Alternate forum for KSP1?

[DeadJohn]

If the KSP franchise was shuttered and we lost these forums, where would people go to discuss KSP1?

KSP1 is the only game I frequently discuss. I play other games and read their forums but rarely post, so I don't have any other favorite gaming forums. My first instinct if the KSP forums died would be to try contacting some of my favorite modders to see where they went.

(There's a gloomy mix of rumor+news about layoffs in the KSP2 subforum. That's not what I'm here to discuss, just offering context about why I'm asking my question.)

[AtomicTech]

2 hours ago, DeadJohn said:

If the KSP franchise was shuttered and we lost these forums, where would people go to discuss KSP1?

KSP1 is the only game I frequently discuss. I play other games and read their forums but rarely post, so I don't have any other favorite gaming forums. My first instinct if the KSP forums died would be to try contacting some of my favorite modders to see where they went.

(There's a gloomy mix of rumor+news about layoffs in the KSP2 subforum. That's not what I'm here to discuss, just offering context about why I'm asking my question.)

We might just have to make another forum.

Edited May 1 by AtomicTech

[Jacke]

EDIT: Below, I've thought of a preparatory safety measure: join existing KSP-oriented Discords, set up by KSP video makers, streamers, and modders.  There's several I'm already a member of.  If these forums get shut down in short order, the discussion would start on them of what to do to do about it.
https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/224662-alternate-forum-for-ksp1/?do=findComment&comment=4395839

I was thinking about starting this sort of topic.  Because I want to start playing KSP again.

But I fear with the uncertainty we face, this forum could disappear overnight.  The organizing hub of our community, discussions, modding, and stories, gone.  Many existing game companies have shut down forums and replaced them with Discords.  Discord is good for many things, but for being the hub of a community of the nature of KSP's I think forums are far better.

I've gone through this loss of community before, with City of Heroes.  2012 August 31st the shutdown was announced.  2012 November 30th I and many other City fans played like we'd never get another chance to play the game we love again.  Because that's what we thought would happen.

But a miracle happened and now there's a stable community-run City of Heroes.

I do not expect that to happen again.

If these forums were closed but KSP was still available on Steam, maybe something could be done to preserve this community.

I think if we don't have a good backup home for KSP before this one goes away, especially if it's loss is rapid, I don't know what will survive, if anything.

I'm calling on a few KSP players to see what they think.  My apologies for tagging you all, but I think this is a clear and present issue that should have some discussion now.  Hopefully more will join the discussion and something good will come of it.

@HebaruSan, @JAFO, @JoeSchmuckatelli, @K^2, @kurgut, @linuxgurugamer, @Lisias, @ManEatingApe, @mikegarrison, @RayneCloud, @Superfluous J

Edited June 5 by Jacke

[K^2]

My suggestion would be to set up an unofficial community Discord for KSP forums somewhere, independent of any official servers. Even if there's not much happening there, it can be a meeting point to discuss alternatives.

I definitely wouldn't recommend rushing to create a new forum somewhere. The unfortunate reality of the forums is that they are a bit tedious to moderate when they grow large, and entirely pointless if they don't. Having gone through some exoduses in early 2000s when certain game communities crashed, and having been involved in setting up some community forums as replacements, I've stepped on a lot of these rakes. So until we have a good idea of how many people would be interested in participating and running the place, I wouldn't start on it.

[Lisias]

I agree that creating a new place is a bad idea, not only someone will have to upfront some money, but running the place is a hell of a work.

And places to go there're some, I don't think there's a need to create a new one - there're Steam and Reddit already, and they are moderated. I like Steam's moderation more than Reddit, but Reddit is easier to post content.

I tried Discord, couldn't get a grasp on it - I'm not online all the time, and that is a live chat at best. Really messy to do anything other than bragging and ask the same questions again and again.

Losing Forum will be a huge blow on historical material. A lot, really lot of useful content for both players and modders are available here, 10 years of development and playing. Losing access to it will be devastating.

I don't know how to preserve it. Archive is not saving Forum pages, probably due copyright grounds (it's almost sure someone at TTI or PD requested to blacklist Forum's domain there).

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

I'm hoping to see the forums continue.  KSP1 is still a game, after all. *

FWIW  -  This is my all time favorite internet community. 

