Just to let you all know that I've made the hard decision to abandon my work on the timeline, at least for the time being. For a few reasons really.
First off let me thank those of you who came out and helped with this. I thought this would make a great community wide project where everyone could get involved no matter when we joined or which groups we played with. Whilst this hasn't received the amount of attention or imput I was hoping it would, I'm still very grateful to those of you did help.
I didn't want this timeline to only cover our major events from over the years, only listing our biggest groups and successes. I wanted us all to come together and make something truly complete and thorough to showcase our history together. I posted a list of divisions we were missing dates and info for back in October, mentioned it again in Nov, Dec and bumped the list in Feb of this year too. 9 divisions there which still have no place on the timeline. We still have several people here who have been around far longer than I have who may have been able to help with these dates and relevant info, or at least help narrow down the year like Blade has done for D2. 7 months later and I'm still none the wiser. I don't feel comfortable leaving so many groups off the timeline knowing that they existed. Doesn't matter how big, small, important or successful they were, they should still be on there. I would rather not release something like this than put it out knowing it was a half-arsed, incomplete attempt.
The write-ups. I had hoped after I had posted the example of one of the write-ups I had done, that others would lend a hand with some of those for the groups they had been part of. Again, I've always had this in mind as a community project and something we could all build together, not just to do it all by myself. When it came to some of the groups I had been part of myself I was fine, but say for some of the many groups I haven't been involved with; Freespace 1 & 2, AO, Lore, GW, CN, LOTRO etc etc. I'd have much rather had someone who was a member of those groups and who played those games help do the write-ups for them. Have them written by members who were part of them and can add that personal touch. It has been 4 months since I posted about those and offered the example and the only write-ups I have on file are the ones I have done myself. Yes I could just say <censored> it and do the rest myself as best I can but why should I if nobody else is willing or can find the time to help write a couple of paragraphs?.
I've brought it up once before but I often feel like my attempts at doing things with or for the group are wasted these days. Whether it's trying to engage people in discussion, interest people in upcoming games we could possibly play together or just trying to get people involved with something as a group like I did with this. Sometimes it's just nice to be met half way you know?. Really thought this was a great opportunity for something we could all do together, little by little. There was something for everyone here and whilst I'm extremely grateful to those of you who have helped, I did expect more people to come out and play. [Edit: Sorry, mini-rant there but it does express my feelings well I think..]
We're now less than 4 months away from Sep 1st, our 10yr Anniversary and the exact date I wanted to launch this timeline on. I still had to account for the time it'd take me to add the rest of the gathered info to my photoshop designs and then again to ultimately implement it into the site itself and give Anny plenty of room to find time to help with that, so in reality there's very little time left tbh. With so many divisions missing from it, no other yearly descriptions completed by anyone but myself and only 1 post in the last four months (besides my own post bumping said list of divisions in Feb), I simply can't see this being completed in time. As such I have decided to abandon all work on the project and put it on hold for now.
Just to note though, I won't be deleting any of my files for the design or the text file with all the info we've gathered so far so if, later on, people want to and are willing to help and make it the community project it was intended as we can always resume this some other time or complete it over a longer period. Just a shame it won't go up on our site to mark our 10yr anniversary like I had hoped and intended. Thanks once again to those of you who have helped up to this point, none of this will be scrapped or anything so our efforts won't have been wasted entirely. Will just take a bit longer.
I'll try not to drag on with this but please take the time to read when you have a moment, ty!
Anny and I originally spoke about this stuff quite some time ago actually and we'd already made some progress towards completing some of that, though we never managed to go the full way. The plan was for us to fully recognise our history basically. Not to hide any of it away, but to show it off and be proud of it.
We have always had the notion of archiving stuff and this is something I have always liked about us. If a members post needed removing for whatever reason it was not deleted, it was archived in a place where everyone (even visitors) could see. If a group went inactive and stopped playing a particular game at any point their forum was not hidden or deleted, but again moved to the archive. Even our members forum is out in the open for all to see, both positive and negative. For a long time though things like our old news posts and inactive group websites simply disappeared when they became inactive or whatever. Anny kindly took the time to restore all of these for us as part of this plan.
