Operation CASTIA - It's our time to fix Sythe.

Operation: CASTIA
Change All Sythe Things Into Awesomeness!

Welcome, readers and community participants. This thread is has been inspired by recent comments all around Sythe along with private conversations aimed toward the general intent of improvement and is intended to be a place for everyone that cares about the future of this community to share ideas and actually, for once, get something accomplished! It's time to stop sitting by and telling each other what great ideas we're having and get to work!

The plan:
The "plan" is to, once we've reached a general and reasonable agreement among users and staff, bring Richard (Sythe) a complete plan of action.
Please remember that this is a community-driven discussion. I'm going to request that staff and users alike combine and for this thread consider each other as equals. Until this is taken up to higher levels, everyone is a "community member," and is just sharing ideas. Gone are the times where an administrator puts up an opinion and everyone agrees. This needs to be a large compromise and a combination of great minds, something I see a lot of around here (except for the spam forum, of course!)

The reason:
Sythe, our beloved website, is dying. It may not be noticeable to some of the newer users, but to myself and users that have been around even longer, it's seen much better days. The issue is not that everything will completely come to an end, but rather the potential that this community has. There is no reason for us to remain how we are, dwindling until eventually we are a small cult and fail to ever expand.
What you should think when sharing and critiquing is ideas that will refine Sythe into a place that will attract and keep new users. Posting "fake" porn will bring plenty of rather...er...sketchy users, and some wille ven possibly register, but in the end none of them will stay. It's the end result we're looking for. I consider myself a member of average activity, and if everyone on Sythe was around and posted like me, WOW! Imagine a community like that! It's thoughts like that in which I am driven, and is a large reason behind the creation of this thread.






Ideas!
Here, I will collect popular ideas and refine them as the community agrees.

Blade's approach:
Wow, I don't even know where to start! I've been going over this repeatedly and expressing what I'm thinking is rather difficult! I would like to start with the main idea, in where I believe we should move our main focus away from RuneScape and a black market community, and focus more on gaming in general. I will explain in depth from here.
Gaming Community - what does that mean? It means, this future Sythe that I imagine, will be a "central hub" of gamers. Somewhere that anyone with a taste for gaming, of all types, can always come back and find others with similar interests. It's going to require some work and quite a bit of expansion, but I believe it will be possible.

Subforums - Forums would be split into subforums as you see now, but would be for each genre, and then each game. Consoles and PC gamers will break up, and then into FPS/MMO/RTS/etc from there, with a final breakdown into individual games (obviously this is an example of hierarchy that I am envisioning, and is up for rearrangement and debate.) Within these forums, users will create groups, trade and discuss anything about those particular games.

Ranks - What drives gamers? Achievement. Success. What gives a feeling of accomplishment? Achieving rank in an established community. This is something completely new for Sythe in the sense that I have been considering. Within each specific genre would be "Genre King's" (obviously these ranks and names are hypothetical, just go along with it) which would assign based on potential and gaming ability, leaders for each individual game. Those leaders would conduct community events and would "outrank" team leaders, etc. Sythe would be everywhere. In every game. Games that don't "support" clans? Bring everyone onto the forums! Discussions and plans can be held here. That is how we'll really get recruiting. Some indie game where everyone is running around solo? You'll sure get some "?" above users' heads when they see a giant group of "Sythe_Gohan" and "Sythe_TBT" running around and questing! The point is to keep those users once you've gotten their attention. Most gamers will hop around between games, and what I want to do is always have a "Sythe" around in those games that people would be moving to, as to never lose a member.

Tokens - This is the part that may be difficult to explain, and further, to comprehend as possible. Donations would still be around, but I have been thinking about a system that will benefit both the site and the gamer.
These tokens would be, at first, bought by a user just like anything else. Those tokens would then be used on Sythe as a form of "currency." [NOTE! SEE BELOW!] Remember those game leaders I mentioned previously? Those competitions? This is where those come into play. They would collect - say one token from each user (a 64 user tournament for example) and conduct a friday night single-elimination bracket tournament. First place would receive 40 tokens, second would receive 10, and third 5 tokens. The host of the tournament would be granted a couple [NOTE 2! SEE BELOW!] and the reset would go to a pool in Sythe. That pool would be drawn from to hold free raffles, etc to hold community interest and raise morale.

NOTE - I need you guys' help on this. If I still have anyone's attention on my ideas, I would like an input where this first note is placed. Should the tokens be used in black market trading? As in, say a user kicks ass on an MMO. They accumulate 100 tokens from tournaments. They could then use those tokens to purchase some badass sword from another user on Sythe for a simple transfer of tokens via a Middleman. Simple, right? I just don't know if I like it, but that's why I want your help!

NOTE 2 - Why does the higher rank recieve tokens? Well, I'll explain. As I stated in my thread >>here<< called "pathetic," staff activity is down. I have been staff on an active RSPS where I ran tournaments, and let me tell you I can understand how it can be daunting. This small incentive will ensure pressure on staff to stay active, competitive and helpful during their time and give them a small reward for all of the work that they do. Each forum would be moderated by the "genre moderator" and it would trickle down from there.

Well, that's all I have. Time to get going! I'd love input on my idea and also some ideas that you guys have! If everyone really gets into this there's no way we won't have success.




Everyone else! Start posting ideas and comments so that they can be put under this "Ideas!" section. Moderators, if I am not online and you see that many users have come to an agreement that something new should be added, please put that between the aforementioned title and this paragraph.

Everyone, please be optimistic about this thread and I'm really confident that we can make some things happen. I'm hoping to see great things from the community development team here as well!

*also - if this is better suited for community general or somewhere else, please move it there. Thank you!*

 

@Blade

 

The future is looking grim as we push ourselves closer to Runescape. Still waiting on that overhaul of site ranks.

 

my idea: sythe . org turns into something like pee pee . com and we see pee pee and we can click the guy and hes wee wee will pee pee on an apple and it will help sythe a lot in my opinyin and we should definitly try it!