(especially the regulars at S&SF) 

I'd like to give a shout out to @Snark, @Vanamonde and @Gargamel who I credit for wrangling all of us, all these years.  You guys are saints for helping us keep it civil and fun! 

Hopefully this place is still here in a year - but if not... Thanks for all the fish! 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 3 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[Superfluous J]

8 hours ago, Jacke said:

I'm calling on a few KSP players to see what they think.  My apologies for tagging you all, but I think this is a clear and present issue that should have some discussion now.  Hopefully more will join the discussion and something good will come of it.

I don't mind being tagged though I don't have much to contribute. Communities fade, it's just a sad fact of life. In all the communities I've ever been in I was always one of the more... prolific posters. These include:

• Doom Usenet groups
• Stars! Usenet groups
• Magic the Gathering Usenet groups and forum
• National Novel Writing Month forum
• Various podcasting forums**
• Minecraft forum
• FTL forum**
• KSP forum*
• Factorio forum
• Dyson Sphere Program Discord

Some of them faded away. Some of them my interest faded away. Some more (**) changed to Discord and I'm still on them in a very diminished way.

One single community (this one) has both stayed in its original form and has kept my interest for over a decade. Both of those are in doubt now, which is sad but... I guess everything goes away eventually.

I'd go to a new forum of it popped up after this one went away (but not before probably). Same with a Discord server though I'd be far less active on one. I won't commit to helping set one up enough. I feel that phase of my life is petty much spent.

Edited June 4 by Superfluous J

[Jacke]

4 hours ago, Lisias said:

I tried Discord, couldn't get a grasp on it - I'm not online all the time, and that is a live chat at best. Really messy to do anything other than bragging and ask the same questions again and again.

I find Discord more useful for smaller groups of people.  It started as a just-works way to get voice comms in any game.  Works well for my gaming guild Repeat Offenders, but we also have our own forums.  A better example is the Homecoming Testers and Devs have a Discord for a lot of the communication on Closed Alpha and Closed Beta development before it goes to Open Beta.

@K^2 is right, forums need security and moderation and that only grows with the player base.  (Discords need security and moderation too.)

But forums allow a number of people in a game's community to interact and have persistent documents.  I have fond memories of Early Access playing Subnautica and participating and getting info on the Unknown Worlds forums.  I don't think it would have worked as well just as a Discord.  It's also the example of a gaming company shutting down its forums (likely as an economy measure) that I learned how so much was lost.

@Superfluous J is right.  I remember communities I was part of over the years, most all gone now.  Outside of my Regimental Association and a local professional group, Repeat Offenders and City of Heroes is my oldest community and that's from 2005 and on.  Others I joined later have now gone.

@Lisias is also right.  There's a whole lot of KSP history here (though there was that major forum incident in which the 20 top mod threads were all lost, which to me means the Better Than Starting Manned topic with all that subcommunity is now just as much dust in the wind).

Without these forums, I can't see the modding of KSP continuing as it is.  I hope we don't lose this.

[RayneCloud]

9 hours ago, Jacke said:

I was thinking about starting this sort of topic.  Because I want to start playing KSP again.

But I fear with the uncertainty we face, this forum could disappear overnight.  The organizing hub of our community, discussions, modding, and stories, gone.  Many existing game companies have shut down forums and replaced them with Discords.  Discord is good for many things, but for being the hub of a community of the nature of KSP's I think forums are far better.

I've gone through this loss of community before, with City of Heroes.  2012 August 31st the shutdown was announced.  2012 November 30th I and many other City fans played like we'd never get another chance to play the game we love again.  Because that's what we thought would happen.

But a miracle happened and now there's a stable community-run City of Heroes.

I do not expect that to happen again.

If these forums were closed but KSP was still available on Steam, maybe something could be done to preserve this community.

I think if we don't have a good backup home for KSP before this one goes away, especially if it's loss is rapid, I don't know what will survive, if anything.

I'm calling on a few KSP players to see what they think.  My apologies for tagging you all, but I think this is a clear and present issue that should have some discussion now.  Hopefully more will join the discussion and something good will come of it.

