Old Websites

Discussion of other water gun websites.
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Belisaurius
Posts: 97
Joined: Sat Jan 17, 2004 1:00 pm

Post by Belisaurius » Mon Jun 28, 2004 1:38 am

What kind of an impact are the old websites having on the Soakage community? Imagine, you log on to the internet to find out about waterwars, and the first thing you find is GnG - and awesome site, but one which hasn't been updated since 2002. Or the old Aqua-Nexus site, similarly outdated. Hydrolysis, without new content to the awesome database since around 1999. Other websites, spawned by the end of Aquatica IB, that no longer get maintained.

Sometimes, when I'm looking for contact info on old soakists, these sites are useful. The rest of the time they're just kind of depressing. they have awesome info, but they give the impression that soakage has ended. Maybe we could get some of the webmasters to post links to WWN, SSC, Isoaker.com, to let people know that we're still here.

I'm just afraid that with so many old, dead sites, new members may be discouraged. Besides, it is kind of depressing. All of these dead sites show what we used to do, and since I was at Aquatica for a few months before the closing, it just reminds me of what will probably always seem like better times.

I ran across something once, where these people had once had this city, and it was destroyed, and they decided that building in the ruins would just encourage the successor to share the same fate. Sometimes I feel like we've built on the foundations of these failled sites, and that they're slowly condemning us to the same fate. I don't want SSC or WWN or Isoaker to fail someday because we didn't learn from the past. I don't think that would be something for which the soakage network could recover, at least not for a long time.

The only thing I remember about why Aquatica really failled is that everything became political, and not about soakage. Because of that, I sometimes get bothered by things like everyone hating Sniper and Blaze's arguments with Hyper9. We're here to be friends, to talk about soakage, and find some help and enlightenment from what others have learned. Soakage is fun, but we're all changed in some ways by soaking. We learn to listen, to lead, to be reponsible for bad calls, etc. Long live soakage, SSC/WWN/Isoaker.com, and the soakage network!


SOAK ON!

- Belisaurius

**edit** there are more dead sites than I mentioned. I haven't even found them all, and some have no links on current sites.
Victory to Unit 1!

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Monsoon
Posts: 832
Joined: Sun Jul 13, 2003 2:14 pm

Post by Monsoon » Mon Jun 28, 2004 1:51 am

I'll quit playing bass guitar when the day comes that iSoaker, SSC and WWN all shut down or stop. even if one stops. I think SSC has the most integrity: It's a combination of both WWN and iSoaker.
Do not underestimate the power of stupidity in large groups

rinkydinkysplat
Posts: 64
Joined: Sun Jun 27, 2004 12:56 am

Post by rinkydinkysplat » Mon Jun 28, 2004 3:11 am

theyll never shut down

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SSCBen
Posts: 6449
Joined: Sat Mar 22, 2003 1:00 pm

Post by SSCBen » Mon Jun 28, 2004 11:37 am

Heh, I was there at Aquatica, in fact because it was getting political was my main reason for starting a water warfare forum. I got back and read some of the posts I have saved and I really do seem like a inexperienced user, yet it was me. Then again, that was 2+ years ago.

Many of the webmasters will be hard to contact, so I don't think such a feat is possible. Some of them don't even have access to their account anymore, they lost passwords and email addresses over time.

I think that only a small percentage of the people who visit dead sites will not continue searching. One of the things Google ranks by (I think) is how often the site is updated. I know that one of the first sites I found was Zero's mod site, and that rarely ever was updated as far as I know (now completely gone). There are loads of really cool dead sites, many no one even knows about because once they start to sink other sites will take their place. As I go through my links I find it sad that many have been deleted and such, there were some real good ones like Age of the Super Soaker. Contact with such people to possibly get an archive of those sites has turned out to be very hard, if not impossible.

I just noticed that my favorite team water war site has finally gone down... Geocities deavtivated the account. That is very sad for me, but luckily since I loved it so much I have a full archive. You can see it here, this site worked best in IE for some reason. I think it used some IE only frames.

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Neuro
Posts: 1081
Joined: Thu May 01, 2003 12:00 pm

Post by Neuro » Mon Jun 28, 2004 2:52 pm

I think I posted at the old Aquatica iB once because I didn't realize it was dead :Hey, that's funny.:. The first sites I think I found were Aqua-Nexus and another one (SSTK maybe even?). And belisaurius has a point, "getting political" doesn't just mean actual political and religious debates, it means we're starting to get a type of "social status at ssc" thing going. Sooner or later, this will only lead to a lot of arguments. This is the downside of having MembersPlus, SuperMembers, etc. It makes the masses think they're not liked by the Admins/Mods. I'm not saying I'm against these member classes, it's a great way to reward good members. I just think we need something of an "intro to the forums" so people understand how things work.

</shortrant>
"I used to care, but now I take a pill for that."

You can pretty much ignore the times on that, I rarely ever have Xfire on when I play. I should, though.
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superstormer
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Joined: Mon Mar 24, 2003 1:00 pm

Post by superstormer » Mon Jun 28, 2004 4:03 pm

That was a very good post, Beli.

I was at the Aquatica myIkonboard for some time, and I used to browse the EZBoard. I remember the main reason I liked WaterWar.net more than Aquatica was because it was more about soakage and less about other things. People were more laid back and it was just better than Aquatica in my opinion.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Socrates)</div><div class='quotemain'>I drank what?!</div>

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