I vote other.

I think we already have enough HL related forums.

I think that another would just open up an avenue for more off topic discussions. It would take a dedicated admin to keep in not. Right now, we don't even have an admin to tidy the tutorials of oversized pics and content errors, why would one want to take on another forum?

IMO, the maps forum could be the indepth discussion place. Say, you see a Doom III map thats exciting you. Post it, and open a discussion about it there. Those forums are already pretty much self policed and would prolly not degrade to much by the non-HL related content.

I vote "other" because I do not want more HL related stuff. I want "other games" related stuff.

I'm dead serious. We must expand beyond HL or perish. I was gone 3 full days. It took me less than 5 minutes to read everything posted in my absence.

Stop denying it folks and think on a solution.

Perhaps it is, but new sites or more specifically, newer sites than Snarkpit have more action now than we do.

This site has more to offer, yet has far less action than even before the release of HL2.

Perhaps I am only wishing upon a star, but dammit I want the interactivity of early HL1 and the only way I foresee such is to broaden our horizons beyond HL2.

If you take into consideration that so far the source engine has not helped.

At one time we were literally at the top of the s**theap. The only difference between then and now is the source engine.

I was here in 2001. Reno and Andrew, two of our most prestigious level designers, were not all that great then. This site helped them to achieve.

My point is, no new person arriving today is any further behind, than they were when they arrived. The ONLY difference between then and now is our dependency on source.

We have two options:
1) Invest ourselves whole heartedly into source and make it more appealing.
2) Abandon source and invest out time into an engine that will deliver us back to our peak.

We have the collective experience unrivaled by all but a few editing sites. Our only problem is a serious lack of initiative. Saying you have no time, will only work for so long then you must concede the fact that you really don't want to continue.

The choice is ours. Make a wise one.

The question's thats bugging me most are:

Are we so focused on the past, that its killing our future?
or
Are we so focused on perfection that we are scaring off our future?

Snarkpit by and large has the highest standards of any editing site I have been to, with regards to HL. Is that causing our grief or not?

I am of the mind that this is not so, but would be open to any discussion that will assist us in a future.

The reason I think its not so is simple. As far as other games go, Snarkpit is but a shadow when compared to the releases for games like Quake and Unreal. Those two games alone have far superior maps and the total releases alone are staggering. Yeah, we have maps that rival them but they are much farther apart and much, much less totals.

The point is, those sites have really high member activity, and really high quality so I cannot imagine our standards are to high.

That said, then where lies the problem?