[The Starport News]Acquisition of an old domain
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I am sure the old domain will be put in good use and rather ease the job of many modders around the FL communities, and well for the future of FL modding also. On a side note, I am not really interested into the many differences between these “sides”, because keeping an old game like FL active even today it’s … something ! And with these separations and arguments to each others brings no good not for the several individuals but for the entire FL community around the web. And I need to be honest that I am rather new to modding as this is my first experience as a 3D Modeller, and to be new to this whole new experience is really “hurting” to see people “under the same roof” arguing about … nonsense :D.
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Yep, agreed, Dave.
As a sidenote, I’ve seen some of your models and they look super promising! We have a model showroom that you’re more than welcome to post them in if you wish. It’s a great place to whet people’s appetite for pretty FL things.
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Dave.Synk wrote:
And I need to be honest that I am rather new to modding as this is my first experience as a 3D Modeller, and to be new to this whole new experience is really “hurting” to see people “under the same roof” arguing about … nonsense :D.Well, welcome to modelling - I can’t even model a brick
There are some good basic tuts out there (admittedly old) and lots of posts regarding modelling - across many sites. I hope you find resources that are useful, but as always, just ask away if you can’t, need help - or just want to thoughts, advice, or the sound of chatter 
As for the fall outs - it is mostly differences in personal opinions - how things are perceived and thought of - or jumping to conclusions about implications. Take things with a pinch of salt and form your own opinions based on evidence and you’ll be fine.
I’d just point out that here allows (within reason of taste!) anything to be discussed - which is why it often is incorrectly copping flak (in my opinion) as this evidently isn’t for everyone’s taste
Have fun
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I have a question. Probably it has been answered somewhere already but when you say that you use the lancersreactor.com domain for the benefit of ALL freelancers and their communities then why is it only linking to Starport and not to ALL of them?
Or was that just a slogan?
Right now I see no way that any other Freelancer community can take a benefit from it. Why don’t you fill your statement with truth by adding links to all the Freelancer communities? Maybe this would even calm down the situation between the sites.
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Darkstalker wrote:
I have a question. Probably it has been answered somewhere already but when you say that you use the lancersreactor.com domain for the benefit of ALL freelancers and their communities then why is it only linking to Starport and not to ALL of them?Or was that just a slogan?
Right now I see no way that any other Freelancer community can take a benefit from it. Why don’t you fill your statement with truth by adding links to all the Freelancer communities? Maybe this would even calm down the situation between the sites.
I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that this was a genuine mistake. On every single page at TSP we have the Freelancer Community Network where all servers, mods and clan are linked. This is also included on lancersreactor.com and far from “just a slogan”.
I took a screenshot for you in case you were unable to find it.
It takes one click to get that overlay to drop down.
And just to answer any other questions about the Freelancer Community Network, OP told us to remove SWAT from the site. So, that was his choice, not ours.
As for other ways modders can link their site from TLR.com, just put it in the news articles. We don’t ban communities extensions.
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That is an explanation but no real answer.
Ok there is this community bar and I can also understand why there are no links to lancersreactor.org or swat-portal.com.Those sites use a different community bar as they can not use yours, as from what I have understand your community bar does not fit the requirements of a site that supports more than one game. Since links on your bar are not allowed as long the other site does not host that bar itself these two communities are not allowed to join. The conclusion of that is that these communities do not even have the chance to be listed there.
Furthermore I have to ask myself why all other communities are hidden behind such a bar when Starport is able to put numerous links right at the top of the site. I also could link to all other sites by putting up a site with black fonts and black background and the only visible link would point to my own site.
I am sorry but in my eyes as long nothing changes this slogan is not true and the “cake is a lie”.
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Those sites use a different community bar as they can not use yours, as from what I have understand your community bar does not fit the requirements of a site that supports more than one game. Since links on your bar are not allowed as long the other site does not host that bar itself these two communities are not allowed to join. The conclusion of that is that these communities do not even have the chance to be listed there.
They use a different community bar because OP decided to create his own for SWAT and TLR. They can definitely use ours, he just decided not to use it.
As for the freelancer community bar, we did that to ensure that that the bar was equal for all. If you’re on one community and want to go to the next, it gives you that option. What’s the point of having a community bar if it was only a one way stop? If you see it otherwise, so be it.
Furthermore I have to ask myself why all other communities are hidden behind such a bar when Starport is able to put numerous links right at the top of the site. I also could link to all other sites by putting up a site with black fonts and black background and the only visible link would point to my own site.
Firstly, they’re very far from “hidden”. It’s on the top of the page. That’s as far from “hidden” as you can get. Furthermore, what you’re suggesting would look awful with the ridiculous amount of links. It would also be very overwhelming at first glance for new players.
Look, when we designed the page, we went for simplicity. What would new players want? They’d want a community bar where they could easily go from server to server if they so choose. They want to know how to get the game and where the downloads are. That was our design logic and if you see it as biased and treating all the other communities poorly, when its a news site for them, by them, so be it….
