DaMadFiddler
April 13th, 2006, 18:05
I don't generally post much in the DCEmu UK forums, but I felt like this was an important thing to express.
It seems recently that DCEmu UK has developed multiple personality disorder, and lost direction through its expansion. It has gone from a welcome alternative to a lumbering hulk...to a nearly useless mish-mash of information, commentary, and well-intentioned but poorly executed ideas, and is currently suffering an identity crisis.
Before I go any further, I want to state clearly that this is not an attack on Wraggster, DCEmu UK, or anyone else. This is just an expression of my personal experience as one of the "scene regulars," and I hope it will provide constructive criticism to help the site avoid an unrecoverable disaster.
That said, here are what I view as the specific problems and complications, in order of importance:
PROBLEM: Site Focus
DCEmu UK started off as an alternative source for DC news at large. This was a very welcome addition to the scene, as there were very few other sites filling this niche: DCiberia tends to be too gossipy, DCEmulation's main site hasn't been updated in *ages*, Consolevision has been dying a slow death almost since its inception, and Dreamcast-Scene is only focused on Dreamcast commercial culture and releases (which it does well, but does not help those with more of a homebrew bent).
There are three parts to the focus problem. The first is a matter of goal. DCEmu UK started as an all-around Dreamcast news site. It did this well for quite some time. As it grew in popularity, and a marked interest arose in other consoles, separate channels were added. This is all well and good, but it is important to keep in mind the founding principle, and the reason people came here in the first place: Dreamcast coverage. DCEmu UK is still the only site filling this role, and is thus very important to keep practical and functional.
The second part of the problem is related to this last point. DCEmu has expanded beyond its initial role. A decision must be made: Is this a DREAMCAST emulation & homebrew site, with side-channels to address scene members who are also interested in other consoles? Or is it a GENERAL emulation & homebrew site, with equal attention and coverage? If the former is true, that must be kept clear both in the organization and in the site design; if DCEmu UK is no longer to be primarily a DC site, then it should be reorganized, to avoid confusion.
As it currently stands, the site network is an absolute mess. moving Dreamcast news to an extension (dreamcast.dcemu.co.uk) makes a large swath of the people who come here--the people who are the lifeblood of the site--feel marginalized, because they come here expecting a Dreamcast site and are pushed onto a side-channel. Even on a very basic level, there's a contradiction: the root domain name is DCEmu. Either keep the main page Dreamcast focused, or bite the bullet and take the steps necessary to make a network-site proper: change the domain name (ConsolEmu, ConsoleHomebrew, HomebrewScene, or something similar), and overhaul the sites to serve this cause properly.
This ties into the third aspect of the focus problem. The site started off as a NEWS site for Dreamcast. Commercial news, homebrew news, hobbyist news, and community news...but "news" nonetheless. It appears now, though, that Wragg is intent on trying to build a community proper here: the problem is, this is getting all mucked up with the news aspect.
Simply put, you cannot interject news and community. What you get is a confusing mish-mash that leaves users disoriented, and fails at both things it has set out to accomplish. There are popular sites that combine the two at will, such as Joystiq. However, there are some key differences:
1. Joystiq does not have a smorgasbord of different channels. There is Joystiq for games, and Engadget for non-game electronics. That's it. That keeps everyone centralized, so that items of interest can be debated with everyone on the same page. Meaningful forum communities cannot build when everything is spread too thin--but I'll get to that in a moment.
2. Joystiq does NOT purport to be a primary news site. It has an intentional blog style, conversational in tone, only posting about items of particular interest with discussion potential. If you want comprehensive game news, you go to IGN, or Advanced Media Network, or Gamespot, or any of a number of other sites, which ARE more news-focused. Joystiq is for discussion and points of interest.
3. Joystiq, like good news sites, keeps itself distinct. It is conversational in tone, and intentionally sets up its posts for discussion. These discussions are specifically limited to a comment session stemming from each post, keeping discourse topical and centralized. It does not try to mix news and general forums in the same place, or have decentralized copies of the same topic spread across different sections (a problem which has caused a lot of disjointed discussions at DCEmu UK).
Similarly, IGN IS news-centric, and does not mix conversational bits and forum/response elements into the main site structure. There are definitely forums there, and extensive ones...but they are kept separate and distinct from the main site. They do not try to blend the two into a single element; doing so would create an unmanageable and unintelligible mish-mash, and I'm afraid that DCEmu UK teeters on the edge of this.
