Data Sphere

I'm not sure how to say this without sounding rude, but why is the last news on Data Sphere's main page from a month ago?

Why am I getting news faster from Mayacast's Facebook page?
Shouldn't there at least be notices and links to people like Blue Table, Beasts of War, and Miniwargaming when they release their 'exlcusives' of what is being released next month?

For instance, the preview video of the new Antipodes has been posted on MiniWargaming's public YouTube channel.

Besides that there have been other news items that could be featured as well.

I'm posting this because I support Data Sphere as a community. I want them to be my 'go to' web site for all things Infinity, outside of the official tools and downloads on CB's own site. I keep checking the home page for updates that just aren't there. I can appreciate how busy the administrators must be, working things out with CB and it's partners, fielding our panicked questions about the future of the forums, setting up infrastructure to deal with the flood of traffic that's bound to hit once CB officially starts linking here, but I want people who aren't familiar with Data Sphere to have a sense that the main page is up to date. A month is a long time on the interwebs....

I believe they are in the process of rebuilding the front page, they just had to finish dealing with the forums first due to the announcement of the official forums being shut down.

Thank you for your comments.

Things have gotten disrupted lately, but we do have new content in the works. I'd also like to say we will have contributors attending the Interplanetary Tournament and will be pumping out as much info from that as quickly as possible.

Beyond that, we are looking for more contributors to do tactics articles or other player resources for the front page. You can contact me until Scorch is back from vacation.

Also, don't blame DS.
CB has some very... er... ...strange... news policy.

Thanks for the quick responses.
The disruption is understandable, and I don't mean to be hard on anyone.
In my mind, articles on tactics and such, in depth interviews, etc., are one thing, news that has already been released by CB and is now essentially public knowledge is something else though, really.

I do appreciate what you guys are doing and the effort it must be taking to get everything ready for the official forum closer, etc.

As for CB's new policies, I understand that if they offer their partners an exclusive then they need to honour that. However, even just something like:

Antipodes on the Loose!
Corbus Belli has released preview pics of their remodeled Assault Pack.
Head over to MiniWargaming for the exclusive!
http://www.miniwargaming.com/content/ex ... ault-pack-

It honors the community and the partners... may even be considered helping the partners out with free advertising.

Anyway, just some thoughts. Not trying to cause trouble.
----

PS. I'd consider offering to contribute myself, but I honestly don't have confidence in my ability to write about tactics, etc. I've only really got a about a dozen games in at this point.

mbdeyes wrote:PS. I'd consider offering to contribute myself, but I honestly don't have confidence in my ability to write about tactics, etc. I've only really got a about a dozen games in at this point.

But you make some fantastic terrain. Why wouldn't you write about that?
I assure you, it is so good you shouldn't doubt in your competence regarding that matter!

I understand. I really, really do. The Data Sphere blog as an active news organization is actually very new, and went from free-time hobby to front page of the official(ish?) forum—which has been the immediate focus for the past week. It will be stronger week after week. I'm tired of looking at the Ariadna symbol too. We should have at least two articles going up by the end of the week so we'll have something new to look at, but they're part of our regular series.

We usually post the model previews with a link to the original source. It's important to give those other outlets that traffic so that they keep covering Infinity, and give broader presence to the game. How far we want to go as an aggregator on the blog page is still undecided. We're just focused on the original content on the blog for now, though we repost other news and articles through our Facebook page.

Unfortunately, new news has its own schedule. It's important to me that DS continues to dig for new news Independent of CB's regular info dump and produce player resources that will help attract new players, entertain and inform existing ones, showcase aspects of the game, then bring visitors into the forum for discussion and community.

One of the ways not to drive our regular contributors crazy is by putting them on a specific topic that they can cover regularly instead of having everyone monitor everything out there. When that one person is absent, the topic is underserved. We don't have redundancy in the system yet.

Excuses, excuses. I'm just hoping next week will kick ass.

@ Melvin McSnatch
Honestly, you guys rock and it sounds like you have a firm vision for how the site is to go forward.

Errhile wrote:
But you make some fantastic terrain. Why wouldn't you write about that?
I assure you, it is so good you shouldn't doubt in your competence regarding that matter!

Wow... High praise. I usually feel pretty much in the shadow of Marc C., Bugbait, and others.
I could probably do some writing if people were interested though.

Oh, they make great terrain, too. But it doesn't mean yours is not worthy of praise.

Besides - I can't tell if you're the best terrain maker we have around. But it doesn't matter: you're a good one. And that's a good reason to give some pointers to folks not as gifted or advanced in the craft of terrain making as yourself.

Every one of us has different talents. Let's put them to good use

mbdeyes wrote:@ Melvin McSnatch
Honestly, you guys rock and it sounds like you have a firm vision for how the site is to go forward.

Errhile wrote:
But you make some fantastic terrain. Why wouldn't you write about that?
I assure you, it is so good you shouldn't doubt in your competence regarding that matter!

Wow... High praise. I usually feel pretty much in the shadow of Marc C., Bugbait, and others.
I could probably do some writing if people were interested though.

So, just the other day I learned an entirely new way to make barbed wire for terrain. Not so long ago I learned how to use one of those chef's blowtorches ( the little butane things) to soften plasticard in order to shape it to resemble things like tarps, curtains etc.