I am sorry but in my eyes as long nothing changes this slogan is not true and the “cake is a lie”.
OK.
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Darkstalker wrote:
That is an explanation but no real answer.
Ok there is this community bar and I can also understand why there are no links to lancersreactor.org or swat-portal.com.Those sites use a different community bar as they can not use yours, as from what I have understand your community bar does not fit the requirements of a site that supports more than one game. Since links on your bar are not allowed as long the other site does not host that bar itself these two communities are not allowed to join. The conclusion of that is that these communities do not even have the chance to be listed there.
Furthermore I have to ask myself why all other communities are hidden behind such a bar when Starport is able to put numerous links right at the top of the site. I also could link to all other sites by putting up a site with black fonts and black background and the only visible link would point to my own site.
I am sorry but in my eyes as long nothing changes this slogan is not true and the “cake is a lie”.
Hmm, I won’t answer the points you raise - mainly as they’re already answered in the above posts (so maybe they need further clarification) - but also they’re best positioned to deal with it too. I also don’t understand your penultimate paragraph either… not sure what it is supposed to mean. However, it is nice to be able to ask questions, discuss and more about these issues
But I’ll point out one thing - regarding all community bars.
The community bars are great as long as the person has Javascript enabled. That goes for any community featuring bars. I can’t tell if Swat-portal or lancersreactor.org works without javascript, as currently they’re not even working with it - which is weird as they did before.
If javascript is deactivated on the browser, then they know nothing about other sites at all. Is there a way to output via php the links within a “no script” tag? Just a thought
edit Ah, i understand better what your last paragraph meant once “him above” answered it
I must admit, I thought Op had asked directly for his sites to be removed from the community bar, but I’m old and memory fails -
The bottom line to me is that there’s no reason I can fathom that should prevent anyone in the community making full use of all sites and resources available to them, especially if the reason for not doing so is a bit of drama or he said she said.
Similarly, there’s no reason for any community to block mention of or links to another, if they do that then it’s obvious to me that they don’t have the community in mind. As far as OP goes, it’s a case of “do as i say, not as i do”. Talk about the greater good of the community and then for personal reasons block any mention of a site that holds a wealth of modding information and tools, plus some very talented individuals that might just hold answers to important questions they have.
People should have the option and the common sense to explore both communities and make their own mind up, rather than relying on the opinion of others.
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OK
Does your community bar support links to various games?
If the answer is no then communities such as swat-portal.com and lancersreactor.org have no other choice than using their own bar. It is not matter of their decision it is matter of their needs.I am running a small site and a wiki for Freelancer. I am not able and not allowed to put something like that bar onto my sites. Thus eventhough I am part of the Freelancer community I can make use of any promised benefits.
The slogan should better be “All Freelancers exclusive sites which fulfill our rules and use our software instead of their own might be able to take limited benefit if someone finds the link”.
That excludes a very large part of the Freelancer community.The cake is a lie and Freelancer sites out there are not granted the right to take benefit at all.
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Darkstalker wrote:
I am running a small site and a wiki for Freelancer. I am not able and not allowed to put something like that bar onto my sites. Thus eventhough I am part of the Freelancer community I can make use of any promised benefits.Why are you not able, or allowed, to put the community bar on your site? You say you’re not, but don’t say why? :-? I mean it doesn’t sound strict to me:
To add your own site, you must have the Freelancer Community Network bar installed on your website.
It would be nice to have the network bar on any of your pages, but only displaying it on some sort of entry page is also sufficient. Note however that the linked site should not be a placeholder to only draw visitors to your site. The linked site should be frequented by your general page visitors as well!To benefit from the bar you must display the bar. I’m unsure why this is incredibly unfair or selective… especially when it does say:
You are obviously free to change the code to better fit in your webpage. It would also be wise to put the CSS stylesheet into the header of your website. For simplicity I put it directly next to the body code and so far it seems to work correctly with all browsers.
p.s. Unsure why Lancersreactor.org can’t show the bar. They’re not multi-game are they (technically you could argue Starlancer is a second, but how many game sites for Starlancer are there on the bar? - I can’t get their bar to work in FF or Chrome so dunno
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Being a firefox user I never realised TLR.org had a bar! I just fired up IE and there it was. How many people by percentage have chrome or FF and cant see it?
oh, and surely Starlancer sites should be listed here as well being in the same universe just a different time, just a thought.
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Darkstalker wrote:
I am running a small site and a wiki for Freelancer.
I think Chips answered most of your concerns fully.
Can we have a link to your site so we can see how to make it easy for you to install the FL Community bar? If your site is a Freelancer community, regardless of the other games, it can easily be put on the bar. It’s not in the rules that it cannot.
Link to the guidelines of the bar can be found here:
http://the-starport.net/freelancer/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_id=1186&start=0You ask why?
The main idea is to make the general visitor of the Freelancer Community aware of all the other great FL communities when visiting just one. This is an effort to unite the overall Freelancer Community, by simply establishing a “linked network”.
