Hey everybody, I'm leader of The HeadCrab Union. Just a note, if this thread is against the rules here, I'm sorry and you can just lock it. Hopefully it's not and everybody here can take advantage of my offer.

First of all, I searched through three pages of image design unions and this is the ONLY ONE that is still active. Even the top level unions are dead, so congratulations! I'd actually like to know here if you could tell me what exactly you're doing to keep the union so active. I was very surprised to see this, especially since most unions on GameSpot are now dead.

Anyway, the point of my post here is to tell you about The HeadCrab Union's offer. GameSpot is holding an image design contest and The HeadCrab Union, which has recently reactivated after a three year hiatus, would like to win it. Winning this contest would help to jumpstart our union again after our long hiatus, because we'd be advertised in GameSpot's Community Blog. So to help with this, I'm offering a $50 prize to anyone who wins this contest on the HCU's behalf. All the contest details are located here. You must put your submissions in that thread also. If there are any questions, please let me know, thanks!

And again, what exactly are you doing to keep your union's activity so high where everyone else fails?

[QUOTE="Artekus"]I guess I'll nominate Sentinelrv.uas-2001

He has already declined an offer of leadership

Yeah, sorry again about not being able to help you out here. I just don't have the amount of time available it would take me to do anything with the union.

Contrary to popular belief, it's not the current design killing unions, it's those in charge of unions. I brought my own union from the ground up and made it the biggest union board in all of GS, bigger than over half of the main GS boards without the need of a new design. If someone truly wants their union to be great and they put forth the time, then it'll become great. I'm for some fixes in unions taking place, but the argument that unions have died because no updates were made is false.julian_jr

I don't think it's fair to compare a social union with a gaming union, another apples to oranges comparison. A social union is open to any topic imaginable, where a gaming union is not. As Michael said above, I was trying to accomplish something much more significant with The HeadCrab Union. I had a complete functioning navigation system built out of images, which consisted of hundreds of pages of interconnected game pages, news, images, videos, downloads, features, interviews, game guides, etc... Even though I don't equate post count with quality as Michael talks about in his post above, the HCU currently has 130,418 forum posts and 66 pages worth of news articles. All of this content creation is what brought the activity in to The HeadCrab Union. As a result of all my hard work I was awarded with this in the first union awards ceremony...

My union's activity was a result of the amount of features and news coverage we had, but shortly after this, my complex navigation system became too much for me to handle and I had to unfortunately cut it back. Instead, I focused on promoting union redesign. I figured I could continue running my union at the desired quality level as I was used to if a union redesign took place, so I worked on this thread when Greg Kasavin asked me to. It was after this that The HeadCrab Union started to go down hill, because I wasn't able to keep up due to the union system's lack of features. I imagine it has to be easier for a social union to keep up in activity. It doesn't require all the features I was used to putting out and there's only a limited amount of things you can talk about in a gaming union. Anyway, the redesigned union system would have allowed me to keep putting out the amount of features I had been releasing. I would have gladly paid for a union subscription if the value it offered me was worth the fee. Instead, I was forced to stop because keeping the custom navigation system updated got to be too much of a hassle and my union suffered as a result of it. As long as the value offered by a redesign outweighs the price tag, I think you'll have people that will want to take advantage of the system.

EDIT: Sorry, I had to split this into three posts because this thread is broken. It won't allow you to link to the last page even though there are unread posts unless there are four posts on that page. That consists of Michael's post and three of mine.

A great way to envision this idea of union leadership being exclusive to paying members is to compare it to UCBs. Pretty much all UCBs out there are mostly dead, and while people may argue that the reason for this is that they are more hidden than unions, it still replicates the current idea brought up. UCBs have never been as popular as unions since people have to pay just to get access to their own UCB and then take into account the amount of work it takes to make a union successful. Compare this to working a real job somewhere, imagine paying your boss money to work for him. Let's be honest, to have a successful union it takes a lot of time, and if we had to also pay money just to do this then you can imagine how many less people will be interested in leading unions.julian_jr

As you stated above, UCBs are not advertised on GameSpot in any way, which is one of the biggest reasons most of them are abandoned. The only advertising comes from individuals on the forum promoting a UCB through their forum signature.

You're also comparing apples to oranges. The real reason why UCBs have never been as popular as unions is because they are inferior to unions. UCBs are just that, a user created board, nothing else. A union on the other hand is more valuable because it has a different purpose. It's designed with the features necessary to build a news and media website and community around it, a blog, forum, membership subscription, telegram system, advertising, etc... UCBs lack value when compared to unions. That's the real reason UCBs have never been as popular as unions. The value you get from a UCB doesn't compare to the value you get from a union. That's why one feature is safer than the other under a payment system, because one adds more value. And currently we're talking about a broken and basic union system. With a redesign consisting of countless new features, the value gained from the product would be increased exponentially, leading to even higher interest in the system than before. After a redesign, the value differential between UCBs and unions would be unmatched.

