Development Proposal

[Satelle]

Domain Name

The domain forceacademy.us was registered by Satelle at the cost of $15 a year and can be pointed to whatever hosting is needed. DNS is about $60 a year.

Dedicated Transition Team

Similar to the old R&D team, we need a transition team. This should be a group with the technical and organizational skills to develop the site and set up the supporting technology.

Website Hosting - Raft Site

As Connor has mentioned, a temporary site would be worth setting up, apart from the forceacademy.co.uk site, to be able to update membership on the transition. This could be:
• A Discord instance with more forums, including a read-only one where the R&D team makes frequent update posts, one where the dev team can talk, and some supporting discussion places for site users beyond a general forum. Something that most closely emulates the old co.uk forums in topics would be helpful to keep consistency.
• A free- or home-hosted phpBB3 installation with similar forums as the Discord option. Free sites will be of uneven quality and performance. Home-hosted would be off a home 50MB/50MB internet connection and subject to that stability. But both are temporary and limited options.
• Some other options, ideas welcome.

The Force Academy Next Generation (FAng) Project

One of the major things that FAng must take into account is Aspect contribution. Over time, it seems that most, if not all, of the Aspects have broken off and put effort into their own sites apart from the FA. Fatum Operandi for the Dark Aspect and Project Armonia for the Light have considerable work put into them. I'm not sure if the Shadow folks have also done this, but I know they are training off site in some fashion. Whatever solution FAng comes up with, it must include and bond with these efforts. That shifts the focus of a site from being the end of a search to being a bridge; it will affect design and structure considerably.

With that taken into account, what do we want to be? This will determine what FAng casts itself as. A few thoughts:
• The site should allow for integration of other sites, with the option of offering content hosting or other features that help both sites. This can be as simple as links and as complex as setting up "satellite offices" on the FA site for them. Content authorship should be respected, but a model of Force content aggregation will be better than one of content repository.
• A big part of the freshness and fun of the FA back in the early days came from the debate and cross-talk possible from having all three aspects on the same site. I feel that we need to regain that again, and we don't need to take away anything from the spinoff aspectcentric sites that exist.
• It would be interesting to cast the FA as being a "town square" central place where the original three Aspects have a home, but also include space for the other sites. This space could be their own forum, their own section of the site (via a CMS system), ambassadors, etc.
• We need to create original content. Everyone seems to float on lectures written in olde tymes, and as the survey made clear, people are looking for content. Lectures, blog posts, space for their own writings, all that. This will mean attracting and retaining people willing to volunteer their time to this; the more people who do, the more the work is evened out. Yes, eventually it would be great to pay people, but we need to establish ourselves as having something worth paying for, before putting up a paywall. This topic of money needs to be discussed in depth after the site is up and rolling.
• The three aspects need to get their shit together. If that means picking new leadership that wants to commit to the FAng project. Do a charter, describe how the aspect will run, beef up the Inner Council, and do it right. We need people to invest effort in to gain momentum.
• All of this should be put into a new Force Academy charter, stating what our purpose is and our standards are, in broad terms that don't infringe too deeply on the aspects. We should also define policies that cover abuse, harassment, and other behavior that we feel may impact someone's participation in the site. We must have standards for behavior for those who are considered in positions of leadership, and a procedure for making decisions when infractions arise.

Website Design

I highly recommend that a website design be drafted before hosting is set up. This should determine the following:
• What we're doing. This should be decided before design. See above FAng Project.
• What features do we want. Do we want forums with fine permissions? Do we want to be able to host other groups in their own areas of the site? Do we want integrated chat or can it be on Discord? Do we want a wiki, and what wiki (Mediawiki? Integrated?) The website features should suppose the FAng objectives.
• What software gives us the features we need, and yet has the controls we want? Being able to grant permissions directly to the aspects and guest groups, without allowing everyone full permissions all over, would be something to look for. How easy is it to maintain? Does it update easily? Is it easy to use for both users and admins?
• Site map. We should sketch out what features go where (even, and perhaps *especially* if we use a CMS).
• Graphics and theme. Someone with that talent should work out the colors and theme. I'm partial to the old site with the circles, but it would be good to collect ideas here.

Looking at Kira's designs (http://www.theamberpen.com/fa/), that in Wordpress, with themed phpBB3 forums and Mediawiki would be an excellent refresh without losing any of the old functionality. Testing with Drupal and Jooma, the other two most popular CMSs showed them to be way too complex for what we need right now; maybe at a later time we can look at them, but they are not easy to manage.

Admin and Control

Lastly, we need to give a thought to who has access to what and why, and how we can avoid placing too much control in one person's hands, and yet avoid having one rogue admin delete the site.

Generally, things like the domain name and the site hosting (POC to the hosting company and account access) must be held by one person for accountability and billing purposes. I have no problem handling both of those and paying for them. Allowing other people account access is extremely powerful and gets into the "rogue deletion" scenario.

