MonsoonSoak is back?

[Monsoon]

Yes indeed! I have finally decided to create a site dedicated to archiving all sorts of soaker-related articles! Please, anything that is submitted to SSCentral or SoakerMedia, please also submit it to MonsoonSoakArchives! I will post the email address later for submissions! I will release the site address when the front page is done!

EDIT-by all means, submit your articles that are to be sent or already have been sent to SSC or SM at: monsoon[at]monsoonsoakarchives.cjb.net

EDIT 2-the web site is located at http://monsoonsoakarchives.cjb.net/

[Ben]

Umm, don't expect to run your site on submissions. SSCentral hardly has got any in the past few months. If you're going to run a site, make sure to write most of your content. It's the only way to be sure you'll have content.

[Monsoon]

I take submissions from everywhere, like ones submitted to iSoaker, SM, SSC, etc. Plus I will write my own so that should give me a fair but of content. I won't release the full site anyway until I actually have some articles. I was also asking Neo yesterday if I could use a small bit of SSC's extra space for purely pictures and articles. Nothing will eat up much space or be flashy since I'm trying to save room on my own webspace first.

[Freakymist]

umm you can't just take the articles from other sites just because they were submissions. They were submitted to those sites not yours!

Btw your 150 character thing is a pain in the A$s this is just here so I can post this

[Ben]

Hey, the 150 character limit I find to be fairly low. Just bring up another point or expand. I want more intelligent discussion here, not just people writing a few sentences and calling it a post. Of course, there are completely legitimate short posts, but 150 words IS ALREADY EXTREMELY LOW. I looked on the last few pages of my own posts and picked out the SHORTEST ONE I could find and then subtracted something like 15 characters to make the number more rounded. Then again, I thought that the modification made it not apply for certain groups... I was wrong about that. I get that error message just like you all do when my post is too short. That's my rant, if you've got a problem with this just bring it up in the Feedback forum.

(Anyway, a good post to me is at least 300 characters. That is, only my opinion however. Now to get back on topic...)

I can't tell if what Monsoon meant was that he was going to take articles submitted to various sites and use them. That would be in violation of copyright laws. Articles are submitted to a certain site and unless they become public domain they are not meant to be used on any other site. Even then, the practice of taking another site's articles is absurd. Why would anyone go to your site when the same stuff is on an already more popular one? I'd stick with writing my own content. You'd be surprised what you can churn out sitting at a computer for a day. Make a list of articles/features you'd like to see and make a few. I did that for SSCentral, and I still am referring to that list for future ideas. The 2005 Preview feature I conceived back at the beginning of the summer, for example.

[NiborDude]

I think he just means that if you have written articles and would like to submit it to his site then he would be appreciative. And the thing about if it's sent to SSC or SM probably just means that if its been submitted to SSC or SM that it can still be sent to MonsoonSoak.

I find that having people create new content works better. No one wants to see the same article on every site they visit. Having a few similarities is okay, but I do recommend writing a bunch or articles yourself.

[Monsoon]

I can't tell if what Monsoon meant was that he was going to take articles submitted to various sites and use them. That would be in violation of copyright laws.

What do you take me for? I am honestly not that stupid. I probably would have thought of something like that two years ago. Here's the bottom line: I archive all new submitted articles so that if one of those websites goes down, some of their content is still safe with me. That was my plan from the start. No I'm NOT going to steal stuff from other sites (without consent of it's webmaster(s) ).

[vaporizer28]

Could I send in a few reviews, even though I haven't ever made one?

I could review the WW Glow Blaster, Xp 270, MD2/3K, Spiderman Soaker, and the Vaporizer.

[Monsoon]

As long as they are valid soakers (I personally prefer official ones from Super Soaker and Water Warriors and Storm), I accept any review of water guns. I of course, will make spelling and grammatical edits if necessary (these articles are being archived after all). Also remember to submit these articles to SSCentral/SoakerMedia/ISoaker or which ever one you prefer.

[Ben]

What do you take me for? I am honestly not that stupid. I probably would have thought of something like that two years ago. Here's the bottom line: I archive all new submitted articles so that if one of those websites goes down, some of their content is still safe with me. That was my plan from the start. No I'm NOT going to steal stuff from other sites (without consent of it's webmaster(s) ).

Archiving site's content to put on your own after they go down? That's planning way too far ahead in the future. :P I very highly doubt that any of those mentioned sites are going down any time soon. People have had similar actions when Aquatica was going down, making special forums "just in case Aquatica goes down." They all, mine included, failed.

I should add a new paragraph to the Running a Water Gun Website article about submissions and why you shouldn't expect to get any. Honestly, what submissions you may get aren't going to make your site a strong one. We do get a considerable amount of submissions, but we still had enough content to release the site.

On the topic of the site already made... compress that huge 125k BMP file into a more manageable JPEG. BMP is not a format for the internet...

[DX]

I really don't expect those sites to go down soon either. If they did, I am assuming the other webmasters have all their original files and could simply put them back up via new hosting or fixing the old site, etc. I keep copies of all the files on Soaker Media, which could be transferred if the SSC server failed.

With submissions, actually Soaker Media articles might be more than half submissions. Not that many articles were written by Nibordude, and I haven't even written any yet I think. So far Soaker Media has mainly been fed by submissions, but if they stopped coming for any reason Nibordude and I could easily write articles to replace the void. So submissions have worked for us, and there's still a large backlog of submitted pics and articles needing to be added. Maybe it's just an exception. :blink:

[Monsoon]

Well I usually never touch my webspace anyway. It's just something I wanted to do. It'll probably stay up for a long time without me noticing it in three years....Also it's just another way that I feel like contributing to the online soaker community. I'm going to use an easy navigation menu on the main page supplied by buttongenerator.com (now here comes the comments on how that's a bad idea) so it can have sub buttons and such for quick and easy one-click searching for that one article that you need to find. Also, you just never know, maybe something could go wrong with one of the sites, making my site somewhat valuable to save some of their content.

[Ben]

You ever seen a popular website use those buttons? You know why you haven't? Because they (1) require a huge amount of JavaScript and images most don't want to download and (2) annoy a lot of people. Text links are the best way to go navigation because they are simple, small, and get the job done! Also, unless you add alt tags to those images, they're not going to do at all very well in the search engines. Those free website things may sound like a great idea to new webmasters, but in reality they are only gimmicks! You don't see any of the top sites using things like that do you?

Also, I do know. SSCentral is here to stay. If we ever got to the point where the forums weren't worth running, all I'd do is shut down the forums (not saying that's going to happen). iSoaker.com has been running for years uninterrupted, and I'm sure will be running for many many years to come. SoakerMedia has barely been around yet, though I'd suppose that as long as they're hosting on SSCentral they'll be around forever. Sites aren't going down for you to take content from or would that be ethical... please by all means write your own articles! I'm speaking from experience to you. Your own articles won't just be the same old thing from other sites, they'll be something new.