EG: Reboot

As many of you know, EG will be getting a total reboot very, very, very soon.

Many things have been decided, and many others are still up for toss. I think alot of these changes are really going to please some of you.

What's Changing

*EG will be getting a new look, with a COMPLETE start from scratch. New banner, new buttons, new backgrounds, new everything.

*The forum's name will be changed to Emerald Hill instead of Emerald Gaming.

*New forum administrators and moderators, which will be chosen by certain regular members of the forums. Anyone can choose to run for being a staff member. Random members who have not decided to run will vote privately yes or no for each. A certain amount of positives will be required for them to become staff members. Any previous moderators/admins can return to said position, except for a few individuals.

*All members get a fresh start, including banned members.

*New rules/policies (more on that coming soon).

*Members have more freedoms.

*No more censoring.

*No more news or reviews, seeing as to it's failure.

*EH will still be a SONIC DEVOTED Fansite. HOWEVER, there will be MUCH more room for discussion of other franchises, and we will no longer push our members to talk about Sonic/SEGA related things.

What MAY happen (Undecided):

*Members may have to reach a certain amount of posts in gaming related discussion before reaching access to the Off Topic sections.

*New forums/categories

*Chatbox may or may not be returning, depending on whether or not it is wanted.

*Possibly even a new forum overall. (If this DOES take place all accounts, posts, and other things will succesfully be transferred to the new forum).

*No more Home page. Just forums, profile, search, members, and -possibly- a chatbox.

So yeah, it's alot. And I'd like to hear YOUR opinions on this. Emerald Hill is going to be more-so controlled by the USERS, not the staff. And certainly not me. This will no longer be a dictatorship, this is (more or less) a democracy now. Anything set in stone is pointless in arguing over, however I'd love feedback. Also, I'm curious on any ideas you might have.

I'm still heavily against EG being YET ANOTHER Sonic fansite.

I honestly don't know what to say to that other than this.

The popular argument here seems to be

1. "There are too many general Sonic fanforums!"
and
2. "If you aren't the big 3 you aren't going to be successful!"

1. If we're going to complain about how there are already so many Sonic fanforums then you're completely contradicting yourself by saying we should be a general gaming forum. Because there are WAY more of those than Sonic fanforums. And on top of that I pretty much just said general gaming talk will be expanded sooooo...

2. This also isn't true. Sonic Pros, The Sonic Community, SEGA HD (I guess), SEGA 16 and so forth would all like a word with you. On top of that, our goal isn't to be successful it's to be a community. I don't care how popular we are as long as we have a fairly large group of people posting here on a regular basis and ENJOYING themselves.

But hey I asked for feedback, didn't I?

I'm with Cola, gonna post my full thoughts in a bit.

To respond to your argument against Cola. Let me ask ya this Misfit.

Most of the forum members here are either from SSMB, or Sega. Do you REALLY THINK that people will talk about Sonic related stuff here when they can do it pretty well over at Sega and SSMB. Hell YOU do it too.

Never heard of Sonic Pros, Community, or 16. And HD isn't really liked from what I've been hearing around sadly. I might go check out the first 3 places though.

You're missing my point here...and like I said...the goal here isn't to be a big forum, if you guys really hate talking about Sonic here, I've already said we'll be allowing wider conversation of other games. You can talk about ANY other games, if you don't want to talk about Sonic, don't.

But we're staying a Sonic forum. Any ideas to propose?

Misfit, I haven't been in the Emerald Gaming community for that much time and I think I have only spoken to you once. I agree with you on the fact that this place does indeed need some form of reboot, but contrary to your points it does also seem that the website is becoming fully geared in a SEGA or more particularly Sonic direction. Now, as you said yourself you do not want this website to become overly-popular and all you care about is having a decently large community. But I'm just being honest here, if the community is already not the largest then narrowing the genre of the website to only Sonic/SEGA will make some members leave and drive away many new people because remember, not every gamer out there is a fan of Sonic.
Also, I believe in order for this community to prosper there will have to be more methods of social interaction. I don't visit the website often, and neither do many other members. But while the Official Unofficial Emerald Gaming Chat was around on Skype I and the others visited it every day. If the social interactions were grounded in to the website and not Skype, it would drive the members to be more interactive with the forums instead of only Skype.

I could go on, but I think I'll just leave it at that.
Happy reboot.

Thanks for the feedback. That's a good point as well.

Honestly, what are some reasons that make you guys want to come back to forums on a regular basis?

Well for me and most probably me only, it's the fact that I get to see the opinions of people I know on different subjects. I'm not too interested myself in SEGA/Sonic but I still like to read opinions on games/events.

Gaming Misfit wrote:

You're missing my point here...and like I said...the goal here isn't to be a big forum, if you guys really hate talking about Sonic here, I've already said we'll be allowing wider conversation of other games. You can talk about ANY other games, if you don't want to talk about Sonic, don't.

But we're staying a Sonic forum. Any ideas to propose?

You're missing OUR points. Like Sky said, having the site being a Sonic forum will drive many potential members away. In fact, it's one of the reasons I barely come here anymore. Why come the EG when SSMB serves the exact same purpose for me?

I propose we don't become a Sonic forum because that would be extremely dumb.

I say we vote on it as a whole. Does that sound fair?

Personally just joining I don't see why your arguing over this, you can indeed get many members as just a sonic site, but since it seems to be only a few close nit people here, you seem to be more in the direction of a general forum, but do whatever. Personally I think general ones are too spamy, but whatever is best for you guys.

In anycase, I'd probably leave if the forum strayed from sonic, but I'm just one guy (From Sonic Pros XP)

Btw Misfit: Sorry about not geting the banners to you, but it looks like you may not be needing them, lol

It's all good Karl, and thanks for the input.

As much as I like Sonic, letting EG be yet another SEGA/Sonic forum site isn't the best way to go. Imo, I think having EG just focus on general gaming discussions alone and not just Sonic is a better choice. And I'll get really tired of talking about Sonic all the time if the site still focuses on it.

However, that's just my decision. :p

I support the General Gaming idea

Azzy wrote:

I support the General Gaming idea

Second that, and each time someone says EG is Rebooting, I for some reason, always imagine that EG will have the so-called "Dark movie reboot" that is happening nowadays with Batman (with the Christopher Nolan movies) and Spider-man (with the Amazing Spider-man movie)