Taking care of business

AbedsBrother — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 15:18:53 +0000

Some group business that needs to be taken care of.

1. Interested in moderating?

Drop a comment below expressing your interest.

2. Group rules.

This is a public group and anyone can join, so we need to have a code of conduct that we can all abide by. I'm not a fan of having dozens of rules, but here's what I've got so far:
- Respect is a must. Everyone is welcome here. Don't act like a jerk.
- Hate speech ISN'T welcome here (I don't intend to go all SJW, but let's use our heads, people, and think before posting).
- There is a difference between a heated argument and a flame war. Our fandom for BioWare games runs strong, it's only natural that emotions run high at times. Passionate arguments = good; flame wars = bad.
- No soliciting. (This includes stuff like GofundMe, Indiegogo and any other crowdfunding website)
- No advertising. (As in, “Hey, check out my store / channel!” However, artwork, game mods, music and video excerpts of gameplay are fine.)

Looking for comments / additions / feedback about these. Don't be diplomatic. The rules need to be something everyone presently in the group can agree to abide by.

3. How many game subforums?

Right now there are subforums for Mass Effect 3, Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer, Dragon Age Inquisition, Mass Effect Andromeda.
The following BioWare games already have dedicated forums hosted on Steam:
Dragon Age Origins
Dragon Age II
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
Baldur's Gate
Baldur's Gate II
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Jade Empire
(if I missed a game, let me know)
Should I make subforums for these also? I encourage people to post in the dedicated forums – chances are they'll be better populated than ATBW's forums – but the advantage to having the group's own subforums for these games is that there is a level of control here – like pinning, and deletion of abusive threads / posts – that is not available in the main forums. Tutorials and guides for instance can be highlighted and emphasized. Would you really want to start (for example) a Miranda appreciation thread in the main Steam ME2 forum? That's why I'm wondering if it might still be a good idea for the group to have its own subforum for games that have their own forums on Steam.

4. Another multiplayer builder webpage?

Steam automatically removes links to the Kalence page. I'd rather not circumvent Steam's safeguards if I don't have to, however annoying they might be.

If there is anything else that needs to be addressed (and I'm sure there is), leave a comment below or start a thread in the ATBW Off Topic so we can talk about it. Thanks for your feedback!

Keep on gaming.

Let's get the conversations going!

AbedsBrother — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 19:34:07 +0000

Hey everybody, hope you're doing well today. I'll do my best to keep this short. Communities are hard to create, and even harder to maintain and grow. This is why it completely bums me out that BioWare is closing their forums.
Here is BioWare's blog post stating they are closing their forums.[blog.bioware.com]

Reading the forums over there, there are at least a half-dozen alternate forums that people are moving to; the community will be completely fractured. I'm not hoping to transplant it here (though that would, in many ways, be awesome!). Rather, I'm hoping that this becomes a new place for discussion, arguing (come on, you know it's going to happen), fandom, and technical help (because we all know EA pays zero attention to those needing help on the Steam forums).

So post away. I'm going to be sharing this group on the BioWare forums in the hopes that some people are interested in joining. With no official forums at all, Steam is as good a forum host as any other (better, I'd argue). Thanks for reading. Let's get this train rolling!

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Taking care of business

Let's get the conversations going!