Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

I'd rather have it link here (the wiki, that is) than anywhere else. After all, it's JoeyDay's domain now, so it should connect to the thing he started. (Does he have to pay for it now?)

Of course, I'd take a whole new fansite over a simple redirect anyday.

TOTPD!!!

_________________

Well, another possibility is, I guess, making another site with the domain, but that may be far too time consuming and rather pointless.


I propose that .net be a page to direct Homestar fans to other forums and whatnot. There could be some little introductory text or something, and then a couple of links to this, and other sites. A mini-site or directory if you will; it doesn't need to be too content-filled.

Trying to change for a group of people isn't going to help anyone. This forum is good in its own way, having developed a specific personality, and the way it works should be maintained and kept unchanged.

_________________

Hmm. That's an interesting idea.

_________________

Im going to miss it. But most people moves to Homestar Rules, so Im fine with that.

Also I think its a good idea having it linking here. Because it is after all the Wiki page.

We could do a foru, yeah, but as Joey said, we need to think outside the box. or rather we need to think outside of the house nthe box resides in. We could do a cool fan page, or we could do an interactive fan page. We could do a forum, or a forum that makes you feel like your right there in Free Country, USA. This would be a huge task, but we have to push our limits, and do something unique, something other people haven't done. Ideas have been taken but there are still more. We just need to find them.

An idea I had last night is to maybe have a random redirect to a Homestar fansite or forum, with a frame on the top for a different random site...

Kind of like a webring.

-DJ

_________________

That's a good idea. I think it'll work. It could link to the Wiki, BHZ, H*Rules, alla that.

But, to some of you, keep in mind Joey makes the final descision. It's his domain, and he can do whatever he wants. If he was evil, he could make it some totally random site.

_________________

You guys, i know my ideas suck, and i have enver had a good idea in my life, but i have an idea for homestarrunner.net. i belive that we combine Homestarrules Forums and Hrwiki forums into one Giant forum under Homestarrunner.net. well, what do you guys think? that way we wont have people flaming members from homestarrules forums, and vice versa on both forums. well, what do you guys think?

_________________

Well, that does seem like a good idea Cola. The thing is, the rules between here and the Net are different. That's why we had all these problem when the H*Rules people came a few days ago, they weren't used to out stricter rules. We need to find a perfect meduim, so mostly everyone agrees to them. I thought that 100x500 was way too small. 200x500 would seem better in my opinion, but that's just me.

_________________

What Ramrod said.

One big forum would probably be just as bad as the two different ones.

_________________

I'm kinda liking this portal idea. One of the biggest arguments that keeps coming up is that no one wants things to change. Combining two (or more?) forums into one would require a lot of change, either for them or for us.

HR.net could simply be a directory that introduces people to all the various HR fan communities out there. It would give preference to none of these communities, but provide good objective information about all of them so as to help HR fans find a community they can feel most comfortable in. This would serve somewhat to unify all the various forums and communities, while at the same time not compromising the goals and values of any of the communities or forcing anyone to uproot and move somewhere new.

I think this would be a good starting place, and the new hr.net could certainly grow to provide other services in the future. What does everyone think?

Oh, and someone mentioned above that the final decision is mine. While that's true, I'm really all ears. I'm hoping that when the final decision is made, it's more "our" decision than "mine". I want to get as much feedback as possible before going forward with anything. You guys have given me a lot of feedback so far, and I really appreciate it.

Yes, I think the portal idea is great. And because a portal wouldn't get many hits from Google, it's a great idea to put it on a URL that people often visit because it's advertised on H*R in the First Time Here toon.

_________________

Yes, I agree that the portal will be a good place to start, as it can easily expand (and be made inteactive. Interactivity rules!)

How yould you make a portal without preference. If you have a list of links, you are more likely to click on the upper links than the lower one. You are also likely to put the ones you know first, which will likely elevate the link to the wiki.

I do like the idea. I'm just being nit picky.

_________________

Well, you could randomize them. Or rank them somehow, like, by number of members, or with some sort of voting or Digg-alike system.

The real trick is how it's going to be administered. Will it be a Wiki page that everyone can edit? That sounds very dangerous to me, because the incentive to vandalize that one page would be much higher than, say, the Main Page on the HRWiki. If not, then some person or party would have to administer it, adding, updating, and removing links.

_________________

I'm going to open my big mouth here and suggest something I have no idea how to implement. A lot of portals have customizable sections. We could have a my.homestarrunner.net where you could customize so you can see like the latest posts from hrrules, latest updates from the homestar runner site, and recent changes from the wiki. Or, you could customize it with latest posts from hsrforum.com and burning horizon's forums. Whichever communities you participate in, you could customize your own page to get updates from those communities.

