Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Is Lugnet dying?
Back in the day, Lugnet was THE place for AFOLs to meet on-line. LEGO builders from around the world met there to discuss their hobby, share creations, plan gatherings, and generally chit-chat with eachother. In the past couple of years, tons of other sites have grown up to rival Lugnet for the AFOL's attention - forum sites, individual LUG sites, blogs, podcasts, etc. At the same time there have been various administrative issues and public spats on Lugnet. As a result, some think that Lugnet is dying. Here's Nelson's commentary in vig form. Personally, I think the proliferation of sites has been a very good thing. I think there is much more LEGO talk on-line these days, and our hobby's visibility has grown beyond a small geek niche to gain recognition in many widespread internet communities. However, I do think there was a lot of good to having one forum where fans of all different LEGO themes, from all around the world, could come together and chat. What do you think? Is Lugnet dying? If so, is that a death-knell to the community, or a springboard for new creativity?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Always a thoughtful post, Bruce. I think Lugnet might in for hard times ahead, maybe even being switched off, but I don't think it will seriously hurt the community. One of the good things about all the forum sites is that there is no longer a single point of failure. Had Lugnet shut off in 2001, it would have been a real hit to the community - a lot of chaos.
But now, if any one site goes bottom up, the community survives. People know where to go to find out what's happening. Something can be rebuilt and made better than before.
-Lenny
The reason why I made this vignette (and commentary page) was because I was unable to post anything for over 3 weeks on LUGNET. The MOC reflects the fact that the current LUGNET admins have seemingly all but given up on the site, and are seemingly allowing "Death" to come to LUGNET. (IMHO, simple things, such as a password reset for a site member, should be resolved within hours... not weeks.)
That said, my ability to post was resolved about a week later, and .vignette came back out of the "Dark".
This vig shows Death visiting the grave of LUGNET. In retrospect, I guess I really don't feel that LUGNET is dead - yet, but is more in a state of "suspended animation" or "like a zombie". Hopefully, this will change soon.
As curator for 3 newsgroups there, I won't give up on my efforts to make it a great place for AFOLs and visitors alike.
I personally still like LUGNET as the "one-stop" for all things/themes LEGO. Many other websites are geared toward a single theme, and that makes browsing/posting/replying more difficult. I hope that if our beloved LUGNET does fade away, a new and better "LUGNET" site will arise. That power lies with the AFOL community. While there are many who would criticize and perhaps even sabotage such efforts, I believe that there are many more who won't give up, if they can be empowered to make things better. Long live LUGNET!
Thanks, Bruce.
LUGNET is dead. It's been dead for a while. Other, better sites (*COUGH* Classic-Castle.com *COUGH*) have taken it's place. LUGNET is merely a wasteland of flames, bashings and grouchy old-timers who can't move forward. LUGNET was a great start-up site. It brought LEGO fans together. But now it's time to move on.
So I'm not really up on what's happening with LEGO on the internets and was wondering is Lugnet dying?
It was The Place at one time, as was alt.toys.lego over a decade ago, which was replaced by rec.toys.lego for a few years, which was replaced by the Lugnet newsgroups (which later became known as the Lugnet forums as Lugnet ever bigger and better).
I came out of my Dark Ages with nearly as much excitement, enthusiasm and love for LEGO as Lugnet's creator, however, that only lasted a few years for me, and for the past several years I've been in my Middle Ages I suppose one could say (a milder dissociation from LEGO, where they aren't all boxed up in the attic, but for the most part sit idle on shelves in a spare room (many shelves, mind you)). Perhaps Todd is getting tired of the LEGO devoted life (or perhaps he is way beyond just getting tired of it).
I like the centralization of Lugnet. On first thought, I don't have to go to different sites to ask different types of questions, but then again, that's what I do all day long, search google to find an answer about a PC problem, find an appropriate place to ask, search google to find a street address, search google for this and that all the time, and it's really no big deal. Whether the owner wants to continue Lugnet or not, it is not vital to the LEGO User community. But nonetheless I would be sad to see it go. Still seems to be functioning to me, though.
well there is flickr
Post a Comment