Any Freelancer related site will be included if it’s meeting the following requirements:- Site has the FL Community Network bar installed on a frequently visited page
- Site is related to Freelancer - Site does not violate any laws and does not contain porn, etc… (use common sense here, we wont include questionable sites)
I bolded and underlined the important point
- Site has the FL Community Network bar installed on a frequently visited page
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The community bar at SWAT does not show up in newer versions of FireFox or other newer browsers because i was not yet able to correct that. Thats one of the points that comes next on my list. Just to clear this issue. It shouldn’t be of any of your problems at all.
Next to that i don’t understand why you state that the .com address shall be used to offer a community for all, unbiased (sure?). Isn’t that also possible with the org. address? I can read there and i can read here - although i am not registered there. So its as open as here Saying also there is randomly some news - probable i don’t know. But wasn’t or isn’t that also the case here - I just need to scroll up a bit with a post asking “Why don’t you post news”
I mean its as lively there as here i guess. I cant really say how much there is going on - I already pointed out why.
You obtained the domain on a legal way - you can use it so. But what i don’t like is if irrelevant statements are made about each side just to put either this side or the other in foreground.Next thing saying Continuum is TLR mod. Dunno is it? They started there as far as i know. You could also lightly say FWTOW is a TSP mod - not because its hosted here - but following back the news and considering that 3 of the active admins here are core members of the FWTOW modding team might bring that illusion also up. Well you can weight anything like you wish. Either to the benefits of someone else or for someones own interests.
Unfortunate the whole issue again made the gap between the two communities bigger. Arrr ;(
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As said before, TLR.org censors us. As regards the TLR.org mod:
This community will officially support the development of a new Freelancer mod which has the apparently has the potential to become very successful. I’d like to officially welcome the members of the Alternative Universe mod project to TLR. We will sup…
And so on.
Also, Freeworlds is absolutely not the same. The services we use from The-Starport are not exclusive to us, anybody could get the same coverage and tools (news and forge repository).
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Not to give any ideas, but the logical thing for OP to do now would be to get the TSP .com or .org domain and link them to TLR
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Schmackbolzen wrote:
Not to give any ideas, but the logical thing for OP to do now would be to get the TSP .com or .org domain and link them to TLROp actually got the-starport.com (prior to us getting TLR.com) but not sure what he’s gonna do with it.
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Huor wrote:
The community bar at SWAT does not show up in newer versions of FireFox or other newer browsers because i was not yet able to correct that. Thats one of the points that comes next on my list. Just to clear this issue. It shouldn’t be of any of your problems at all.Glad to hear, I swore it worked not long ago - but I think Firefox updated last night to beta 5 - which explains it.
Huor wrote:
Next to that i don’t understand why you state that the .com address shall be used to offer a community for all, unbiased (sure?). Isn’t that also possible with the org. address? I can read there and i can read here - although i am not registered there. So its as open as here Saying also there is randomly some news - probable i don’t know. But wasn’t or isn’t that also the case here - I just need to scroll up a bit with a post asking “Why don’t you post news”Hmm, I would let them answer this - but I feel it’s best giving my very very recent experience of “unbiased”.
I submitted news about lancersreactor.com domain being back for the Freelancer Community.
The news was published by an admin I assume (as it didn’t show when I submitted it), then moved forum, my post deleted, myself banned for violating the rules of the website by posting “lancersreactor.com” in the message body (not even hyperlinking I think?) for posting a forbidden domain and trying to get around the censorship (I didn’t but that’s not the point).
Furthermore, the mere mention of TSP or The Starport is impossible in posts, it informs you that you are trying to post a post with banned words and to change them. If you post any links, you are banned (or warned and then banned upon the second posting).
That is my personal experience within the last 24 hours
I’ve read repeated claims that here didn’t post news, but it does appear that there was an issue with the news submission system which they’ve now fixed (they weren’t aware of it) http://the-starport.net/freelancer/forum/viewtopic.php?post_id=44755#forumpost44755 - so there may be a “counter claim” - but one where “it was never received” vs “it was received, denied and the submitter banned”.
You can decide whether my news was ban-worthy, here it is. Is Op being unbiased and fair - bearing in mind, I’m just a Freelancer fan member - not an admin of any site itself. He could not have published the news instead of publishing it and turning into a public banning spectacle. But I digress
The news submitted to lancersreactor.org that resulted in being banned.
Finally the original domain name familiar to so many has been returned to the Freelancer community - through a generous, anonymous, donation
The original “Lancersreactor.com” domain name was lost during a turbulent time in the Freelancer community - where the person who controlled the domain passed it over to a third party who utilised it for anything other than Freelancer related material.
Now the domain is back within the Freelancer community once more! So those people bitten by nostalgia and checking out the domain will once more be directed to the Freelancer community, instead of into host advertising. The simple yet elegant community bar will help direct new and old alike to the various Freelancer communities, ensuring everyone benefits from the domains return.
This is great news, as the game approaches it’s 10th year since release!