DCEmu UK became popular because it filled a need: when it started, it was the only consistently up-to-date source for Dreamcast news of all kinds. This is a role it is still very much needed for, both for DC and for some of the other platforms it covers. It is very important that we have a focused, clean, and consistent source of Dreamcast news.
I fully understand the desire to build a community here, but it's currently being implemented in all the wrong ways. What's currently happening will not only *not* foster a strong forum community, but could potentially sink the network entirely by ruining the service that people came here for in the first place.
This, of course, all ties into....
PROBLEM: Muddled Posting
The posting across the DCEmu UK network of sites has become increasingly muddled in the last several months, making the site incredibly frustrating for those of us hoping to find out about the latest releases or catch up on scene news.
Part of this, as I said, has come from sloppy implementation as channels were shoehorned in. The new main site is the perfect example of this: it is a wreck, both visually and content-wise. There is no organization, layout is not intuitive, and you have no idea what you're looking at because of an incomprehensible onslaught of dupicate newsposts, non-news posts, and lack of distinction in what is being covered. There is simply too much happening too often to hope a design like the front page could possibly be useful to anyone. Something similar to AdvancedMN's main site, or that of CBS News, needs to be put into place if this is how the site is going to operate. Just the latest few headlines from each section, physically and clearly separated, with clear and distinct links to each different section and purpose of the site.
Part of this also comes from the aforementioned attempts at community-building. While having a community is a definite benefit to the site, community discussion simply does not fit as an organic part of a news site.
The forums (and thus, all speculation pieces and introductions/conversation prompts) NEED, and I underline this, NEED to be extricated, and separated from the news channels. The main sites should be NEWS ONLY. Having comments enabled for the articles is fine, but the forums should be maintained as a separate and distinct element from the news channels. Otherwise you get a befuddled mess, and people who just come here for one of the other end up getting a mire of confusing half-news that does nobody any good. Pointed questions, personal opinion, and discussion prompts make great forum posts; they make terrible news stories.
On a similar note, article copying has really got to stop. In addition to the ethics questions, style problems, relevancy issues, and all other manner of problems these posts cause on an aesthetic level, there is also the more basic (and more important) issue of audience confusion. Many articles that are copied here contained, images, links, or inside references that completely--and often unavoidably--lost in the move to a different site. Besides that, it's NOT YOUR WRITING.
If you see an opinion piece that is particularly thought-provoking, or an article that contains copywrighted or exclusive information, or something that is just written so well that it should be shared verbatim with the community, report on that article. Post about it, with a two-to-three-line excerpt from the beginning, or a brief summary, or a statement on why it's an important thing to read...and then LINK TO THE ORIGINAL. Do NOT copy it wholesale, even if you do cite the source. It looks bad, it's unprofessional, it disrupts the flow, and a lot of the article's original context is lost.
Which brings me to a minor side-point: when you quote something, make it visually clear that you're quoting. Set the quote in a separate font, or a different color, or in Italics, or set in an inlay...and reference the source clearly both by name and with a hyperlink. Or don't quote at all.
PROBLEM: Guiding Principles & Cohesion
This part is simple. As I said earlier, the site feels far too cobbled together--it has a schizophrenic air to it, like it's lost its way and is trying to do too many things at once.
Set a clear goal; develop a mission statement if that's what you have to do. Then take the site down for a day, a week, a month...whatever you need to redesign it to clearly and boldy reflect this goal.
- Do we have a comprehensive Dreamcast news site, with a bit of consoles A and B on the side? Focus the site on the Dreamcast, and make that clear on the main page. Keep your subsections distinct both from one another, and from the main site.
- Do we have an equally-distributed console homebrew site? Set up a main page that serves either as a simple gateway to each section, or with clearly separated and distinct "breaking news" from each channel, with corresponding links to the full sections.
Regardless of which direction you choose, there are two principles which are absolutely necessary to success:
1. Keep everything simple and easy to distinguish, with clear separation and navigation between sections
2. Keep your community aspect (ie. forums and personal interest/discussion) separate from the news. People come to a news site for news, not discussion. They will click a Comments link, or go to the forums themselves, if they want discussion. Allow the user the choice, rather than blending everything together; all you'll end up with is a site that is a jack of all trades but a master of none.
Again, it may be helpful to you to take a look at some general "real" news sites, and see how they are organized, CBS News, MSNBC, ABC News, etc. ....these sites all have multiple topics to cover, like you. They all have active feedback and discussion venues, like you. But they kep everything organized and distinct, so that you always know where you are and what it is you're looking at.
...This took me an hour and a half to write out. I am not saying it to be mean, or because I dislike anyone here. I am only writing as a concerned scene member, who is very worried about losing the last useful DC news site out there.
