Forum structure discussion

[charlie]

There is no 'Help Wanted' section yet, or 'Showcase'. Nor an 'Announcements' but I always felt that got conflated with 'Showcase' and I have a secret plan (*cough* freegamer subreddit *cough*) that can be better used for announcements.

The section 'Other' should be called 'Open Source Game Community'.

There could be another section 'Other' with boards 'Off topic' and 'Non-free games'.

[qubodup]

'Help Wanted'
This forum appeard useless in the past. Hard to search, quick to become out of date. Projects should use their news system to ask for help.

'Showcase'/'Announcements'
This thread (edit: eliminated) serves the purpose. Nobody needs one thread per project or even per release.

'Other' -> 'Open Source Game Community'
Neither is descriptive/sound generic but 'other' is less word clutter.

'Off topic' and 'Non-free games'
I would prefer neither to exist. TIGForum for non-free games discussion, #freegamer and 4chan for off-topic.

[charlie]

I disagree strongly on the Showcase. If anything, the stronger argument would be that Showcase would be a useful combination of Help Wanted and Announcements and Showcase, where you can have a thread per game.

Several projects posted repeated updates in the Showcase thread e.g. Pink Pony, Word War Vi, OpenLander. I mean, you have to give somewhere for these to get feedback, you can't pack that all in to a single thread. There's 90+ threads in Game Showcase on the old forum.

I think the Help Wanted / Offered section was more helpful than you imply. There's 111 topics there, making it one of the busiest sections on the board. Don't forget that one of the purposes of the forum is to bring the Free Game Development community together and surely one of the major benefits of that is the ability to attract contributors or offer contributions?

*food for thought*

PS. I do agree with your sentiment that it needs a bit of reorganizing. I'm not suggesting the old structure was optimal. I still think 'Other' is really weak. It's too close to 'off topic'. Perhaps 'Users & Players'? *mumbles*

[qubodup]

I disagree strongly on the Showcase. If anything, the stronger argument would be that Showcase would be a useful combination of Help Wanted and Announcements and Showcase, where you can have a thread per game.

Sounds good, I turned the "Projects" Category into a forum. What do you think?

I think the Help Wanted / Offered section was more helpful than you imply. There's 111 topics there, making it one of the busiest sections on the board. Don't forget that one of the purposes of the forum is to bring the Free Game Development community together and surely one of the major benefits of that is the ability to attract contributors or offer contributions?

I created a "Collaboration" forum. My worry is that projects will feel urged to double-post help requests to this and the "Projects forums". I dislike duplicate data (IDDD).

PS. I do agree with your sentiment that it needs a bit of reorganizing. I'm not suggesting the old structure was optimal. I still think 'Other' is really weak. It's too close to 'off topic'. Perhaps 'Users & Players'? *mumbles*

I called it "Community". Sounding good?

I wonder if people would like the assets forum to have 2d, 3d, sounds and music subforums.

[charlie]

I think we are getting somewhere now. I like 'Community' - in fact, I was going to suggest that myself.

I agree that 'Collaboration' might lead to double-posting - perhaps just put 'collaboration' in the description for Projects, and announcements and news is a bit... meh. What about: Project showcase, collaboration, and updates.

I thought the 'Free Culture, Free Software' in the old forum is worthy of consideration.

[qubodup]

I agree that 'Collaboration' might lead to double-posting - perhaps just put 'collaboration' in the description for Projects, and announcements and news is a bit... meh. What about: Project showcase, collaboration, and updates.

Ok

I thought the 'Free Culture, Free Software' in the old forum is worthy of consideration.

I thought it was kind of off-topic, even though I created it and put it in the second category.

There was some discussion on IRC, let me share it with you.

Category names

02:00 < m64> well, I don't exactly understand the separation into developer and community sections - after all it is freegameDEV - so the main auditorium are the developers
02:05 < nekotaku> to me it looks like the developer section is supposed to be about development in general, whereas the community section is about individual projects and off topic
02:06 < m64> to me it is a bit too blurry

Open to suggestions. "Developer" and "Community" are short at least :)

Assets subforums?