Another part of the plan I would have personally liked to have seen done and it may be too late now (if it was even possible or negotiable to begin with) was to restore our Shattered Star Confederation forums up to the time of the split, or as much data as was possible. This time was just as much a part of our history as any other post, thread or site we have archived, preserved or restored since and a link to that should have stood proudly besides the rest of our preserved history content. This group would not even exist had it not been for the SSC years. I've always found it sad that we didn't and that it basically just vanished into thin air, but alas..
The final part of the plan was for us to add a Shattered Star History page to our main site where we could show off events during our history such as group formings, alliances, bosses killed and dungeons cleared, arbiter election results and such. You get the picture.
Just recently I was thinking (out aloud too so you may have seen a post or two) about our 10th Anniversary next year and thinking it would be nice to do some things to mark that. It's a big date for us. It wasn't long after that when I was reminded of the above and thought launching a History page of some sorts would be extremely fitting for such an event.
Playing Beyond: Two Souls last week gave me a concept idea for how this page would look and I have already spent several hours working on something which is shaping up very nicely if I do say so myself. To describe it; The chapter screen for the game is basically a long (animated) wavy horizontal timeline. SL33PY will know what I'm referring to since he is currently playing it too. Along this timeline from left to right are big events (chapters) in Jodie's life. My idea was to do something similar for our history page but not animated.
Our history timeline will date from 1997 - The founding of the Shattered Star Confederation all the way to 2014 - the 10th Anniversary of the SSX. (It'll have one final marking at the end which I could name "2015+" or similar which will link to a joining us page and helping to write the rest of our history).
Each yearly marking along the timeline will have notable events written next to them; 1997 SSC is Founded, 1998 FreeSpace, 2002 Neocron, 2005 WoW EU, 2011 SW:TOR etc. The idea is then to be able to click each year, have a little dialogue box appear or something and have that display a more detailed description of the things that happened during that particular year, including the current Arbiter (I've already gathered a full list of each Arbiters term - job done). So whilst the timeline itself won't be animated, it will be somewhat interactive and hopefully pretty cool if all goes well.
Here's where you guys come in and this is something which everybody here can help with regardless of when you joined the Shattered Star (Confederation or Exiles) or which groups you have played with over the years. Infact this is the point and why each of you can have some imput on this if you want. A group wide project in a way!. There's all the archived content below, archived news & group sites via the main site nav, google, and sites like the wayback machine to help as well so you may be able to help gather some dates/info for stuff even if you weren't around for them.
So to complete this timeline we need to gather as much information as possible. Tis not something I could accurately and fully complete on my own really and I can't remember ever little detail myself either. Plus I think this would be a nice activity to do as a group personally. Like I know we had a DH:Lore group under the SSC before the split as well but I don't know when.
So!. Notable events from 1997-present day. Need accurate dates (just the year is fine so we know where to mark it but if you know or can find out the day/month too that would be awesome. Also if you have any extra detail you'd like to add to that event & date we can make sure to include that in the detailed popups). Anything you think should be listed on the timeline but not 100% sure on the date? Post it and maybe someone else will know or be able to find out.
I'll start keeping a list of dates below and spoiler tag them to save page space, that way everyone can see what info has been gathered, needs adding or needs fixing if incorrect. Also if any of the mods would like to help maintain this list please feel free!
My plan is to launch this on Sep 1st 2014 to coincide with the anniversary so we have ample time providing all goes well and Anny is able to implement my design okay, so no great rush or anything. Can take our time with it and make sure it's as complete as we can get it.
I have already filled some of these in myself by searching around but some are just estimates so if any of these look wrong to you or you have some additional info to add that would be great.
Cheers guys <3
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