Also, your idea of union leadership is very different than mine. I find it very enjoyable. If you find it to be work, then maybe you're doing something wrong. Yes, there may be a lot of work involved with running a union, but it is still a hobby, thus it is enjoyable to you. GameSpot is providing you value by offering you the tools to manage your own website and community. This is in addition to the free value they provide you with everyday in news and content on their website. I think increasing the value of the union system with a large upgrade to the tools provided is enough to justify a small fee for the value provided. The cost for GameSpot to upgrade unions would far outweigh any benefit gained if they were just going to give away this value for free. Only payment would justify the redesign, and those leaders that benefit from that service most would pay the fee in order to keep enjoying that service. Those who consider union leadership work would abandon their union or allow someone else more dedicated to take over.

The idea of requiring union leaders to be subscribed members of gamespot would kill off almost all the top unions in GS guaranteed. Look at all the top unions out there now which are active, and you'll quickly notice that the majority of all the top unions around have leaders who are basic members. You may believe that all unions are dead, but there's actually quite a lot of unions out there doing fine, just that you have to search for them due to the broken level system hiding the active unions.julian_jr

Just because the majority of union leaders are basic members, (Unconfirmed Fact) it does not mean those leaders would refuse to pay a fee in order to use all the new features that came along with a union redesign. If they refused to pay the fee, then they could just transfer leadership to somebody in the union who didn't have a problem with the small yearly fee. To avoid the need to transfer leadership, maybe there could even be a feature where any member in the union could pay for the union to be renewed, instead of having the requirement that the leader has to be the one to make the payment. The way I see it, as long as members of a union are getting some value out of it, they should be allowed to contribute money toward the union to keep it running. I never said that unions had to be tied to your GameSpot subscription either. I just suggested it as an idea of how payment could be handled. Maybe besides the union feature being included in a subscription package, they could also be featured as a separate fee, cutting down the price to just around $5 for the union, instead of $20 for a year long GameSpot subscription. That would help cut down the price and help people save money. The value you'd be getting in return for that $5 is unmatched.

Also, something MudKip brought up was what would happen if the union leader went inactive or canceled their subscription. First of all, the subscription would only be necessary in order to form a union and renew it. If it was immediately canceled after forming a union, the union would remain active until the subscription was supposed to end. In the case of a leader becoming inactive while their community was still functioning, it would need to be clearly stated in the rules that any union leader that abandons their position for a certain period of time would receive notice (an email) that they need to either return or pick a succesor to the union. If they do neither, then someone in the union's community would take over leadership through an automated voting process, or else the union would be suspended and eventually deleted.

In my opinon, to say that unions don't have enough support to justify payment is an irrational emotional response to the issue. Along with all the other GameSpot features you gain for only $20 a year, you're saying that it's not worth it and that nobody would pay to use this feature? I would agree with you if the money was going to be used to pay for the union system in its current state. Though with a redesign that would add countless new features and advertising for unions, I would say the benefits highly outweigh the cost. The community has already shown that it cares about unions. A price tag may eliminate some people, but the view that it would kill off unions completely is absurd in my opinion. It would only kill them off if GameSpot wanted us to pay for unions in their current state.

With a redesign though, there would be much excitement for this feature again, completely justifying the cost. Your negative reaction to a price tag stems from viewing this issue through the current non-existent activity of unions. Remember though when unions were first introduced as a new feature. There was a lot of interest and activity. The HeadCrab Union's board alone was as active as one of the main GameSpot boards. So this fear or belief that unions would die out stems from not looking at the entire picture. You've become so close to the issue that it's altering your perception of what would really happen. A complete redesign would spur interest in unions again. Only a redesign would justify payment, not the outdated broken system we now have.

So if you still believe this, state your reasoning and not just your personal objection to a price tag. Explain to me why you think this would kill unions, not just your belief that it would do so. Beliefs do not necessarily equate reality.

Thanks for your help.

Artekus: I think Sent means that those who subscribe to GS should enjoy the exclusive privilege to ownership of a union. Not that the union will be an additional cost to a subscription, and normal users should be able to use unions for free (just to be clear on that, or at least that was my interpretation that I support).michaelP4

I'm trying to figure out what would happen if there was a switch in leadership. Maybe the union would still be set to expire on the same date as the previous leader's subscription was set to end, however the new leader would have the option of paying a small fee to extend the union expiration date until the end date of their subscription. The extension fee would vary depending on how long before the new leader's subsciption was set to end. The details of this would need to be worked out.

