Ryzom character website / social thingie....

[piratechance]

I'm thinking about creating a site where us players can upload screen shots, character bios, track our characters and such.
Basically I'm wonderin g if there is any intrest?
if so I set up a test site on ning.com, a social network creator, basically I'm looking for feedback, is it a dumb idea? what would you like to see?

I stress that this is a test site to judge intrest, if its worthwhile I will code the site myself to give you more options, like listing all 5 of your characters, etc.

ryzomtavern.ning.com


Right now it also has grouping abilities, and forums, as well as private forums for each group.

Thanks,

[bofrano]

Hey, I think it's a great idea! A central place to post stories, screenshots and happenings centered around your character and experiences. Good shot!

I haven't seen anything similar to that in Ryzom as there aren't many fansites and the forums just have their own... life. I'm going to add my character to the Ryzom Tavern and are hoping many of you do aswell!

[beaut666]

Wow! Shoutout coming on the next podcast! Very cool!
Beau

[kaetemi]

Originally Posted by piratechance

a site where us players can upload screen shots, character bios, track our characters and such.
a social network creator,

I don't see how being able to know a person without talking with him is "social" in any way. And why do people need a 'creator' for 'social networks' anyway. It's not that I have anything against putting your personal information online or something, I just don't see why they call it 'social'.

Oh, and another thing... Roughly half of the text on the pages are just ads >_>

For the design... Is it really that hard to make a website dynamic width? Not everyone has the same screen resolution, you know.

Siri doesn't have any friends on this social network yet.

I think those sites can only make you depressive =)

[piratechance]

Just to clarify, I did not write / code this page, it is a free site site hosted by ning.com, I have no control over the ads, indeed they annoy me too

I merely requested certain content, and named it

Same thing goes for the dynamic page width! I have no control over that right now.


and..
*ahem* Social Network : A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of relations, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes.

thank you, wikipedia!

so basically in our case its a site where a node (you and your info) is linked to another node (you buddy, and her info) by a relation (declared friendship, a chain of friends, shared interest, etc.).

ning lets you slap together the basics of one of these sites in a way that is fast and free, but sadly ugly

Which happens to be perfect for a feasibility study!


PS:
Sorry for being a smart ass!

[ajsuk]

I kinda like this idea, my only concern would be what if people sign up posing as someone else.
Are you able to moderate the thing and say, only activate accounts once you've confirmed with them in-game or some such?

[piratechance]

as of right now, no.
That is certianly a consideration if the idea takes off, in fact I think it would be a necessity.

And it should be fairly easy to have a group of admins/mods who could approve applications after reciveing an ingame tell.

on that note, if there are any complaints, send me a tell ingame, or email me at
siridatryker at gmail dot com

thanks,

[bofrano]

Originally Posted by ajsuk

I kinda like this idea, my only concern would be what if people sign up posing as someone else.
Are you able to moderate the thing and say, only activate accounts once you've confirmed with them in-game or some such?

You got a good point there Jayce, one could hope people would be honest. However, same thing applies here, there's no easy way to tell who is who with just the forum name.

But sure, to be able to moderate the registrations and have some sort of "Character test" is worth looking in to.

Oh btw, Kaetemi, one doesn't have to meet face to face to be social. Or do you mean you're not being social when calling a friend on the phone? Or sending an e-mail to a relative. That's social behaviour aswell as a community of this type. It's only the means of communication that changes.

[kaetemi]

Originally Posted by bofrano

Oh btw, Kaetemi, one doesn't have to meet face to face to be social. Or do you mean you're not being social when calling a friend on the phone? Or sending an e-mail to a relative.

Nope, that's absolutely not what I mean. You are still 'talking' with that person.

I mean that, being able to know everything or just a lot about a person, without having a conversation with him, does not count as social interaction. And to need an index of humans to find new 'friends' with the same interests...

In any case, chances of this succeeding are pretty low around here... You could gather about 50 people maybe over a few months. I personally just don't bother with all those limited profile websites that look like a great place for data mining. The thing is, that, if you want to have a place where players can post about events, post screenshots, etc, then you'll need to have a site which does just that, and not all of that fake networking stuff. The site itself should be designed to give information about the events. It should be able to link screenshots to to those events, even to the places within the Ryzom, and to the players themselves. What you have now, is just too generic, and does not have much use, other than splitting off people to yet another site, which will eventually die over time, due to the lack of people adding their stuff there, whatever they're supposed to put on there anyway.

For example, take the integration of news comments to the main ryzom website some time ago, where they used this generic website content system. People were used to just read everything of news on these forums, and simply reply to it here. Eventually, when they only put the messages on the main site, players just started opening threads here to comment in, resulting in 2 different feedback threads, the one on the main site which often went unused, and the ones that appeared on the forums. In the end, all the news posts are now appearing on the forums, and the main website only follows once in a while.

[bofrano]

Originally Posted by kaetemi

Nope, that's absolutely not what I mean. You are still 'talking' with that person.

I mean that, being able to know everything or just a lot about a person, without having a conversation with him, does not count as social interaction. And to need an index of humans to find new 'friends' with the same interests...

Ah I see what you mean. I still don't think that a community website is merely an "Index of people", it's main purpose is communication, and even if it's not direct or in words from one person to another, it's still communication in a way and thus "social" actions.

Also, you mention earlier that this was about "putting your personal information online", while I must say you've got it pretty wrong. As far as I've understood the community is not for sharing Real life information while sharing the same interest but rather to share experiences and IN-GAME character information with each other, such as photos of a specific event, a boss-fight, a trek to a distant land, or creating a group about Yubos where people share their opinions and experience with those creatures, etc..

At least I won't be posting personal information.