Shoryuken wants your feedback! Let’s build a brighter future together!

[Preppy]

@Icy_Black_Deep

When it comes to my local scene, I would agree, but when it comes to SRK, not so much. Maybe it’s too big and the “friends” become a cabal while the rest of us outsiders are sitting here with question marks over our heads.

I think it’s really critical to understand that nobody here is an outsider. You’re only going to have question marks over your head if you think that somebody else is handling stuff for you. There just isn’t. If you’re not handling it - probably nobody else is either.

In short, when you ask “What behind the scenes? Why do you keep thinking that there is any behind the scenes?” it’s mostly because there’s nothing in public except for a few vague mentions that Things Are Happening.

That’s kinda how things are though. For example on the Wiki project we’re kinda roadblocked on getting the server fixed (blocking specifically on direct server access), so while the Wiki team has been making great progress probably the most important aspects are simply blocked on a specific problem that’s going to be maybe kinda be solved at some completely unknown and unknowable point.

If you want better progress reports, figure out what you want progress reports on. Figure out if anybody is working on that, and offer to help out. That’s probably the best way to be able to know what’s going on.

[Preppy]

@Pertho

On a similar vein, how are people supposed to volunteer to help when they dont know who is doing what or what they are doing?

That’s a great question. It turns out that there are a lot of skills that are useful for people to have. Some people have the useful skill of wanting to help out. Some people have the useful skill of being great at giving updates. Some people are great at asking for help and/or organizing volunteers. Not everybody has all of those skills. You are in one of the few lasting positions of leadership: what are you doing with that?

Its ridiculous that a multitude of people were willing to spend money on premium again, donate to keep up the servers etc but somehow its just a handful of people who really care.

Gosh, if only the statement was:

You have a very few people that actually do the shit necessary

as opposed to anything whatsoever about Premium or that kinda thing. Triple Perfect has been throwing money at SRK to keep it running: money has not been the real problem.

Nobody has said a damned thing about “people who really care”, and it’s pretty shameful to pretend that anybody said that. Plenty of people care about Evo and SRK: that’s certainly obvious and fantastic. It’s amazing what has been built up over the past decades. It’s amazing seeing the gigantic worldwide community

If you love how things are now, that’s great. If you wish that something in particular was different, maybe inquire about how to step up to make that happen.

Hell we still dont know wtf is going on with SRK ownership since all the drama went down on twitter.

That’s a business-side thing that’s not completely resolved yet. I would imagine that once that’s actually fully resolved that things might be easier to follow. But how that resolves out does affect … everything here, so … no one on Earth could possibly speak well to how the future is going to play out.

But yeah sure, this is a completely transparent process.

I mean, you’re in one of the few positions of leadership. If you have questions, you should reach out as opposed to just pretending you’re helpless. Man up.

[Preppy]

I wrote this in conversation, but it probably bears repeating here because it takes a community to make SRK happen:

The forums provided a grounds for fighting game fans to gather and help build the community that lead to Evo’s success, I think. The FGC benefits from a barrier to entry (and some level of exclusionary community), the ability to build, store, search, and respond to old data, and an ability to have casual game-centered community-building discussions. The forums are usually the best of all worlds.

Reddit is a cesspool where it’s rare to find useful information, the barrier for entry is too low, the community building is pretty awful, and the ability to keep track of / engage with older topics is blocked.

Twitter is also a cesspool, except it’s even harder to find good information and usually impossible to find discussions.

Discord/Slack has terrible discoverability and is not optimized for … anything as far as I can tell.

Facebook is I think most useful: it’s been a good place for people to find their local gaming communities, but isn’t good for technical discussions of gaming aspects.

SRK has suffered from the success of General Discussion (GD: off-topic stuff) overwhelming the strategy discussions. The Discourse board software is also far less conducive to community than vBulletin was, but it’s functional.

One thing SRK benefits from is also a problem: lots of people think that there’s some secret cabal running things, and have mythologized the efforts of the SRKX/Triple Perfect team. They still love and adore and support SRK even though there’s no one in charge. There is a particularly fantastic thread here:

• https://archive.supercombo.gg/t/shoryuken-wants-your-feedback-let-s-build-a-brighter-future-together/

where people discussed why the forums are useful and why forums.srk is flailing. While people believing SRK (and Evo) are “bigger” than they are is excellent, that also is a problem when there’s no one left actually running the ship or trying to improve/cultivate things. GD should not be the reason people come to SRK.

I think the future of Evo benefits from SRK being around in some sort of presentable fashion. This could probably be done just from volunteers. You need 2-3 active or available administrators/technical team (just so that one person doesn’t either go power-mad or get overwhelmed), and a moderator or two per major section to help provide people policing and curating by a member of their own community. The site shows the cracks of age when the forums advertise Evo2k18 and various main links in the layout are dead. Much like the wiki has broken down over time and needs an ability to have people make the technical investment necessary.

I think if you get some new blood to step in, it makes sense to keep [the forums around]. I don’t think things can or should continue without new maintainers. I am super biased and do think the forums are one of the reasons why Evo has had so much success and has been able to stick around when other tournaments have died off. People believe in Evo. They believe in SRK. SRK has been a ghost ship for many years, but it’s still hanging in there.

If people care about the future of SRK, you can make whatever future you want happen. But you’ve got to reach out: this isn’t going to solve itself.

[Icy_Black_Deep]

@Preppy

SRK has suffered from the success of General Discussion (GD: off-topic stuff) overwhelming the strategy discussions.

I don’t know if it works quite that way. I can only speak for myself, but I originally came to SRK for the strategy side of things, and pretty much wandered over to General Discussion when the strategy side mostly died (largely due to SF4 mostly dying). I had little interest in SFV, so I don’t know how its life has gone, but my initial impression was that the strategy side started off weaker than it did when SF4 came out.

I think General Discussion accumulates people who have become less enthusiastic about fighting games, or at least the latest shiny ones, but still want to hang around the site. Partly for that whole community thing. We’re a bunch of old guys reminiscing about the time we scored four touchdowns in a single game and shaking our fists at the young folks.

[appo]

edit - just noticed you got banned…well…then i guess its @d3v

the offtopic things happens only when people who moderate this place let it happen and that has not only to do with the gd section which you could limit in term of how big it goes too. when you have a forum its up to “you” to decide what you allow and what not. the users can be blamed too but at the end when you give em no boundaries they go wild…set rules and enforce em when needed instead to - we can be happy that people still visit the place so we let em do what they want - approach which got practiced the last years.

when money is not so much a issue then for gods sake, switch to a propper forum software.
check out tym forums or 8way run forums for inspiration. discourse is just a less shitty version of discord in term of functionality. get someone who really knows what he does in term of improving the usebillity and design…right now the srk forum has the sexyness appeal of a 60 old in black adidas thights…make it sexy so that people who are new stick to it instead to move on.

changing the moderators or getting new ones without sitting together to think about what kind of direction you want to go seems pointless too. just going the same direction as of now seems to be not working out…