Discussion

[jonaku]

Here are some thoughts on why your community building efforts are not succeeding to the degree you would like:
-- Your FAQs rudely tell noobs to read FAQs before asking stupid noob questions
-- Your FAQs rudely convey that the forum mods are ban happy and will quickly ban anyone asking a stupid noob question or being subjectively disruptive
-- Noobs are scared of IRC, which is a 1980s technology that no one except Linux freaks use
-- Your admins and mods say antagonistic things to forum participants, it makes this forum look unprofessional, fly-by-night and hostile
-- You don't provide systematic and easy to find info on what SWGemu is and how it's progressing

Some suggestions:
-- Create a "newbie yard" forum (like EQ2)
-- Improve your FAQ materials in tone and substantive quality
-- Provide weekly updates on progress
-- Use a gentler touch as a mod and discourage unprofessional behavior from mods/admins when posting
-- Consider writing an article about yourselves on wiki
-- You should provide links to SWGemu affiliated server sites and get them to link back to you
-- Get rid of IRC or stop relying on it so strongly and shift those IRC efforts back to the forum
-- Make the forum more prominently displayed and advertised on the homepage of swgemu.com
-- Let other community members answer noob questions for you
-- Create more or different forum topics than the ones you currently have
-- Have a lawyer address for you the legality of your work so that people stop questioning it
-- Provide more videos
-- Get those videos onto youtube and googlevideo and let people download high quality videos
-- Have weekly screenshots for a screenshot gallery
-- Have community polls on weekly basis
-- Publish interviews with your devs on your website (who are they? what do they enjoy about swgemu dev work? what are the challenges?)
-- Reach out to the game magazines and game websites and invite them to do articles about you and your work
-- Make easier-to-find and easier-to-understand FAQ materials on how noobs can download, install and use the SWGemu client
-- Maybe a have "noob" section of your website
-- Do some guerilla marketing of SWGemu on other community forums (like Fires of Heaven, EVE, Stratics, MMORPG, silkyvenom etc.)

I love you guys and hope very much that you succeed. I hope you find some of the above suggestions helpful.