The next life for CAT23 Diplomacy.

Like so many others, I have a soft spot for CAT23,
it’s where I cut my teeth both as a newbie in 2000 and
2001 and later had my first experiences as a GM. I
would love to see this group rebound. Here are some
observations and suggestions as of Monday.

1)	The average life span of a dip player is 2-3 max.
Those who are involved longer than that are exceptions
to the rule. Most players get involved, get more
heavily involved, and then either burn out, loose
interest, or move onto other things (job, family,
other hobbies, etc.) Part of this means unless you are
bringing in new blood constantly, any dip community
will die of starvation. Look at how quickly the AOL
Dip Club was flourishing and then completely
disappeared over the course of 6 months.

2)	That means marketing CAT23 to new players and new
potential community members. Sure there are lots of
other online PBEM communities. Redscape,
DiplomaticCorp, DipWorld, etc. What makes us
different? What’s our role, if any, in the larger
hobby? For example, no archives are available on
Redscape. Once those games are done, they are wiped
off the record. That we have archived results
differentiates us from Redscape. But what about
DipWorld or the DiplomaticCorp? Or this ACD community
a couple of you have references (I’m not familiar with
it). Unless we have something that makes us stand out,
maybe we should listen to Alan Farrington’s
suggestions and roll over our membership into another
(similar) community. I think there is a worthwhile
discussion about the value in maintaining numerous
(redundant?) communities instead of trying to build a
larger and more sustainable community. As Alan said,
“When everybody who wants to play diplomacy is under
one roof, it will create great opportunities for the
diplomacy community. Imagine a place where a game
varient such as crowded could be filled up in no
time.” What I’m trying to say right now is that I’m
not sure what CAT23 offers that some other communities
do or don’t, and maybe even do better. (Personally, I
had been debating GMing my next game somewhere else,
and not on CAT23.)

3)	More on marketing. One thing we can do is
continually hype CAT23 in some of the on-line ‘zines
in the hobby. For example, the Dip Pouch and Diplomacy
World. IN each of the last two years, I’ve submitted
little year in reviews from a selection of on line
communities and give CAT23 top billing each time. The
2007 article (about 2006 in review) is available at
http://www.diplom.org/Zine/S2007R/Dziedzic/PBEMCommunities.htm
The 2008 article (about 2007 in review) will be
published in the upcoming March 31 edition. I’m
willing to put my money where my mouth is, and commit
to one year as marketing director or public relations
person for CAT23. Submit articles to the ‘zines,
publicize the community in different ways, etc.

4)	Other volunteer contributors as the ‘White Wolf’
mentioned. A couple of you have written about how much
previously depended on Ray Setzer. His work is
laudable, but we’re quickly seeing that we need more
people to make sure this works well over a long period
of time. Webmaster, yahoogroup person, PR guy,
historian, archivist, etc. Many hands make light work.
Maybe we should contact the other communities to see
how they maintain their stuff. How many chiefs do they
need to make the system work well? Also, there should
be known contact people. How often in the past couple
of years has someone posted an issue or question to
one of the main yahoogroups because they don’t know
who handles that concern. On the web page their should
be a list of officers or contacts. For website
questions, contact Mr. X at this e-mail address, for
recruitment questions contact John Q Public at that
e-mail address. Etc.

5)	Website. Agreed that the website needs to be more
inviting. More user friendly. I like the idea of
re-branding.  I think Dave Watson’s proposal of
"Diplomacy On Cat23" is clear and simply. No
disrespect to the worldmasters tournament and Chris
Babock’s suggestions, but I think CAT23 may need its
own separate website with a CAT23 web address. It will
help with recruitment when people do Google searches
and the like. I love Stephen Worthy’s Facebook
suggestions. Let’s have MySpace page too.

Chris
[email protected]



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