View and vote on the article here: The Red Pen #2: The Once and Future CyberArmy
The Red Pen #2: The Once and Future CyberArmy| Category | | | Summary | | In the second installment of my occasional columns, I'd like to address the past, present, and future of CyberArmy. |
| | Body | When I joined CyberArmy way back in the day, we had very recently gotten some excellent press in some major Australian news outlet, as well as online. We had the Zebulun challenges, a bunch of forums, some brigades, and thousands of users. This seemed like the Utopian ideal we always wanted to see CyberArmy become.
However, then as now, the smooth surface betrayed the turmoil beneath. Out of the thousands of users, only a small percentage of them were involved with brigades. The rest logged in, played the challenges or cheated through them, and went away. Many abused the privileges they gained through beating challenges, and the boards were blanked on a near-weekly basis. The group dynamic was different - people had privileges based on their challenge ability, and nobody really knew what the Staff did, except that they were friends of the CinC.
Then came more turmoil, a site split, and dissension in what CA should be doing. The .com domain was lost, and .net was created to take its place. The users of each domain had very different ideas of what CA was all about. Some wanted challenges, and some thought we should do more.
The face of CyberArmy had changed since the heyday of Zeb. We made brigades more integral to the site, and we based promotions on brigade work as well as challenges. We tried to become more "hacktivist", and support causes that were important to the digital frontier. Some things ran so autonomously that they split off from CA entirely, and an umbrella group was formed to safeguard CA as a whole. We still had more users than active brigade members.
We've gone through a number of regime changes here, and each leader has applied their own philosophy to what they think CA should be. We've succeeded in some areas and failed in others, as will happen in a realistic approach. Recently, we've changed again, and we are still changing, because the needs we fill are changing. It has been recognized that CA must fill a niche in order to survive, and we are endlessly finding and refining that niche.
What has not changed, however, is that at its root, CA is a community, and the group cannot survive without users. If CA has helped you, as many members have attested, share it with your friends. If you have ideas, share them with us; that's what Feedback is for, after all. Every opinion counts, except the one that is never voiced. CA cannot be viable unless it does what the users want, and we all need to know what we all want so that usable effort is not wasted in needless work.
In some respects, therefore, CA is the same as it ever was, and I'm not sure everyone realizes that. We succeeded in the past because members participated, and we succeed now because members participate. The accolades we received were due to our own efforts, and perhaps now we simply take CA's existence for granted. We still have the capacity to make a difference, but it is up to each and every one of us to participate as we see fit in order to for CA as an organization to succeed. There really is something for everyone, but it simply may not have been made yet.
Those of us who have been here for a long time certainly have a vested interest here, but it is because of the work we have put in. However, we all had to start somewhere; I can remember when a few of our past CinCs (and the current one) first joined. As a matter of fact, I issued our current CinC a Mod warning way back in the day. As with anything else, they got where they got because they worked hard to get it.
Similarly, CA will only go as far as we are willing to take it. It will only succeed if we make it succeed. Therefore, my challenge to you is not to opine about the "good old days", but rather to consider what you, whether you are a new recruit or a long in the tooth General, can do to take CA in a new direction. Rank is simply a reflection of your level of work, not a means to an end. Simply put, we can all contribute, we all need to contribute, and we simply need to think about how best to do that.
So what are you going to do? |
|
There are no replies to this post yet.
|