The Sierra Gateway: a proposal

Hi everybody,

My name is Rudy, some of you may know me as ruudje_1976, moderator on the official Sierra forums.

As you probably know, due to the Activion-Blizzard merger, the official Sierra forums, including Arcanum, will disappear. The projected date is 04/01, but the administrator informed us that they are keeping up the forums until the Jive software breaks down. Basically they're just letting it die, which could happen in a few months or as soon as today for as far as we know.

Anyway, because of the takedown of the official forums, members are moving to several existing and new fanbased forums. Since every forum will attract some members of the official forums, the community as a whole is bound to fall apart. To prevent this from happening, a handful of Sierra fansite owners clinched hands together and set up the "Sierra Gateway" (www.sierraforums.com). The Sierra Gateway is an umbrella site which links the forums of several Sierra fansites together, so that the community can easily move from one forum to another, creating a united community across fansites, while at the same time each fansite maintains its autonomy.

The Sierra Gateway is growing fast since it was set up 2 months ago, and is even beginning to attract people from Sierra itself. For example Al Lowe, designer of the Leisure Suit Larry Series, just joined up yesterday. The word is spreading, and more Sierra fansites are gradually joining in. Currently the Sierra Gateway has 8 member sites. They are:

www.sierrahelp.com/forums : classic Sierra Games in general
www.gabrielknight4campaign.com/forum : Gabriel Knight series
http://forum.spacequest.net/ : covering Space Quest
http://www.sierraplanet.com/boards/ : covers the Roberta Williams games
http://www.questformoreglory.com/forums : Quest for Glory series
www.unityhq.net: the "No One Lives Forever" series (new member)
www.sierrachest.com : my site, covering the more recent Sierra titles
http://larrylaffer.net : covers the Leisure Suit Larry series (new member)


A few days ago, i received a message from Ellerit, moderator of Arcanum on the official Sierra forums, suggesting that it could be interesting if terra-arcanum would become a member of the Sierra Gateway aswell, since most of the Arcanum fanbase moved here and the game is not yet covered by the Sierra Gateway, aside from a small forum in the Sierra Chest fansite. I asked the other Gateway boardmembers if they would find it interesting if these forums would join up and they liked the idea.

What would joining up mean in practice?
- these forums would be the only ones covering Arcanum. The Arcanum forum in the Sierra Chest would be removed, since this is clearly the main Arcanum forum and has a far larger knowledge base.
- Terra Arcanum would be a member site on the Sierra Gateway, allowing direct access for members of the entire Gateway to the forums and site of Terra Arcanum.
- Terra Arcanum would need to insert direct access to the Sierra Gateway on their forums, so that members here can also easily find forums of other Sierra games.
- Terra Arcanum keeps its autonomy: the idea is not to have unified forumrules or a unified layout or whatever. The idea is to keep the whole Sierra community together and enlarge the memberbase of each fansite by unifying them through easy and direct access.

In my opinion it is a win-win situation. Please let us know what you think of our proposal. If you have any questions, please ask. I, for one, sincerely hope you are interested in joining the Sierra Gateway.

Rudy

 

That sounds like a sensible idea, but that's a question that should really be directed directly in the direction of the admins, since they're the ones who will have to work any changes that may need to happen. Those would be Dark Elf, DarkUnderlord, mathboy and Vorak. But for what it's worth, I vote yes.

 

Sounds like a good idea to me, for what it’s worth.
Although, I am wondering what ‘direct access’ is all about. Global logins? Login to one and you can go anywhere under the umbrella? How would that work with the ban hammer?

 

At this point, it is a simple umbrella site, directing the people in the right direction and each membersite linking back to the umbrella site. It's here http://www.sierraforums.com. Some member sites also have direct links to eachother. For example the Sierrahelp site, which covers classics in general, has clear forumlinks to the detailed gabriel knight, leisure suit larry and questformoreglory forums. The Sierra Chest forums, which focus on Sierra games of the last decade in general, have an RPG category with an Arcanum forum, which would then be replaced with a direct link to Terra-Arcanum and so on.

