*

berkovw

  • G Cup
  • 705
Should the ADDventure be restarted?
« on: May 27, 2002, 02:25:16 PM »
After reading the post discussing about an author retiring when a thread ran down to its conclusion, I started thinking.  Maybe now would be a good time to reboot or restart the ADDventure.  After all, comics does it all the time.  If something becomes large and unwieldy, it becomes rebooted.  The ADDventure has become so large that I think it could stand to be rebooted.

What does everyone else think?  
"I am not a number!  I am a free man!"
                             - Number 6

"There are a shortage of perfect breasts in this world.  'Twould be a pity to damage yours."
           - Westley AKA The Dread Pirate Roberts

*

sebreid

  • E Cup
  • 315
Re: Should the ADDventure be restarted?
« Reply #1 on: May 27, 2002, 03:59:07 PM »
Archive it first, otherwise you will get a lot of shit!

*

berkovw

  • G Cup
  • 705
Re: Should the ADDventure be restarted?
« Reply #2 on: May 27, 2002, 06:22:50 PM »
Oh, defintely archive it first, but it's gotten so huge that I don't think it's as fun as it used to be.  
"I am not a number!  I am a free man!"
                             - Number 6

"There are a shortage of perfect breasts in this world.  'Twould be a pity to damage yours."
           - Westley AKA The Dread Pirate Roberts

*

Prophet_Tenebrae

  • Breast Prophet
  • 4113
  • Prophet Of Darkness
    • FTF10 - FTF Superblog
Re: Should the ADDventure be restarted?
« Reply #3 on: May 27, 2002, 07:00:36 PM »
Hmm, I can see the argument for starting over but really it's the unending BE and there are always lots of oppurtunities to start more threads.

The addventure is what we make it and starting it again wouldn't really mean it's going to be revitalised - why not start a new addventure? The old one can keep going, there's something to be said about 5 years of history.

*

Leviathan

  • G Cup
  • 857
    • www.angelfire.com/ms/LeViAtHaN
Re: Should the ADDventure be restarted?
« Reply #4 on: May 27, 2002, 07:50:16 PM »
I think it should be restarted, but only accompanied by an update in the "OS". If you don't change the look of it and add some new functions, then there isn't as good of argument for starting a new one.
Leviathan

*

Chuck

  • E Cup
  • 422
  • Bow down.
Re: Should the ADDventure be restarted?
« Reply #5 on: May 27, 2002, 08:18:12 PM »
The Addventure should NOT be restarted. Hopefully no one in charge will seriously consider this. Someone mentioned five years of history, well let me reiterate. FIVE YEARS of history. Web browsers have been around for, what, seven years? Eight? (not counting Lynx/text).

This amount of time (5 years) represents basically the entire duration of the WWW as we know it. In 1997, few were using the internet with the exception of computer enthusiasts. Yahoo was a search engine. So was Infoseek. There was no Google. There was no BEarchive.

Simply trashing that much accumulated work, and effort...or for that matter, rendering it inactive by shuffling it off to some forgotten directory, to be peered at as a curiosity from time to time - that would be unforgiveable.

Hopefully, the Addventure will continue for another 5 years. If people are tired of it, perhaps a new one could be started (although I'm against this and wouldn't participate in such a thing) but the original must continue.

As someone said, a new Addventure would not energize anyone or revitalize anything. I for one would slink off this site forever, never to be seen again, should the Addventure be restarted or scrapped. (I can hear the chorus of "who cares", but even so...)

I find that whenever people work hard on something, there is always a minority who want to tear it down and destroy it. Let's make sure those people don't get their way.  

*

berkovw

  • G Cup
  • 705
Re: Should the ADDventure be restarted?
« Reply #6 on: May 27, 2002, 09:20:29 PM »
The suggestion of starting a new one while keeping the old one is a good idea.

The reason I think it might be a good idea to restart it (and archive the old one) is that it is so huge now that there are threads and threads and threads out there that go nowhere and that noone deals with.  I myself wrote a few of them almost two years ago.  I thought that they were good, but noone's built off of them.  I think that one reason people haven't built off of them is that since there's millions (not exaggerating) of threads out there that a lot gets lost in the static.

I mean, just take a look and see how many orphan threads there are out there.
"I am not a number!  I am a free man!"
                             - Number 6

"There are a shortage of perfect breasts in this world.  'Twould be a pity to damage yours."
           - Westley AKA The Dread Pirate Roberts

*

Adama

  • G Cup
  • 1724
  • Addventure Master
Re: Should the ADDventure be restarted?
« Reply #7 on: May 28, 2002, 12:18:46 AM »
Well, that's the reason I started working on the Addventure Storyline Tree, so that people could find all those obscure threads.  Though I admit that it's woefully behind the times.

