This is a brainstorm. Everything is read (at least by me…) and once the dust settles, we’ll make some concrete plans. Meanwhile, keep 'em coming!
How about:
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Allowing non-java-programmers to the website. My audio designer couldn’t get access due to having minor programming knowledge (the Captcha). I still think he’s a valuable asset to me, and could perhaps be to others as well. I suspect some graphical people might also come in handy for many of us without artistic skills in that area…
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Making the website become more alive with an instant messaging service like used on gamejolt.com? Maybe someone could write an front-end to the JGO irc channel (Which I’m the only one lurking in at the moment :O)
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Scarzzurs
This is a bit of a weak suggestion, but since you insist…
Thinking about how to up the traffic in the Showcase section. We’ve already got a separate “Best of Showcase” section (i.e., Featured Games). Maybe we could also have the opposite, a “Not Ready for Showcase” section. Any Showcase thread that’s first post doesn’t include screenshots and a link to working (preferably playable) code (Applet or JNLP could be required) would get moved to this section until it meets those criteria. (Maybe there could be a strict template for Showcase posts: Title, Author, Development status, Description, Screenshots, Links, etc.)
I don’t think this applies to many posts in practice, but it would give people a bit of incentive to make their Showcase submissions as player-friendly as possible.
Simon
I second that, don’t think it’s weak at all. Showcase posts should have at least title, description, screenshots and link. It’s just a close post for me if I don’t see images first most of the time.
Kev
JGO has an IRC channel O_O I didn’t even know such a thing existed. Part of the problem with that though is JGO has a lot of people in a lot of different time zones, that may be why your the only one on. Or nobody uses it…
Although I do agree that the focus should be on java and on gaming.
However, as someone else pointed out.
Perhaps we could have a secondary (even possibly a restricted membership) for “artists” or “musicians”
Where they can have a different set of “tests” or “captcha” and aren’t allowed to post a few specific forums but have their own hang out. A specific test that requires photoshop/gimp for artists and some piece of knowledge specific question for musicians, as we could definitely use some artists that hang out here on occasion.
Erm, is JGO really so great that there are artists and musicians queuing up to be secondary members?
I really do not know, but I don’t feel it is something we shouldn’t exclude pre-maturely. As Scarzzurs just mentioned he had an audio designer friend who wanted to join but couldn’t pass the programming captcha test.
I’ll admit if you have an artist friend, you could always just give him the answer, but you never know if there are people who might come here and then leave because they are scared away from that. I am positive there are a few artists out there who try to avoid the big areas so that they can find places to get experience and whatnot.
You never know until you try.
If a musician really wants to put their stuff online, they will join Sound Cloud, not a Java Gaming community. Artists have Deviant Art. There are also multiple alternatives to those, far more art and audio dedicated.
Doing it right, would require lots of work, and I think ‘sound and art for Java games’ is just too big of a niche to justify that.
Well AFAIK, JGO members usually hang out in the #lwjgl channel on FreeNode 
I would still like to see cas have his repository of code listed on the resources page.
Along with mine: https://github.com/AllBinary/AllBinary-Platform
These days I really dont have the time to spend on grand games (or start said grand games 
) so I really enjoy the Java4k competition when it comes around. And it seems I am not alone, every year we get significant number of entries.
Whist there has been many different competitions through out the years that have attempted to gain the popularity of the Java4k comp, none really took off.
Perhaps we can take a page from the ludum dare competition and so something similar for the JGO community. i.e. short period of time to produce something. But to lower the barrier of entry, perhaps instead of a full game (although that will not stopped) someone (or a team) will make an frame work and “working” very basic game for the competition which the competitors can plug in their own components into.
Benefits I can think of:
-The framework / game is designed such that it is possible to replace components at a higher and higher level of abstraction giving the competitors varying levels of scope and thus varying levels difficulty and time comittment.
-Potential for “Mash Up” games were components for various competitors are plugged into the frame work to produce different “games”
-Able to form teams as individuals have a clear component interface to implement so members need not be in the same timezone.
-Competitors will have instant feed back on game play when they are developing their component when they plug in the component into the game framework.
Detriments:
-Large upfront effort for the competition organisers to create the game framework.
-Unclear how to judge competitors… tiers based on level of abstraction impelmented?
Hmmm not sure whether it would be fesiable…
It’s awesome. I’m sure Cas will enjoy it too
Looking great, hehe 8)
Cas 
Not bad
seriously pretty great for 3 hrs work!
A suggestion: instead of applying a semi-transparant mask to the featured games pics, perhaps use slightly smaller pics but when you mouse over them the large pic is shown. So you still get the effect of not overly focusing the user on the pics rather than the rest of the content but still allowing the page to look “vibrant”.
Growing/shrinking thumbnails will probably make the webpage act pretty chaotic.
I just reduced the transparancy a fair bit, and removed the black caption. Better?
yeah, personally i like it better, but don’t base your design on just my opinions
I agree with moogie it looks better like that, does anyone else think it looks a bit odd that the header area is wider then the rest of the page… or is that just me?
EDIT: Never mind I just realized that the header area scales to the width of your browser… my bad :-X
Geez i felt bad for taking so long to reply when i first saw the first page.
the site needs strippers and blackjack