@HebaruSan, @JAFO, @JoeSchmuckatelli, @K^2, @kurgut, @linuxgurugamer, @Lisias, @ManEatingApe, @mikegarrison, @RayneCloud, @Superfluous J

Honestly, having built forums multiple times over, this is not an easy thing to do. There's so much to talk about like picking the forum software, any sort of hosting or domain names, rules, moderation guidelines, etc. The kind of community we'd want to build making sure it's a safe enough environment for everyone that loves KSP, as well as worrying about any possible legal takedown action from the IP holders whoever they are.

I'd be up for it, and I'd support and offer my hand in building it, but I don't know what sort of hunger there is really for the community. 

Also, as already stated, there's a lot of history here in this place. Including my first posts as Community Manager that I sometimes look back on to remember the good times. All the mod threads, the WIP mod threads, all the vessel sharing, missions, stories, et all. There's just, way to much here and we don't and will never get access to the database to mirror it or save any of it.

As the others have suggested, I think the best course of action is a new dedicated KSP fan ran community discord server. That also, is something I have a great deal of experience in building and running and managing, but it's also a lot of work to really set one up well.

Edited June 4 by RayneCloud

[K^2]

4 hours ago, Jacke said:

I don't think it would have worked as well just as a Discord.

I don't know if Discord is the right space for this sort of a thing either, and for a large community, it's a lot of the same effort running it as a large forum. The only reason I'm suggesting it is that it's relatively easy to set one up as a jumping off point.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

I would contribute to crowd sourced attempts at getting it set up and maintained, though I lack technical skills to assist.

[Jacke]

A big issue here is uncertainty.  We don't know whether or not there's a continuing future for KSP that would extend to see these forums continued.  Because with these forums, a replacement isn't needed.  But if these forums are shut down in short order where we can't react before the end....

I think there's already a security stopgap solution to this problem.

There's already a number of KSP-oriented Discords out there.  Set up by the KSP video makers, streamers, and modders.

I would strongly suggest we all join these KSP-oriented Discords ASAP, as many of them as possible.  I'm already on several of them.

If these forums disappear overnight, there will be discussion of that on those Discords.  And then a community replacement could then take form.

I also strongly suggest if there are vital things on these forums you don't want to lose, you should find a way to save them.

For me, I would worry about connecting with the members here.  The KSP-oriented Discords should solve that issue.

For mods, I have many saved links to these forums.  While those links wouldn't work without these forums, there's the names of the mods in the links' text as well as my arrangement of the links.  That alone I could use to reconnect with needed mods for KSP.

Edited June 5 by Jacke

[JAFO]

On 6/4/2024 at 3:14 AM, K^2 said:

My suggestion would be to set up an unofficial community Discord for KSP forums somewhere, independent of any official servers. Even if there's not much happening there, it can be a meeting point to discuss alternatives.

I definitely wouldn't recommend rushing to create a new forum somewhere. The unfortunate reality of the forums is that they are a bit tedious to moderate when they grow large, and entirely pointless if they don't. Having gone through some exoduses in early 2000s when certain game communities crashed, and having been involved in setting up some community forums as replacements, I've stepped on a lot of these rakes. So until we have a good idea of how many people would be interested in participating and running the place, I wouldn't start on it.

Agreed.. I've been involved in running forums before. It's not an experience I'm keen to repeat, even if I had the time. Which I don't.

Discord? The format doesn't appeal to me.. massively long unbroken comment/discussion threads, that are tedious to scroll up or down for miles. Give me pages any day.

Reddit would be a little better, for me personally. But again, the format still isn't as efficient to find your way around in, as it is in a forum.

[Bioman222]

Reddit and Discord both have very different formats than these bulletin board style forums that really change the usefulness. You don't see modders being able to have their own page/thread on Reddit/Discord, and if they do it lasts only minutes or hours. Not to mention Discord isn't search indexed on like Google. I think something like Discourse or the federated Lemmy with lemmybb frontend would both be good options. Hosting/server costs would be the big queston, but I have seen on the fediverse with Mastodon and Lemmy that volunteer hosted/moderated communities are practical and operate ok. I currently host a mastodon server on my own server, and if there's any way I could help with a community run alternative to the forums I'd be happy to contribute technical know-how/server space (though my little server probably can't handle this entire operation )

Edited August 27 by Bioman222

[purpleivan]

@Bioman222 post prompted me to throw in my 2 cents on the question of setting up an alternative (non-official) forum. I know this a while after the events that triggered the OP, but I thought I'd chime in, in case there was still any serious consideraton of this.