But would a new Addventure really gain us anything?  It's not like the existing one has a single coherent setting.  Effectively, we've got dozens of "games" going right now -- we had at least a dozen different stories, with completely different main characters, contributed to just today!  A new Addventure would give us a new "main" storyline (instead of Jim/Rick/Sharon/etc.), but that's about all.

Granted, a new Addventure would be small enough that it would be a lot easier to browse around in if you were just looking for new things to contribute to.
 
Adama, Addventure mega-geek

*

Leviathan

  • G Cup
  • 857
    • www.angelfire.com/ms/LeViAtHaN
Re: Should the ADDventure be restarted?
« Reply #8 on: May 28, 2002, 02:10:47 AM »
Just clearing up a few things. Just because I'm pro-restarting, doesn't mean I'm anti-addventure (or anti-history or anti-legacy or whatever you want to call it). I'm not trying to be the Nazzi Poster. I wrote on the Addventure for several years, and because of that I gained a lot of knowledge about it.

I look at the Addventure as a software program in need of some major, serious upgrading. You guys talk about the Addventure as if it's this great legendary important thing. You say it's over five years old so it should be kept running. But I say it's running on five-year old code and it's time for somebody to come up with some innovations. It's time for us to see some improvements. Don't take it for granted Adama's work he does on the addventure. That stuff isn't automated, and he can't do it forever. You need to be thinking about new addventures with those kinds of things built into them.

Adama is right about the current Addventure having already "restarted" dozens of times. People don't usually write on the Addventure with all of the past threads in mind. New stories are started every day, and if you create a new addventure, the same thing will happen.

People say that this addventure is special and that is why it gets so much attention, but I think it's more simply a result of its location at the BEArchive. It's convenient for people to have all their porn and interactive writing in the same place. It becomes second nature to go to the BEarchive main page, check the forums, check the UGs, and then head to the Addventure. This site draws a lot of visitors, and that's how come so many new people find the Addventure and get addicted to it and keep it alive. If you made a new Addventure and it was a good improvement over the old one, the popularity wouldn't take a hit in the least.
 
Leviathan

*

Fret Pearson

  • E Cup
  • 277
Re: Should the ADDventure be restarted?
« Reply #9 on: May 28, 2002, 08:49:45 AM »
I don't care for the addventure much, because somehow it seems like a living monstrosity that sucks the energy from would-be BE authors, trapping them in a Mandelbrot quicksand.  It's a succubus.  And maybe I'm **92**, but it seems like it knows what it's doing and won't be happy until we're all dead, dead, dead.  Admit it: wouldn't you shit your pants in fear if you turned a dark corner in an old house and saw the addventure waiting there in the shadows?

But I don't think it should be restarted.  If someone does make a new one, maybe it can be like Fiction Branches and add links as episodes are created, saving disk space.  Ah, the soothing sounds of Pink Floyd.

Fret  


*

Chuck

  • E Cup
  • 422
  • Bow down.
Re: Should the ADDventure be restarted?
« Reply #10 on: May 28, 2002, 10:02:26 AM »
Eww, Pink Floyd...

I'll take the soothing sounds of Alphaville anyday.  

*

Prophet_Tenebrae

  • Breast Prophet
  • 4113
  • Prophet Of Darkness
    • FTF10 - FTF Superblog
Re: Should the ADDventure be restarted?
« Reply #11 on: May 28, 2002, 11:21:35 AM »
Oi, Fret - you never e-mail...

Anyway, it would be nice to have lots of new features and such on the Addventure - but surely if that's your only argument for saying that we need a restart, would there be any reason to dump all the existing episodes?

*

Sencho

  • D Cup
  • 184
Heavens no.
« Reply #12 on: May 28, 2002, 12:01:24 PM »
The Addventure most certainly shouldn't be restarted.  Sure, it's huge, unwieldy, and convoluted.  But that's part of the point to it.  It is an unending story.  
-Sencho

"What, Sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce." - Mark Twain, 1868.

*

Chuck

  • E Cup
  • 422
  • Bow down.
Re: Heavens no.
« Reply #13 on: May 28, 2002, 06:04:38 PM »
I agree with you.

(well actually I'm posting this to see if the avatar works. But I do agree. No, really!)  

*

dev

  • WebsterBoy
  • 1314
Should the ADDventure be restarted? Part 2
« Reply #14 on: May 28, 2002, 10:48:20 PM »
What is actually wanted?

I also find the UBEAd largely unsatisfying, but it's not so easy to work out what the issues are.
I don't believe a clean start would address them all, although it appeals to certain impulses.

A legacy free environment.
A chance to get in on the ground floor.
Maybe there is also a belief that the thing will become more coherent or better written.

Getting your episode extended is mainly an issue of scale, and may in fact prove to be part of the reason there is so much more garbage now.
Unless you are on a speed thread, there is almost no hope of building anything. There's a different psychology involved when you write into an unresponsive field.
If you want a response you have to hook someone in the first 24hours (usually less); you have to write for the recent-episodes demographic.

So my question is, what are the issues?