The Future of GateWorld (Community Discussion)

[J-Whitt Remastered]

I would like to make a suggestion for the main site. If you would be willing, could you put a section in the gallery with pictures and screencaps organized by character? I find myself frequently wanting to look for pics of a certain character, but not wanting to stifle through hundreds of screencaps episode by episode to find them. I have only found 1 site that had organized their pictures like this (other than MGM and which is now closed because the owner didn't want to keep maintaining the site). I found it very convenient to have the pictures organized that way. GateWorld has an awesome gallery of screencaps and I think having pics organized by character would make it better! Just a suggestion...

I would like to say thanks again for this site! I don't know what I would do without it!

While a nice idea I personally think that would take a LOT of work. Screen caps for episodes is relatively easy (I assume because all I have to do to get a screen cap in VLC Player is push a button), but to do that for EVERY episode and then sort them out for every character? That would take a long time. Plus, after you do that you'd have to consider doing that for ships, weapons, planets, etc because people will want more than just characters.

[Skydiver]

maybe there's an aspect of the software that allows you to tag photos with who's in them? A searchable field of tags....of course, yes, that is a LOT of work. maybe if the software has the ability (and i'm just guessing here) there could be something that some volunteers could help with??

I dunno. It would be a MASSIVE amount of work. 3-500 caps per episode, almost 400 episodes...that's a TON of caps.

But if the technology was there and people could chip in, then maybe it'd just take a few months rather than years. And be a way for fans/clients/users to contribute

[shelsfc]

The screencaps gallery sounds like a good idea, I'd love to help out with that if I could!

[Spimman]

While I'm not a fan of the idea of creating pay services as I think it would discourage new users, it doesn't mean there couldn't be some good ideas to go along with this line of thinking.

• Monthly/Annual Fee to Eliminate Advertisements + Get a GW Supporter Badge
• Sell Custom Ranks
• Sell Custom Avatar Privileges Ahead of them Being Earned for free
• Donation area for supporters

I really have no idea what the server costs are for running the site/forum but adding these but at $20/year or so I bet you could raise a $200+ in additional revenue per month and maybe more. I don't really know enough about the site active user statistics. As long as things were optional and not forced. I'm just thinking of ways to make sure the site doesn't go into the red.

[Sealurk]

I've said that I'd be in favour of a degree of expansion with the GateWorld front page covering related shows...provided that Stargate news always takes priority. I really wouldn't want to see GateWorld become just another science fiction site - personally, I'd say that news on non-Stargate shows would be welcome but must always be used to fill a gap and keep things moving and the focus must always be on Stargate wherever possible.

It certainly seems that there are plenty of people, myself included, who would like to contribute more to the site beyond merely posting on the forum, and I think that's the key. The photo-tagging idea is one excellent way of doing this, perhaps along with some means of assisting with the Omnipedia without turning it into a Wiki?

Getting people to write things for the front page doesn't quite seem to have worked out, but I think it's because it's quite daunting - not least because nearly every speck and scrap of Stargate news is already ably covered by Darren, so for the most part all that's left are opinion pieces. I expect many people shy away from writing these because they can be highly subjective (though that could be a bonus for generating traffic...) and because it feels like there's a big difference between posting in a thread on the forum and posting an article.

So, if indeed increased participation by the visitors to the site is the key to keeping it running, how about getting the ball rolling by setting specific targets for front page articles, at least until a few more people become more comfortable helping out on that front?

[Linda06]

FRINGE
Haven
Sanctuary
The walking Dead
Warehouse 13



And thank you for keeping the forum running, even though they'll be no new Stargate eps.

[SirRastusBear]

Being the Gateway to all things SciFi would be the way to go IMO. Updates as they surface regarding the SG franchise should take precedence but there is still a lot out there to discuss in the genre be it past, present, or future projects.

[immhotep]

I havent been as active as I have in the past, Ive kinda retired in recent months. But I still care about GW and I think its important that if stargate has a future, GW and its membership are there to greet whatever incarnation should happen. With the end of stargate I had alot of fears that we might at some point lose the forum, and all our contributions to it. I really hope this doesnt become reality as I have yet to find a way to back up things I would like preserved from this forum.

I think there are two main issues, the forum, which should continue, in a new form, scrap the current divisions and infighting by reducing the forum subfolders to the main topics only, SG1, SGA, SGU, Sci&Tech, C&R, News. Keep the discussion folders for other shows, fanfic, games, offtopic. But we never needed this grand seperation of all the shows and all the elements, we lasted along time with the pre-sgu setup. And with all three shows in hiatus, theres no point in the new system really.

As to the site itself. I think archive might be the best option. As this will allow gateworld to evolve from the news source to the legacy of stargate, complete all the projects that have gathered dust, complete the omnipedia for example. But I also think there are sections which could be expanded, I think the fanfiction section should have been transformed along time ago to follow the spin off VS's and fan fictions on the forum and elsewhere, and with Stargate ending they are going to become even more important IMO. I think that might be a way to keep things fresh. You might also want to have more feeds from scifi stream.
I dont think business as usual will work beyond the end of SGU, unless there is a change in plans for the whole franchise, but GW already has alot of assets that could be incorporated in to the main site, especially from the forums and they could help fuel the next phase in the GW story.