Obviously, a system like this would require a lot of collaboration between the different fan sites, but it would really bring things together without otherwise screwing things up.

As for not giving preference to any one fan site, listing them alphabetically wouldn't be too bad, or listing them in descending order by number of users wouldn't be too bad either, but then you're giving preference to the bigger ones, and some people prefer the tight-knit smaller communities. I dunno. I'm sure we'll find some way, but the ultimate goal would be not to put anyone above anyone else.

Well, HomestarRunner.com itself would go on top of the portal.

But I think user count would be a good way to sort them. I mean, I don't think someone would get upset if that order is implimented, and it gives the sites the possibilty of "rising the ladder" by gaining more members. I mean, I'm sure there's a downside, but any listing would have one. Someone has to be at the bottom.

And for people that like smaller, more tightly-knit fansites, they can just scroll down and there they all are.

_________________

Yeah that would be cool to have a TBC made intro.

Maybe JoeyDay could email them? But they said something in the FAQ about not doing stuff like this or something...

_________________
[Something cool might go here...?]

TBC would probably just make it redirect to the official website. Or not accept it.

_________________

I think the portal idea would be the best. It makes the most sense.

I'm really liking the random portal idea. Although there should be somewhere that you can see all of them (like an index). Nobody wants to put themselves first, but no matter what we do, someone's always going to end up on top.

But random portal seems like the best idea so far.

_________________

I don't think random would be cool, just like a page with links to bunch of sites.

If anyone's concerned about the order, they could just show up in some random order every time. Except I like that idea of Joey's if anyone's up for it.

_________________

Yeah, that's what I was saying.


Although Joey's idea is great, I think it would be extremely hard to pull off. Combine HRWiki and HRules alone, and you've got a crapload of people. And if that alone doesn't crash the server (like on Message Bored), you've still got all the other fansites.

_________________

For the personal page idea, we'd need to implement a user-remembering thing, which is probably quite conplex. I think we'd need some tutorials from google and stuff to pull that off, but if we did, that'd work!

I bet InterrupterJones knows how. It just depends on if that's what they really want.

_________________

Portal = Good

One thing though- why not integrated HRwiki search? It would make it a "true" portal.

User-remembering? You mean, like a login thing? It might be possible, but if you're getting at what I think you're getting at, I think it would be way too much work.

_________________

Yes, I'd like to write (or make Jones write) as little code as possible. There are systems already built that we could use for our portal. I'm researching different solutions as we speak, but if anyone can find a good one, I'd be happy to receive suggestions.

A few people have expressed concern over exactly who would maintain this thing. I had an idea about that. With the various systems that exist, I'm sure we can find one that would allow individual site owners to sign up and post information about their site. That way, no one person would have to collect all the information and organize it personally. Obviously someone would have to moderate this, and I wouldn't mind doing that as long as a good group of people was selected to help me (preferrably from as many different communities as possible).

In addition to the site directory, I thought we could find a system that would allow for updates (maybe like blog posts?) on the front page from the various site administrators. For instance, Simon (or ZealousDemon?) could post a blog entry each week on hr.net's front page listing the five most popular forum topics on hrrules.com. This would be a great place to make announcements about site changes, like hsrforum.com being down but coming back up last week with an new layout. The HRWiki could use it to post announcements about pledge drives or collaborative community projects, or to list the five most popular forum topics in the HRWiki Forum. I'm sure you can see the potential for a system like this. It would really make the site more interactive and keep it alive so that people would keep coming back. I'm thinking of something along the lines of Spread Firefox (they use a content management system called Drupal, which is one that I'm researching). What do you think?

EDIT: I hadn't realized Spread Firefox was down this week. Sorry you guys can't get a good look at what they've created over there. I'm trying to find another site that uses Drupal. If you know of one, please post it here.

Heh. SpreadHomestar?

I think those are all great ideas, Joey.

I think one thing we definitely need on the front page is a list of the most recent H*R.com updates (preferably scraped from H*R.com updates itself). In fact, I think that should be the most prominent things on the front page.

I also like the idea of making it the burden of other sites' administrators to keep their info up-to-date and promote the sites themselves. I wouldn't mind seeing a blog-style front page.

Actually, I might be possible without a ton of coding to show a list of the five most recent posts on each of the major forums, at least for the ones that push RSS feeds.

Oh man, now I'm getting excited about this.

_________________