Starcraft.org
From ORG Wiki
Having been created in 1998, Starcraft.org was the first ORG Network site that existed. Starcraft.org is said to be "the number one source of all things Starcraft" because it has the largest collection of StarCraft related content anywhere in the world, currently standing at 15,000 maps, mods, fanfiction, strategies, downloads, tutorials and news posts. At the moment, Starcraft.org brings in approximately 4,500 visitors every day from around the globe, processes 1000 comments each week and the total new weekly submissions often goes into the hundreds. Starcraft.org is managed by a competent team, and in its time has had approximately 25 different staff members - 15 of them all being active at the same time in 2001. See the staff page for a full list of current and past StarCraft.org staff members.
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[edit] History
Starcraft.org was formed seven years ago when a four of the most prominent StarCraft sites merged together just before the release of StarCraft to create the largest StarCraft site in existence. Whatever you wanted to find about StarCraft - whether it was news, strategies, maps, mods, mp3s, fanfiction, utilities, patches, anything - it could be found on Starcraft.org. One of the primary reasons why Starcraft.org is able to be of such a significant size (15,000 accepted submissions as of April 2006) is because it is community-content-driven. This amazing feature which is unique to Starcraft.org has shaped a lot of the history of Starcraft.org in the past, especially after 2005 when the Starcraft.org community was given a voice and thus a medium in which they could interact, which lead them to see Starcraft.org as not just a content-driven site, but as forum.
[edit] Humble beginnings
The original owner and webmaster of Starcraft.org was Mutant, who owned the domain during the 1998-2001 period. At some point during that time period, the second webmaster Hone took over from Mutant, directing the site until about the year 2000. Under his leadership, Indoflaven created Starcraft.org's most famous layout which came online in the year 2000. Besides his amazing graphical talents which have earned him a job at Blizzard Entertainment, Indoflaven also competently did the programming behind Starcraft.org's layout as well. Also during the year 2000, Gibb joined the Starcraft.org staff and brought his real-life best friend Mystikal onto the Starcraft.org team. Little did they know, these two people would bring about some of the greatest milestones in Starcraft.org history.
[edit] Livin' large
Ownership over Starcraft.org and the ORG Network was transferred to Edgewize in 2001. Also a change in leadership happened here at this time, unrelated to the ownership change, with Gibb taking over as webmaster. Many things occured in 2001. Mystikal almost entirely recoded the site, and with him and Gibb being the primary forces of activity behind the site, Starcraft.org reached its peak of 800,000 visitors per month - a huge achievement by any standard. Also during this year, the combined forum effort of the Legacy Network and ORG Network, BlizzForums, opened its doors. From its peak, activity at Starcraft.org slowed down, partly caused by the fact that the lead forum administrator, Mystikal had to focus more on the forums.
[edit] The not-so-great depression
Over the next two years, Starcraft.org slowed down and reached an archive state, primarily only existing to respect the thousands of people who had contributed to the site and made it what it was. The actual site was only updated once every few months, and due to the fact that Starcraft.org's system had been partially recoded so many times by different people, with features being added and removed a huge number of times over Starcraft.org's life, the scripts had been left with bugs that were a sure sign of a site that was no longer cared for. In fact, the strategies section simply did not work, and the fact that the search feature for the map database containing 5,000 maps did not function meant that essentially the map database was useless because no one could find anything. Besides this, links were broken, some of the sections that existed (such as the walkthroughs and map reviews sections) did not have any links into them from the outside, and some of the content had become outdated due to the progress of patch upgrades and of the changes in the outside community. However, all of these problems combined did not compare to the security flaws that existed on Starcraft.org.
First of all, a flaw in the scripts enabled people to login as administrators without even knowing the password. An even bigger mistake, if you went to a particular page on Starcraft.org, the username and password to access Starcraft.org's FTP and database were displayed for everyone to see. By 2003, Starcraft.org had so many problems and was so inactive that it could not keep any kind of regular visitor base. What's more is, Starcraft.org exhibited some of the most obvious security flaws a website could have, and the truth was, it was just a sitting duck, waiting to be killed by the least experienced of all hackers.
