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Franz Joseph Haydn

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Year 14

About Franz Joseph Haydn

  • Birthday 08/06/1995

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Philadelphia, PA
  • Interests
    I am a Austrian-American carpenter from Philly. Hit me up.

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  1. I dunno, FC Bayern is pretty electric to watch.
  2. You know, if Christian Faber's teasers actually mean anything, we may see the site come back. But they still need to do the things I outlined in my previous post.
  3. Sooo Christian Faber might be up to something

  4. I feel the same way. It's just weird, I don't like it!
  5. I'm kind of a big deal

  6. You're gonna carry that weight.

  7. I've gone into this in short form before, and given my ideas in other topics, but seeing as this will likely be my last post on this site, I think it's fair that I give my perspective on this issue once and for all. BZPower is a forum website, that doubles as a news site for the Bionicle and Lego fandom. They have competitors, Eurobricks being the primary one. BZPower offers many unique services that other sites don't have, the primary of which I've noticed being the paid for blogs section and the premier membership that comes with that. You put down a little bit of money and then you get the ability to make a blog. As far as forums go that's pretty dang nifty. The more unique features a website has, the more it diversifies it's profile of interest, which then translates directly into staying power within the culture of the internet, stretching itself out over time and breaking out of the zeitgeist of it's inception. Unique features bring people back and allow them to have a sense of, well in a way "Replay-ability" to the website. In a world of social media that is restricted to small posts or comments, diversifying your POI (Profile of Interest) is essential to your survival. BZP is an old platform, in 2022 BZPower will be 20 years old. That's pretty extraordinary for a forum website, the most of which fall to the wayside in far fewer years. Most forums I've been on don't have such a POI that they can withstand the test of time, or escape the great filter that is the Zeitgeist of the early 2000's internet. Most all other forums are doomed to a loss of interest because they are just that, forums. They don't offer anything for the main contributors, the members, to engage in. They have to rely upon user-created content and that is a well that is as deep as it's member base is. With BZP, the staff gave and do continue to give the member base things that they can engage in, instead of relying solely on that well of user generated content. In that, the member base is given time to generate new ideas, make new contributions and add on to what the staff give us to engage in. In order to fully understand the position of BZPower in the context of the modern internet, we need to look at it's competitors and analyze their POIs. Let's look at two in particular, Reddit and Eurobricks. Reddit is less of a forum and more of an aggregate service, but in the sense of the Lego world, Reddit serves a great purpose. Look at the internet and it's general userbase like a finite resource. When one site comes along and does something better than another, it takes away attention from another website. Reddit's Lego subs are incredibly active, and with a quick glance it's hard to find posts more than 1 day old, and you have to search for them. So the Lego fanbase is there, but because of the way that Reddit is built, with a sleek, fast interface and a luxuriance of contributions across all sorts of other subreddits, it's hard for them to lose userbase. Their POI is vast in that the platform they have built is incredibly diverse in it's content. Now let's look at Eurobricks, arguably BZPower's most prominent competitor and one more on par with what BZPower is as a site. Scant do I find a post without a recent reply. From what I can glean, while Eurobricks doesn't have a whole lot of unique features to add to their POI, they do have a lot of stringent content guidelines and are aimed at a much more mature audience. The people I see participating on Eurobricks are people who seriously consider Lego to be their primary hobby, and they juggle their offline lives with participating in that hobby. There is a level of commitment there, not to mention their scope. They look to and appeal to people the world over. While BZP has it's fair share of international members, I've yet to see them include that in their main scope. It's more of a bonus, instead of a primary goal, to bring in members from other countries and make them feel 100% welcome within the community. There is also the BZP layout. The forums are slow, and i understand that from a server standpoint this isn't something that can be fixed without much more money coming in, but I feel like the loading times haven't changed since 2008 when I joined. In fact, I feel like they're slower than they have been before. As far as security is concerned, I can't speak for certain. I can however, say that the front page of BZPower hasn't been changed in the ten years I've been here. From my understanding, that front page has been the same for nearly all of BZP's existence. At this point in time, there's no way the software that front page is working on is secure in any way, shape or form. This is accentuated with what we've learned in public about how easy things are to breach. That front page is like a star-gate into the site's infrastructure. This is another limit on the site's longevity. I do believe that BZP has a core userbase of enthusiasts for Lego that may keep the site limping along, but without increased diversification, adding features, upping the security so that attacks are less likely to happen, and making it so that the user base has more content to work off so that a well doesn't become a dearth, BZP's time on the internet is limited. Add onto that more stringent content policies that aim to increase the quality of content, and BZP could be revitalized still. Now let me tell you why I think these things will never happen. I might as well get all my thoughts out here correct? I have a job, I have a wife and dog and apartment. Next year my sister is moving in with me to go to college and I've offered to pay for her to go. I own two cars that I maintain myself. I clean, cook and contribute to the household in many ways. I don't have the time to spend on Reddit, BZP, Eurobricks or even Facebook. A lot of the staff have even more hectic lives than I do. This would all have to come from their downtime, the time they use to relax and enjoy life. I can imagine that the staff of BZPower really do not genuinely want to give up their free time, however little or much they have. I believe that without a full rehash of the site, gutting it and bringing it back, sinking hours into coding and hundreds into advertising, not to mention all that would have to be done to rebuild the userbase, that yes BZPower is dying. The platform of forums is dying. The internet Zeitgeist has moved on from large forums to social media and aggregate sites. Enthusiasts seek out enthusiasts and that unfortunately is Eurobricks, not BZPower. Eventually BZPower will draw it's final breath. When that will be, I can't say, but without a lot of serious effort, it's going to happen. This has been probably my longest non-story post on this site. It serves as an omen, seeing as it's most likely my last. If this site is to become what it once was, it needs a lot of work. I think it can be done but not without willing staff. See you space cowboy.
  8. This is your brain on Bandit

  9. So, Majhost just imploded then? I mean, I was wondering. Photobucket always was shady.
  10. To put it simply, yes it is. To put it more complex, it is a dying platform as all forums are, but this is also one of the strongest fanbases, that uses forums, out there. I think it'll be many many years before the site dies off in it's entirety. We've still got life, new members, and what have you, but I think we could use a restructuring to make it more mainly lego themed, and make BIONICLE a sidebar.
  11. we can both reject becoming 20 together Turning 21, can legally buy alcohol in the state of New Jersey....such a weird thing to know that there won't be anything to wait for.
  12. Got your mother in a while, She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl

  13. Kopaka G1- Wise, cool, collected. He was one of the reasons I got into Bionicle in the first place. Tahu- Honestly, I loved his character as being a leader and while fireheaded still got done what needed to be done Lhikan- Mentor-like ability, one of the more able and epic characters Vakama- Creative Gali- Kind, Compassionate, caring There are a lot others but it's way past my bedtime and I need rest xD
  14. I have to say that they probably would have done better if they weren't ending, that being said, the Stars were fairly good sets. We got new pieces, a good send off story and six new sets to accompany that. No matter what they would have done it would have been sad, in my opinion.
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