I was speaking with Luke yesterday about the maintenanace of the forum.

Beside of that, I came with the idea to re-introduce a general articles part of the website aside the forum.
We could re-use some of the articles we had on the previous website (without the comments) as a first start (if Luke find them back).
Later we could (and everybody could) make some general or more in-depth articles on the rules, the meta-game, deck building and so on.
This could be an help to recent players (and to bad old ones like me).

The forum would stay as it is for discussions and praxis.
But the general site could be more "theoretical", more informational.
This would be another part of vtes.be with links from the forum to the articles and vice-versa.
How exactly it would show up is yet to determine.

What do you think about it ? Should that be useful for our small community ? Or attractive for other players ?
Or do you think it would be useless ?
Please give your opinion about it.

I think we should first discuss the future of this website/forum, before we can adress a possible expansion.

Luc-Oliver is no longer an active player, but he is hosting & funding the forum for now. It seems there were issues about the proposed bill for it. The forum has been down before and there is no clarity on how long Luc-Olivier is going to continue hosting.

The alternative is using the facebook group & creating events.

I don't know how the hosting costs, but it cannot be so much. I don't think that hosting cost was the issue.

Luc-Olivier has not much time to do the maintenance of the forum and as there was not much activity in the last two month.
I came from time to time on the forum during one month before the closing. There was no new posts or nobody answered existing posts !
So he maybe thought that he could close it.

I discussed with him about the maintenance of the forum that I could do.
I could take this over from him. It will then not last him anymore.

But I think the best way to ensure that the forum will still exist is make it live.
Post messages, discuss about the game, organize praxis on the forum.
Make the forum better known by giving the address to potentially interested people.

And talking and organizing games on facebook or elsewhere, is one of the best ways to let the forum die.

So the question is : what do you really want ?

Do you want to have a living dedicated forum and website that can be accessed by anyone.
A central point that can unite every players from every part of Belgium.

Or let small groups organizing games and discuss each on his side, using facebook, myspace, Skype or other medias.
Some people are not on facebook or do not like it. So each group choses his own way to organizing and discussing in close circuit.
Each little group being smaller and smaller till there is no group and no play anymore ?.

Personally, I think we should better make this site as attractive as possible and use it to promote our beloved game here in Belgium.
Let's try to do it and if we are all active, it can work. But we must want it and work to make it.

Hey there !

Thanks Michel for creating a topic about our project of making the old VTES website alive again.

To clarify the situation, Michel and me are to team up for making the website a bit more than just a forum.
In the past, we used to have several articles about examples of decks, explanations about the meta-game and extracts of the rules.
Creating this again shouldn't be a long and hard work, as I have (somwhere yet to determine lol) a backup of all these articles.

Of course, in response to Tom's questions, I plan to continue hosting the forum for the next few years, at least as long as VTES is played in Belgium
Thanks to Michel's help, and seeing ppl still seem to like our old red and black online shelter, I think it's worth it.

Besides, making the website more complete might attract new players .... who knows

Last point I would like to react is that I'm not 100% inactive. I said I still had a few decks left and would enjoy being the 4th or 5th players when needed
I also look when there are games or tournaments that fits my agenda...

Well, waiting for more feedback on this, then I guess Michel and me will meet again to see what to implement or not.


Have fun guys and hopefully see you soon !

I don't think I'll be able to contribute much. But if you guys can get enough content, it would be nice. I know I would read the articles for sure.

@Michel, I was talking about facebook in case the forum would go down again. Most of us have facebook and check it on a dialy basis. Most of us have an account here on the forum but only check it weekly or monthly. It's not about excluding people, it's about including and reaching as much people as possible. Social media helps to that end. Either way, I don't see why they can't both exist and have their merit. Usually I will post on both the try to get players together. I was just refering to the case that if the forum goes down, we can find eachother on facebook. If we start with the articles, I'll make publicity for them in our FB-group

Happy bleeding,
Tom

Keep in mind that you are not a baseline. Making generalising statements based solely on your own personal media use (how do you know others check it daily for example) and pretending they are default is false.