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#Post#: 632--------------------------------------------------
ANNOUNCEMENT: Recent Activity Decline and How to Bring it Back U
p?
By: Asher Hurowitz Date: March 24, 2018, 11:16 am
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It seems that there is less and less activity on the forum
recently. Do any of you have any ideas on how to ramp up
activity?
Thanks,
Asher
#Post#: 633--------------------------------------------------
Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Recent Activity Decline and How to Bring it Ba
ck Up?
By: HGMuller Date: March 24, 2018, 12:42 pm
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Having the possibility to include diagrams directly?
#Post#: 634--------------------------------------------------
Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Recent Activity Decline and How to Bring it Ba
ck Up?
By: Asher Hurowitz Date: March 24, 2018, 6:02 pm
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[quote author=HGMuller link=topic=98.msg633#msg633
date=1521913321]
Having the possibility to include diagrams directly?
[/quote]
Where do I insert the code your provided?
#Post#: 635--------------------------------------------------
Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Recent Activity Decline and How to Bring it Ba
ck Up?
By: ebinola Date: March 25, 2018, 2:42 am
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First, lowered activity shouldn't discourage you. For what this
site is, it's an excellent hub to discuss the different ways to
play chess. You've managed to collect some of the great
'aficionados' of the chess variant world; if I hadn't joined
this site, I don't think I would have ever gotten the
opportunity to interact with the likes of Ed Trice, for
instance.
However (and this has become apparent in the past couple of
months) this site faces competition from chess.com, particularly
the 960 forum. The forum is flooded with correspondence games
that get the attention of people quickly. If we remove all
connotations of spam, it's the greatest tool available to anyone
to promote their variant, and get it out there to the main
audience you're trying to appeal to, the chess players. Before,
I ranted: Hang on. This is spam. You guys need to get out of
here, this isn't what a forum is for. But now? Not a lot I can
really say, other than this is the way the forum is now, another
phase in its life-cycle.
So, one of the main attractions of this forum is beaten by the
top dog. Really, it's a no contest - threads over here are
hanging in the middle of games while games over on the 960 forum
are updated hourly.
But I've noticed something that occurs on the 960 forums that I
find really strange. The games are mostly contemporary variants,
like bulldog; infinite chess; musketeer chess; event chess, the
list goes on. You never hear a word about the 'traditional'
variants, such as shatranj, or xiangqi, or shogi, or larger
shogi variants, or makruk, or knighted variants... If users
aren't as interested in traditional variants they'll scarcely
talk about them, that's true. Likewise, if people don't want to
play shogi via correspondence, they won't (although, the spread
of shogi in Europe can hardly be compared to the spread of
contemporary variants on the web).
What follows from that is while this site faces competition from
the 960 forum in terms of correspondence games, it offers proper
discussion of chess variants, whereas on the 960 forum, that's
not possible because the threads are updated rapidly. Here
threads are slower, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. This
site can be offered as one where traditional variants and
resources for those variants (books, videos, etc.) can be
discussed and shared.
Try and gather people who would want to learn these traditional
variants. Offer this place as a hub for discussion and to share
resources. Ask about on sites that you frequent, get in touch
with people like you've done already. I know a couple of places
where I could ask people for interest in moving here.
Include diagrams, too. That would greatly increase the site's
functionality.
#Post#: 636--------------------------------------------------
Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Recent Activity Decline and How to Bring it Ba
ck Up?
By: GothicChessInventor Date: March 25, 2018, 8:36 am
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[quote author=ebinola link=topic=98.msg635#msg635
date=1521963732]
First, lowered activity shouldn't discourage you. [/quote]
I must wholeheartedly agree. Look at my own discussion board for
the 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 (and now larger) Rubik's cubes:
HTML http://cubesolvingprograms.freeforums.net/
There are 12 members, 307 posts, and the board has been up for
over 2 years. I created that board because I used to post on
SpeedSolving.com but I got banned. I wrote a 5x5x5 solver at a
time when there were only two 4x4x4 solving programs, both of
which were rather slow, so nobody thought it possible to solve
the 5x5x5 from a random scramble. In proving them wrong, and
telling all of the nay-sayers to go jump in a lake, I became an
outcast. (A great many of my programming techniques posted there
were deleted by the admin, so it was a huge waste of my time in
sharing knowledge as well).
My board caters to programmers, and those with an interest in
larger cubes, but I don't measure "success" by the number of
members nor the frequency of posts. When someone makes a post
there, it is usually of the "holy cow, check out this awesome,
never before seen thing..." type of post. I would rather have
that than clutter.
[quote author=ebinola link=topic=98.msg635#msg635
date=1521963732]You've managed to collect some of the great
'aficionados' of the chess variant world; if I hadn't joined
this site, I don't think I would have ever gotten the
opportunity to interact with the likes of Ed Trice, for
instance.[/quote]
Not knowing what that means, I am just going to take that as a
compliment and hope that was your intention.
[quote author=ebinola link=topic=98.msg635#msg635
date=1521963732]However (and this has become apparent in the
past couple of months) this site faces competition from
chess.com[/quote]
I'm not sure I would extend the logic in that direction,
especially since they pre-existed this forum, and this forum had
rapid growth early on. You'll never have faster growth than when
you acquire your first member, since delta_g = (new member count
- old member count)/old member count = (1-0)/0 = undefined, but
relatively speaking, infinity.
chess.com has a whole host of activities going on, whereas this
place is a depot for discussion of variants of any kind. So be
it. There is no mutual exclusion. There is no "zero-sum" state
space where one side loses when another joins the counterpart.
