THE PACK Message Boards

I'm getting kinda sick of seeing this place so dead, and only a few people actually posting.
Anyone got any ideas about how to get people back here, or am i just wasting my breath again?

We need members to be more liberal in creating topics and posting. It doesn't have to be about werewolves, people seem to get this impression. It can be anything you want, whether it's a funny comic you find on the internet or politics. Anything that comes to mind just post.

I think what we really need is for one of our own pet projects to show some serious signs of life. The Pack reached its peak when it genuinely looked like Freeborn could enter production within a year or two, and as soon as it became apparent that such was not the case, everything gradually came to a halt.

The reality is that most of us, if not all of us, feel like we've pretty much discussed and debated everything important, and that it's now pretty much just a waiting game at this point. So for the Pack to get back to the way it was, I think it'll need to have something to look forward to in the near future again.

what about a bit of both?
{sighs} this is probably a bad idea since most of us have lives but... what about a blog or something else web based that we can all contribute to?
we all have our own opinions and talents... i'm sure we can come up with something...

it could also be with the lack of people on here, i am sure a lot of people have work and school so that could also be the reason why

I'd want to be more active again in this forum, but recent personal problems have made me into a lite version of the Anti-Vuldari.

Perhaps next time.

Terastas wrote: The reality is that most of us, if not all of us, feel like we've pretty much discussed and debated everything important, and that it's now pretty much just a waiting game at this point. So for the Pack to get back to the way it was, I think it'll need to have something to look forward to in the near future again.

I would have to agree.After the Freeborn frenzy the most excitement the forum saw was a few years ago when it was being moved.Now with the new posts by AB the forum has wakened a little but still seems to be lacking a real life.Fresh perspectives by some new members is def helping but members projects help keep the convo's going.

Perhaps if more of us reved up some of our own projects; my novel manuscript might not be a $1Mbit movie, but it's due for a dusting off. At one point we had several artists, novelists, and filmmakers going at once.

Yeah... considering i've got five stories i want to work on now... and that sixth one i'll wait till i'm more prepared to do...
I mean... what if we started portraying this place more as... i don't know... a place for everyone and everything...
I know it's called The Pack, and for most of us, it's a place for werewolves only... but what if we added more to it? Like other sub forums for discussions on other mythological creatures, and things like that?
Yeah i know it's a lot to ask for but... the more i think about it, the more i realize the Pack really isn't just for werewolves anymore... then again, was it really ever just for werewolves? Considering we've had others here who aren't wolves at all...
But that's just me...

EDIT:
I figured out why i don't want this forum to just fade away.
I actually feel normal here, talking about what i love, hearing other peoples versions of ideas i've gone over a thousand times before. I don't have to worry about people looking at me funny or thinking i'm weird... well, at least not in a bad way.
The only real reason people came back here is because it looks like Freeborn will be made. What happens after it is made? What do we do then? I'm sorry for dumping so much here, but i actually like not feeling like a freak.
Does anyone else feel the same, or am i the only one?

When I saw the thread title I thought someone must have bumped a topic from last year, because I don't know if you've noticed, but these forums have been 100x more active than they were three months ago.

Yeah but it's starting to dwindle down again. If you remember late last month you we would have 10 active topics a day. Now it's down to just 2 or 3.

Shadow Wulf wrote:Yeah but it's starting to dwindle down again. If you remember late last month you we would have 10 active topics a day. Now it's down to just 2 or 3.

It's a yearly cycle, like the seasons. There's dips and swings of activity.

When spring/summer comes we may have an influx as kids and young adults get out of school. The folks that are still haunting these forums should just try to keep things going.

As was said it's hard when there is little more to say and less fedback from the folks on high. ;)

There are a lot of great ideas floating around, but i think some of us are waiting for a "go ahead".

I personally think that this forum will gain a lot of speed in the following months. We can help to speed it up, by posting, being active, creating more and interesting threads to discuss and so on...but I think that if Freeborn will gain more and more popularity, we will also get a lot of new members and so the board will become more activ and will again draw new members and so on....you can see it is some kind of "self-boosting-process". But as I have also said, we can influence this process by being active and telling everybody out there, what is going on here and with Freeborn in general...

If there's a reason for people to come back then they just might do that.

All we need is a real pack for all fellow werewolves we are free why be chained to secioty way of living its our nature and blood to roam free dnt u think

It's been brought up before as a complaint that everything has been talked over, several times over. So we could perhaps create a clean forum install, with a new structure; and leave this forum read-only for archival reasons. So, how receptive is everyone to the idea?

