Open letter to the Dreamcast scene (attention: 100% emo)

[Christuserloeser]

Yeah, that would be sexy

I love the sites as they are but maybe we should at least merge the forums

All we gotta do is to find a way we can port over the existing posts to our then new forums, decide which subforums should be kept seperate and which to merge together and also to set a layout that goes well with DCS' current site layout (which I like btw)...
If there's a way to automate the process of porting the posts, our merger could be a good example for the other sites

I still would love to see the ConsoleVision.com and DCEmulation.com forums to be merged with DCEmu UKs like Meta suggested some time ago.
There has to be a way without loosing any post, not to mess up the forums' internal links and also without the need to do it manually :P I wonder if that'd be possible at all...

[quzar]

i concur that dcs should insorb some of the smaller sites, as it would be a positive move foward. as it is I only visit dcemulation and dcemu because it's rare that something isn't originally posted on one of them. i used to visit talfi as well but it's dc scene has been absorbed by dciberia, which also barely moves as all the developers there simply talk to each other over msn (since there are only like 3 or 4).

if dcscene and dcevolution were to merge, i think that would fantastic.

I don't see dcemulation and dcemu ever merging, comon, think about it. same thing with consolevision, they were both born from feud.

if ANYTHING it would be dcemu.co merging into dcemulation. it has been there longer, has more stuff relevant to dc, and is a dc specific site/forums. as opposed to dcemu.

iirc the way metafox proposed it would be to have one shared forums system then also host all the old forums from sites at the same place, and simply have them locked. so going to dcemu.co dcemu or cv forums would all take you to the same unified DC forums, and also to the archived old forums of all three.

[beetroot bertie]

I think merging the forums would be a great idea. A lot of the topics are similar accross the various sites (and have much the same members) and from a casual peruser's point of view, going to one place would make things much easier and hopefully create a larger community without the need to flit about so much.

Personally, I wouldn't like to see DCEmu get absorbed by DC Emulation. I think this place is much quicker off the mark with news and it appears to me that more effort goes into everything generally too with site redesigns etc. I love DC Emulation too - it was the first site that I found regarding homebrew games etc and has opened up a much wider DC view for me, but a unified forum would be ace.

[Skyhawk]

Seeing how scattered the DC Scene is and how less and lesser people are still updating their sites, I think it would be very good to have a one stop site. Unfortanly I don't see this ever to happen, for various reasons.

What could be done is indeed have just one forum for the whole community and keep the seperate sites. Those sites will link to the one big community forum. That way every DC fan is united and everything is discussed with everyone with no double topics.

I had this idea for a very long time and I praise Metafox for actually trying to bring everyone together and opting this idea to the various webmasters. At that time I tried to help and convince the webmasters, but with no luck. At the time the scene was more active than now and that was a great time to do it. It feels that doing it now is a bit too late, but waiting even longer makes the community smaller and more scattered.

My idea to get this to work is to take the DC Emulation forum (the biggest and oldest one) as the base. Create seperate forums in there for the sites who participate, where only site specific stuff is discussed. Ofcourse those sites will drop there own forums what they where using. Metafox already should have a good base for this, but maybe he better can comment on this than I can.

Than for the site dcemulation.com. It is so outdated now, wich is a shame because it is still high in the search machines and bookmarks. I think we should ask 007Cheetah (webmaster) to give dcemulation.com to the community and use that url as the mainpage of the new forum. But I think 007 is only triggered to do that if we give him a big bag of money...

[Darksaviour69]

well, the forum at boob.co.uk is gone and CV forum is on life support (why do that good one dies so young! )

so really that just leaves DCemu.co.uk, dcemulation.com, dreamcast scene and of course dcevo

i really don't see any of them merging any time soon, DCemulation has the biggest dc users base, but dcemu.co.uk has the most traffic. + it will be hard to get anything done dcemulation as it has been stuck in time, nothing changes there, its slowly dieing. on the other hand, dcemu.co.uk has been growing since it opened (and i mean dc users not just psp) i see it getting bigger. i do see dcemu.co.uk replaceing dcemulation as the flagship site (hopefully), dcemulation is too messed up now, i think starting fresh is the best idea, and dcemu.co.uk has proven itself worthy... i'm a little biased

so you really just have dcevo and dcscene, i could see those forums merging, and it would benfit both those smaller sites. dcevo is not really a news site, when dcscene is, i think it would work well!

[quzar]

what about dchomebrew though. dcemu hasn't even really been thriving since the whole psp stuff started happening. anyone notice how the 'newest released' stuff hasn't changed in over a month? dchomebrew doesnt have anything done in the past few years.

007 tried to do something about dcemulation by passing it on to darc and ace, but they havn't done anything about it. these two forums will never merge, although i'm sure wraggy would jump at the chance to insorb any other forum. that's why i think the best chance would be for the smaller sites to merge into a single site. boob, cv, dcevo, dchelp, and dcs. if they were all to share a single set of forums they could become something to rival dcemulation. ESPECIALLY if somehow old forums were imported there to be viewed and searched. if not it wouldn't be too hard to distill a lot of info about stuff into consolodated topics with everything you could ask for.

[Darksaviour69]

well i agree that the psp stuff took over the forum for a while, but the psp scene is really slowing down now. the site is still being updated with new releases http://www.dcemu.co.uk/dreamcastgames.php

i think wraggs run dchomebrew, and dcemu.co.uk will be doing any new releases

really only dcemu.co.uk, CV and dreamcast-scene posts up todate news

[Skyhawk]

that's why i think the best chance would be for the smaller sites to merge into a single site. boob, cv, dcevo, dchelp, and dcs. if they were all to share a single set of forums they could become something to rival dcemulation.

That could be a start. But infact that means that only the smaller sites will unite. Boob.co.uk is almost dead (so sad...), CV forums are almost inactive and DC Help and DC Evo already share the same forum. That leaves us (DC Evo) with DCS and that is still a small user base. I don't think that merging some very small forums (userbase wise) into one small forum can make the difference. But maybe something small as that could be the start of other (bigger) sites joining and eventually becoming the one stop forum.

If we finally could have one big forum for all sites, we can also do much more as a scene and a community. We show others that the DC fans are here, united at one place. I gonna see if I at least can make a start, I hope others will follow.

[Darksaviour69]

boobs forums have been down for months, the sites dead.

if CV, DC evo and DCS merge, that would be a great start, and easiest (well cv is multi console so...)

3 main forums would be better than 4-5, then maybe down the line there could be futher merges.

[quzar]

the idea would be to have boob link to the same forums. anyways, what i was saying wouldn't create one forum to rule them all or anything, it would just allow for the smaller sites fo enjoy more successfull forums. the sum of the parts will be greater than all of them seperated, because people will see the wealth of stuff availible in one place.

CV is supposed to be having major updates soon, and isn't exclusively DC, but if DCevo and DCS were to merge i think that would be a big step in the right direction.

Different sites are fine as long as they have a strong reason to exist, specialty or something, but having so many 'general' sites is just hurting more than helping.