I think there are 3 main questions, the answers to which determine if an alternative forum is viable, as a replacement of sorts for this one, should it disappear.

1. Are there enough users interested?

2. Are there enough people with sufficient time/interest in setting up and moderating a new forum?

3. Would there be enough finances available to support it?

If the answer to any of these is "no", then it's probably not worth even attempting to create one. The question I have, is what is known, or could be found out, regarding answers to those 3 questions.

 

Here are my thoughts on those question

1. Is a tricky question to answers, although a pole on this forum (but it would need to be pinned to maintian visibility), might give an idea of at least the minimum numbers of those players who might be interested.
2. Is a personal question, for those already involved in the moderation of the current forum, as there's not likely to be a many people with suitable experience, volunteering at this stage. Possibly @RayneCloud could canvas opinion amongst the mods regarding this (assuming this hasn't happened already).
3. How much would an alternative forum cost to set up an maintain. It's not as if a forum with the capacity of the current forum would be required, as player numbers are already much lower than when the game was at it's peak. I've no idea of the costs of the kind of forum arrangement that would be suitable/necessary, but hopefully @RayneCloud would have some insight regarding that. Once there's a reasonable idea of the scope of the funding required for a new forum, then at least there would be a goal to meet in terms of pulling together some funding. I'd imagine that the funding available would be in the form of personal donations via [insert crowdfunding portal name here] to the cause, most of them small (say $5-20), with perhaps a smaller number of players willing to stump up more substantial sums.

[calabus2]

I never understood the want or need for a forum backup. The only outcry from a few folks about the forum going away was the loss of mod content. Why? Every bit of that content is hosted or duplicated elsewhere like Github or a few other mod sites. Reddit has subs dedicated to KSP modding among other things. If modders want an outlet for their work there are already options available to them. It doesn't need to be this or some other forum-like site. Reddit is free, less hassle making a sub as apposed to a new website. 

I looked at the active user count here and on the KSP main Reddit sub. The counts were pretty much equal. It certainly isn't a stretch to say that if this forum callaped tomorrow, folks would simply utilize KSP resources elsewhere. I see no need for a new forum.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

I couldn't find the conversations where the mod was actively discussed with a broad community, and cooperative troubleshooting efforts provide patches.

I also found it more difficult to find compatibility discussions.

I failed to locate related suggestions & support and mod recommendations based on a preferred playstyle. 

I was unable to find a way to ping other members that might be interested in reviving some of the Dead github repos... or how to determine which members of the github community at large have an extended interest in KSP1 and might be willing to take on updating / maintenance of said more for free.

Reddit is certainly searchable and offers many similiar features, but does not maintain the same coherent format and structure for easy reference. Some of the smaller reddit communities I've joined have a great sense of community, but find it largely lacking in general.

Loss of the forum would definitely be a sad day and I think player count would suffer from those that don't know what a repo is.

Edited September 4 by Fizzlebop Smith

[calabus2]

If you are having a hard time searching within Reddit then simply Google "Reddit "whatever your question is". Why create a new forum that cost money and time when Google is right there and free? As for the loss of the forum and player count.... KSP2 pretty much killed that already. There is nothing this forum or any other new forum can offer that isn't already out there.

[Gargamel]

Using Reddit or discord to replace a long standing forum is like trying to use your spare tire for a trans continental car trip.    Yeah, it’ll work in the short term, but no serious conversation can be done on it over any length of time.      Reddit auto locks their threads after what, 3 months?    That’s completely useless as a continuum of information if you have a pertinent piece of information to contribute.   

[adsii1970]

On 9/4/2024 at 5:08 PM, calabus2 said:

There is nothing this forum or any other new forum can offer that isn't already out there.

This forum offers a long-standing community. Many of us here began playing KSP before there was a bloody 1 or 2. It was just KSP. We also made a lot of friends on this forum. For us, this is our neighborhood.

33 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

That’s completely useless as a continuum of information if you have a pertinent piece of information to contribute.

^^ This.