Lastly, I'd like to have a predictable schedule for the webchat (IRC) of people being on; therefore, I think I'll set a date and time for everyone to pop on at, and hopefully some people will stick.

takyoji wrote:It's been brought up before as a complaint that everything has been talked over, several times over. So we could perhaps create a clean forum install, with a new structure; and leave this forum read-only for archival reasons. So, how receptive is everyone to the idea?

I'm game with this. I'm more or less against necro-posting. I'd rather see newer material, at least now in the maturity of our forums

The loss however is that there are a bunch of high quality threads with great answers that I would love to see staying and representing a good quality of posting level.

Perhaps keeping some of the best "What would...?" threads to keep in that area?

outwarddoodles wrote:The loss however is that there are a bunch of high quality threads with great answers that I would love to see staying and representing a good quality of posting level.

Perhaps keeping some of the best "What would...?" threads to keep in that area?

As I've mentioned, I won't be removing all the posts from existence; instead, they will be retained in an old read-only forum. I could still however copy over some important topics, if really desired.

Also, I forgot to mention: if I do start a clean forum install, I WILL transfer all the existing accounts, so that people don't have to re-register.

I'd knew that you would be archiving old posts, but I thought that perhaps we could select the highest quality threads and keep them in the primary "WWaWWB" section as a sort of "seed" to encourage the type of discussion we want here.

So a new/old beginning huh?

Sounds like it would work. if someone doesn't have a life... i mean, has the time, they could even create an... outline i guess, of what others have thought about in the past.


Also, i'm surprised this topic survived past those few posts way back then.

You know, that's actually not a bad idea (just so long as there are no foul-ups in which all of the archive is inadvertently lost). A re-boot would allow fresh looks at well-tread aspects of the original question "what should a werewolf be?", given that there's been nearly a decade of filmmaking since the original threads were discussed. Not that I feel my ideal of a werewolf has changed any in the interim, but given some of the crap-bombs -- *cough-cough* Er, I mean fine examples of the cinematic artform that have come out, might provide fodder for yet another re-imagining of our favorite horrific monster and/or furry.

As of redoing the forum as I've described, it would take trivial time, so don't worry about labor. The procedure would be as follows:

• I set this forum to read-only and lock people out of logging in
• I create another forum installation at another location (for example, thepack.network/forum/)
• I create new forums and sections on the new installation, and install the current theme
• I copy the 'users' table from the old forum, and import it to the new forum (and fix any inconsistencies), so that people don't have to re-register.
• I finish off with sending out an announcement to all the registered members of the change

Lastly, I want to make sure it's mutually agreed to do the above, so I've edited a topic to have a poll, which everyone should participate in, at: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=14257
I want it to be officially decided and on-the-record, as this is a very big change (not in terms of labor, but of decisions). So again, please participate in the poll; you can also change your vote at any time. If it gets past 25 'aye' (or 'Proceed') votes, while maintaining a 2/3rds majority, I will automatically go ahead with the procedure.

I would drop in my $.02 and say that the idea of creating a separate URL (thepack.network/forums) or whatever it's going to be, might not be a great idea as it could throw off people who have bookmarked the site and assume that the the site is down if they're not aware that we've locked the old site as read-only. It might be better to do the new site on the current "thepack.network/thepackboard" URL and move the archive under something like "thepack.network/archive". I mention this because some of us (like myself) are comically non-computer-literate, and seemingly tiny issues like that trip some of us up. It would be unfortunate if this ends up leaving a quarter of us assuming the board just died away. (I still like the idea overall, however)

Uniform Two Six wrote:I would drop in my $.02 and say that the idea of creating a separate URL (thepack.network/forums) or whatever it's going to be, might not be a great idea as it could throw off people who have bookmarked the site and assume that the the site is down if they're not aware that we've locked the old site as read-only. It might be better to do the new site on the current "thepack.network/thepackboard" URL and move the archive under something like "thepack.network/archive". I mention this because some of us (like myself) are comically non-computer-literate, and seemingly tiny issues like that trip some of us up. It would be unfortunate if this ends up leaving a quarter of us assuming the board just died away. (I still like the idea overall, however)

The old forum would need to keep it's current address, otherwise that will cause a massive amount of link breakage and search engine crawler confusion. The old forum will have a notice which would state the location of the new forum, in the header on each page, perhaps. Once I do have the new forum install and some additional functionality, I'll do a board-wide announcement (which has never been utilized in all the time that I've been a forum admin) to ALLLLL the registered users regarding the change, the status of Freeborn, and any other confusions/news.