Dear Escapists, please help

[BryceN]

Hey, I was just assigned to write an essay on a community and how it has changed dramatically. The definition of community with this assignment is very broad. I am looking for some input on changes that have come to the Escapist to see if there is enough source material and changes happening around here to do a whole essay on. So, what's happened around here that's new? Any significant changes in our online community worth gambling my English grade on? (i.e. publisher's club, new video series and columns, etc).

Your thoughts, Ready, set, go!

 

[Sneaky-Pie]

The Many Faces of Sneaky-Pie: A Sparkling Example of Humanity

I think you should go with that.

 

[Griphphin]

The escapist community might be hard as changes aren't really well-documented on a forum. Go with something like how a community changed during a dramatic event (though it's possibly that you could count ZP's rise of popularity as that. I came with that crowd, so I don't really know myself).
-European cities during the black plague.
-The different parts of New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina and how this was influenced by outside help, where they are now, how the future looks, etc.
-How the German people changed from pre-WW1 to post-WW2. How they felt about the Treaty of Versailles, how they saw Hitler during his rise to power, how they reacted to the oppression and eventual attempted genocide of an entire race of people, how that changed them today, etc. Maybe too large-scale, but it would definitely make for a good read.
One thing that would make this a big iffy is if your teacher wants sources/citations. That will be much harder to glean (especially if we're talking scholarly sources) for this than with something as well-documented as a disaster.
It sounds like a fun idea, but your teacher would probably want something more relevant. Not to mention, you've got more leeway with a topic like this (you'll have to pull off a pretty damn good paper to justify using something so specific depending on how harshly your teacher grades your papers).

 

[2fish]

You can talk about how all internet communities start out small and for a niche group. However over time some leaders rise, these people are never called leaders or call orders, but people follow their posts and their ideas. So when these people leave or are banned (die or assassinated) it changes the site as new people are chosen for leadership roles.

Over time the Escapist will grow from a niche to many topics such as the Politics forum. You can even see different clans in the same thread. For every forum there are people who concentrate their time in mainly one thread. While we are all members of the same website we all belong to our own "countries".

The people who come to the website for RP games want a different experience than me who comes for the reviews and the off topic forum.

Your community has the influence of many different cultures in it, and we all have agreed on a middle ground (even though the mod's hammer does help with that). In time I can only assume this site will further expand into the forums and people will polarize to the spots they want to be in.

You also know there is a class system here, some people see those with the most posts as the upper class and those with few posts have to prove themselves to get out of the new person (lower) class. This mostly has to do with trolls and dumb posts/questions but it is still there. You know there are people who post that you recognize and people that have over 500 posts that you have never heard of before.

I am sure you can make a big essay on this, just write out what you would want if you wrote a paper on your home country changing (immigrant= ZP getting big) and then apply those ideas to the escapist.

Use a nation as your example of a community.

Germany, America or something.

Borers are a false concept, the internet is the best to use. As I usually support your ideas when I find you in threads, your words have shocked and hurt me.

 

[Tanis]

I did a paper recently, but not on the online part.

 

[The Ambrosian]

Well before ZP became a big-hitter and our site became flooded with one-hit-commenters we used to be small, quiet, and-in the main-free. MaxTheReaper and NMS were examples of that.

The shit hit the fan and both got banned, and a bit of what made the Escapist a great place was lost. Other than the influx of people, theres not been much change, really.

I wish I was around for those days...
I was around for Max though, how did he get banned?
I went away for a while came back and he'd gone...

 

[2fish]

You can talk about how all internet communities start out small and for a niche group. However over time some leaders rise, these people are never called leaders or call orders, but people follow their posts and their ideas. So when these people leave or are banned (die or assassinated) it changes the site as new people are chosen for leadership roles.

Over time the Escapist will grow from a niche to many topics such as the Politics forum. You can even see different clans in the same thread. For every forum there are people who concentrate their time in mainly one thread. While we are all members of the same website we all belong to our own "countries".

The people who come to the website for RP games want a different experience than me who comes for the reviews and the off topic forum.

Your community has the influence of many different cultures in it, and we all have agreed on a middle ground (even though the mod's hammer does help with that). In time I can only assume this site will further expand into the forums and people will polarize to the spots they want to be in.

You also know there is a class system here, some people see those with the most posts as the upper class and those with few posts have to prove themselves to get out of the new person (lower) class. This mostly has to do with trolls and dumb posts/questions but it is still there. You know there are people who post that you recognize and people that have over 500 posts that you have never heard of before.

I am sure you can make a big essay on this, just write out what you would want if you wrote a paper on your home country changing (immigrant= ZP getting big) and then apply those ideas to the escapist.

Use a nation as your example of a community.

Germany, America or something.

Borers are a false concept, the internet is the best to use. As I usually support your ideas when I find you in threads, your words have shocked and hurt me.

Borers?

Yes, the letter D is sooo last month. *runs off to his crying pillow*