I won't comment on the forums (which seem quite active), just the main site:

-- Your welcome page is really more of a site map. As a newcomer, I'd like you to tell me more about your game before I venture any further.
-- Similarly, the Guides and Setting portal pages are just a list of links, at least some description to tell me where I'm going would be nice.
-- Your layout is clean and simple, but the result is chaotic - exactly because it's links all over the place.
-- I'm not a big fan of frames, and neither are bots and spiders. Something to consider if you want to optimise your site for search engines.
-- Since you are using frames, you should definitely set a doctype. This will also help your page validate at w3.org. (Run the page through the validator for a bunch of other issues.)
-- I like your image boards. Seems your community is not only active, but also creative.

All in all, I think your site as it is now falls short of the Gold Wyrm, but I'm no editor. It might be a good candidate for the quill, from the brief look I had at the forums.

--Alayla

God Wars II | MudLab

I only agree with two of the comments. Your setting page could use a brief blurb, rather than links to ship guides and glossaries. I am a fan of one or two paragraph descriptions like the back cover of a book to give a general overview.
The menus could use some somplification, but not much. Traditionally home belongs at the top, but it's the 6th item and it's called main menu, and it looks different from the others. Often people want to go right back to the beginning so it should be more visable.
If I may go on a wild tangent about this one, Wes. Group buttons by position and appearance, and based on function. So your 'main menu' button is currently grouped with 'image boards' and they're not closely related. I think the only distinct one should be search. I wouldn't describe it as chaotic though. I can find anything I'm looking for easily enough, except for that.

Nothing else though. The main page does have general information. It pretty clearly explains what the website is. A collaborative fiction sci-fi community that's not for kids under 16. The main page also does serve to solve most bot crawling issues. They can extract much of what they need from that front page and the blurb.
Frames are iffy, but I have no problem with them. You can get the same effect as the frame by using CSS and pasting identical code onto every page. I suppose that is 'ideal' but I have no problem displaying frames and I don't think people need to be able to view your site on a cell phone or with netscape 1.0.

Doctypes are irrelevant, there's been discussion on that, as well as w3.org validation.

- - - - - - - - Do not use dotted lines - - - - - - - - -

Advertise your online RPG - http://www.pbem2.com

Thar Shaddin - freeform fantasy PbP RP: http://www.tharshaddin.com

First of all, thank you for the comments!

“I won't comment on the forums (which seem quite active), just the main site”
But the forums are a huge, integral part of the site (with about 3,000 times as many articles)!
“Your welcome page is really more of a site map. As a newcomer, I'd like you to tell me more about your game before I venture any further.”

The home page had pretty much all the basics on it. I’ve now (in response) also set the frames page to default to a much more detailed page about Star Army and its benefits.

“Similarly, the Guides and Setting portal pages are just a list of links, at least some description to tell me where I'm going would be nice.” “Your setting page could use a brief blurb, rather than links to ship guides and glossaries.”

I added some basic descriptions. The links are pretty self-explanatory.

“Your layout is clean and simple, but the result is chaotic - exactly because it's links all over the place.” “Traditionally home belongs at the top, but it's the 6th item and it's called main menu, and it looks different from the others. Often people want to go right back to the beginning so it should be more visable. If I may go on a wild tangent about this one, Wes. Group buttons by position and appearance, and based on function. So your 'main menu' button is currently grouped with 'image boards' and they're not closely related. I think the only distinct one should be search. I wouldn't describe it as chaotic though. I can find anything I'm looking for easily enough, except for that.“

Well, there’s just too much to put it all on the surface. I did, however, reorganize the side navigation bar.

“I'm not a big fan of frames, and neither are bots and spiders. Something to consider if you want to optimise your site for search engines.” “Frames are iffy, but I have no problem with them. You can get the same effect as the frame by using CSS and pasting identical code onto every page. I suppose that is 'ideal' but I have no problem displaying frames and I don't think people need to be able to view your site on a cell phone or with netscape 1.0.”

The site seems to do well with Google. We’re #1 with a bunch of our keywords, from “Space Roleplay” to “Star Army” and even “Vagina Power Armor.” Yeah.

“Since you are using frames, you should definitely set a doctype. This will also help your page validate at w3.org. (Run the page through the validator for a bunch of other issues.)”

As Frug pointed out, Doctype and validation are irrelevant. The site does fine for humans on FF and IE and does well with the bots, too.

“I like your image boards. Seems your community is not only active, but also creative.” Thanks! It’s true.
“The main page does have general information. It pretty clearly explains what the website is. A collaborative fiction sci-fi community that's not for kids under 16. The main page also does serve to solve most bot crawling issues. They can extract much of what they need from that front page and the blurb.”

