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In lugnet.build, Jake McKee wrote:
> Secondly, LUGNET is a site meant for adults. While the stray kid may wander in
> from time to time, the purpose of the site is really directed to adults. Nothing
> wrong with that at all, but since a vast majority of our audience is kids, it’s
> a bit problematic, support-wise.
YES. Thank you, Jake. I have a problem with being too subtle, so I'll be more
blunt: Lugnet is targeted to a particular audience, an adult audience. This is
_not_ the ONLY audience interested in LEGO. For those whose online LEGO
experience revolves around Lugnet, that's excellent - but not everyone finds
this site the easiest or most informative to use. Children have been known to
play with LEGO sets as well, and be interested in finding out more about it
online. And let's face it, Lugnet is not terribly inviting to kids.
I'm not criticizing Lugnet, simply saying it's NOT a comprehensive hub. If it
were, sites like BZPower wouldn't exist.
The forums from BZP (originaly BZCommunity.com) were created as a direct result
of the lack of interest in Bionicle on Lugnet. It's got lots more graphics and
features that interest the Bionicle audience - primarily kids. And many members
there are as loyal to it as most Lugnet members are to this site.
So what happens when a newbie wanders into BZPower, looking for general LEGO
info? They find a few links, but they're mostly Bionicle-related. We don't go
out of our way to act as a hub for other interests. And what about somebody
interested in Bionicle who just found Lugnet? There is an average of about 1
message _per week_ in Lugnet/Technic/Bionicle. There are links to other sites on
that landing page (including to BZP), but there are a lot more Bionicle-related
resources available than are listed. If one were to gauge Bionicle's overall
popularity by Lugnet, you'd come away thinking it was one of the
least-successful of LEGO's product lines rather than one of its most successful.
Both the WorldLUG and LEGOFan.net concepts interest me specifically because BZP
would not only be able to more effectively direct people to other LEGO-related
resources that might interest them; BZP would also probably end up becoming a
destination for new fans interested in Bionicle, who found us from one of the
hubs or another site that shared content.
I've always avoided comparing BZP with Lugnet, because they don't really
compete, despite doing the same basic thing - forging a community and providing
news of interest to its audience. The audiences are simply different. What's
appropriate for one (NNTP for adults) wouldn't be for kids, and vice versa
(splashy graphics, avatars, "proto meters" and so on). I find Lugnet and BZPower
to be completely complementary to each other.
You can insert dozens, if not hundreds, of other site names where I've written
"BZPower" and it would still be accurate.
> The LEGOFan concept is meant to be a hub, a place for new and old users alike to
> keep up with all the amazing things happening in the community. It’s meant to
> deliver age/interest appropriate content to you. It’s meant to capture
> interested builders and turn them into hard core fans. And it’s meant to help
> existing AFOLs keep up with the massive amounts of cool things happening in the
> community.
I really like that idea. My LEGO interests are varied, and I have to check a
dozen sites to see cool new stuff. I would love to find a place that either
provides easy access to the content that interests me, or allows me to customize
my own view (e.g. news from BZPower, FBTB.net, press releases from LEGO.com,
anything new added to BrickFrenzy, keeping an eye on certain people's Brickshelf
or MOCPages galleries, possibly using matching algorithms to present links or
content based on previous choices, etc.).
The best of both worlds, in my opinion, would be a concerted effort by members
of the entire online LEGO community (including WorldLUG and LEGOFan.net) to
create a universal standard (Open Source is a good analogy) for various LEGO
online web resources to share content and code. It would need to be accepted by
a majority of LEGO webmasters to be successful.
It's apparent this would be an entirely different entity than a single site like
Lugnet. Because of its popularity and existing user base, obviously Lugnet
administration and a good portion of its members would probably need to at least
agree with the concept for it to be successful. And many others would need "buy
in" as well.
I truly do hope the concept gets off the ground and into implementation, not
only for myself but for the greater LEGO set of audiences. It would be pretty
ground-breaking from an Internet perspective too - I don't think I've heard of
something like this being done on the scale this could reach.
- Kelly
BZPower.com co-Administrator, News Editor
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: LEGOFan.net - central community run hub for all areas of the LEGO community.
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| (...) There are a couple of reasons that there isn't more "corporate" presence on LUGNET. First and most important, the owners of the site have by and large declined it. Like you mentioned, the reason for this was to stay independent, and as far as (...) (20 years ago, 12-Feb-04, to lugnet.build, lugnet.castle, lugnet.general, lugnet.lego, lugnet.publish, lugnet.space, lugnet.starwars, lugnet.trains) !!
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