WCNews is a really solid webpage :-)

Vidmaster

Rear Admiral
Did we actually ever have a discussion on the fact that the CIC is a really well put together webpage by now?

* it looks very wc-ish to me, which is always a good sign for a fanpage
* all the resources are nicely accessible (recently verified when I reinstalled Prophecy and was looking for the patches)
* it loads fast and is perfectly cross-browser compatible (proof: https://app.webmate.io/share/4a7e5580-8530-4319-8672-d10c10a4df13 )
* there is lots of activity on it

:)

Maybe this thread will eventually turn to be a feedback/improvements kind of thread but right now, it is more of a "good job" thread ;)
 
Thanks! It's nice to hear that people think so. :) There's tons of stuff across the site that's only half finished from our perspective, but it takes all our available time just to keep the regular stuff going. We'll just keep gradually cranking away and making incremental improvements though.
 
Agree. This is a very well put together site. It looks cool, it's clean, everything that must work works, and the hosts are constantly improving it.

Of course, it has a couple of advantages going for it that many other sites on the web don't have. First, it's user flow is (I imagine) relatively small (unfortunately!) I don't know, but I would guess that we Wing Commander fans number in the hundreds to tens of thousands rather than the millions, which probably makes life easier from a hosting standpoint. Second, the hosts apparently have no need/desire to make a profit off the site, so they don't pepper us with ads and annoying streaming embedded flash videos. (Aside--I have always liked the clean simplicity of this site, from its very inception a few decades ago. I wish the whole internet was more like this.) Third, it's clearly a labor of love, and those are always the finest works of art.

Thanks for doing it for us all!
 
Speaking of this, I would totally tolerate a few ads on here. I think they deserve that at the least. A few bucks here and there.
 
Speaking of this, I would totally tolerate a few ads on here. I think they deserve that at the least. A few bucks here and there.
I disagree. The absence of ads doesn't just make the site cleaner, it also makes a huge difference in credibility towards the WC IP owners (mostly EA); when WCnews wants to release or host a developer backup CD or a huge WC mod, the IP owners can be sure they're not doing it for a profit. That helps a lot walking the thin line between fair use and copyright infringement... EA (and others) have tolerated many slight infringements of their IP over the years because they trust this site and their administrators. Doing all this without any chance of a profit definitely helps maintaining that credibility.
 
PopsiclePete nailed it I think. We've always been anti-ad, because ads can really mess up the experience I think. I'm the guy who pays to subscribe to YouTube to avoid having to ever see ads, and we wanted that clean ad-free experience for as much of the WC community as possible, which was one motivator behind SolSector hosting as well.

But there are benefits to having zero financial incentive. Pete's fair-use example is prime among them, and there have certainly been cases where us having no revenue helped us legitimize things. We've looked at several methods like having WC links in our sidebar be part of Amazon's referral program, which would be non-intrusive, but ultimately we've always decided it was better to be able to say we made no money off anything, if case a situation would ever benefit from that. I also think back in the '90s and early '00s we wanted to also be able to avoid any suspicion whatsoever that we were doing the CIC for "the money." Origin hosted files for us for the first couple years, and even that was enough to draw accusations, but being able to point out that we operated the site without any intent or method to generate any profit was a good way of dropping the mic on those conversations. I like the idea of services like Patreon today for struggling artists and content creators to get their projects off the ground, but even if that existed 20 years ago, it wouldn't have been our style.

I really like the idea of the CIC being our personal community center that posts WC news. It's great to be able to freely be over zealous fans, post random non-WC news when we feel like it, or even take up a day's posting with (literal) WC easter eggs. That's just us messing around and having fun - I would never charge anyone for that (including their eyeballs' time scrolling over ads to get to it).

To Dundradal's point, while I do put in quite a few hours here, it seriously takes a team of people to run the site. Even if you don't see their name in the news regularly, everyone is out there running down leads looking for newsworthy material. Kris does a tremendous amount of technical stuff that nobody ever sees to keep the site operating and secure. If I suddenly disappeared, maybe there would be fewer news posts, but if Kris suddenly disappeared, I most certainly could not keep the site online by myself!
 
Well I'm definitely not complaining. I love this site being ad free. I just wish there was a way where u didn't have to pay for everything and we could help.
 
Probably the best way to lend a hand is by being awesome Wing Commander fans. The more crazy cool projects people make, the more it reminds us of why we're Wing Commander fans and why it's worth it. And the more people keep their eyes open for cool Wing Commander stuff to report, the more that helps out whoever is doing the updates for the day since they aren't scrounging around looking for whatever stories to put on the front page at the last minute.
it seriously takes a team of people to run the site. Even if you don't see their name in the news regularly, everyone is out there running down leads looking for newsworthy material. Kris does a tremendous amount of technical stuff that nobody ever sees to keep the site operating and secure. If I suddenly disappeared, maybe there would be fewer news posts, but if Kris suddenly disappeared, I most certainly could not keep the site online by myself!

I can't re-emphasize this enough. Kris does so much essential work behind the scenes and deserves a ton of credit for it. Also Chris always impresses me with his dedication to getting updates out.
 
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