VOLUNTEERS NEEDED (And Feedback Wanted)
 

It's time to take FOFC to the next level, guys, and I need your help to do so. I've got some ideas for what I think could be some pretty doggone cool features that would potentially keep the front page updated with fresh content every weekday for at least the next few months, but there's no way I have the time and energy to pull off what I'm looking to do.

Here are the weekly features that I'd like to see implemented and published on the front page.

• MONDAYS: "Coaches' Corner": The person in charge of this would put up one FOF2K7 tip, or highlight one post each week. For example, the next Coaches' Corner feature could highlight albionmoonlight's defensive gameplanning ideas. The next might pull something from the Groupthink thread. Another might highlight the explanations of what various ratings mean from the little-read CSV Help File. I think there's plenty to be done here without giving too much away.
• TUESDAYS: "MP League Highlight": There are 17 MP leagues listed on the front page currently, with at least one more coming soon. That's over four months of weekly features right there. I'd love for someone to come up with a list of interview questions for the various league commishes, and be responsible for sending them out, gathering them, and posting them once a week. This may be the easiest job of them all, since you can probably ask every commish pretty much the same questions. The idea behind it would be for each league to be able to pimp itself a bit, and for the rest of us to be able to have a quick source to find about all of the leagues.
• WEDNESDAYS: "Face The Board": I've seen this elsewhere. How I'd envision it working here would be that the person in charge would contact someone to "face the board". On Thursday, the person in charge would post a thread entitled: "Face the Board next Week: {Name Of Person}." In that thread, people would post questions that they'd like to ask the person about himself, how he got involved in text sims, etc. At the end of the weekend, the thread would be closed, and the questions consolidated and sent to the subject. The subject would then turn the answers in to be published on each Wednesday, and the subject gets to select the next FTB subject.
• THURSDAYS: "Thread Of The Week": I started this already, and will continue to be in charge of it. If you have nominations for it, feel free to let me know. I haven't been reading dynasties lately, so if there's a good dynasty in particular, point me to it.
• FRIDAYS: "New Downloads This Week": I can take care of this one, too. It's pretty easy to just go into my FTP program and take a look at what has been uploaded in the current week.

If any of these don't work out, or I can't get a volunteer for one, I'm wide open to suggestions for other weekly features. I'm looking, at this point, for three volunteers to take on the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday articles. I'm asking for a 3-month commitment, and if both you and I agree on it, the commitment is renewable. ;) If you're interested in taking on one of these for the next three months, let know. Thanks!

--Ben

Dola:

Heading to write up the first "New Downloads This Week" feature right now. :)

Double-dola:

I'd also love some feedback in general on these ideas.

This idea sounds great. I'm just now getting back into FOF after a few years of sitting on the sidelines. Anything adding to the enhancement of this game (through immersion and idea sharing) is an excellent idea.

Agree with my fellow Philliesfan, this sounds like a great idea.

2 bullet points here, both somehow related to each other:

1. i say rather than make this weekly content - make it monthly. this will stretch out the material over the course of a year, if not longer. you're going from one extreme here to another, SD - from not having the front page updated in a few years to wanting daily/weekly content added. i say the middle ground is monthly updates. this allows the front page to be consistently updated for a longer period of time while allowing new members/infrequent visitors to not miss out on much. weekly content updating benefits only the frequent visitor, not the casual.

2. i still say FOFC has outgrown just one particular game (FOF), and that the name of this site should be something more "general" or "vague" (Text Sim Central, to name one possible avenue). what's gonna happen is we're all up in the FOF 2k7 Kool Aid Flava, but when that runs out (say, this time next year) most of the ideas you mentioned will have run their course. and we all know Solecismic is not a source to rely on for frequent (or any) PR. extending your front page to other games will allow FOFC to further dominate the text sim enthusiast market, making it more of a one-stop shopping center for text sims. Solecismic just isn't interested in being a "rah! rah!" type company that you can count on to pimp their products, which is ok. but you're trying to make a lot of hoopla about a product whose creator is not into the hoopla making business. spreading the love around will ensure a steady supply of front page material. Solecismic's (non)publicity dept just doesn't lend itself to long-term content generating, which is the way they like it. we're gonna get to the point where, once again, we've tired of talking about the same old, same old. text sim games just aren't that exciting that you can talk about them for years at a time.

so those two points, as you can see, are related in the sense that having weekly content updates based on just one product made by a company that doesn't generate a lot of newsworthy content will essentially result in that well being sucked dry quickly. less frequent updates using any/all text sim games will ensure a long and steady supply of front page relevant material to use.

that having been said, i'd consider volunteering upon hearing more of your future plans. not sure if i could do a weekly thing, but monthly - i don't see why not.