It seems recently that DCEmu UK has developed multiple personality disorder, and lost direction through its expansion. It has gone from a welcome alternative to a lumbering hulk...to a nearly useless mish-mash of information, commentary, and well-intentioned but poorly executed ideas, and is currently suffering an identity crisis.
Before I go any further, I want to state clearly that this is not an attack on Wraggster, DCEmu UK, or anyone else. This is just an expression of my personal experience as one of the "scene regulars," and I hope it will provide constructive criticism to help the site avoid an unrecoverable disaster.
That said, here are what I view as the specific problems and complications, in order of importance:
PROBLEM: Site Focus
DCEmu UK started off as an alternative source for DC news at large. This was a very welcome addition to the scene, as there were very few other sites filling this niche: DCiberia tends to be too gossipy, DCEmulation's main site hasn't been updated in *ages*, Consolevision has been dying a slow death almost since its inception, and Dreamcast-Scene is only focused on Dreamcast commercial culture and releases (which it does well, but does not help those with more of a homebrew bent).
There are three parts to the focus problem. The first is a matter of goal. DCEmu UK started as an all-around Dreamcast news site. It did this well for quite some time. As it grew in popularity, and a marked interest arose in other consoles, separate channels were added. This is all well and good, but it is important to keep in mind the founding principle, and the reason people came here in the first place: Dreamcast coverage. DCEmu UK is still the only site filling this role, and is thus very important to keep practical and functional.
The second part of the problem is related to this last point. DCEmu has expanded beyond its initial role. A decision must be made: Is this a DREAMCAST emulation & homebrew site, with side-channels to address scene members who are also interested in other consoles? Or is it a GENERAL emulation & homebrew site, with equal attention and coverage? If the former is true, that must be kept clear both in the organization and in the site design; if DCEmu UK is no longer to be primarily a DC site, then it should be reorganized, to avoid confusion.
As it currently stands, the site network is an absolute mess. moving Dreamcast news to an extension (dreamcast.dcemu.co.uk) makes a large swath of the people who come here--the people who are the lifeblood of the site--feel marginalized, because they come here expecting a Dreamcast site and are pushed onto a side-channel. Even on a very basic level, there's a contradiction: the root domain name is DCEmu. Either keep the main page Dreamcast focused, or bite the bullet and take the steps necessary to make a network-site proper: change the domain name (ConsolEmu, ConsoleHomebrew, HomebrewScene, or something similar), and overhaul the sites to serve this cause properly.
This ties into the third aspect of the focus problem. The site started off as a NEWS site for Dreamcast. Commercial news, homebrew news, hobbyist news, and community news...but "news" nonetheless. It appears now, though, that Wragg is intent on trying to build a community proper here: the problem is, this is getting all mucked up with the news aspect.
Simply put, you cannot interject news and community. What you get is a confusing mish-mash that leaves users disoriented, and fails at both things it has set out to accomplish. There are popular sites that combine the two at will, such as Joystiq. However, there are some key differences:
1. Joystiq does not have a smorgasbord of different channels. There is Joystiq for games, and Engadget for non-game electronics. That's it. That keeps everyone centralized, so that items of interest can be debated with everyone on the same page. Meaningful forum communities cannot build when everything is spread too thin--but I'll get to that in a moment.
2. Joystiq does NOT purport to be a primary news site. It has an intentional blog style, conversational in tone, only posting about items of particular interest with discussion potential. If you want comprehensive game news, you go to IGN, or Advanced Media Network, or Gamespot, or any of a number of other sites, which ARE more news-focused. Joystiq is for discussion and points of interest.
3. Joystiq, like good news sites, keeps itself distinct. It is conversational in tone, and intentionally sets up its posts for discussion. These discussions are specifically limited to a comment session stemming from each post, keeping discourse topical and centralized. It does not try to mix news and general forums in the same place, or have decentralized copies of the same topic spread across different sections (a problem which has caused a lot of disjointed discussions at DCEmu UK).
Similarly, IGN IS news-centric, and does not mix conversational bits and forum/response elements into the main site structure. There are definitely forums there, and extensive ones...but they are kept separate and distinct from the main site. They do not try to blend the two into a single element; doing so would create an unmanageable and unintelligible mish-mash, and I'm afraid that DCEmu UK teeters on the edge of this.
DCEmu UK became popular because it filled a need: when it started, it was the only consistently up-to-date source for Dreamcast news of all kinds. This is a role it is still very much needed for, both for DC and for some of the other platforms it covers. It is very important that we have a focused, clean, and consistent source of Dreamcast news.