Aside from that, I suggest it be handled like this:
• Satelle deals with paying for the domain forceacademy.us and the hosting, along with the technical support. She will maintain technical documentation (including site support POCs) and make it available to the IC on a site off the main one, in case of downtime.
• Account access may be granted to people in the future who have the necessary technical skills to help at the command line. However, Satelle would rather provide tools for tasks such as restarting processes, etc.
• The IC has manager access to the software the site runs on (this is where a proper CMS would help a ton). They delegate control of parts of the site to the Aspects and guest groups as needed.
• Site backups will be automated and sent to two locations: one to storage for Satelle and one for storage that the IC people have access to. That way:
○ If Satelle gets rabies and locks down the site, the IC can revive it using the latest backups and the technical docs.
○ If the IC goes rogue, they can only inflict limited damage.
○ If anything happens, the site can easily be restored using either backup.

Website Hosting

Here are a few sites with comparison. The costs are pretty low, and we can probably get by just fine with a donate button; the cost can be borne without donations, and any donations exceeding the hosting and domain name costs can go toward eventual goals to pay staff. The prices below are for one year terms.

Bluehost $14/month This hosting company has a good rep and offers a dedicated IP and site backup.
Dreamhost $10/month Good performance hosting company with the usual slew of features.
Hostwinds $5/month This company seems really feature-packed with a free dedicated IP address and backups, and I really can't see why they are cheaper than everyone else.
POE Hosting $12/month A hosting company I've used for over ten years, though they are fairly small. Emphasis on security, so some software may not work on them. Good customer service.

All of these will allow setup of software, but they are all shared hosting, which means software needs to be checked to make sure it will work on them. They all offer unlimited subdomains (think light.forceacademy.us, dark.forceacademy.us, etc), email addresses, and backups. They all require knowledge of linux and setup to configure things.

If we do, as mentioned, go with Wordpress+phpBB3+Mediawiki, any one of these could do it.

And What Of ForceAcademy.co.uk?

It must be closed and not used, otherwise whatever we build will be a schism site, and people will still cling to the old. Colin may be relieved to not have the responsibility anymore, and he may not. But the old site must retire to allow the new site to carry on a lineage.

In Closing

We have the chance now to really rebuild something great, and we should take full advantage of it by deciding what we want to be before how to enact it. We must focus on getting up and running, and gaining momentum in bringing a quality Force site back. And we must cultivate and support quality content from willing volunteers in a way that they value their work for the site.

[Satelle]

Another option is a Force Academy that is simply a place where other sites represent and chat, and the FA doesn't have aspects beyond handy tags. This would probably help reduce dilution of effort and peoples' time and help showcase the work of the other sites.

[Zephyrus]

Well, I figured this was the plan:

Working forum: check.
Updated front page: in the works (with Kira's build)
Updated wiki: Backed up, but not uploaded

The next step beyond that would be to fix the skin on the forum to something more pleasing.

[Luciana]

Another option is a Force Academy that is simply a place where other sites represent and chat, and the FA doesn't have aspects beyond handy tags. This would probably help reduce dilution of effort and peoples' time and help showcase the work of the other sites.

Here's the best way forward for the FA that I can see, if it is to remain its own entity:

1) Set up the three Aspects. A Jedi training program, Shadow forums, and move FO in as a DA/ Krath training program (I'd love to actually have "Krath" become the norm at FA, to make it distinct from the Sith - the DA badly needs to recover from being over-run by the Sith).

2) Make some of the training content accessible to new guests. The Discussion forums are dead right now, so no one is able to get a "taste" of the Aspects from the Discussion forums. Maybe make the first tier of FO/ Jedi/ Shadow work is accessible to all members, to work on in their Holocrons. This will let newbies dabble before committing to an Aspect.

3) Be prepared to rebuild the Aspects from the ground up.

Right now the FA has no original content/ producers willing to share their work, and that is the real reason it is struggling. The consumer:producer ratio is always 9:1 and Raven and Pelar are the only producers at the FA sharing their work at the moment.

The content-producers need to be the Heads/ Councils/ Masters of the Aspects. It is that simple. The only role consumers play is in consuming information and complaining when there is none left (the real reason most people are upset at the FA "dying," I'm sure). Therefore the cores of the Aspects must be rebuilt from those few who are willing to produce for the consumption of the many.

The only problem with this plan is it requires content-producers from all three Aspects, and I just don't know if the capacity for that actually exists anymore.

--

If it is not to remain its own entity:

None of this is essential, if it is not what is desired. Without it, the FA will automatically become a place where people from various FR sites just log in to make small talk, maybe share work from other sites, and don't do much else. That can have merit too, if it is designed to be that way. I think that comes back to the question of what people actually "want" from this site.

Not what do they think they want. But how do they actually interact with the site, what do they actually do here, and what do they actually use the board for.

If you look around, most of the people at the FA just hang out in the chatroom to bitch, and show up on the site when drama happens. That's because they're all consumers.

If people really do just want a social-media hub for Force Realists to hang out at, then all you really need is the Discord chat, a Journal section, and a Discussion forum. And I guess an area for showcasing the Aspects, by sharing the work from different sites.

