zOwie Omega Discussion Forum

: I'm glad that we've been graced with new
: moderators... but who really has control of
: the whole site??? Are there going to be new
: pages and updates? How about picture
: galley??? I'm sure that many of us would
: like to see hi-res pics on this site.

At this point the control really is with Jeff moreso than me (which isn't a bad thing IMHO)...

As for expansion... There are two schools of thought about expansion/updates/upgrades... First though, our first and highest priority was regaining control over the forums. Which we have done. With that done, the question of expansion and updates come to the fore.

Here's the schtick... Jeff has his own site, OnTheDash, and this a prior committment. I have my own site, and a webblog, and those are prior committments as well. When Derek was with us, Chronocentric was his website and his committment. As much as Chronocentric is and has been a wonderful source of information and learning for everyone who's visited it, for one of us to take over it's day to day update/upgrade and expansion would likely require us to drop what we've been doing which is really _our_ individual passions.

What to do about Chronocentric the informational site (as opposed to the discussion forums) since Derek has to put it bluntly... put himself to sleep... There are two main trains of thought, and one compromize...

The first and easiest possibility is that Chronocentric (the info site) remains static and unchanging in tribute to Derek, his work, efforts and genius, and that's it. The second possibility is that someone, or some committee takes up the task of updating and maintaining the newsworthyness of the Chronocentric site. The real downside of this is that unless the updates are up to the quality of Derek's work (which would be tough to match), it's not very attractive...

The compromise would be to leave the "Derek" pages alone or with a minimally invasive link to updated pages that would be in parallel with the existing pages somehow...

The problem is that short of preserving the pages in situ and leaving them alone, any update and or maintainence would take a lot of talent, time and effort. If anyone has all of those in abundance, we'd like to hear about it so we could ponder how to proceed.

As for the Forum side of things... Chronocentric/OnTheDash will never be TimeZone, Watch-U-Seek, WatchNet, WatchParadise, etc. etc. Nor do we really seek to be.

Let me speak for a moment about where we see ourselves… TimeZone and Watch-U-Seek are “the big boys on the block”, we’re the little independent guys.

Let me give you an example…
TimeZone has: 25 Brand Forums (two Rolex: Modern and Vintage), 9 General “Watch Discussion” forums, and 8 Community forums. And I’m not counting the 4 News forums and close to a dozen Archive forums…

Watch-U-Seek has 4 Main forums, 3 “Official” Brand Forums, 11 Theme Forums, 16 Brand Forums, 2 Shopping forums, and 4 Watch Deal forums.

In addition there is the Military Watch Resource, the Dive Watch forum, Equation of Time (EOT) has a forum(s), TURFer’s, WatchNet, WatchParadise, etc…I’m not being critical, just tallying the totals…

At this point in time Chronocentric/OnTheDash has 4 forums total.

See? We really are the little guys! I wouldn't recommend anyone hold their breath for us to add a Rolex, or Zenith, or Breitling, etc. forum when there are so many other places to talk about them already established. However, we might add a forum or two (or more) if we see a need that our patrons (and others) might find to be useful.

That's pretty much my thoughts, any ideas would be welcomed... But at this time I know that Jeff is still catching his breath from the push to gain control over the forums, and I have tonnes of projects that are ganging up with me. Expansion and updates will have to come as other duties permit.

Just so you all know...

-- Chuck