CGN Forum Closure

[Petek]

The Civilization Gaming Network (CGN) forums have been closed, according to buster, the forum owner:

The Civilization Gaming Network forums have been closed for new postings and turned into a static archive. Earlier posts , file uploads, images and the wiki will be kept accessible as an archive as long as some interest is still there.
Registering as a new members is also no longer possible.
Existing members will for now still be able to post in the site feedback forum and to use the PM and email to user system.

CGN focused on SMACX. Originally created to host multiplayer SMACX games, it later became the center of development for scient's unofficial patch.

RIP CGN.

[Buster's Uncle]

I wonder what the deal is with that...

[Green1]

Dead forums, just like dead puppies are no fun....

It is like a downward spiral. Less posts give way to less posts.

All I know is I did not like it as a lurker they made me register to DL Scient's patch. I guess they thought it would make me post. Lurkers that just want to DL something do not like that. It smacks of tackiness. particularly if you are a one trick pony and all you got is the patch I am interested in. That is my only memory of the place.

[Buster's Uncle]

This is a loss to the community.  Much as you might wish for everyone to be active where you are, there are lurkers who would have signed up there and eventually found their way here.  Or not, but made worthwhile contributions there.  Lots of SMACers are multi-forum, as this thread started by the CFC SMAC(X) mod demonstrates.  A rising tide lifts all boats, and the potential tide just got a little smaller. 

-Or less boats; whatever.

I strongly urge everyone to get in the habit of checking CFC and Apolyton AC forums once in a while, and posting when the fancy strikes.  It's good for AC2 for those places to be alive.

[ete]

always sad to see a good site come to an end, but at least it's being kept as viewable. As a precaution against possible loss of information, I've done a full backup of the wiki over there (XML text backup plus the one image uploaded) an attached it to this post.

[Petek]

Thanks for making that backup. The SMAC Academy is a great resource. However, the information is unformatted when I open the file in either Firefox or IE. Firefox displays the following message:

This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.

Can that be fixed? Also, buster, the site owner. may have some IP rights to this material. If it was me, I'd check with him about posting it.

[ete]

The format is designed for importing into another wiki, not for reading. It would be trivial to import it into the wiki here, but as you say that would be questionable at best on copyright grounds, or at least impolite. The pages will not be imported en mass or posted in a human readable format unless and until the CGN wiki becomes unavailable (at which point we would be an archive of materials otherwise unavailable, not taking traffic away from the original source, and helping out new ACers as I am sure the authors would want, much like the NN faction index), and I will respect author requests to not import or remove their work.

Edit: To clarify, mirroring with permission is something I'd like.

[Petek]

OK. Thanks for the info.

[Darsnan]

buster, the site owner. may have some IP rights to this material. If it was me, I'd check with him about posting it.

When I was in the process of building the SMACX Scenario Repository at WePlayCiv I asked buster if it was OK to download all of the scenarios from CGN for the project, and he had no problem with that at the time. I will contact buster specifically about the Guide to Editing the alphax.txt file and see if he has any problems with me making a copy of that.

D

[ete]

Okay. I'd be very happy to have a full mirror of the SMAC Academy (with links back to the original) if we can get permission for that.

[Darsnan]

Okay. I'd be very happy to have a full mirror of the SMAC Academy (with links back to the original) if we can get permission for that.

Note that I am only focusing on the "Guide": I don't have the bandwidth to even attempt porting everything from CGN to the other remaining SMAC sites. FYI so there is no misunderstanding as to what I am volunteering for.

D

[ete]

If I get permission, it would take me under five minutes to create a full mirror of the wiki which has the SMAC Academy. Collecting and mirroring other things on wiki is also practical, if there's anything in particular which should be saved.

Edit: Oh, I remembered that I mirrored just the Alpha(x).txt editing guide back in March: http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Alpha%28x%29.txt_editing

[Darsnan]

If I get permission, it would take me under five minutes to create a full mirror of the wiki which has the SMAC Academy. Collecting and mirroring other things on wiki is also practical, if there's anything in particular which should be saved.

Awesome! :b: I definitely think it is worth the effort once we get official permission from buster.

Edit: Oh, I remembered that I mirrored just the Alpha(x).txt editing guide back in March: http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Alpha%28x%29.txt_editing 

LOL! I think I am superfluous here in this regards!

D

[Darsnan]

OK, I got word back from buster that he has no issues with the Guide being posted somewhere else, so np posting it here. Since this is already done I am going to re-prioritize this lower on my to-do list, however I will still probably update this sometime along. Ete, if I give you the updates sometime in the future can you incorporate them here for me?

D

[ete]

You should be able to edit the wiki directly using your forum account, does http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/index.php?title=Alpha%28x%29.txt_editing&action=edit work for you? If not I'll try and track down the issue.