Decentralizing the Community

[Propfam 2,286]

Hello,

The SimCity 4 and 3000 community isn't decentralized anymore. I mean, there are just SC4Devotion and Simtropolis. SimCityPolska is dead. SFBT, well I don't know. City Builders will be ceased to exist in November. SC4ever and SC3000.com isn't active anymore (but still exists). Yes, I don't hate either sites but I'm worrying about unhealthy competition, something common in mono/duopoly. There was a case in 2009, a person called Constantina make trolls the SC4D's wiki.¹ The user is banned from SC4D Wiki and Simtropolis. ^{1, 2} Dirk (I'm not sure the user is really @Dirktator or not) later edited pages about Simtropolis and he's banned from the Wiki.¹ I don't know why he is banned and I don't know what happened when he's banned. But, maybe the relation between ST and SC4D in that year isn't quite well. If the community runs into problem, we risk into not exist. So, I came up with community decentralization, meaning we must build other sites to keeping our community exists. The sites should be active, otherwise it's just a formality and zero result given. If you have suggestions, critics or comments, feel free to give them below.

¹ http://www.wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Special:IPBlockList
² http://www.wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=People_talk:Constantina

Thanks.

[catty-cb 4,381]

2 hours ago, chfzdn said:

... I mean, there are just SC4Devotion and Simtropolis

 

There are quite a few active SC4 sites still going

http://www.simcityplaza.de/index.php/simcitykurier

https://www.toutsimcities.com/

http://SimCity.capitalsim.net/

https://www.SimCity.cn/

I'm sure other people should be able to post a few more links to other SimCity 4 sites

[Propfam 2,286]

4 hours ago, catty-cb said:

There are quite a few active SC4 sites still going

http://www.simcityplaza.de/index.php/simcitykurier

https://www.toutsimcities.com/

http://SimCity.capitalsim.net/

https://www.SimCity.cn/

I'm sure other people should be able to post a few more links to other SimCity 4 sites

But, almost none of them is actively visited by and influencing global users, except for TSC and SFBT (is SFBT and SCPlaza is same?). My country community, SimCity 4 Kaskus only rarely making posts and they're stop producing custom contents anymore but still exist due to hosted in Indonesian largest community center, Kaskus. We are missing the golden age of community decentralization: SC4 Kaskus is active, Japanese sites are active, SimPeg is active, CB is active and SCPolska is active. We hope this only affects CB, SimCityPolska etc and smaller ones is being made, but currently there isn't progress about it, unlike Minecraft community and content creators.

Thans.

[Tarkus 6,932]

8 hours ago, chfzdn said:

Dirk (I'm not sure the user is really Dirktator or not) later edited pages about Simtropolis and he's banned from the Wiki.

Definitely not the real Dirktator--it was in fact the aforementioned troll.  I'm not really sure why you bring this up in a discussion about the need for more sites--people who purposely go around trying to wreak havoc on every site they post on are not going to be tolerated, regardless of whether there's just a single SC4 site or fifty.  In fact, even in cases where intersite relationships might have been frayed, we've routinely collaborated on dealing with shared threats to our sites.

Part of the reason for these site closings is a matter of cost (both in money and time) versus the level of activity at these sites.  If the site is turning into a ghost town, the owners may decide it's no longer worth the expense of paying for hosting--especially as download sites are bandwidth-heavy operations.  Running into technical issues (i.e. the database crash that SimPeg encountered, and the bot issue City Builders encountered) doesn't help, either.  Low activity also generally means little revenue coming in from donations and/or advertising, compounding things.

Losing two long-time sites in this community does really sting--City Builders has been around for 8 years, and SimCity Polska for at least 10.  My heart goes out to the SimCity Polska team and to Cathy, as I know it had to be a hard decision to close things down. 

Having surveyed the landscape out there, sadly, it would not surprise me if we lost more this year (if anyone out there is worried that SC4D would be among those--don't be).  Those of us in leadership positions are trying to do what we can, but it's tricky when we've lost so much critical mass in recent years.  Everyone in the SC4 business is treading water right now, unfortunately, and while there are some internal roadblocks we still need to break open, there's also a sizable number of external factors that have popped up in the past five years that are real whammies (i.e. C:S entering the market, Microsoft killing SafeDisc, EA keeping the MSRP at US$20, all retailers except GOG failing to include the shortcuts for running on multi-core systems, Origin selling unpatched copies and apparently ending CD Key redemption, and of course, RL).

-Tarkus

[catty-cb 4,381]

1 hour ago, Tarkus said:

....Losing two long-time sites in this community does really sting--City Builders has been around for 8 years, and SimCity Polska for at least 10.  My heart goes out to the SimCity Polska team and to Cathy, as I know it had to be a hard decision to close things down. ...

Its been a rough year in real life and the MJ12Bot was the final straw according to the website that's responsible for creating it

Quote

MJ12Bot does not currently cache web content or personal data. Instead it maps the link relationships between websites to build a search engine. This data is available to technologies and the public, either by searching for a keyword or a website at Majestic. Details about the community project behind the crawlers are at Majestic12.co.uk

Which is a load of baloney especially the bit where it says it obeys the robots.txt

this snapshot of the site statistics shows that in March alone it had visited the site 45338 times and had only checked the robots.txt 427 times, it got to the point that my hosting company was going to suspend my account if it didn't stop as it was having a serious impact on the shared server I was on, after trying a few things which didn't work and as I had to go offline for a couple of weeks it ended up easier to put the site into maintenance mode and from there it led to the decision to shut the site down in November when the hosting fees are next due to be paid.

