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Someone recently left this at the bottom of the Pirates CSG Survey:
“I only lurk. The communities are too scattered and disorganized for me to learn.”
🙁 This makes sense, but is really too bad. Inevitably it has gotten worse now that we have reason to doubt Miniature Trading. Personally I of course disagree, but I haven’t had that kind of beginner perspective since 2012/2013. I have the Tutorials playlist on Youtube, and lots of informative content here on my site.
This is part of the reason why I plan to keep working on Pirates with Ben. I want to work on something I own that I have control over. I will of course keep posting things to the FB group/Discord/etc as well, but a lot of times it will be content that comes from PwB first.
Any thoughts on how to fix the above complaint?
MT is a ghost town now when last year at times it was quite busy. So jumping between the two forums does give me a sense of disconnect. Unfortunately for some like Xerecs it may not be possible to return. So I look forward to when everything becomes consolidated to one forum (it’s understandably in transition now). I think the facebook group and youtube channel are great advertisement and communities (never checked discord and forgot about reddit XD) that draw people to the forums should they choose but are sufficient on their own. I check those regularly it’s just having two forums that seems scattered to me.
So jumping between the two forums does give me a sense of disconnect.
Agreed. Part of it is a combination of some people not migrating from there to here, some people that have joined here not posting as much as they might at MT, and people not migrating because MT is still up.
When I learned of MT’s potential demise I had to do everything possible to get this forum up and running with reasonable features and a membership system. Naturally, very soon after I PM’d all the Pirates fans at MT to join PwB, I got the message from the admin of MT saying that MT might stay open. XD
Unfortunately both of Xerecs’ brothers got caught up in his trade issue banning, so MT was inevitably declining a bit from that. I think things would look more consolidated if MT was gone by now as I had expected it to be, so for as long as it stays up, there may simply be confusion. I just want to host my own Pirates content.
Facebook is nearly ubiquitous and it’s pretty obvious that people feel more comfortable posting at the FB groups than participating here. (whether they should or not, given FB’s “issues” in the recent past if you will) Speaking of issues, youtube has their own detractors at this point for very valid reasons, but if that gets worse there will hopefully be other free video sharing platforms.
Thanks for the feedback!
I’m holding out a slim hope that the new owners of MT ‘un-ban’ me. I was very frustrated and upset that it snagged my brothers, which I thought was unfair. The ban snagged them because we share and IP address, and that’s what was banned.
That aside, I do believe that community is scattered, with MT still ‘active’ PwB and the FB group, thee are SEVERAL places to post things about pirates. Not to mention the various other social media platforms such as reddit, Instagram and YouTube, though that one is mostly me and Ben.
I agree with you assessment that if MT had gone down as we all thought it would, then the number of people that registered for PwB or the FB group would have gone up, and the community would be a little more focused.
As-is, things are a little scattered, but it also feels a little overwhelming, with the number of places now that you can go to for pirates stuff. It used to just be MT, with BGG and Pojo playing supporting oles. Now in addition to those, thee’s PwB, the Fb group, and more. That diversity is good, but it also spreads the community out more. For instance, thee are people who are only PwB members and post every now and again. Then thee are people who are pat of the FB and Discord, but don’t post/talk to people often on those platforms. If ALL of Pirates could be consolidated under one site or platform, then the community might feel more ‘focused’.
As-is, things are a little scattered, but it also feels a little overwhelming, with the number of places now that you can go to for pirates stuff.
I feel that way when I go to post a new video/etc. So many places to put the link in order to maximize reach/views. It’s nice and kinda just a hallmark of the modern internet/social media, but it feels kinda empty sometimes when I post content in 5+ places and get little to no engagement in any of them.
The growth of the FB group is kinda weird. For “225 members”, the activity level is stagnant and disappointing. It’s also far too “instant” and seems vanity-based – a “welcome to new members” post that takes 5 seconds to submit gets way more likes than my best youtube videos or most interesting discussion topics, and if there isn’t a picture associated with a post, it will automatically get way less likes than if a random picture is assigned to it. Reminds me of the Instagram fake followers problem. It doesn’t seem like more than 1-10% of the “membership” count of any given platform or group will bother participating at all.
Thanks for the feedback, lots of similar sentiment. I’ll keep doing my best but I can’t change others’ behavior.
I think this place is the best and easiest to find forum for pirates
Awesome, thanks! Glad to hear that. Out of curiosity, did you find the site through a Google search? (or other similar engine)
I’m really happy to be ranking 4th in Google right now for “Pirates CSG”, behind only MT, eBay, and Wikipedia. “Pirates CSG Forum” shows up with my site as #1; now it’s just a matter of me concentrating on the other names of the game for keywords. (Wizkids Pirates + etc)
I was honestly surprised that there was still a community for this game at all when I found this site. It was a large part of my childhood for my siblings and I as we where just old enough to be able to start playing and understanding this game when it came out. I revisted it in a bought of nostalgic collecting funded by tax returns and stumbled in here on a whim after I kept being directed here for googling keyword lists!
I revisted it in a bought of nostalgic collecting funded by tax returns and stumbled in here on a whim after I kept being directed here for googling keyword lists!
Huzzah! Glad to know that my efforts here have started to pay off with SEO and whatnot/etc. 🙂 I do like having all the major rules documents in PDF form on the homepage.
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