In the Sierra Gateway forum, there is also a Board room, visible and accessible only to the owners of the various member sites. In this board room, we discuss how to improve the Gateway project, which fansites could be approached to propose membership and so on.

 

This question has indeed been brought up before. We are effectively trying to find a way to impliment a single registration to subscribe to all membersite forums simultaneously, so that all members have the same username across the different Sierra Gateway forums. It would be practical and improve recognition of the members across sites. On the other hand, it is absolutely crucial to each siteowner that their autonomy is not touched. To my knowledge, there haven't been any bans yet on any of the member sites, but it is likely to happen at one point or another. The ban on one site should however NOT affect this person's membership status on the other Gateway forums, cause that would mean that one site can control bans outside his own domain. I would find it unacceptable if members on my forums would be banned because another admin decides to block him from his forums, and i would imagine other admins would feel the same way.

So we are discussing the possibilities in the Gateway boardroom but, for now, members need to register to each forum they would like to post on separately. That is also why we recommend at this point to use the same username when registering on other Gateway forums.

 

Being a fan of one-stop shopping, this sounds like a good idea to me.

 

I like the idea of linking to a whole bunch of other Sierra game forums. One stop shopping indeed.

However, I am deeply opposed to the idea of 'log on here, and you're logged on across the umbrella'. That opens us all up to an increased risk of being hacked. As someone who actually wound up leaving a decent forum after a hacker completely obliterated my reputation within days, I'm not even remotely cool with the prospect of someone being able to do it to me across several sites with one hack.

Linking good. Multiple logins... BAD.

Of course, I'm not an admin, so feel free to completely disregard the above.

 

Now now, let's not rush into anything. We're going to require some provisions be made. For instance, it must be made perfectly clear that members of the HoL are in all ways preeminent and take precedence over the scum that inhabit these other inferior forums. Also, we should require that other forumites pay some sort of fee for the privilege of being loosely associated with us.

 

One board to rule them all, one board to find them?

Wouldn't that mean Sierra is Sauron and the positions of dark lord held by both you and Vorak would be usurped? :lol:

Rudy, while I think the whole concept generally a good idea, I for one do not like the idea of a global log in and it would go against each board being autonomous. If the sites are to truly maintain their autonomy the user should be allowed to choose what sites they log in to. For instance, I'm set to auto log in to these boards when I visit and would not like to be automatically logged into sites I have never visited or have any intention of ever visiting.

 

The autonomy for each membersite is a top priority for all of us. Nobody will cross that line because everybody understandably wants to stay in charge of their own website. The Sierra Gateway simply wouldn't work if the autonomy of the members is jeopardized.

Frankly, we haven't found a way yet to impliment this global login idea and, by looking at all the complications (security, use of different forum software and so on), it looks like that idea may never happen. In the end, the global login is just a convenience tool to prevent that members would need to register on each forum they would like to post in (i registered to all 9 of them individually, all on the same username). The real important thing, aside from the autonomy of each site, is that people can easily find their way to the forums of all Sierra games through this Gateway, holding the Sierra community together, and that is already going on in practice right now. Most people don't mind registering multiple times to access different places.

 

Sweet. I may be able to debate without being oppressed!

 

Fat chance.

 

What the hell is this "Arcanum" everyone keeps talking about??

 

http://www.terra-arcanum.com/: that's the answer, regardless on which Gateway forum people ask it.

 

OMG I'm a member of terra-arcanum? When did that happen??

 

Get back in the closet!!

 

How in the world did he escape in the first place? Did someone unlock the manacles AGAIN?

 

Well, he only had one thing he could have used for a lock pick.
If he used that, I'm not sure if I should be proud of him or feel sorry for him.

I'm almost out of mortar. Anyone have another bag of the stuff.
*lays another brick*
I'm only up to the door knob.