Please read: A personal appeal from shadowmaster

[Midnight_Carnival]

Read his appeal.

Ok, I had an idea for a forum game which I never got round to making, funny thing was it might have been ok...

It was called "Where's Konrad", inspired by those Waldo thingies. people made huge images out of Wesnoth in which you had to help Delfador find Konrad and a whole lot of other things to make a spell that teleports him out. There would be a sort of friendly competion beetween people to make the best ones, as well as if being fun to look for the aledged prince... you could make some quite funny images if you were clever.

Never really got anywhere becasue I ran out of time and upgraded to 1.8, hence I saw that many of the sprites I used were outdated.

For myself I don't have any time for forum games these days.

[Dixie]

I think Gambit's sugestion makes sense. And event though I don't mind one way or another: 70 pages, really? I'd have thought that something like 10-20 would have been faaar enough. But it's your call.

[ancestral]

I don't care what happens to it, as far as if it gets moved, etc.

When I go to the forums, I never go to the main board. I always go to "View new posts" or "View your posts" and have those bookmarked, anyway.

[artisticdude]

I knew it would be a good idea to get some input on this.

So some things people have mentioned so far:
1. Some people do enjoy forum games. Also "forum game" is a broad category and some may be more fun for certain individuals than others.
2. Forum games clog the search feature (I didn't think of this angle, but yes it's true. Almost all the hits for the word "lock" for example are in R2D).
3. We don't want people to register just to use forum games. However there have been legitimate uses of the off topic section by non community members in the past. Such as spreading awareness of other OSS projects.
4. Forum games are not worth keeping around.

I think the solution is pretty easy. Forum games get their own subsection. It could have a decently long autoprune so that we're only keeping the most popular 70 page games. It won't be indexed for searching, and it won't get an atom feed. Additionally maybe it should be invisible to guests and you can't post in it until you get a certain post count elsewhere. What do you guys think?

I like this solution. Disabling post count for that section, like Thrawn suggested, would also help cut down on the noise.

Make it a child board of Off-Topic, so it's not too prominent on the main page.

Ditto.

[dipseydoodle]

I too find it kind of unnecessary. I myself love forum games but, If you want to make or join a forum game you should join a forum that is fitting.

[Gambit]

I think Gambit's sugestion makes sense. And event though I don't mind one way or another: 70 pages, really? I'd have thought that something like 10-20 would have been faaar enough. But it's your call.

That was an exaggerated joke about how massive some of these forum games get.

[bigkahuna]

R2D is 75 pages atm...

Forum games get their own subsection. It could have a decently long autoprune so that we're only keeping the most popular 70 page games. It won't be indexed for searching, and it won't get an atom feed. Additionally maybe it should be invisible to guests and you can't post in it until you get a certain post count elsewhere. What do you guys think?

Perfect solution. I think that this would be the best way to cut down on the "outside influences", too.

[hhyloc]

Those forum game thread really clutter up my search result (and many reasons other people have posted here), so I agree.

[Kenpachi]

you can't post in it until you get a certain post count elsewhere.

I don't even know if this is possible with forum fu, but would having a "must be registered for more than XX days to post in this section" discourage people from joining, and then spamming a heap of threads to build up enough post count?

[Tonepoet]

Wait, what? Why would somebody advertise forum games on the Wesnoth forums, when they could just as easily start their own native version of the thread in place of the advertisement? I mean I suppose I could understand that forum games might be considered spam in some places but I can think of no circumstances where the advertisement wouldn't be even worse. Were they using ours as an example or something or is it really as weird as it sounds?

Anyway I've suggested a subsection in one of the prior blog installments[/url] so I can't say I think it's not a good idea. If we actually end up going through with the idea, I think it might be best if we make it a hidden section that only logged in users had the permissions to view. My reasons are threefold:

1. If it's a subsection, then they have to turn off the searching of all subsections in order to filter the results out of other Off Topic results. On the other hand, if it gets a dedicated section, the user can single it out of the search results completely if while looking for a specific thread, the clutter gets annoying.
2. It wouldn't push down the vital information in Off Topic such as stickies, announcements and recently posted in threads like it would need to be if it was a child forum.
3. Since we only want the community to participate, only the community needs to know it even exists. Something can't look fun enough to join for, if it can't be looked at by nonmembers and we'd maintain the usual outward appearance to our lurkers. Addtionally, it would also block members from directly linking to its threads elsewhere.

Yes I realize this is different from what I suggested before. That's because I've had more time and space to reflect upon and extrapolate my thoughts.

[JackBarber]

I really think that the forum games getting their own section would be the best idea, though that's MOSTLY what the off-topic topic is, Forum Games.
If it's cluttering up the search function I think you need a better reason, you can easily just block results from certain areas.

[HomerJ]

that's MOSTLY what the off-topic topic is, Forum Games.

I beg to differ. The OT has been a very active section before those Games started, and it will still be active even with the Games moved elsewhere.

Greetz
HomerJ

[thespaceinvader]

I really think that the forum games getting their own section would be the best idea, though that's MOSTLY what the off-topic topic is, Forum Games.
If it's cluttering up the search function I think you need a better reason, you can easily just block results from certain areas.

Just because you think something, does not make it so. This is a lesson you could stand to learn throughout this forum, it would make you less annoying. Seriously.

[Dixie]

R2D is 75 pages atm...

Forum games get their own subsection. It could have a decently long autoprune so that we're only keeping the most popular 70 page games. It won't be indexed for searching, and it won't get an atom feed. Additionally maybe it should be invisible to guests and you can't post in it until you get a certain post count elsewhere. What do you guys think?

Well, I may be mistaken, but I thought Gambit said "70 pages worth of forum game threads", rather than "cap individual forum game threads at 70 pages". But I may be mistaken. I don't play them much, anyway, so, well...

[Gambit]

And this is why hyphenation is important.
70-page-games. Now, can we move on?