I'd rather the new portal be completely new and not on an existing site, just so no one can say "oh, they say it's a committee but sw-fans really owns it" much like everyone did with Ceel's "I didn't want TGC to be the hub" while at the same time having a hub forum on his board, and even calling it a hub.

Just a random offer. :) And sw-fans doesn't own that site, it's owned by me alone as a personal project. It does, however, have to DO with sw-fans, and so I totally understand the objection.

However, there is nothing to stop ANYONE from simply putting a page up on every RPing site, stating all the other RPing site there are. You know, like we are all affiliated with everyone else, or were part of a webring. Unless people don't like being linked to on other message boards.

Its good to see this thing is outliving Ceel's interest in it. I hope it happens.

What if, rather than pay for a single separate site, each board hosts their own hub-page? That way we can bypass who is in charge of the one hub site and all the legal concerns some may have. Not only that, but it seems that it'd be much easier to find the hub-pages 15 (or however many) ways instead of just one.

You'd just need each board to write up what they want listed information-wise about themselves which will give everyone else the same content. This also allows each seperate board to design their own hup-page how they want it, giving them the freedom to update any graphics (with the exception of the board icons, of course) they want to have on it.

The legal issue is still very real.

A portal like this has serious potential. We get it going and a year down the road we have dozens of communities using the portal. Hurrah! This is good.

Until Bob, who despite the contributions of others, still owns the legal rights to the Portal, gets the idea that it'd be really neat to charge people a five dollar registration fee to acess the portal. This incurs not just financial responsibility for the domain, but also grants the owner a near-impossible-to-dispute claim to any profits. Maybe the Admins gripe and get a small piece of the cake, but this says nothing of the members...

And that's just one more example of a legal conflict.

1. The Portal must have a ToU which protects the rights of each board and its members. This can be supplementary to each boards own ToU but serves to protect against Incorporation.

2. It can't be a webring. Believe it or not, that incorporates us. Especially with a wide-distribution of funds going to pay for the thing. You may not believe it, but this will remove a certian amount of independant idenity. This is not a 3rd party showcase, it is a Portal (a term I did not chose to use).

I'm sure I could dream up more points. My only concern, as I've stated before, is over Intellectual Property Rights alongside individual community idenity.

There are definate advantages to the Unity Proposal, advantages I had failed to see until Ahnk opened my eyes to the benificial side of things. I can see this being a boon and not a bane... if properly executed.

Beff, how would you do it then?

I tried looking up legal issues of webrings, but all I got were webrings of legal sites. A long and involved TOS like <a href=http://dir.webring.com/h?terms>this one</a> would COA, but then you would still have to deal with paranoia - because the 'owner' of the site (or owners of the individual sites, if each board hosted their own) could delete the TOS or alter it completely.

I wouldn't.

If I had to I would approach a totally unaffiliated 3rd party and comission them to handle this project. That's how I'd do it.

But that seems unlikely at this point.

I don't know how anyone will achieve the things I've suggested; but unless it gets done I will be forced to reconsider my stance on the evolution of online gaming. And my membership within a community that is, as I see, embarking on what could be a disasterous project.

I've said before, and I'll state again; I think our current affiliation measures are sufficent.

However; I recognize that there are folks involved in this discussion who are far smarter and more experianced then I...

Well, I see the hub-page idea as an expounded affiliation page, albeit with fancy pictures and a short description of each community. It would certainly allow us to evolve the affiliation setup in general I think, as we could give people a small explanation to a linked site rather than just an icon.

As s'Il says, I see it as an extended affilliation page - basically we'd all be agreeing to be affiliated with the other sw message boards.

What the heck are you all yammering about legal issues for? We're talking about putting up a glorified webring for pete's sake, not an actual SuperSite. It's hardly different from our current method, which is a link exchange. We're brainstorming basically a more complete version of TRF's affiliate's page. Just a single simple page, with a graphic and a block or two of text for each member board.

That's it. The whole chalupa. Maybe, in the future, we could add more, but all we're looking at now is raising awareness between boards that there are others out there. Initially the only copyright issues for TRF would essentially be ... well ... mine. I own most of the graphics used on TRF, and quite a lot of the website-ey style text. Chances are pretty good that at first all of TRF's stake in a portal would be some version of Portal Default's banner, and maybe a C&P of the 'Hey, you're unregistered' text that you see when logged out. And that's all mine, and I'm not too worried about people ripping it off of me.

In the future if we start throwing stuff in there like, RP summaries, RP excerpts, "The Best Of" lists and stuff, yeah, maybe there'd be copyright problems. The TRF staff has thought of that already.

I really don't think copyright is going to be a problem. TRF isn't going to use someone's RP without the authors permission, and this portal idea isn't going to expand into new territories without its member sites agreeing.


Beff's concerns are valid, on a larger scale. I for one don't see the value in having much beyond a glorified affiliate page. Everyone runs their own thing these days, and everyone likes it. If we start moving into posting board news and junk, yeah, getting a third party to run it would be an idea.