[dboy-2007]

As Immhotep said If we are seeing the end (which I sincerely how we are not) A lot of the focus should go into fanfic’s and all other fan based things within the forum and incorporating them into the main gate world site.

[J-Whitt Remastered]

Since Stargate will be out of new stuff for awhile maybe every fee months or so there can be a GW wide re-watch of the series or maybe even a GW wide watch/re-watch of other genre shows to help people find a show that they wouldn't have tried otherwise. These can be anything from Firefly to The Sentinel to the old Outer Limits and everything in between.

[Sapphire_Jade]

maybe there's an aspect of the software that allows you to tag photos with who's in them? A searchable field of tags....of course, yes, that is a LOT of work. maybe if the software has the ability (and i'm just guessing here) there could be something that some volunteers could help with??

I dunno. It would be a MASSIVE amount of work. 3-500 caps per episode, almost 400 episodes...that's a TON of caps.

But if the technology was there and people could chip in, then maybe it'd just take a few months rather than years. And be a way for fans/clients/users to contribute

I would be more than willing to help with that. Be it tagging pictures or setting up categories. I would just like and easier way to look for pictures of a certain character it gets kind of tedious having to stifle through all of those caps..

[Darren]

Thanks, everyone, for the great discussion and suggestions! Let me just respond to a few of these tonight ...

maybe there's an aspect of the software that allows you to tag photos with who's in them? A searchable field of tags....of course, yes, that is a LOT of work. maybe if the software has the ability (and i'm just guessing here) there could be something that some volunteers could help with??

I dunno. It would be a MASSIVE amount of work. 3-500 caps per episode, almost 400 episodes...that's a TON of caps.

YES! Coppermine does allow us to tag images so that people can search by characters, objects, etc. This would be an ideal set-up, but with over 318,000 images in the gallery today, it's a project that could take years. If people think this would be a valuable, long-term resource, I'm all for setting up some volunteers with Coppermine usernames and editing privileges.

The alternative to this that David and I have bandied about would be to expand the Omnipedia with multimedia. So, for example, Martouf's page would have a half-dozen to a dozen of the best Martouf shots that we can find (with a variety of episodes / looks / costumes). This would be somewhat less laborious, and in the end perhaps less thorough.

I've said that I'd be in favour of a degree of expansion with the GateWorld front page covering related shows...provided that Stargate news always takes priority. I really wouldn't want to see GateWorld become just another science fiction site - personally, I'd say that news on non-Stargate shows would be welcome but must always be used to fill a gap and keep things moving and the focus must always be on Stargate wherever possible.

I think is is about the right balance we'll need to strike. If Stargate does go off the air for a time and we expand to cover other shows, Stargate news will always take priority on the site. We'd just see a longer time in between Stargate news items, more than likely.

It certainly seems that there are plenty of people, myself included, who would like to contribute more to the site beyond merely posting on the forum, and I think that's the key. The photo-tagging idea is one excellent way of doing this, perhaps along with some means of assisting with the Omnipedia without turning it into a Wiki?

I'm thrilled to hear this. We've had a lot of great volunteer help with major projects over the years (including building the screencap gallery to begin with!). Writing new, original content is the one that takes a bit of a specific fan with specific skills, though, so it's not surprising that consistent writers have been harder to find.

We do have a couple of assistants with Omnipedia access, though we haven't been cracking the whip on a real deliberate plan of updates at this point. I think that if and when the show does go off the air, this will become Priority #1 for bringing the site as it exists now up to date.


Last but not least, I do want to honor the fanfic writers among us and make it a priority to recommence GW FanFic. We almost got there last year, but haven't been able to "cross the T" with our developer and Greg to actually get the new system installed and tested. But it hasn't been forgotten, and thinking ahead to "GateWorld 2.5" and even "GateWorld 3.0" is certainly the time to set it in motion again.

Happy New Year to you all!

[Sapphire_Jade]

YAY! for GW FanFic!!

And if you ever need volunteers for anything to do with the site (like tagging screencaps) I would be more than happy to help! (I got nothing else to do )

Have a safe and Happy New Year!!

[iheartshep]

I've been away for the holidays and am just now getting back to GW to catch up.

I'd go for Business as Usual with maybe a touch of Expand a little. Keep all the current actor news and headlines on the home page and all the Forums. Since most of the shows I watch tend to be sci fi, more than likely there's a forum here to discuss them. And this is like an Online Home.

Happy New Year everyone!

IHS

[Egle01]

Since Stargate will be out of new stuff for awhile maybe every fee months or so there can be a GW wide re-watch of the series or maybe even a GW wide watch/re-watch of other genre shows to help people find a show that they wouldn't have tried otherwise. These can be anything from Firefly to The Sentinel to the old Outer Limits and everything in between.

Interesting idea, there's been several SG-1 re-watches in the past that different fan groups have organized. And members from this forum helped me get into BSGverse.