But just for clarification, you wouldn't need to pay to use a union. The leader would need to pay though to keep the union going. If the leader didn't want to continue paying, they could transfer leadership to somebody who would pay, or they could let the union become suspended after their expiration date hit. It would then be purged from the system after a period of time had gone by without renewal. Maybe GameSpot could provide another incentive for unions to do better in the form of an achievement to shoot for, which when hit would allow the renewal fee to be waived. It would be a free extension of the expiration date, but it could only be reached if the union strived for quality and success.

I don't believe that a decreasing show of support in polls for union redesign necessarily means that there is less demand for a redesign. I think instead that this decrease is more representative of people's lack of faith that their vote will actually make a difference. People have given up hope. Most still support the redesign, but because of GameSpot's actions and lack of acknowledgement on the issue over the years, people just don't see the use in voting because they "believe" that it's not going to change anything and that GameSpot will continue to not care. That lack of belief is what's causing the polls to decrease, not the lack of demand. It is possible to have a high level of desire for something, only to suffocate that desire through a lack of belief that it's even possible to achieve.

You mention that unions have too many features that aren't used. I would argue that these features aren't used because they are in fact useless. There's a reason why I've never used the union archive. It's poorly designed and doesn't allow me the ability to organize my news archive in a way that's best suited to my purposes. That's why I ignore the feature altogether. The same goes with the union videos feature. It's poorly designed and implemented. All of this would change if their redesign actually gave these features some usefulness.

I don't remember if I supported this in the thread when I originally posted it, but I do now. Unions should be a feature reserved for paying members only! This provides a monetary incentive for GameSpot to actually spend their time and money on redesigning the feature. Here's another even larger monetary incentive. If unions were actually given the features needed to be able to professionally operate a news and media website, they'd achieve growth like never before. This expanded growth would help pull in new viewers and members from across the internet. I can tell you from personal experience that when The HeadCrab Union was at its peak, I used to go beyond the GameSpot forum by placing paid advertisements on other websites. The union system would essentially act as an advertisement vehicle for GameSpot, powered and driven by the community itself. This would ultimately lead to increased ad revenue for the main site. Look at Facebook. It basically advertises itself.

Another reason for this becoming a feature that's part of a paid subscription involves the quality and quantity of unions. As you correctly point out, UCB's are limited in number because the paid subscription acts to filter out those people who are not serious about building a healthy community. The only filter preventing the number of unions from exploding out of control is the fact that you need to find co-founders in order to activate a union. Even that step though is easy to pass. Besides this, there is nothing set in place to filter out unions being created by people who aren't serious. If somebody was serious about building a news organization and community, they'd easily find a way to get the money to buy a paid subscription. Those who just thought it would be fun to create a union would be filtered out. The setup we have in place right now encourages high quantity and low quality. This has the unfortunate side effect of diluting membership across a large number of poor quality unions, and those unions that are actually committed to quality news and community management never come to the forefront.

I don't care how many people will whine about having to pay for their unions. The system we currently have in place is a system that rewards laziness and punishes hard work. It is therefore unacceptable and needs reworking. Once unions are redesigned, allow people a window of time in order to purchase their subscription. Once the deadline passes, all unions that haven't paid in would be either permanently deleted by the system or suspended, preventing people from accesing the union or searching for it. Only once it has been paid for would the union be reactivated. This system would act as a way to filter out all the dead unions automatically, instead of requiring GameSpot staff to search through unions and do it manually. Those unions that paid for a subscription, but failed to show any results would be automatically removed by the system when the subscription expired without renewal.

This system would be setup to drive poor quality unions out of existence and high quality unions into the spotlight. GameSpot would also need to provide incentives for higher quality management in order to further drive unions to a professional standard of excellence. One idea I suggested in this thread was to provide union achievements or goals, which when reached would add a new badge or emblem to the front page of the union, creating for unions an ever expanding list of goals to achieve, increasing quality. Another incentive would be increased advertising throughout GameSpot, with the benefit of driving up union membership. This setup provides both monetary benefits to GameSpot and it fixes the union quantity vs quality issue by filtering out poor quality and incentivising high quality.

I didn't really plan on writing all this, but felt it was good stuff, so I'll post a thread about it when Monday rolls around, unless there's some disagreement on it here. I'd love to hear your objections.