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I originally quoted a shitload of posts in this thread, but most of them make the same points, so I'm just going to address the points and not the specific people who made them.
Advertising:
Where the heck do you think we should be advertising? If people were interested in discussing Oddworld, they'd have found this place.
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Don't think it needs advertising percé, but it ties in with making it part of the Oddworld community as mentioned below.
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Forum themes/interface:
I don't really buy that this is enough to put anyone off joining or staying if they really did want to discuss Oddworld.
I do agree that a mobile site/app would help, though.
That said, we're more than willing to update the themes and interface. The problem is that Kristin/Cloverfield/Abe Babe doesn't have the time to lend her expertise any more. And I don't have the requisite skills. And the less said about the last attempt to build a forum theme, the better.
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This ties in with modern forum software, which is much easier to code for. Vbulletin is a messy pile of junk when it comes to coding and making themes. Say that we'd migrate the forum to Xenforo, there are many many pre-made themes for sale that can be altered to fit our needs, I'd be able to help out there if you want. Building a completely custom theme from scratch is a little harder and honestly something I'd advice against unless someone is willing to put in the cash to have a professional theme designer do it. It's easier and cheaper to buy a professional theme and alter it.
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Make it a recognized part of the Oddworld fan community:
Hmmmm... I'm not sure how that'd happen. OWI kinda suck at fan relations at the moment anyway.
It's a tricky thing anyway. There was some discussion a while ago about making OWF an official OWI forum. The problem then is that if they're officially lending their name to the site, then we'd have to follow their rules for behaviour, language, various legal shit that can get a company into trouble. And given we didn't go down that route, they took two steps further away because there was a time when they were considering setting up their own forum, like Double Fine did.
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Isn't Wil their current PR officer? If anything that should make it insanely easy to have relations with OWI, assuming they don't have their own forum plans, which I doubt. Having the forum conform to some rules set out by OWI isn't a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. An official OWI endorsed Oddworld forum would be great for the fan community without any additional required man- or financial power from OWI themselves, as it would be essentially fan managed. We used to be in that position years ago when we were at the very top of OWI's fan site list. These days they understandably want very little to do with us, but it's not too late to turn that around.
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Ownership/Power:
If I became an owner, I'd have been able to solve this week's outage quicker. But with respect to the problems listed above, I don't think there's much more that I could actually do to fix the place. I'm more than happy to listen to suggestions.
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I don't know if this is still some sort of sensitive subject, but I genuinely think this place can be turned around and be made great again. If you think you lack the know-how to manage this forum on your own (as in technical know-how, migrating to new software, altering themes, server management), I'd be happy to help you out in managing it. I've been kind of reluctant to mention it so far because I haven't always been the most likable/endorsed member in the past and there's been some 'political' struggles over the years I guess. But now is as good a time to mention it as any, I suppose. So if you'd like my help, consider it on offer. I have all the technical experience you might need to pull this off.