Just Asking Questions

I feel obligated to start by answering some questions that literally nobody is asking to provide some closure for myself.

Where is the Old Site?

It's still available here: board.goeshard.org

The front page you're looking at now used to be that imageboard -- something I was working on sporadically for nearly half a year. The idea was a throwback to the old Internet, inspired by my time on the Something Awful forums. I wanted to recreate that forgotten era and its chaotic energy while building something of my own.

I'm officially retiring that idea.

Postmortem

first iteration

There were a couple versions of the software that I tried with different communities, different branding, and progressively more features. The initial failures I encountered were largely my own fault, because I was willing to go pretty far to put the URL in front of as many people as possible. It resulted in something I didn't really want but should have anticipated. I alienated the few people that wanted to be a part of the site in good faith and invited users that didn't give a shit. I really wanted the site to be active during this first version, but I wanted everyone to just be cool at the same time.

That isn't how the Internet works obviously.

And my quest to grow by any means certainly didn't help.

second iteration

I discovered that I was not made for community building, so the second time around I decided the site would relaunch with much better features and only cool people would ever know about it. It would be the Internet's best kept secret.

That idea was flawed, too. But I was becoming okay with this as I increasingly realized that very few people were going to put the effort into quality posting that I expected. There were a few threads that took off where people posted occasionally for a week or so, and every so often I would convince some cool person to make an account and post a good thread, but most people would just leave a shit post that I would have to move into the place that was designated for shit posting.

I was progressively locking things up tighter and tighter, until finally anonymous posters weren't allowed to post new threads at all. They could only reply to existing threads. This is because I was starting to prioritize and think about other projects, but I wanted the board to remain if nothing else a decent portfolio piece with a nice front page. I figured if a new visitor was going to come and see that the site is dead, I'd like for the threads at the top that they will most likely browse to at least be good threads.

third iteration?

I don't see any reason to take the board down. It just doesn't belong at the front of my site anymore. It's truly an abandoned mall of the internet. Except it's more like those empty hotels in North Korea. If nothing else, you can use it as a comment space for whatever I post on this blog.

Or not, you know. I don't really expect anything from you. That's why the format of the front page has changed to demonstrate that this is my space.

The Future of This Site?

Nobody can really say. The project I've been putting the most effort into in recent months is a silly little web game using the Defold engine. I'd like to write more about that but I'll save it for another post.