I fully understand the desire to build a community here, but it's currently being implemented in all the wrong ways. What's currently happening will not only *not* foster a strong forum community, but could potentially sink the network entirely by ruining the service that people came here for in the first place.
This, of course, all ties into....
PROBLEM: Muddled Posting
The posting across the DCEmu UK network of sites has become increasingly muddled in the last several months, making the site incredibly frustrating for those of us hoping to find out about the latest releases or catch up on scene news.
Part of this, as I said, has come from sloppy implementation as channels were shoehorned in. The new main site is the perfect example of this: it is a wreck, both visually and content-wise. There is no organization, layout is not intuitive, and you have no idea what you're looking at because of an incomprehensible onslaught of dupicate newsposts, non-news posts, and lack of distinction in what is being covered. There is simply too much happening too often to hope a design like the front page could possibly be useful to anyone. Something similar to AdvancedMN's main site, or that of CBS News, needs to be put into place if this is how the site is going to operate. Just the latest few headlines from each section, physically and clearly separated, with clear and distinct links to each different section and purpose of the site.
Part of this also comes from the aforementioned attempts at community-building. While having a community is a definite benefit to the site, community discussion simply does not fit as an organic part of a news site.
The forums (and thus, all speculation pieces and introductions/conversation prompts) NEED, and I underline this, NEED to be extricated, and separated from the news channels. The main sites should be NEWS ONLY. Having comments enabled for the articles is fine, but the forums should be maintained as a separate and distinct element from the news channels. Otherwise you get a befuddled mess, and people who just come here for one of the other end up getting a mire of confusing half-news that does nobody any good. Pointed questions, personal opinion, and discussion prompts make great forum posts; they make terrible news stories.
On a similar note, article copying has really got to stop. In addition to the ethics questions, style problems, relevancy issues, and all other manner of problems these posts cause on an aesthetic level, there is also the more basic (and more important) issue of audience confusion. Many articles that are copied here contained, images, links, or inside references that completely--and often unavoidably--lost in the move to a different site. Besides that, it's NOT YOUR WRITING.
If you see an opinion piece that is particularly thought-provoking, or an article that contains copywrighted or exclusive information, or something that is just written so well that it should be shared verbatim with the community, report on that article. Post about it, with a two-to-three-line excerpt from the beginning, or a brief summary, or a statement on why it's an important thing to read...and then LINK TO THE ORIGINAL. Do NOT copy it wholesale, even if you do cite the source. It looks bad, it's unprofessional, it disrupts the flow, and a lot of the article's original context is lost.
Which brings me to a minor side-point: when you quote something, make it visually clear that you're quoting. Set the quote in a separate font, or a different color, or in Italics, or set in an inlay...and reference the source clearly both by name and with a hyperlink. Or don't quote at all.
PROBLEM: Guiding Principles & Cohesion
This part is simple. As I said earlier, the site feels far too cobbled together--it has a schizophrenic air to it, like it's lost its way and is trying to do too many things at once.
Set a clear goal; develop a mission statement if that's what you have to do. Then take the site down for a day, a week, a month...whatever you need to redesign it to clearly and boldy reflect this goal.
- Do we have a comprehensive Dreamcast news site, with a bit of consoles A and B on the side? Focus the site on the Dreamcast, and make that clear on the main page. Keep your subsections distinct both from one another, and from the main site.
- Do we have an equally-distributed console homebrew site? Set up a main page that serves either as a simple gateway to each section, or with clearly separated and distinct "breaking news" from each channel, with corresponding links to the full sections.
Regardless of which direction you choose, there are two principles which are absolutely necessary to success:
1. Keep everything simple and easy to distinguish, with clear separation and navigation between sections
2. Keep your community aspect (ie. forums and personal interest/discussion) separate from the news. People come to a news site for news, not discussion. They will click a Comments link, or go to the forums themselves, if they want discussion. Allow the user the choice, rather than blending everything together; all you'll end up with is a site that is a jack of all trades but a master of none.
Again, it may be helpful to you to take a look at some general "real" news sites, and see how they are organized, CBS News, MSNBC, ABC News, etc. ....these sites all have multiple topics to cover, like you. They all have active feedback and discussion venues, like you. But they kep everything organized and distinct, so that you always know where you are and what it is you're looking at.
...This took me an hour and a half to write out. I am not saying it to be mean, or because I dislike anyone here. I am only writing as a concerned scene member, who is very worried about losing the last useful DC news site out there.