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The death of the Volcano?
Topic Started: Sep 17 2017, 02:23 PM (630 Views)
Denomon3144
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Pick a god and pray!

I recently posted this at ZTV. Since it would affect this site as well, I have decided to repost it here. As at ZTV, input would definitely be appreciated.

"ZTV is the oldest standing Zoo Tycoon fansite, and it was once the most active. Now the site has become a shell of it's former self, plagued by inactivity- except from the 20 or so regulars. This brings us several problems. At the ZTDC, any old mods that have moved to ZTV have had their topics deleted. Many people think that the downloads are now unavailable because they do not know that they were reposted at ZTV. The logical option would be to move all of the downloads here and notify everyone, which I tried to help with earlier this year. The truth is that it takes an awful lot of work, and it might not be worth it.

It is time to face the truth. ZTV is essentially dead, almost entirely replaced by The Round Table. I only see two major options for the fate of the site and the fate of the old downloads. Unfortunately, I do not expect for this to be an easy decision.

1. The harder (yet more desirable) option would be to revive ZTV's activity and move the remainder of the old downloads here. This would take a large amount of advertising, as well as effort from everyone involved. This site will need tons of advertising, several contests, exclusive downloads, interesting features that set it apart, and more for the modern community to join it. Yes, it is possible, but it isn't guaranteed regardless of what steps we take.

2. The easier (yet less desirable) option would be to give up on moving downloads here. This site is dead, so there's no point in hosting downloads where no one will access them. Additionally, ZTV has become so inactive that it could very well go down at some point. What if the site is hacked again? Would it survive? In its current state, I honestly doubt it. Where would the downloads go instead? I would move them to The Round Table, which is still very active and is where many people will be able to access them.

So, there you have it. I don't think there are other options for rehousing the old downloads. Please provide input if you can, it would very much be appreciated. I would especially like input from this site's higher ups like Zooa and Incinerox, whom this decision would affect the most."
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stargatedalek
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I'm not slow! That's just my moe!

I would recommend against exclusive downloads, or membership mandated downloads. This killed a lot of sites because it discouraged people from participating and many only participated long enough to get access to the downloads. If your goal is to preserve old downloads than making them openly available will help make the site appear more inviting and do a better job of preserving them.
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SLGray
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Exactly was not the forum dead a long time ago?
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dycki1231
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stargatedalek
Sep 17 2017, 02:42 PM
I would recommend against exclusive downloads, or membership mandated downloads. This killed a lot of sites because it discouraged people from participating and many only participated long enough to get access to the downloads. If your goal is to preserve old downloads than making them openly available will help make the site appear more inviting and do a better job of preserving them.
Without exclusive downloads, not even 10 posts would be made by the new comers.

But I need to agree that the right of posting the hosted downloads should be belongs to the site moderator so those files would be host as long as the forum still alive , other than losing them just because the creators leave the community and dropbox, mediafire link expires, which they are not trying to take down the download.


And the main reason of killed a lot of sites in zt2 to me, is just RL, not belongs to any small policy or operation mistake of the site, just RL.
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Piano
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They stayed up late; they trashed the house

dycki1231
Sep 18 2017, 08:58 AM
stargatedalek
Sep 17 2017, 02:42 PM
I would recommend against exclusive downloads, or membership mandated downloads. This killed a lot of sites because it discouraged people from participating and many only participated long enough to get access to the downloads. If your goal is to preserve old downloads than making them openly available will help make the site appear more inviting and do a better job of preserving them.
Without exclusive downloads, not even 10 posts would be made by the new comers.

But I need to agree that the right of posting the hosted downloads should be belongs to the site moderator so those files would be host as long as the forum still alive , other than losing them just because the creators leave the community and dropbox, mediafire link expires, which they are not trying to take down the download.


And the main reason of killed a lot of sites in zt2 to me, is just RL, not belongs to any small policy or operation mistake of the site, just RL.
If your goal is to preserve the downloads the site already has (it does have an extensive archive), then exclusive downloads are a bad idea.

The volcano has been dead a long time. New posts are not worth the community losing access to a trove of knowledge and hard work. If people wanted to be active at Volcano they would be - exclusive downloads don't fix that, they simply timegate content.
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Denomon3144
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Pick a god and pray!

Thanks for the input guys! It is very much appreciated. :)

I should reiterate that these downloads aren't at ZTV, though. Many of them originated at older versions of ZTV, but they were all moved to Zookeeper's Hideout before it closed. They were then moved to Zookeeper's Hideout, before being moved to the ZTDC when it closed. John and I started moving them back to ZTV earlier this year, but we stopped. I would like to make these downloads available to the majority of the community again since there has been some confusion, but the question is whether it's worth continuing the move back to ZTV or if I should move them to The Round Table instead in order to reach new crowds. The first option is only feasible if ZTV itself is revived.
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Piano
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They stayed up late; they trashed the house

I think the option that is most realistic is to move them to Round Table and to make sure that they're hosted in a manner that won't let them expire.

I wouldn't be against Volcano reviving, it was a centerpoint of the community for quite a while and many of us, including myself, loved it - I just don't think it's realistic to hold onto hope for it.
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