[quote author=ebinola link=topic=98.msg635#msg635
date=1521963732]
Include diagrams, too. That would greatly increase the site's
functionality.
[/quote]
This is a key component I would like to see. The forum quickly
exhausted its image hosting capacity, so a native way to show
diagrams of various kinds is very important.
#Post#: 639--------------------------------------------------
Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Recent Activity Decline and How to Bring it Ba
ck Up?
By: Asher Hurowitz Date: March 25, 2018, 1:28 pm
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Thanks so much to everyone for the responses! I now realize the
inherent stupidity of my statement. I am extremely thankful for
the activity I have, it's a lot fora forum on chess variants!
[member=8]GothicChessInventor[/member], you were banned from
the Speedsolving forums? :o With that and the 13x13x13 I can
see why you aren't a more active member of the cubing community.
Anyway, @ebinola remarked:
[quote author=ebinola link=topic=98.msg635#msg635
date=1521963732]
But I've noticed something that occurs on the 960 forums that I
find really strange. The games are mostly contemporary variants,
like bulldog; infinite chess; musketeer chess; event chess, the
list goes on. You never hear a word about the 'traditional'
variants, such as shatranj, or xiangqi, or shogi, or larger
shogi variants, or makruk, or knighted variants... [/quote]
I was hoping for this to be a place for any and all chess
variants to be discussed, although when I created the forum I
was unaware of the Chess960 forum on Chess.com and didn't know
of the popularity of many recent "simple" variants (those in the
category of Chess960, Bughouse etc, not requiring much more
equipment) and therefore created it with traditional variants in
mind. At the time I thought the only maybe five other people
interested in these strange games and I'd again like to thank
all of you for being so wonderful and contributing to the site.
Things were rather stressful in my life recently on all fronts,
and I really appreciate the enthusiasm you guys share with me on
this wonderful hobby.
Thanks again,
Asher
#Post#: 642--------------------------------------------------
Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Recent Activity Decline and How to Bring it Ba
ck Up?
By: Martin0 Date: March 25, 2018, 3:55 pm
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The popularity on the chess960 forums on chess.com has exploded
very recently. Over 30 forums with ongoing games right now. If
it gets even more popular there I wonder how the chess.com team
will react. Right now I want to encourage the activity there
more than anything else though. It's quite a mess right now
though since there is only one category for chess variants
forums. Here we have a lot more freedom and things can be a lot
more organized, even if it is a lot fewer people. I like it here
and even if I am silent in most threads, I have read and
followed quite a bit. Many awesome people here.
#Post#: 645--------------------------------------------------
Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Recent Activity Decline and How to Bring it Ba
ck Up?
By: HGMuller Date: March 26, 2018, 2:49 am
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[quote author=Asher Hurowitz link=topic=98.msg634#msg634
date=1521932520]
[quote author=HGMuller link=topic=98.msg633#msg633
date=1521913321]
Having the possibility to include diagrams directly?
[/quote]
Where do I insert the code your provided?
[/quote]
I did ask this on the 'support' forum of this hosting site:
HTML https://support.createaforum.com/8/adding-javascript-powered-features-to-forum-posts/
It seems you have an admin control panel, with a menu "admin ->
style managers -> headers and footers", where you can insert
HTML code (next to other text) in the headers and footers used
with the forum pages. All that is needed is that you include the
following line of HTML code in the footer:
<script type="text/javascript"
src="
HTML http://hgm.nubati.net/variants/CVF.js"></script>
I cannot be anymore specific than that. I am not an admin on
this board, so I cannot see the admin panel, and have no idea
how it looks. If it is not clear, you either should ask more
information from the webmaster in the mentioned support forum of
how to use the admin panel, make me an admin, or post
screenshots of the admin panel so I can see how it looks, and
advice you how to proceed.
If the mentioned line is included in every forum page, the
script it links to will be used to 'post-process' all forum
pages on the machine where people display it. At the moment I
put a very simple test script in that location, which does
nothing else than scan all the forum postings for [diag]some
text[/diag] tag pairs, and will color the text within those
green. If that works, the plan is to allow a diagram description
between the tags, and have the script replace it by an image of
the described diagram.
In principle the script could scan the postings for any text we
want, and then process that text in any way we want. We could
use this to define our own tag pairs for including features,
such as games you could step through, etc.
#Post#: 706--------------------------------------------------
Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Recent Activity Decline and How to Bring it Ba
ck Up?
By: ebinola Date: March 31, 2018, 9:53 am
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[quote author=ebinola link=topic=98.msg635#msg635
date=1521963732]
(although, the spread of shogi in Europe can hardly be compared
to the spread of contemporary variants on the web).
[/quote]
Actually, I wonder - we've got a forum for xiangqi, why not
offer a place to discuss shogi? I don't think that'd be too much
trouble.
#Post#: 710--------------------------------------------------
Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Recent Activity Decline and How to Bring it Ba
ck Up?
By: Asher Hurowitz Date: March 31, 2018, 10:17 am
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[quote author=ebinola link=topic=98.msg706#msg706
date=1522508008]
[quote author=ebinola link=topic=98.msg635#msg635
date=1521963732]
(although, the spread of shogi in Europe can hardly be compared
to the spread of contemporary variants on the web).
[/quote]
Actually, I wonder - we've got a forum for xiangqi, why not
offer a place to discuss shogi? I don't think that'd be too much
trouble.
[/quote]
Great idea! I will add it soon!
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