Okay, what toadster said is true. We aren't going anywhere with this. I've been mulling over what he said since I saw his topic, but I don't know if we need a theme change or not.

I've seen quite a few forums. A lot of the more active ones are for ongoing active series that keep getting new games and updates, like Phoenix Wright. Forums that cater to a series that is either dead or dying will die eventually too. And right now, Kirby isn't a very appealing game series, and mainly you can blame Nintendo for not giving it enough focus. But still. Look at Kirby's Rainbow Resort. I know I've brought this up a number of times, but I've never gone into detail before.

KRR has a ton of stuff, and we can't possibly compete with them if we don't have the means to. Even if there are no Kirby games, they can still pull new material out. We can't. We can't rip BGMs off the Kirby games and post them. We can't rip official arts, sprites, or game backgrounds. We can't record gameplay footage and upload them ourselves. We can't think of creative contests and give out some REAL incentive to paticipate in them, since our resources are limited. They have an Oekaki board and a place for people to put up their works. We're hosted on a sh1tty freewebs instead of being a full site(then again, KRR is hosted under Gamespy).

BUT. And this is a big but. Their forums. Are dead. Although they have a great diversity of members(around 2500 right now), they keep moving location, and lose members with each move. They get like only a few posts a day, and usually two or three per member. I tried contacting the guy in charge of the affiliations(Disaster Kirby), but he wasn't around(and I suspect he wasn't for some time already). Their last message board post was at the Pointless Palace(a.k.a Random), with the other sub-boards not posted in for at least a day. We should be considered lucky that we're still getting a great number of posts a day, even if they are from the same old people.

KRR makes new content themselves. They have Mailbags for members to ask the mods questions(which is then published to their site). in the forums, you have people who make Kirby fangames, draw art, write fanfics.Now, they're planning on moving the site out of Gamespy and host it under their own server because their main staff member now makes websites for a living, and has a lot of experience. They can use money to pay for servers and prizes for contests. None of us here do that, or are unable to do, or are TOO LAZY to do(this last one is a major inhibitor to our success). If we really cared about Kirby we would do anything to make the site live. Right now we're not doing anything except posting on the forums. We're doing it wrong.

Hey, we're all one bunch of friends who opened up their own place to talk to each other, basically. Expanding has and will always be difficult. Making a forum tick is NOT as easy as making a blogroll and getting a billion unique visitors a day. Not many people are dedicated to forums, and they're usually short-lived. Remember how tough it was during our time at Gamespot? We did even worse than right now.

We'll need a theme change, but I am not in favor of doing a 180 away from Kirby. If we were to expand, it would be building on what we have already achieved. The next logical step would be a Nintendo forum. It'll take a lot of convincing for me to change the name. K5Star is our home, our pride. We built this place together. We should stick to it. Our inactivity is largely cause by our own incompetence(I'm not completely blameless either).

Think about what I just said. What can YOU do to make the forums a more lively place? What can you do to make the freewebs more interesting? What can you do on other sites to attract members? Being a Kirby fan or not is irrelevant. I mean, sure, we're Kirby-centric, but to a non-Kirby fan, don't tell them about that. We have a very comprehensive Meadow forum that's just dying to be posted in. If they're a fan of anything, it can all fit into that sub-board. ALL OF IT.

A captain always goes down with his ship. And we'll do just, that, if we have to. Right now I'm in no mood to make many posts, but I hope I drove a point home here.

And I'm off.