[edit] The revival
At the end of 2003, BSTRhino applied to work as a programmer for Starcraft.org simply so that he would have a use for his programming skills. As a test for his programming ability, Gibb set him the task of fixing the unusable Starcraft.org tactics database. Within the same week, the strategies database returned for the first time in two years, and following that, all of the problems that had plagued the site for two years were eliminated over the next few months. For the most part, instead of fixing the original scripts, BSTRhino recoded the various sections from scratch, thus ensuring that all security flaws were eliminated. The maps database returned with a fully functional search feature. Links were fixed, pages were updated, and the thousands of strategies and maps that had been submitted over the past couple of years were all approved in one single go.
After the existing parts of the sites were fixed, BSTRhino moved on to improve the site, creating an automated system for the fanfiction, customs and feedback sections. The news section was recoded so that people could respond to news posts once again. The Starcraft.org sidebar got a new look, with a slightly different font, and a listing of each of the now-automated sections consisting of a newest list and a currently popular list. Also, the Starcraft.org poll, which had existed in the past, was entirely recoded and brought back online, and attracted thousands of votes and over 200 comments each week. By the time his work was finished, Starcraft.org was receiving 1,000 more visitors per day than it had before BSTRhino had started working on the website - approximately a 33% increase in visitors.
[edit] The next generation
After seeing how BSTRhino had brought the site back to life, Gibb and Mystikal felt inspired to pursue a new design to Starcraft.org. As the year went on, Gibb worked on securing a new layout, reviewing several layout attempts by some of WarBoards.org's most talented graphic designers. Halfway through 2004, Mystikal began to code the most powerful Starcraft.org content management system yet: Ixius 2. Ixius 2 was based on the idea that all of the sections on Starcraft.org shared common features. They all were submissions of some kind, some of them had files and screenshots that needed to be managed, and it would be useful if all of them could be commented on or rated. Since each section had been coded separately, some of the sections had more features than others. For example, strategies and news posts could be commented on but not fanfiction. However, fanfiction could be rated whereas strategies could not. The premise of Ixius 2 was to program these features once and have them work throughout the site.
[edit] Disaster strikes
The inevitable disaster struck over Christmas 2004 when the security flaws that had been long present in the existing Starcraft.org system were finally exploited. An autonomous worm (a special type of computer virus) that identified itself as a variant of the sanity worm broke into Starcraft.org's FTP and erased all the HTML and scripts from the site, leaving the site defaced with the message "This site has been defaced!" However, in the midst of what should have destroyed the site entirely, Starcraft.org had been blessed with an incredible amount of luck.
Although the damage the worm did to the scripts and HTML files was irrepairable, the worm left the images, maps, mods, downloads and all other files intact. Due to the fact that Gibb and Mystikal had very luckily been inspired to work on creating new version of Starcraft.org, all that had to be done to bring Starcraft.org back online was to switch to the Ixius 2 version of Starcraft.org, which had already been developed to the point where it was useable. Within days, Starcraft.org rose from the ashes, with a new layout and a new content management system. Unknowingly, BSTRhino started a chain of events that ultimately saved Starcraft.org from certain destruction.
[edit] Community building
The year 2005 heralded great change for Starcraft.org. Mystikal took over from Edgewize as the owner of Starcraft.org, and Mystikal's hosting company, Darkstar LLC now hosts Starcraft.org on one of its servers, greatly reducing the server downtimes that had been experienced on Starcraft.org's previous host ReconGamer. With the advent of Ixius 2, all the submissions in every part of the site could be reviewed by visitors, and soon enough, all parts of Starcraft.org were buzzing with more community activity than ever. Even though this made Starcraft.org more popular than it had been in years, it also created a problem that Starcraft.org had never happened in the history of Starcraft.org.