That’s the idea – the site map and the RSS feed are awesome for search engine attention. Google -LOVES- RSS feeds and will visit your site for updates more than once a day!

“All in all, I think your site as it is now falls short of the Gold Wyrm, but I'm no editor. It might be a good candidate for the quill, from the brief look I had at the forums.”

What about now?

Doctypes are irrelevant, there's been discussion on that, as well as w3.org validation.

Can you point me to the discussion? I tried searching for "doctype", but it yielded no results. The validation still happens to be one of the GW criteria, as far as I know.

--Alayla

God Wars II | MudLab

Yes, the welcome page looks much better now. I also like that "Setting" is now "About the Setting" - I was half expecting it to be a link to page settings the first time around.

I definitely agree that people are more important than standards, but wouldn't just throw standards out of the window like that. You can make your site for both and in the long run, it'll save you some headache on maintaining the site as new browser versions come out. Isn't adding one line with the doctype (and fixing possible bugs that appear as browsers are thrown out of quirks mode) worth it? It would be for your own benefit, and would bring you closer to the GW award, which is for sites that do go that extra mile.

--Alayla

God Wars II | MudLab

"I added some basic descriptions. The links are pretty self-explanatory."

There's still no overview of the setting. Without sifting through the list of links of stats, and even after doing that, I don't see things like: What's the overarching plot? I know it's a space sci-fi, but where? what time? what part of space? What races are involved? Are they at war? Is it anime themed? What's the mood? Dark, friendly, star trek clean, industrial? How about history so far? That kind of stuff.
Although stararmy is a fair bit more popular than my own forums, so far be it from me to question how you attract players, but I get a number of people who join Thar because they see the plot overview and like the setting. So I'm not just suggesting this for the amber quill.

We had a brief discussion on standards Alayla and what it comes down to is that they're generally irrelevant but maybe a good idea if you feel like it. He's not going to have to recode star army when a new browser comes out. No new browser that comes out will just arbitrarily decide to remove support for frames, because nobody would switch to such a crappy browser. Likewise for any "depreciated" code he's using. How much of the internet would such a browser be able to handle?
Preatorian points out the only reason to have a doctype is if you're going to be using strict xhtml, and that is also the only time you'd have to pass validation. If you use good, clean code, and you've tested it on the two (maybe three) major browsers, I don't see why anything else matters.

The discussion is here: http://rpgherald.com/forum_topic/doctype

- - - - - - - - Do not use dotted lines - - - - - - - - -

Advertise your online RPG - http://www.pbem2.com

Thar Shaddin - freeform fantasy PbP RP: http://www.tharshaddin.com

I'm not suggesting something as key as frames would stop working all of a sudden. But some elements may change their behaviour or display differently, as the new browser versions decide to handle them differently in quirks mode. Anyway, I'll stop rambling here and post my opinion in the appropriate thread.

--Alayla

God Wars II | MudLab

Ah, I see what you mean, Frug.

I've updated the setting page again. I think you'll like it better, now.

Yeah, much better. I'm sure you'll benefit from it too.

- - - - - - - - Do not use dotted lines - - - - - - - - -

Advertise your online RPG - http://www.pbem2.com

Thar Shaddin - freeform fantasy PbP RP: http://www.tharshaddin.com

Just wanted to say how much I like Star Army's website - I've always liked the way the information has been presented and have found the information to be quite complete and intricately detailed. Star Army is definetely amongst the best examples of what one can do with the sci-fi anime twist without ensuring it loses any of its quality.

I hope the editors offer it the GW and AQ it deserves!

-----
-= AOM TealFox a.k.a Kim =-
Administrative Ops. Manager
Co-Founder of the New Worlds Project
Find out more at: http://rpgnewworlds.net

I'd like to resubmit the site for review - we've made some major improvements, including a freshly-started Wiki.

I figured this place was dead, but Remmy's recent post offers a glint of hope.

My Review-Sense is tingling.