To follow up on HA's comments, I am concerned about the Tuesday and Friday content as the time past release grows. I think there will always be tips to be found, and I think that every week here definetly has a great thread, but I don't think every week will have downloads or more multi-player news...

Also, I think the "Face the Board" might get a bit tedious if it was every week, but mabye it could be bi-monthly or monthly...

correct. using my monthly idea - having 17 or 18 leagues with one being the "league of the month" will allow for this to be stretched out for the next year and a half. with March being, say, "Imperial Football League Month" we could spend the whole month compiling info and more in-depth looks about the various leagues, perhaps allowing league members to anonymously post their likes/dislikes about the league so that a Pro/Con can be written up about each league allowing new members to get a better idea about which league is best for them.

We'll highlight the leagues still in FOF2K4, too, but of course the FOF2K7 ones first. That's over four months worth for Tuesdays. We'll have to see how downloads go, but it seems like there was always a little something here or there (logos, an update to this utility or that) for quite some time after FOF2K4 was released. I'm thinking that once we get a few months in, those two will change (one reason for the three-month initial commitment).

This isn't a bad idea at all. My initial thinking was more of a high-level look: owners who are familiar to FOFC, special features such as Dr.K previews, quick overview of league rules (fictional/real players, fictional/real teams, injruy setting, etc.)--basically something to whet one's appetite to vulture for a particular league. What you're proposing is significantly more in-depth than I was thinking. Hmmm.....

I agree with HA in that I would love for this place to be a "one stop shop" for text sims (It pretty much is already, but formally embracing this would go a long way I think). I would like to see more formal coverage on various text sims. I think this will help the genre as I'm becoming a little concerned (although 2 updates were released yesterday) that things are slowing down in text sim development, namely basketball.

I like our identity and although we do discuss "other" text sims, I still like being identified by Solecismic and Front Office Football.

Just my opinion.

I agree (SHOCK!) with pretty much everything HA said. Spread the content updating out...make it maybe bi-weekly? Or have different stuff updated different days of the week? I know I'd be more likely to visit the frontpage more often (as opposed to never really) if stuff was updated there on some type of split up schedule.

That being said, if we change the name of the community to embrace other text sims I think there would be more than enough info for MANY weekly updates. And you could delegate that to different mods/people SD (have one person in charge of FM updates, one in charge of EHM updates, etc) and that way take more off your plate on a weekly basis. I like the identity of this place with FOF but look at the number of other text sims that get significant play here. There's a huge FM-community here, a decent-sized EHM community, a large FBCB community, TPG players, a number of TCB and TPB players, BBCF players. By embracing these other segments and giving them "play" on the front-page as equals we will ensure that this is THE place to come on the Internet for any and all text-sims, which should garner us some nice attention, possibly exclusive sneak-peaks and developer interviews, that type of thing. It'd make us "cool."

And thats what I've always wanted... :D

Seriously on this topic, however, this decision is one that we should make carefully. I think that everyone here respects the work of Jim and Solecismic, and respects our direct connection to his work. I don't think there is anywhere else on the Web that Jim posts like he does here. While I think spreading out the focus is probably a good thing, I do think it would be smart to keep our "heritage," FOF, front and center.

how about boxed hxxp link of the day?

:D

To clarify, y'all, I wasn't really looking for feedback about changing the name of the forum, or for changing the one-update-per-weekday format. I'm looking for feedback about those five particular ideas, and for any replacement suggestions.

UPDATE: Coaches' Corner and Face The Board have been claimed. First Coaches' Corner article is up. Thanks, EF!

I hope to have the first thread for questions for Face the Board up tomorrow.

How about an RSS feed of the front page?

MONDAYS: "Coaches' Corner": The person in charge of this would put up one FOF2K7 tip, or highlight one post each week. For example, the next Coaches' Corner feature could highlight albionmoonlight's defensive gameplanning ideas. The next might pull something from the Groupthink thread. Another might highlight the explanations of what various ratings mean from the little-read CSV Help File. I think there's plenty to be done here without giving too much away.

There should be some sort of archive for these.

My pleasure.

Solid idea.