As time passed, visitors unintentionally began to see Starcraft.org as more of a forum. This became more obvious as people began to use the word threads to describe the user submissions, and people started to post forum topics and polls in the various sections. Members began to post their comments with signatures, and requests were made to include forum-like features into the system, such as avatars and user profiles. Along with the movement towards the forum mindset, all of the problems faced by forums surfaced themselves. There was flaming, spamming, trolling, off-topic discussion, requests from people to become moderators, as well as a certain degree of patriotism towards the site that formed because of the strong community-feel of Starcraft.org. However, Starcraft.org was not a forum, members were using Starcraft.org for a purpose outside of its scope. Worst of all, it did not have the staff nor the technology to support such a move. With primarily only BSTRhino running the site at the time, it was simply not possible for all the parts of the site to be running smoothly if BSTRhino was going to be the single moderator for the thousands of people that visited the site every day. Not only that, it was seen as unnecessary to have moderators at Starcraft.org because WarBoards.org was Starcraft.org's forum, and so all of the user's needs for forums should have been satisfied on WarBoards.org. In the process, the members would get profiles, signatures, avatars and all the other forum features that they had been requesting, they would get the proper amount of moderation and Starcraft.org would be able to focus on what it was designed for. Unfortunately, getting the core members to move to WarBoards.org was practically impossible.
As of Sep 25, 2006, K'tan became part of the StarCraft.org staff, his main role being to approve Fan Art and Fan Fictions as well as cut out any flaming that may occur and change polls as frequently as he saw fit. Further staff were to be hired, with a review process starting in January 2007. Once the permissions system was re-worked, the new staff would be introduced to the public. They would be subdivided into particular roles, for example, each section would have a moderator or, more often, as small team, while news poster were also hired. All staff would become involved in the role of moderating comments and changing polls, giving K'tan time to get down and actually write some fan fiction, for a change.
The members who had not yet been touched by the strong sense of community at Starcraft.org moved easily and without complaints. However, the ones who had made strong bonds with the other Starcraft.org members simply refused to move, primarily because of the fact that all they wanted was to talk to each other, and even though a large proportion of WarBoards.org visitors found the site through Starcraft.org, WarBoards.org had an existing memberbase that had a different focus in life from the Starcraft.org regulars. This caused a conflict between the Staff and a group of members calling themselves the Veterans(led by Protogod, Ihatezerg, and GriffonHeart, LumosaBrood, SciFifreak90, among others) who eventually formed BSCorg. This lead many of the Starcraft.org regulars to create their own "unofficial official Starcraft.org forums." There are a number of these, the most popular two are Shakuras and bscorg.
Overall however, the move to be able to involve the community more in Starcraft.org has been favourable, although sometimes it is unclear whether Starcraft.org is community-content-driven or just community-driven. Even though Starcraft.org has changed so much to when it was first created, one thing is for sure. Starcraft.org is and will always continue to be the number one source for all things Starcraft.
[edit] Trivia
- Due to tradition, officially, there is no capital C in the name Starcraft.org, even though the word StarCraft is officially spelled with a capital C.
- Starcraft.org's map database is officially recognised by Blizzard as the Blizzard Authorised Map Database.
- In 1999, Starcraft.org asked on its front page for people to apply to be on staff. Over 300 people lodged an application.
- In the year 2000, Mutant ran a news feature on Starcraft.org called StarCraft Ghost sites. Interestingly, this name had nothing to do with the game StarCraft: Ghost, which had not been announced.
- Besides the Front Page, the most popular page of StarCraft.org is the Patch Downloads page, followed by the Maps Database.
- Three out of the four webmasters of Starcraft.org have come from New Zealand. Those are Mutant, Hone and BSTRhino.
- Two of the Starcraft.org staff members, pixels and hammocksleeper, were hired on Friday the 13th after they were chosen to replace GriffonHeart as the newest moderators.
- No moderators have ever been 'fired' from Starcraft.org, including GriffonHeart (after he came into conflict with the other Staff).
