Insim under new management!

[Amazone]

Look, the only reason I'm even CONSIDERING the possibility of keeping it is because I know the peasants would like a minimum of change. Therefore, either someone volunteers to pay for it BEFORE we get it up and running, or by the time the issue comes up, I'll have hucked it. Are you volunteering? An owned license for both sites will cost us $360, because those shysters raised prices. There are several different currencies, so you may be able to get a more favorable rate by conversion. I, personally, would rather eat my own offspring than pay that, and if this were just entirely about me, this issue would not even be debated. Are you volunteering to pay the equivalent of 2-3 months worth of server bills for THAT?

If and when it should be an issue i would contribute.  If you have to skip vB, and the users are ok with that, then there's no problem at all. I think this debate belongs to those who had insim as their "home", i was not often there. I should have tried to form my question better,
if it was possible to keep vB, despite the expenses. But since you are so snappy, i go on with my own stuff and forget about it for now, and get back to it later on - it it's an issue at all. Damm, i hate english sometimes.

[HugeLunatic]

Delphy you just listed all the additional features of vB that I don't think I used.   But I wasn't staff, so my opinion doesn't mean much.

[Amazone]

Funny to see how one's own post are "old" when people posts like hurricanes. Thanks for the explanation Delphy.

[kenmtl]

Delphy that's generous of you. It's presents the option to let people back into the site they're familiar with with a minimum of disruption. As an interim option once people are back in their home, the staff can present them with their options and let them decide what they're willing to pay for. Or not. A little streamlining would definitely be a good thing and it might be easier for them to adjust to on a gradual basis instead of one big surprise. Plus the members there would be part of the process.  At least this time transparency shouldn't be an issue.


P.S. Is it being considered to maybe create a small unobtrusive stickied memorial to this whole situation. Lest we forget.

[TKPurrrrs]

Oh and I think Delphys ideas on fixing it so its easyer to search is a good one and if Delphy is willing to do it and our staff thinks its a good idea then I say give it a go.

HugeLunatic your opinion dose meen something... I just refer to the staff cause they undersand the day to day runnings of the site we so loved and because they know and understand our little sub culture/community theirfore they make for good reps to go out and basically talk buisness for us when we might be sitting here scraching our heads.

[Delphy]

Delphy you just listed all the additional features of vB that I don't think I used.   But I wasn't staff, so my opinion doesn't mean much.

About the only interesting thing for me on the 3.7+ releases is the social groups system - and even then I wouldn't do it in the way they did it.  Profile customisations are something I had on MTS2 for longer than they had them in the base code, albeit in a different manner.

The other stuff (friends, and so on) are stuff that is important in a "social" aspect but I think most "community" sites would be just fine without it.

If we break down Insim in terms of actual features what we are left with is the following:

- A front page which looks like a standard CMS type system
- The actual forums which really aren't any different from any normal forums
- Some other "nifty" things like the groups/notifications which I daresay hardly anybody used in comparison to the total site usage

There is no specialised download view, nothing special about actually *looking* for downloads, no specialised story view like we have on S2C.  Heck, pretty much the entire site is just a standard forum with a whole mish-mash of different content and none of it is really customised or optimised to work *well* with what it's presenting.

It would be great if:

- Downloads could be sorted/filtered/showed in a paginated form across the whole site, much like MTS2 does, but keep the creator-centric forum structure for those old-skool views and the creators ego.
- Stories could be shown in a specialised story view, much like S2C, for easy story reading.
- The downloads themselves had keywords or tags and EP requirements etc that are common everywhere

All of this could be done in an SMF system and could then be used on other Sims 2 sites as well since a lot of them use SMF.

Ultimately though I guess it's up to the staff and the ex members as to what they want to see and use.

[HugeLunatic]

Most of you here are much more vested in insim than me.  I mostly hung out in the Mac help section, and the requests.  I would love better organization at the new site, because the other way was too disorganized for my OCD brain to function.  And I'm guessing I missed a bunch of cool downloads.

Fake Edit: I like Delphy's idea of organizing the downloads, but I'm anal about organzing.    And not usually social.

[pierreandreply]

hello i am also an insim membe oh and delphy i hope you manage to get insim from this walt fellow you would make a better owner. goodluck.

Pierre

[Shark*Tooth*Hester]

So many of us saw that something seriously fishy was happening. We didn't say anything because it was a "free" site, and because anyone who tried to go up against Kathy would be screamed at by her and many of her followers. That's fucked up.

This is absolutely true, they got away with far more than they should have. Really this is the grand finale of their mistreatment of their members and abuse of (perceived) power. The fireworks were going off ages ago but many of us who weren't as close just kind of looked the other way. In retrospect, what else could we have done? I am glad that we stood up to this. Learning to say NO and mean it is a valuable lesson, and we learned it as a community.

On a side note, I wouldn't worry about the kids so much. I was a 12 by maty definition in sims 1 days and went through a very large drama bomb on the uberpastel forum I frequented. And guess what? It didn't destroy my simming experience. On the contrary, it got me out into the rest of the sims community which exposed me to sites where I could express my actual opinions. (Which also incidentally included not worshiping paysites which was not an option at the smile mafia forum I had frequented.) Overall it was a good thing.

[Scotty]

I use Invision over at my site. Ive been using it for several years now. I think Id be lost with anything else. Stick with what you are used to. If you are more comfortable with SMF, use that. It's not about the forum software, it's about the content and the people.

[Pescado]

One thing I'm still fuzzy about: So if someone WERE to be foolish enough to buy an expensive, overpriced license for a clumsy piece of bloatware that will likely bring the server to its knees much like it is doing on Insim right now, AGAIN, how exactly would this stop the vB people from complaining anyway? There does not seem to be a very good way for them to know anything of the sort.

[Quorneater]

Maybe it phones home?

[TKPurrrrs]

I think the friends list thing was relatively new and kinda stupid but fun in its own way... kinda stupid for some of the old members cause its like... come on... we know eachother... wats the use of a friends list, but I also thought it was kinda cute in a obviously trying to make our site more of a simmers social site.

Yeah, forums are basically the same, Its up to us to make them ours again.

Better search features while being able to keep some of our own style sounds really good... would help to keep people intrested in our downloads if they could search them better plus our own style will make shure us members from the old site can feel like its still home and that we can find stuff.

[Pescado]

Maybe it phones home?

Delphy has confirmed this, yes. So due to privacy concerns, vBulletin is now off the menu entirely. Phoning home = instant dealbreaker.

[Ali]

for me personally, the actual version it's on - be it vB, SMF or whatever - really makes no nevermind plus from what I've been told from a 'working with it' point of view, SMF is easier to learn than vB ... besides, if it's Pescado doing the hosting then surely it's up to him to use whatever platform he thinks will work best?

better search features are definitely needed

at the end of the day, most people are there for the community spirit ... surely that spirit can still be there regardless of the platform it's on?