Well, the Shadows will want their own forums still. They actually use them.

Lately the divide between the DA and the LA has become huge though. The LA stopped having students post in the General Discussion areas at all, in case the DA scared them off. The Jedi in general seem to tuck and run whenever they get called out on anything by a Dark-sider (or deflect/ laugh it off/ ignore it). So I even query the potential of having actual cross-Aspect discussions anymore.

I guess there's even a problem with this plan, in that it requires the Aspects being at all interested in what the other Aspects have to say.

--

As an afterthought, I'm not sure how you'll get Colin to close down forceacademy.co.uk. I think he's made it kind of obvious that he sees no reason to, and that he thinks everything is fine.

[Satelle]

I am in complete agreement with Luciana's post above. As for me, I really think having all the Aspects together results in stimulating conversations and helps avoid echo chambers. The big challenge is: are there enough people still interested in building that?

If not, then what do people want the FA to be, given the commitment levels of its membership? That is what I want to see from this raft site.

And yeah, not sure what to do about Colin, but I hope he can be reasoned with. However, it will be hard to reason with closing co.uk if all people want is a board. You have a board, he'll say, and I fix problems (eventually, when I find out about them). And he would have a valid point.

[Satelle]

Well, I figured this was the plan:

Working forum: check.
Updated front page: in the works (with Kira's build)
Updated wiki: Backed up, but not uploaded

The next step beyond that would be to fix the skin on the forum to something more pleasing.

Insert here the eternal lament of writing up a whole proposal that people agreed with but either didn't actually read in detail, or forgot when it began being enacted.

Working forum, check. Temporary one to discuss what the final site will look like.

Updated front page: This enters into payment for hosting and design. We have not determined what the website will be, though the design will likely be Kira's (unless she gets more ideas).

Updated wiki: It's been backed up for a couple weeks now, but re-hosting it will need hosting.

If people want, I can just recreate all the forums here, but the purpose of this site is to decide what the final form will be.

Did anyone have any questions or comments on the plan as posted at the top of this thread?

[Satelle]

Pulling a few comments out for discussion:

The only problem with this plan is it requires content-producers from all three Aspects, and I just don't know if the capacity for that actually exists anymore.

That is exactly what I hope to find out before committing more funding for hosting. It is an essential question. Do the leaders who left to create their own websites have the time and spare cycles to product content for the FA anymore? If not, are there people who do and want to?

Not what do they think they want. But how do they actually interact with the site, what do they actually do here, and what do they actually use the board for.

This needs to be answered too. Second most essential question.

• It would be interesting to cast the FA as being a "town square" central place where the original three Aspects have a home, but also include space for the other sites. This space could be their own forum, their own section of the site (via a CMS system), ambassadors, etc.
• We need to create original content. Everyone seems to float on lectures written in olde tymes, and as the survey made clear, people are looking for content. Lectures, blog posts, space for their own writings, all that. This will mean attracting and retaining people willing to volunteer their time to this; the more people who do, the more the work is evened out. Yes, eventually it would be great to pay people, but we need to establish ourselves as having something worth paying for, before putting up a paywall. This topic of money needs to be discussed in depth after the site is up and rolling.
• The three aspects need to get their shit together. If that means picking new leadership that wants to commit to the FAng project. Do a charter, describe how the aspect will run, beef up the Inner Council, and do it right. We need people to invest effort in to gain momentum.

My comments on these points from the original post.

[Zephyrus]

Hm. Well, I've been thinking about it. I really never thought the FA would go "to the next level" or make any major changes. My main drive in creating the new site was to restore the functionality that the old site was missing. It went down far too often, it was difficult to post on and even log in to at times. I don't have much to contribute in the way of a philosophical reorganization of the content of the FA.

I am mostly concerned with continuing my training with Raven. So, a Shadow forum would be essential for me.

I like what Luciana posted. Her suggestion of making the FA into a public forum without defined aspects beyond tags would be fine for me. I very much doubt that anybody wants to content create for this site specifically. Armonia is going off in their own direction. The SA trains, but content creation isn't really our thing. The DA... I don't even know what they're doing these days.

[Satelle]

Well that’s a shocker.

[Luciana]

My main drive in creating the new site was to restore the functionality that the old site was missing. It went down far too often, it was difficult to post on and even log in to at times. I don't have much to contribute in the way of a philosophical reorganization of the content of the FA.

Well, at this point forceacademy.co.uk is a functional board, and you can chat to Raven on it, so if that's all you wanted, Satelle is right - you have it, and it's going to be hard to make a case for revival via a new board to Colin.

I view the functionality of the Aspects as part of a functioning FA. Right now there is a lot of dysfunction within and between the Aspects.

Of course, the overall silence towards this fact makes me think no one actually minds.

And that is the pity. Because the three Aspects sharing information was what made the FA unique and special. Without it, it's just another Jedi board, with people working behind closed doors, free to shy away from the growth and challenge that an alternative path can present.