Subject:
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Re: LEGOFan.net - central community run hub for all areas of the LEGO community.
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.org
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Date:
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Fri, 13 Feb 2004 00:38:51 GMT
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Viewed:
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3726 times
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Hi all,
One website to rule them all
One website to find them
One website to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them
in the land of Denmark, where the LEGO lie.
Sorry, just had to do that. ;)
Okay, on to the thread. These are random thoughts spurred by various of the 111
posts in this thread so far. Rather than post a ton of different replies, I'll
include them all here.
--Language? If this new site intends to be the one worldwide center for on-line
LEGO doings, what will be the language? Lugnet is mostly English (yes, there
are .loc groups in Swedish and Italian that seem to have a fair amount of
traffic) (at least I seem to see posts in those on the .news page). OTOH,
German-speaking (writing) AFOLs post largely on 1000steine.de, and there are
other sites with other languages. BTW, does anyone know of a comparable site in
Japanese? Some of my favorite builders are from Japan (think of "Tony's
Creations" for military or Onishi Shinji's castle stuff, plus others)?
Different languages often involve different character sets (especially
considering the Japanese fan community here), and would these be included?
--Hub vs web. Some in this thread see this new site as the proposed "one hub"
for LEGO activity, others say "No! Lugnet is and always will be the one hub."
I'd say wrong on both counts. This "one hub" theory ignores places like
BZpower, the LEGO Club pages, 1000Steine.de, etc. Lugnet is the "one hub" of
adult, primarily English language, cross-themed as long as it isn't Bionicle,
on-line LEGO activity, but that's not the same thing. I expect that a new site
would end up being the same. Life on-line is not about having one hub, it's
about a bunch of interconnected hubs, with all kinds of spokes going off in all
directions. In this sense I could claim that my own site is the "one hub" in
that I have links to many of the major sites.
--It seems to me that the movement in the past year or so has been to spin off
more themed sites (classic-castle, ILTCO, Scibrick, FBTB, BZpower) rather than
to move towards one new centralized system. I see this decentralization as a
Good Thing, personally, allowing for some real focus. I still track Lugnet,
though, because I can always learn techniques from other themes, so I go both
ways on this.
--Some people have said that having different message boards at different sites
is wasted, but I would contend that this is not how you live your RL life. You
don't take all your acquaintences and put them in one big room (or even one
building with many individual rooms) to have your conversation. You go to work,
and have groups of people you talk to there, then you have the guys you play
basketball with, then you have your family, your LUG, your church, your
neighbors, etc. Multiple different forums at multiple different websites allow
for this, and give people the flexibility to make groups of on-line friends,
rather than feeling they have to address the whole world each time they speak.
To take three quick examples: 1) Lugnet is not very open to kids, whereas other
forums are. This is a Good Thing in that it allows for different audiences to
find their different comfort zones. 2) The whole Bionicle example has been
mentioned several times in this thread. Lugnet wasn't a welcome place for
Bionicle, so now there is this huge(!!!) BZ community. And God bless 'em. I
don't want to build in their theme, but if they do I will gladly let them. 3)
Personality conflicts happen. I'm not going to take sides as sometimes I've
thought one or the other party had their heads up their butts, but there have
been people who felt dissed in Lugnet.space and found their home at FBTB, while
others have felt dissed at FBTB and found their home at Lugnet.space. Again,
more forums allow for different audiences.
--"Corporate mouthpiece". Jake says he doesn't want this, and I completely
believe him. But. A few months ago Brad Justus would probably have said the
same thing, and I would have believed him, but since then he has taken off his
corporate LEGO hat in favor of an AFOL hat (and presumably better pay at his new
job). Someday Jake might do the same. I don't know the other "suits" at TLC.
Maybe I can believe they won't want a corporate mouthpiece, maybe not. Concerns
include: controversial material (e.g. the Holocaust art exhibit and Brendan's
Brick Testament) (and no, I'm not equating them at, but both have had some
detractors), brick sales - does this conflict with official TLC sales, leaks -
would LEGOfan "respect the brick" as per the FBTB policy, or be more anything
goes like Lugnet (both aspects have their advantages), discussion of
controversies like minifig skin tone or the new grays, etc. I can't link my
own, very kid friendly, website off of my LEGO Club page. While I understand
why TLC doesn't want to allow off-site linking, would they someday, under some
non-Jake liason, seek to limit links from a LEGOfan site?
--Todd's ownership vs community. Yes, there is the possibility that one day
Todd could shut us all down. Go to the FBTB page right now and you'll see a
note that Tim Saupe is stepping down as the admin of that site. At one point he
thought of taking it down, but in the end agreed to turn over control to some of
the other admins. This is a concern, but I don't anticipate Todd dumping this
site. I can't say I've ever directly corresponded with him, but I suspect if he
were to leave the Brick forever he'd turn the reins of this site over to someone
else rather than dump it.
--TLC involvement, part two. Richard writes "Presently, the LEGO Company works
informally and sporadically with multiple independent fan sites. LEGOFan.net
will provide a more centralized point for the LEGO Company to interact with the
fan community, thus increasing the frequency of their interaction, updates,
news, and releases."
This year we have seen TLC increase their involvement, posting high quality
pre-release photos on classic-castle, ILTCO, 1000Steine.de, FBTB, and Brickset.
Does the potential LEGOfan site mean that TLC will stop interacting with these
others (bad idea, IMO)? Or would they increase involvement (best situation,
IMO)?
--Open source. This is the most exciting part of this whole thing. If this
allows people to modify code to easily create sub-sites (theme based, language
based, age based), this could increase the flexibility of the LEGO-web (like
MOCPages allows people to make their own sites fairly easily), which would be a
Good Thing.
Anyway, good luck. I suspect that this will become Yet Another Site to Visit,
rather than the definitive one-size-fits-all hub, but more sites is always a
Good Thing.
Bruce
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | LEGOFan.net - central community run hub for all areas of the LEGO community.
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| Hi everyone, For some time now, a group of us have been discussing the concept of a LEGO site that the community could truly call its own-- community owned, designed, and operated. To this end, we have been endeavoring for more than half a year to (...) (21 years ago, 11-Feb-04, to lugnet.build, lugnet.castle, lugnet.general, lugnet.lego, lugnet.publish, lugnet.space, lugnet.starwars, lugnet.trains) !!
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