So let me preface this by saying, I like the idea. A NotLU/Robotic Boogaloo-like community update but for maps, sounds exactly like what we need for a lot of reasons, however from the discussion in the Steam chat, there are some ideas that I personally feel we should think very carefully about before jumping in.
Content
So the first point I'd like to bring up is what we are putting into this community map update. An opinion shared by a few others and myself is that we should make it consist entirely or mostly of totally new maps. And some others would prefer that it consist of quality maps from recent or semi-recent times, that perhaps didn't get the recognition they deserved. I think that pulling out all of our older maps and trying to thrust them back into the limelight, isn't a good idea, at least in comparison to all new maps. Like taking an old tired horse to a horse show, it may have been great in its heyday, but most of the people attending didn't come to see it, they came to see the strong and promising stallion that is in its prime or the rookie underdog that's a complete mystery. From an outside perspective, you come across this map update and you look at the dates these maps were last updated, you wonder "Wait, where are all the maps from this year?" Trotting out all the golden oldies might be a nice sentiment, to finally see your favourite map that played really well but never rose to prominence get some recognition, but it just seems rather desperate on our part, when we know we can produce top quality maps, to be pushing forward something old. Someone said why not both, I'll address this in the following section.
Time
A major sticking point in the discussion was the timeframe, some people wanted to do it right here, right now, some wanted to wait for winter, and some wanted to wait for summer next year. I'm putting my eggs in the Summer 2014 basket, mainly due to time constraints. Trying to get it out by the tail end of this summer would mean we have about 3~4 months to complete, while it's quite possible for some quality maps to be finished in that time, it worries me that we could produce enough of those to warrant a community update page. What I feel this idea is about, at its heart, is showing that TF2M as a whole, can produce a substantial amount of fun and balanced maps, surely in order to make sure we have the best chances of showing that, we should give ourselves time to do so comfortably, without any kind of rush, and 3~4 months would definitely produce a rush. So why not Winter 2013, my worries about rushing to finish and producing enough content is lessened, but not gone, from now until winter seems borderline for both of those factors, but two other problems arise around this time: Night of the Living Update and Australian Christmas. From November through to Decemeber is when the item-making community is at its busiest, they have their own community update one month, where more than a fair share of their items are accepted into the game from, and then another boom of items going into the game another month. Last year TF2M tagged along with NotLU 2 and included something like eight Hallow'een themed maps, and we were totally dwarfed by everything else. Quite simply, trying to do this during winter means we run the risk of being squished between the two giants of item-making, and making all our effort worthless because the TF2 community is busy fawning over their skull hat that has other smaller skulls floating around it.
Now going back to what was said in the previous section, why not both? Again, time constraints. Basically copy all of what I said in the above paragraph, and then trying to produce a gaggle of new, quality maps after that, the strain on time, effort and willpower would cripple our efforts and, I feel, make the second part inevitably fail. This is not the kind of thing we want to rush, we'd need to rush now to get this old map community update out and then rush again to output all of those new maps for part 2.
Themes
This is quite a simple one, some people are asking "Well what's the theme of this community update?" and so far we have a resounding shrug for an answer, well I ask "Do we need a theme?" LeSwordfish mentioned having a load of exoticly themed maps and suggested some maps for them, including Angkor. Nothing personal against Angkor (Or LeSwordfish), but it's not great, even LeSwordfish agreed with me, but when I asked why we'd include it, he basically said "Because it looks nice and fits the theme." The problem with a set theme of maps is that it sets a limit on what we can do, and as in the case above, means we may need to sacrifice quality maps for fitting maps. Most mappers here learn that gameplay comes before detailing, it's why we use dev textures so much, I don't think we should abandon that principle, and furthermore, I don't think we should limit the possibilities of what we can produce. Actually here's a theme suggestion, "Good Maps"
Exposure
I'd like to make a quick note that all of this is for nought if we don't get it out there, and I'm sure we can all agree that for this to work, it can't just be something that happens on TF2Maps.net. This is something we need to spread as far and as wide as we can: contact server admins, TF2 blogs, podcasts, forums, even Valve themselves. Ask the server admins if they would like to host some custom maps we produce, see if the blogs would link to the update, have someone (Probably theharribokid) go on podcasts (Probably KritzKast) to talk about it, make a Facepunch thread and tell Valve that we'd really, really, really like to talk about these wonderful maps of ours.
Finally, good job for reading all of that, and remember, we should discuss this as fully as possible before we act: This is not the kind of thing we want to rush.
This is not the kind of thing we want to rush.