The point is, we all continuously learn new things. But only if people teach us ( and posting WIPs and How-Tos is just that), even if it is just a new or different take on how to do something.

Do some writing. I'll certainly read it.

lol... red harvest... that was one of the names I was going to mention... was going to have to look it up though. Couldn't remember it off the top of my head, but I was thinking of your work too!

A lot of my stuff would be how to do things on the cheap. I spend a lot of my crafting money in dollar stores, thrift stores and yards sales.

We have had a DIY Terrain section empty in the blog header for a while as we haven't had the right contributors yet. That's certainly the type of project we'd like to showcase. I will get more general submission guidelines done this week but I'd love to hear your ideas.

We did decide that we would not be running the kind of WIP stuff you'd see on a personal blog and there's always the forum for that.

Cool. I'd love to see the guidelines. There's lots of places to go with that kind of article.

mbdeyes wrote:A lot of my stuff would be how to do things on the cheap. I spend a lot of my crafting money in dollar stores, thrift stores and yards sales.

And I love that idea.
See, there are two types of people in the business. Those who have money usually don't have time. Those who have time, usually don't have the money.

If you have money, you simply buy stuff - one of the Warmachine players at LGS had bought several reisin buildings... even with the amount of reisin itself, they had to be pretty expensive. Or you pay someone to do them for you.
If you don't have the money (or just don't want to spend it on terrain) - you have to be creative, and do things on the cheap. Which is in fact way better, because it requires to think, to find solutions rather than just buy those made by someone else.

My Scratchbuildt Deployables were a good example of that - pretty little things made on the cheap. Maybe I'll ask Melvin to turn that into a post, if he thinks it fits. But I don't have that kind of ideas often...

So, mbdeyes, why shouldn't you become our teacher on the subject of scratchbuild terrain on the cheap? The community needs folks like you

mbdeyes wrote:lol... red harvest... that was one of the names I was going to mention... was going to have to look it up though. Couldn't remember it off the top of my head, but I was thinking of your work too!

A lot of my stuff would be how to do things on the cheap. I spend a lot of my crafting money in dollar stores, thrift stores and yards sales.

Also Deflater Mouse. As far as on the cheap? I buy tools.( I may have a problem with that too. Recommend a 12 step?) Supplies are whatever I have already or scavenge/scrounge up.

I think that well written, informative content will attract viewers from outside of the community. Terrain is perhaps the 1 thing universal to all tabletop gaming. Thus it has the best potential to attract more people.

Returned from my vacation two days ago. Also moved to another town just before I left for my untimely vacation so there were some problems with the new internet Murphy's Law in process....

I've used the last two days to get some things running, get myself up to date with the hectic situation and to apply some damage control with all the discussions, arguments and disruption that came up after the initial announcement.

Thanks for your concerns about the lack of news updates. It wasn't planned this way and that's bad. I will keep this in mind the next time I'll be AFK for such a long time. I appreciate this feedback and Melvin has already stated everything needed to say, thanks to him for that as well!

I'll be adding content and getting the home page up to date today! We'll probably have (some already shown on BoW) tidbits about O:I later this week.

red harvest wrote:
I think that well written, informative content will attract viewers from outside of the community. Terrain is perhaps the 1 thing universal to all tabletop gaming. Thus it has the best potential to attract more people.

I would love to host a series on the frontpage on some of your terrain buildings, Red Harvest! I agree that some well build terrain and perhaps tutorials/tips&tricks will attract lots of people from all kinds of places.
Deflater Mouse is also one of the guys I've had my eyes on for some time now. Let me know if you are interested to write something about your beautiful Haqqi-buildings!

Something that would be rather easy is just to link from the News page to the preview videos of other sites like Miniwargaming, BoW etc.
So you don't step on there shows of ripping there previews, but assuring people that they always get every news about Infinity from here, if not first than at least, they are collected. I know its work, but not that much, since you most likely will check them out anyways.
And similar could be done with forum posts of pictures, like the ones from the minis of the O:I. I think Arachas posted them, would be nice to have them collected in one place, so you don't have to search the page in the news tread where they where first posted.

McNamara wrote:Something that would be rather easy is just to link from the News page to the preview videos of other sites like Miniwargaming, BoW etc.
So you don't step on there shows of ripping there previews, but assuring people that they always get every news about Infinity from here, if not first than at least, they are collected. I know its work, but not that much, since you most likely will check them out anyways.
And similar could be done with forum posts of pictures, like the ones from the minis of the O:I. I think Arachas posted them, would be nice to have them collected in one place, so you don't have to search the page in the news tread where they where first posted.

I always include links to the website of the company that has the preview. I grab one picture for the magazine, but most of the previews have like 6 to 7 photos. A short preview + blurb are collected on the blog, and people can easily visit the company that hosts the preview + additional information.
The blog section in meant for people to keep up to date with news, so they won't have to dig in all the news threads to look for it.

Ok so usually you do this, and just this week you where on vacation. I understand.

Errhile wrote:See, there are two types of people in the business. Those who have money usually don't have time. Those who have time, usually don't have the money.

And what about us saps that have neither time nor money

leigen_zero wrote:

Errhile wrote:See, there are two types of people in the business. Those who have money usually don't have time. Those who have time, usually don't have the money.

And what about us saps that have neither time nor money

You can join the rest of us in your position.

Edit: by that I mean the cool table.