02:08 < m64> I also guess that we could have separate forums for graphics assets and sound assets
02:09 < nekotaku> I don't think people will create threads fast enough to justify separating them
02:09 < m64> if it were made for commercial games scene also a level design forum would come in handny - I don't know how important level desing is in FOSS games
02:11 < qubodup> m64: I was thinking of giving 3d, 2d, sfx and music subforums to the assets forum
02:11 < m64> nekotaku: I just think that sound and graphics people may have virtually nothing common to discuss about
02:12 < m64> so by joining their communities we just create burden without any benefit from team work
02:13 < nekotaku> I don't think there'll be team work regardless :-P
02:13 < nekotaku> I didn't see a lot of that in the old forums at least

We need moar input on this from artist people :)

Join "Games" and "Projects" forums aka too many forums

02:14 < m64> I would also consider joining Projects and Games forum - it could make the dev's and the users more intertwined
02:15 < nekotaku> that might be a good idea
02:18 < nekotaku> I'm in pretty much against having a lot of forums. I think that having a ton of low traffic forums makes them all seem deserted, and it's a pain to check out them when something gets posted
02:18 < m64> exactly my opinion
02:18 < qubodup> m64: the games forum is for discussing projects without the developers being involved
02:19 < qubodup> m64: the projects forums are for being used by devs
02:19 < nekotaku> I don't think it matters that much whether the devs or someone else creates the thread
02:20 < m64> first, I think that developers should be involved and second, if they care, than they will be anyway
02:23 < nekotaku> yeah. if you create a thread in the games forum, the devs are quite likely to join the discussion if they frequent the community
02:24 < qubodup> A possible problem would be that they would like to use the thread for announcements later, they would want to have the first post
02:25 < m64> also I prefer creating too few forums and splitting them due to traffic to being stalled in an barelly used forum
02:25 < nekotaku> they could just create a separate announcement thread, I think
02:26 < nekotaku> it's not any different than having one thread in games and another in projects
02:26 < qubodup> not very

This might work. Discussions in general about games could still go into the "Others" thread.. I didn't see many games discussions that were not based on news announcements.

[qubodup]

I agree that 'Collaboration' might lead to double-posting - perhaps just put 'collaboration' in the description for Projects, and announcements and news is a bit... meh. What about: Project showcase, collaboration, and updates.

Ok

I realize now you might have meant to keep the collaboration forum *and* edit the projects forum description. Or was it allright to delete the collaboration forum?

[charlie]

I meant to delete... so it's ok as is.

[Sindwiller]

The forum is well-arranged imho - won't scare anyone anymore I suppose.

Now the only thing necessary is the relocation of all the project forums, mainly STK, OpenDungeons and stuff.

[kiba]

It is strange to me that legal and business is together.

[rudy85]

I post 2 same messages but no one appears , Why ?

[Julius]

It is strange to me that legal and business is together.

Makes sense to me... it's both a secondary topic... and legal issues matter the most when business is involved. After all who would sue for GPL violation if it is a hobby project?

[qubodup]

I post 2 same messages but no one appears , Why ?

The first message of a new user has to be approved. It is an anti-spam function we enabled. You can post normally from now on

PS: I think you asked about attachment file size in an email: It's 10 MB

[ghoulsblade]

I post 2 same messages but no one appears , Why ?

First post by a new user has to be confirmed by a mod before it appears, q wanted this as spam prevention, maybe we should disable it temporarily during the transition to avoid confusion ?

[qubodup]

I post 2 same messages but no one appears , Why ?

First post by a new user has to be confirmed by a mod before it appears, q wanted this as spam prevention, maybe we should disable it temporarily during the transition to avoid confusion ?

Would make sense, but unfortunately I already deleted two users trying to post spam: 1. steroids and 2. something written in Cyrillic I didn't bother to read.

[Sindwiller]

2. something written in Cyrillic I didn't bother to read.

Discrimination!!!

Nah, j/K, proceed

[Arthur]

I post 2 same messages but no one appears , Why ?

First post by a new user has to be confirmed by a mod before it appears, q wanted this as spam prevention, maybe we should disable it temporarily during the transition to avoid confusion ?

It could at least be more obvious it's a one timer. I got confused and thought it was so because you wanted to wait for the old forum lockdown before new postings here, to avoid duplications.

[qubodup]

I post 2 same messages but no one appears , Why ?

First post by a new user has to be confirmed by a mod before it appears, q wanted this as spam prevention, maybe we should disable it temporarily during the transition to avoid confusion ?

It could at least be more obvious it's a one timer. I got confused and thought it was so because you wanted to wait for the old forum lockdown before new postings here, to avoid duplications.

I'm working on a solution. Will report as soon it's finished

[rudy85]

I'm still waiting

[rudy85]

it works maybe problem is comming of my computer sorry

[quboduptest]

I added a message as seen below in the screenshot for new (0 posts) users.

[Arthur]

Looks great, though the forum theme changed again.

[qubodup]

I just took "Games" and "Other" and merged them into "General"..

[charlie]

I would like to see Projects split from the hosted projects. I can not tell if there is a new post in Projects because it always shows up as unread due to the high activity boards contained within it.

[qubodup]

I would like to see Projects split from the hosted projects. I can not tell if there is a new post in Projects because it always shows up as unread due to the high activity boards contained within it.

I turned the Project forum/category into a pure category and added a Projects forum to it.