBAQKDBNR[/img]
[Edit] It seems to work, but not very reliably. Sometimes the
image does not appear, and I have to refresh the page with Shift
pressed to make it appear.
What I had to do to get the image is put the URL
HTML http://winboard.nl/my-cgi/fen.cgi?f=tyevxkoeyt/llllllllll/10/10/10/10/PPPPPPPPPP/RNBAQKDBNR
into my posting, and put img tags around it. So one just has to
specify the FEN of the desired position after the 'f=' CGI
argument. And know what letter to use for which fairy piece.
#Post#: 966--------------------------------------------------
Re: IS THE CHESS VARIANT FORUM DEAD?
By: GothicChessInventor Date: September 14, 2019, 9:18 am
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[quote author=Asher Hurowitz link=topic=147.msg939#msg939
date=1538351064]
Hello,
What happened to all of the activity we had on here earlier this
year? While some remains, It has at the very least taken a huge
dive. Do any of you know how we can get activity back up?
Thanks,
Asher
[/quote]
Well you CENSORED people. That's why I left. And that's why it
deserves to die.
You can't be a PLATFORM and censor people. That's not how it
works. A platform allows freedom to the posters in exchange for
legal immunity for libel.
A PUBLISHER can edit. But, publishers CAN be sued for libel.
Therein lies the difference.
So, go ahead, be a heavy-handed moderator and continue to censor
subject matter experts such as myself, and then you reap what
you sow. Enjoy the inactivity.
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