The Good
We’ll see about that.
1) Blue backdrop with pink(ish) hyperlinks may be unconventional, but it goes surprisingly well, normally that sort of color would put me off but I can’t think of anything else that would go much better. White would hurt the eyes, black would be standoffish and probably pretty hard to read on the dark blue, and grey is too neutral to accomplish the apparent goal.
2) Good opening outline for the site, I acknowledge anyone who goes out of their way to explain the site to potential users. It is probably the most important thing I can think of, beyond making a good graphical first impression, to let the user know before he or she even get’s in what the site is all about so they don’t feel confused.
3) Multiple entry options are a plus, frames are outdated but some like them, the wiki is a progressive and effective approach and it was still integrated into the frames so the site maintains at least a little bit of consistency.
4) The forums, oddly enough, impressed (or at least made me feel fuzzy inside) me. Styled well for PHPBB and nothing looks needlessly placed, as is customary for most PbPs to do, it all looks as though it serves a purpose and very little (if any) of it appears redundant.
5) The RSS feed is another progressive way to go, I’m not terribly sure what purpose it serves here, but I always give kudos to RSS feeds because someone will find a use for them.
6) Multiple languages for the site is a nice way to go, although probably redundant because most of the boards look to be English-speaking. Normally I list redundancies under “The Bad” or “The Ugly” (depending on in what respect something is redundant), but I won’t go against you for providing language support for potential non-English speaking users.
7) Sitemaps are good, the navigation on the wiki is slightly iffy, but the sitemap and frames options save you from my navigational peeves.

The Bad
I feel forgiving.
1) Some pretty important Wiki pages appear to be missing, inaccessible or just not even written. In the “Creating a Character” Section for example, “Creating your Character’s History” is pretty important, especially if it’s a setting someone is relatively unfamiliar with. Moreover “Character Examples” could help in the same respect. I won’t go point out every one of these that’s missing, I’ll just stick to being generalized. Though this particular point is definitely keeping the GW from you.
2) Image Boards? Slightly Childish and Risqué in some cases, a disclaimer for younger audiences might be in order, but probably not necessary.

The Ugly
I may have been spared.
1) That webring at the bottom, while considerably less intrusive than other webring-type situations it’s still an eyesore. This won’t be keeping a GW from you, I can’t expect someone to kill a source of potential traffic.
2) No comment on the overtly ‘cute’ images strewn about. Just…Not so bad, but not so good. This is a neutral ‘no comment’ statement. It would be bad if they were gratuitous, it would be good if not at all, but considering the site’s aim you can’t very well get rid of them.
3) Image boards (yes this gets a double mention) don’t seem to have any quality control, its either decent, risqué or bad artwork followed by some obscene comments in some cases. I will not, in this case, hold an Out of Character function that is relatively difficult to maintain a decent grasp over against you in terms of GW consideration (although I should), but I will mention it nonetheless. Mind you I’m weighing the good with the bad and you’re still outweighing the bad.

Amber Quill
What can I say? If nothing else I vote a positive on that, very few can achieve quality consistency, I’ve seen one or maybe two other boards achieve it, so you can be proud to have my vote. Not a big ol’ speechified situation here, and vastly pointing out certain things that aren’t in the administration’s control isn’t terribly fair. So, generally speaking, the users write long, in-depth posts, that very few sites can claim to accomplish on a grand scale –this is the fact that holds my vote for your site. There are always the few one-liner posts, I don’t condone of those in any situation, but they happen and sometimes they keep the thread moving and that’s occasionally more important. Enforcing a ‘no one-liner’ rule is usually the best way to go, instead encouraging users to at least provide a paragraph to maintain thread quality and a more immersive environment.

First, I want to thank you for the compliments.

Down to business...I think some of the "bad" comments shouldn't really apply; for instance:

1) you pointed out that the new Wiki version of the Creating a Character guide isn't finished - however, the guide itself directs people who arent working on it to use the previous HTML version, which IS finished and does have a section on making a character history.

2) You didn't like the webring link -- well, it doesn't show up when you're logged in. In fact, when you're logged in, the front page of the site (it is integrated into my forum) tells you how many messages you have, how many posts have been made since you were there last, etc.

3) Imageboards are a simply a way to quickly upload and host pictures, typically to post on the forums. Loose moderation is somewhat intentional - many of our roleplayers are from the chaotic imageboard community 4chan.org - we used to run banner ads there.

Additional notes:

I and many of the other members use the RSS feeds as part of their google (or Yahoo) custom home page, so they can always see the latest threads (from Star Army and a variety of other sources) as soon as they open their browser.

The color scheme of the site was created with some experimentation - I think it's definitely turned out to be rather unique. We also have an alternate light-gray-on-black theme available for forum users who for whatever reason don't like the blue.

Links to pages that say nothing more than "Coming Soon" or "Under Construction" will invalidate the site. [Nothing is more annoying than clicking on a link that promises to have what you want and finding these two words. Don't put links up until the pages have content and make no apologies for partial work.

