Hi all,
since i took my leave the site hasnt changed much.. actually is broken in a few places.
I was thinking about looking into the possibilities of reanimating it again, perhaps with a different way of doing things.
So i am wondering who is still using BRnet, and give some ideas on how you would like to see BR(net) being continued on the web
I tend to check here once every few days. To see if new questions or articles are posted. Personally I enjoy it the way it is. But would not be adverse to change. If it is an upgrade, go for it. The site has always been a favourite of mine.
i take a look one or 2 time by week for check if they are big problem and help people to register.
After you leave, i wish upgrade but there a lot of thing to do (to do it good) and not to lot of people come…
I tend to check the state of things at least once a month, sometimes once or twice a week. Don’t have time to do much.
Sorontar
I’ve actually just returned to the site after a very long absence. I’ve come back because I am finally running a birthrightesque game again, and I’m digging for any and all information on how different people have implemented it in GURPS.
I check in every other week or so. I check for new discussions, new files. I’ve been hoping to finish a small project, for eventual posting on BR.net.
I don’t have a problem with how the site currently looks, but i wouldn’t object to a refresh, so long as things remain easily navigable. (Lately, i’ve seen a few too many sites get too clever with their layout and they just become clumsy to use.)
-Fizz
I like to check back here regularly. Would love to see more updates and activity.
Usage may vary…
When I have time I love to come here and update the wiki and see what is going on. When I’m running a game, I’m here quite frequently to get information, ask questions, and come up with hooks/ideas.
But as things stand right now, I only have time to check it out every week or so. I’d love a wiki update to bring it more into alignment with how wikipedia itself is made with the templates and what-not (The amount of time I’ve spent trying to work up solutions to infoboxes alone I could have built a house lol).
The downloads/uploads section could definitely use a facelift with more detail on keywords and a more robust searching/filtering system.
The forums themselves seem to be just fine. But there really does need to be a “contact us” button somewhere easily viewable if there is a problem with the site. I’m sure Arius is annoyed at my emails when the site goes down or about bot spammers on the wiki. I’m sure it is annoying to both Arius and google translate to figure out what I’m saying with my southern accent 
not a problem, in fact i’m happy somepeople do this when i did’nt see that. A big thank you to you 
I still use BRNet on an almost weekly basis. I run most of my D&D, Pathfinder, HR Blend rules using the Birthright setting. So for me, more than anything I tend to use the BR Wiki functions to look up place names, settings etc.
The biggest suggestion I would make as far as that is concerned, is to maybe make sure to include clearer delineations as to what came directly from which source. I’ve noticed on quite a few pages that content from other players’ campaigns, house rules etc. has slipped in and that’s confused some of my players on more than a few occasions.
Other than that, keep up the good work, for sure! Also, I’m not sure if you would maybe consider setting up a Patreon or something like that. I mean, I know you have the one time donation thing through Paypal… but maybe something to provide a more constant source of income might not be a bad idea.
I still check in a few times a month. Growing family and other obligations keep me limited, but I still have a special interest in the community, setting, and game.
How much time, effort, and money is required to keep this thing alive?
The time and effort can be endless, as far as the money not too much. we are on a shared server with athas.org and so far i didnt have a complain about sharing the costs.
Sindre is still paying for the domain.
So that leaves us to the software being used.
we started out with wikipedias software mediawiki, but at one point we created a bridge between vbulleting and mediawiki (VbWiki)
eventually we merged the two into vbulletin using a vbulletin mod call vaultwiki
https://www.vaultwiki.org/features/
Not sure we have the latest version.
Anyway, an option is, like nick proposed to “roll-back” to MediaWiki.
Thats gonna be an immense amount of work considering the work that has been put in converting it to vaultwiki in the first place.
but yes, i am afraid it will be a page to page copy job.
The good thing about doing that, we can sort out certain things as well to clear things up. (clean/enhance brwiki)
And we know the mediawiki software will be kept in development for wikipedia.
So that could be a safe/wise move to keep BRnet alive.
The forum software could still run, but it will loose the once so admired vaultwiki integration..
there are still a few plugins that connect vbulletin with mediawiki
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VBulletin/Users_Integration
so yes, that could work.
as a matter of fact the old mediawiki install is still up and running. (kept it there for reference when copying it)
http://www.birthright.net/brwiki/index.php/Main_Page
might need a little update
Last content edits to that version of BrWiki were 30 September 2011. Not sure how much we have added to BrWiki (or changed to those pages) since then. I know a lot of the manual changes were fixing ‘special’ characters like quotation marks, and adding or removing blank lines due to the WYSIWYG nature of the new software. Manually it was a lot of work. Automating conversions like that is a lot better. Believe me, as a data scientist, this is what I try to do with data regularly (but still have to do some grunt work manually unfortunately).
Sorontar
I’ve been using the site more in the last few months than I have for years due to a new game I’m running in Muden.
I’m to the point where I’m looking at running a West Marches style game in Cerilia beginning this summer, so I can easily see a point where I’m referencing information here much more often.
I can see the need for some kind of platform update/shift to clean things up but I’m quite thankful that it’s just here!
true, most of the edits after the conversion from mediawiki were because of the incompatibility of some of the mediawiki addons we were using like variable and dynamic pagelist.
I am not saying it wont be a lot of work, but it might be a good idea for the continuity of the website. mediawiki (i assume) wont have an end of life anytime soon.
I used to have a lot of rainy sundays in holland, but here in Lima i have waaaay less
I check in most days, but have much less time generally due to RL changes. I have a lot of fond memories of the site though so am happy to help where I can and with the costs.
BUT BUT BUT Halspaka and The Siren’s Relam!!! lol
Exactly, a “few” pages were created afterwards as well hehe :rolleyes:
For the VBulletin i buy the last version, for vaultwiki i buy a licence forever for xenforo (the license for vbulletin expire some years before), i buy xenforo too.
My first idea was to migrate vBulletin in the next version but vBulletin declined (lot of people want leave it for some reason, one of them is the bad code). i saw Xenforo (created by some developper from vbulletin who want do more better than vBulletin).
So my second idea is to migrate to xenforo. i succeed it with some hack i need do but succeed. I begin to do migrate all template but i see a problem when i try to migrate the wiki…i search a good way to did it, but everytime i lost some data or the wiki have no link to the forum.
These, they take me lot of time. Now, i think the best way, it’s not this.