On the plus side as this is going to be a planned shutdown over a number of months it shouldn't cause the kind of problems that happened when SimPeg just disappeared.

-Cathy

 

[CorinaMarie 29,566]

10 hours ago, chfzdn said:

So, I came up with community decentralization, meaning we must build other sites to keeping our community exists.

If sites are shutting down due to lack of activity, funds, or interest who exactly is going to pay for new sites and run them?

 

10 hours ago, chfzdn said:

The sites should be active, ...

Would this be accomplished by waving a magic wand? Or via some other method?

 

To be honest, it seems to me peeps should be encouraged to support and use the sites which are already established.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

As @Tarkus put it, sites need some "critical mass" in order to work fine, i.e. they need a certain amount of activity. Otherwise, any interested user will think "Meh, this site is pretty much dead", and the site can't build up any momentum. Therefore, further fragmentation is the last thing we need in our current situation, I think.

[Cyclone Boom 16,851]

I think another key point to consider is there's a difference between websites and communities.

On its own a website is simply a container. An empty shell which sets the foundations for what could be built. Ask any website owner and they'll confirm it does take time, effort and financial burden can increase exponentially over the years. It's technically possible for anyone to register a domain name, create a basic site, then set up a message forum, files exchange, or a myriad of other interactive features. There are various ways to go about this. However, the progression of a website to a community is far from a formality. It's not simply an A to B step, nor a case of flicking the switch. In fact it's a giant leap where there are no guarantees or certainty at any point along the way.

A catchy name or classy design brings no assurance to capture interest of any target audience either. While a solid structure may help, reaching the all-important step of sustaining a loyal following is another matter. The reason being, like a product or service, it's all about finding a gap in the market. By providing a platform unique for a purpose so people who share similar interests can freely contribute.

An actively thriving community doesn't just appear out of thin air. If the market is saturated, it's more challenging to stand out from the crowd.

SimCity 4 happens to reside in a saturated market. Therefore in terms of decentralization, that surely would mean greater division. So would fragmentation of the SC4 community be of benefit? I personally believe the answer is a definite "no", and it's the exact opposite of what would be beneficial. We are talking here after all about a 15 year old game. While it still does have a very loyal following by many mayors around the world, in the gaming community it's still a relatively small niche. So in that case, it can only help for content and information to be made more accessible. That means centralization is not actually a bad thing.

Speaking here as an admin of Simtropolis, we'd much rather the smaller community sites are still around. There's no doubt about it. Many of those which closed or are scheduled to close have been established for years. But since they covered small sections of SC4's global interest, it's understandable when activity is no longer sustainable. Then website owners must make the difficult decision whether to keep their sites going, or finally (and sadly) close the doors.

I strongly believe it would be much more productive for sites like ST and SC4Devotion to continue working together on solving issues. There are a multitude of things possible to achieve that way. The whole discussion on content distribution being one at the forefront. Leading the way to help make SC4 more accessible for new players, however that can be facilitated. Also as established communities, we're best placed to support sites which are closing should they wish to have a helping hand. How would creating new replacement sites help achieve this or similar goals? Surely doing so would be completely counterproductive, and quite frankly a wasted effort.

This isn't a competition, but a case of healthy and collective community cooperation.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

On 30.5.2018 at 9:30 AM, chfzdn said:

(is SFBT and SCPlaza is same?).

I forgot to reply to this - let's see what I remember:

• It all started on a German Sims & SimCity fan forum site, www.simforum.de.
• Some people there decided to found a BAT team, which was called SimForum BAT Team - SFBT in short.
• The team decided they'd need a site to host their stuff, so they started to collect ideas. The site was finally named simcityplaza.de.
• Another suggestion at the time was simcitykurier.de, which was ultimately adopted for the download area of simcityplaza.de. It's quite fitting because "Kurier" in the strict sense of the word means "courier", "messenger", i.e. someone who brings people stuff. In a wider sense, the word has also been used for newspapers - with the logic that the newspaper brings you the news, just like a messenger. Therefore, the download area was dubbed SimCity Kurier, and the URL used to be kurier.simcityplaza.de
• Due to technical changes, the former "Kurier" part has been re-integrated into the main SimCityPlaza site.

So, in short, SFBT is the team, simforum.de is the forum where the team was founded, SimCityPlaza is the team's website, and the - now defunct - SimCityKurier used to be the download area of the site. I hope this helps to clarify the confusion.

[TekindusT 3,809]

@T Wrecks 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

On 5/29/2018 at 6:12 PM, chfzdn said:

I'm worrying about unhealthy competition, something common in mono/duopoly.

I don't even know what you're saying. Monopoly power only exists where competitors are excluded, not where they are merely absent.

I am saddened that bots are hurting sites. Can't the MJ-bot be blocked?