I believe your "You’ve followed a link to a topic that doesn’t exist yet. If permissions allow, you may create it by using the Create this page button." Constitutes a "Coming Soon" message. And as much as I like wiki its up to the staff to ensure that all aspects of the site are completed. A mere link to the completed content in other areas of your site would suffice, better yet just Copy/Paste the content. At the moment its really the only thing keeping you from my vote.

Great job, Wes! I can't think of a site more deserving of a Remmy thumbs up!

-----
-= AOM TealFox a.k.a Kim =-
Administrative Ops. Manager
Co-Founder of the New Worlds Project
Find out more at: http://rpgnewworlds.net

Few and far in between comes to mind.

I don't think that's fair. Here's why:

1) There are no "under construction" pages on the website proper.

2) One the wiki, normal links are pink, and web ones are blue/purple. Links to nonexistant pages, however, are specially marked with red links so that no one ends up at a "This page doesn't exist yet" page by accident.

3) The red links are not detrimental like links to "under construction" pages. They are there for a purpose - The Wiki is a constantly growing; red links are suggestions for future expansion, encouraging member participation. It's part of the experience.

4) Because any visitor at all to the site can edit the pages, I cannot entirely be held responsible for red links.

You've made your point and I've made my decision. Should the other editors jump in and give you a reprieve in the mean time, that's all fine and good. But in this context a link to a piece of the page that isn't finished is grounds for immediate disqualification, wiki or no.

Hm. I was browsing old topics and came across this.

I have to say that in my opinion, disqualifying a site because of a wiki article that contains red links shows a lack of understanding for how a wiki functions.

A wiki is a live piece of work, and it is expected that links to articles to be created will exist in a wiki. Furthemore, sometimes articles are removed from a wiki, which leads to red links, and as far as I know it's not practical to expect people to go searching for every reference to a removed article. Wikipedia itself has many red links, but that is to be expected.

That's why wiki's have the red linking function to begin with. It's not broken, that's how they work. I'm disappointed.

edit: To clarify, i'm not so much commenting on this particular decision as I am on the establishment of a precedent that says any website with a wiki with red links is automatically disqualified. That seems like a technicality that can be applied in ways to omit deserving sites (which I think star army is mind you).

- - - - - - - - Do not use dotted lines - - - - - - - - -

Advertise your online RPG - http://www.pbem2.com

Mkay so I wrote that last night and gave it some thought on the crapper this morning.

I run a game with a setting that is developed by the players as well. I ask them on occasion to write descriptions for me because I'm either not inspired or don't have the patience or time. Sometimes someone will take up the offer, other times someone won't.

So, for example, I have a list of available races, but this list does not encompass all the races in the setting. There is a note at the top of the description page which says "there are too many races to list here, if you wish to play something not listed here you can talk to us about adding the race." Now, I could say "such as goblins" which are not listed. This is on purpose. I want someone who is inspired to creatively come up with details of goblins to add their own touch. I am asking for user input.

Now, just because I use static HTML to manually write all my pages, I do not put in dead links. However, if I was using a wiki I would have the logical option of adding these links as red-links in as suggestions for player development. Would this exclude the site from a GW, and if so, why? In many ways the wiki approach represents a better and more modern approach to the problem of managing a large amount of player driven, possibly dynamic content. The decision to take that kind of approach is the purview of "editing guidelines" and the preferences of the owner, and does not constitute a "broken link" in the traditional sense because nothing is broken and it is intentional.

I just hope that this isn't a general rule like that.

- - - - - - - - Do not use dotted lines - - - - - - - - -

Advertise your online RPG - http://www.pbem2.com

I have to agree with Frug on this point. At Tazlure, which has a GW since 2006 and a wiki since 2007, we use the wiki both for development and for listing established material. We have a long list of red links requesting content (which you can check on the wanted pages) and another considerable list of "stubs" were there is a request for additional content. We live with the realization that the wiki will never be finished because Tazlure is a living and breathing environment and it keeps changing.

The same argument could be equally made for the wiki of AoI, though staff there has turned most wanted pages into stubs, but that is just a question of organizing and not necessarily better.

I really like how the wiki is a community effort. It is a great way to make sure that players are involved and it gives them something to do with their energy and spare time while they wait for new posts. If anything an actively edited wiki shows that a game is alive, not that it is "unfinished".

---------------------------------------------------------
www.tazlure.nl and www.ageofintrigue.com : premium PBP games!

Would it be possible for a re-review? The wiki, while still having a few red links if you look deep enough has over 10,000 new articles since the last review.

The location of our forums has changed from stararmy.com/forums to http://stararmy.com/roleplay