I hope this isn't going to be a sign of things to come, and we can all behave maturely to one another and discuss things sensibly, as by now our ages require.

I simply meant that considering how only yesterday Arwen's message was posted here, some things seem a little too... definite perhaps? That was all I was saying. No big deal.

But frankly, I found this to be quite unfair not just to me, but everyone who spent hours contributing ideas, plans etc to the whole AU project.



Considering no one knew whether Arwen was going to come back herself, pull the plug on AU, or tell us all to scram. I think if anyone months ago put on the chief hat, it would have seemed pre-mature, controlling and all sorts of not nice things. While it's nice that some people can do things, a lot of us on here have only ideas and thoughts to give, and we gave it all we could. If it wasn't for Ea and everyone else who contributed to those discussions - and even the complaining which did garner notice, AU would be even more dead and decaying than it is now. And maybe without Ea, we none of us would have had the initiative to "start" something.

And while a list of your qualifications would prove interesting reading, I don't think that kind of attitude is going to help. I don't think anyone is denying you and presumably others, have what it takes, but you have to also appreciate that not all of us are going to agree on the "first things first" list so that might be why some of us were just a little surprised to find someone in charge already. I'll admit to that, simply because I only saw this post today and it just seems like there is a lot of stuff that maybe need to be discussed first.

I also think there are still plenty of things that need to be discussed before any action is taken, as now we know what the score is i.e ultimately some members will be able to do Mod-like/webmastery things, there are even more options and topics open to us than ever before. It might be a case of having a few more days of walking before running.

But anyway, there have already been some great ideas suggested already, so perhaps for now, we should concentrate on what we all would like to see, or think would benefit the forum and site.

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^ By me and my SS *squiggle hugs*

Can I just say that first of all, I didn't see anyone flinging accusations around, so I don't think there's a need for anyone to get defensive. Personally, I merely read polite but strongly opinionated posts.

Second of all, I agree with JF and Ellie that this is happening awfully fast. I think Ammy has a point when she says this is a time for action, and that we've been discussing for months, but now that we have some concrete proof that the members could take over the site, may we just have a few days to sort things out and get used to the idea before we start changing everything? The Hobbit's not coming out tomorrow, you know.

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Wow... this topic seems to be turning into a discussion about the speed we should take this at, and talking about that won't get us anywhere. I'll just stop there.

And instead of going on about how fast we should go and how we should get other people's opinions, I'm just going to throw some ideas out here on what could be done about some of what has been mentioned here that needs to get done. I'm not saying it needs to be done now or that this is how it should be done, like I said I'm just throwing some ideas out here.


For the financial aspect. It's pretty obvious by Arweb's reply that she's saying that handing the reins of the website over includes paying the bill. And maybe first, I think this should be discussed and planned first because without paying the bill, well there's likely to be no AU at all.

I believe it was Ammy who suggest a Paypal account for AU with a donation button. This might work except for the fact that most people(at least that I know) would look past the donation button thinking that someone else is likely to donate enough to keep the forum running when in reality we end up short of the bill. In my oppinion as a member, finances of the site should be part of the Mod/Admins duty so that the members don't have to worry about it and can just enjoy, but since this site has become so member driven, this might not be so. I suggest that maybe we could set up a plan where people sign up to pay the bill ahead of time. For example: Bob, Bill, ang Garret will pay February's bill, while Jane, John, and Bubu signed up to pay the March bill, and have the list go on like that to make sure we get enough money every week/month. And maybe have someone who is willing to be a backup in case one person can't come threw. But a donation button could also be used in case there are those who want to donate, in which case it can build a kind of emergency fund for tight times when the money can't be made from the volunteered donors or there aren't enough volunteers(such a time might happen like around major holidays such at Christmas time).

Another thing about the money is that I would want, as a members, one person that I can fully and completely trust with my money to handle the finances. Someone suggested a treasurer, and baisically that's what I'm talking about. I don't want ten different people organizing the money and not knowing what exactly is going on with it. I'd want just one person that I know for a fact that I'd be able to trust with the money. And possibly several others to check up on what the treasurer is doing to make sure said person is staying honest.

As I said before, this is just a suggestion.


Another thing is who to make moderators, and how, and what they need to do, and how many. And most everyone here has said that we need to get ahold of the old Mods/admins and such and ask them for qualifications and to help pick the new mods. One question I will ask: What is stopping us from getting in contact with them??? is it the fact we don't have their contact info or what? From what I've seen most of us have agreed that this needs to happen, and I wonder how long are we going to discuss and agree on this one thing before it actually happens? Someone should contact all the old mods(active or not, maybe old forgotten ones will pop their heads in) and ask them to do what we've been saying we should ask them to do.


Now this is just my two cents. Hate, bash, or agree or just ignore all you want, I'm just glad I got it out of my system, lol!

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(}--{)Imagination Inspires Ideas -Zandain(}--{)
Married Cloud Strife 9/17/08

Wow, I step away and everything happens! It's good to see we have some concrete things to work on now.

It would probably be good if we started listing the things that we think need to be managed. If we can categorize into smaller sections, then people can migrate to the issues they want to address. That would also let us know about how many people we'd need to manage the site.

I'm with Raina in that the main site needs some work, and am all up for helping with that.

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going on a journey through my old claims

Woo, so much discussion since I've been gone!


I'd like to say that I don't understand why some are upset with Ammy. I don't know how to say this, so I hope that people understand that I do not mean anything with any sort of offense. People have been moaning about this site for months. Several people have got together to attempt to revive AU, to no avail. Therefore, I'm really glad Ammy has come up with a viable option that will save AU soon, as opposed to sometime...eventually. And there only need to be a few people willing to donate the money in order to take over the site, so it's not really a group decision at all. I think Ammy was being very courteous about the whole thing, and I'm glad that she extended it to the rest of us so we COULD have a decision, and I think everyone's opinions have been good. But I don't think it's the slightest bit fair to say that Ammy has been overbearing or controlling or whatever else. It just isn't.



Anyway, I very much agree with Rain about the mods being people to put in the money, so that they are sure to get the site paid on time, with the donation button, all the points she made, etc. And of course with Nurr as well.

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Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!

As I'm about done with this forum, I'm not going to give too much input at all. Since mine is probably almost invaluable to everyone anyway judging by my colourful history here. But I'll say it anyway, in the nicest way possible. Call me a douche if you want.

I'm all for this. And I have no idea why it seems to be such a problem that Ammy is taking the lead here. Someone's got to - and it seems like she's the only one who's been able to really get the ball rolling on this entire matter - which has been going on for a long while now. It honestly doesn't matter whatsoever who takes Arwen's place. I'm pretty sure it's about keeping this site/forum active anyway, not who gets to do it. We could debate about who gets to take the lead for another 6-12 months if that seems productive to you guys. This forum seems to have the tendency of doing that anyway.

But that's just me.

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^ By me and my SS *squiggle hugs*

I didn't imply that it was the least bit "I'm awesome, look at what I did!" I did say that it could have easily have been that way. Also, Ammy wasn't lucky to get an answer, she directly contacted Arweb through facebook, because as far as I know, only the mods had previously done so.


Also, Haldir, I kind of adore you. Just throwing that out there.

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Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!

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^ By me and my SS *squiggle hugs*

I had a random half a sentence. Too many thoughts. Apologies.

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Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!

so... yeah. right now there's really no point to condemning this for moving faster than desired OR calling people slow or ineffective. we've all been addressing this the way we see fit and as jf says, we're in it together. so let's get to work?

if people want we could start discussing this on the revival fb group forum. that way we could have multiple threads going at once without cluttering up the suggestions forum.

right now i see, please chime in and elaborate:
(in no order)

MAIN SITE
-funding
-layout update
-new content +constant news/updates
-fixing broken links/removing unneeded pages/finishing pages
-fixing the tag
-mods for the tag
-reconnecting with former affiliates
-eventual total makeover, entirely new layout/format

FORUM
-assessing current state of mods, gathering their input
-finding new mods (~2?)
-possibly removing/consolidating sub-forums
-creating new sub-forums
-generating community interest and activity

MISC
-mods for the chat

which means
WE NEED
-people with money
-people who can code/know html
-graphic designers
-people who will actively follow and report news on the main site
-if we wish to keep up a-u as an image resource, people who can cap footage, find pictures
-mods for tag, chat and forum
-people who know how to network or otherwise promote us

that's all i got right now, it's still pretty general
i also haven't read the old revival threads in a while/wasn't part of that for a lot of it so i'm assuming a lot of this has been planned out somewhere?


(n.b. ammy was actually smarter than the rest of us i think, not lucky. the message she sent to arweb wasn't "please come back, would you like some help" it was "you haven't been around, we'll take over." the same promptness that people don't like got us the response, really because arweb doesn't seem to be in the position to come back. haha. )

Well if you wanna put it that way... hehe. <3


Fair enough! And I agree - it's been tedious, not being able to do much but talk about taking action for several months... and not actually being able to take action. Since that's essentially all we could do at the time. But since we actually seem to be getting somewhere with this now, the person who's had success in bringing this forward to Arwen (Ammy) taking the "lead" in this current process and where we are with this now (she's not the new admin by any means guys, bear that in mind) just seems the most logical option.

@ Tar:

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I agree that funding and sorting out the payment is number one priority, including figuring out the exact amount that needs to be paid each month (meaning how much Arwen imagined chipping in).

The A-U Revival threads I started focused mainly on the forum and what we as members could do to breathe life into the various sub-forums and within the given limitations that we didn't have access to any moderating and that Arwen still was supreme ruler in charge. There are some ideas for the sub-forums that are worth looking at when we get there, but for now there seems to be other issues of importance and the threads will still be there when we need them.

I like Tim's idea of discussing the various tasks in seperate threads. That way it will be easier to follow the particular discussions and contribute with whatever ideas and skills you have on that topic.
Like we can't all decide on whether we want the layout to be green or purple. So an idea could be that we let .. whoever ends up in sort of a layout/graphics group to decide amongst themselves and trust them with any decisions regarding layout, or they should do all the talking and then post a poll where the rest of the members could vote for say purple or green. And the same with the other things.

So I think starting threads here on the Suggestions board for the various topics and tasks is a great idea so we can have more elaborated talks on the different tasks. We'll get a better overview over who is interested in helping out with what and more importantly what skills we have avaliable. I mean we can't really start out doing a lot of html-coding if we don't have any members who know how to, then we would have to either focus on something else or settle for another solution.
I'm gonna start out and post a seperate thread about the missing mods. Ivy sent me a list some time ago with all the mods A-U has (had) and encouraged us to try and reach out to them. I never got to post it because at that time we were discussing graver topics in Eru's thread.


And by the way, I think we should embrace discussion and the power of having people come together to discuss things. It's a way of feeling involved. This is what a discussion forum is about and it makes people come together, as long as it doesn't end up discussing for the sake of discussion. I mean sometimes the planning and list-making is almost as fun as the ending result... and here is really something, a project, that everyone can contribute to and get involved in.

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>>Be the change you wish to see in the world<<



Banner credit: Shadowcat & Nurrantiel Mashiara

i haven't heard anything but support for creating separate threads, so we might as well move ahead with that. to avoid too much complication how about four or five threads max?

funding
layout/coding
news/new content
forum
staffing - up!

EDIT: Eä, are you interested in starting the forum improvement-related discussions on here/collecting your ideas from the revival pt 1?

Tim:: I can try and put it up. Compared to some of the other changes it is a minor priority at the moment but at some point we will need to talk about forums/sub-forums and what kind of content we want and where to put it.

And let me add, I'm very excited to see what kinds of ideas and discussions will unfold in the various workshop threads.


EDIT: I want to mention that I can't wait for you people across the pond to get up and get on A-U.

I think it would be great if we had various people to.. I don't want to say 'lead' or 'host' workshop threads because it sounds wrong, But I just had a look down the Suggestions board and it does seem like Eä and Tim4x had been let lose while everyone was away... So I hope that a lot of other people will come and post soon!!

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>>Be the change you wish to see in the world<<



Banner credit: Shadowcat & Nurrantiel Mashiara

i agree it's not really the first thing we need to do, but we might as well have a place for those interested to plan.

me too! especially for plans to finally change the color scheme from winter. it's time for spring, literally and metaphorically.