Forum restructuring - discussion

Elestel · Post by **Elestel** » February 18th, 2006, 6:31 pm

"I can be a drop, you can be a fountain, a river, a rain or a sea... but by all, without forget nobody, are the ocean"
If there are old or repeated ideas... the messenges can be removed... and there's a developer forum, isn't it?

toms · Post by **toms** » February 18th, 2006, 6:37 pm

Elestel wrote:If there are old or repeated ideas... the messenges can be removed... and there's a developer forum, isn't it?

You o0nly can delete posts before someone has replied.

Tux2B · Post by **Tux2B** » February 18th, 2006, 7:03 pm

I understand why you want to make these changes, however there were some good feedback in what now are restricted areas.
For an example, the ideas forum, even though there were some bad or FPI ideas, there were also some good ones.
I also don't understand why the ideas thread has been renamed. How can an idea be old, except when it's a FPI? And new users always are those who have the most ideas, and who sometimes have very interesting ones.

Post by **freim** » February 18th, 2006, 7:28 pm

We will move (good) threads out of the recently restricted forums into the appropriate open forums for those it makes sense to do that for. The Ideas forum need a major cleanup first before we decide what to do with it, it may very well become open again.

This will however take some time, so show some patience while we work on it.

scott · Post by **scott** » February 18th, 2006, 7:29 pm

I personally disagree ( -> Tux2B). I think most of the good, implementable ideas have come from more experienced users. The best example of this is irrevenant. The goal is specifically to avoid users posting their first ideas in the ideas forum. For 2.5 years the forum had a high potential for fresh outside ideas and high annoyance level. With the new way, the ideas are going to be slightly more inbred but hopefully less frustrating. Give it a chance and/or back up your claim.

jonadab · Post by **jonadab** » February 18th, 2006, 7:32 pm

Sangel wrote:However, I think that many users come to the forums specifically to give their ideas on Wesnoth.

I agree with this assessment, and furthermore I figure that if there is any forum open to new users, they will post their ideas there. We can experiment with having the Ideas forum closed to new users, but I suspect we will find out that has a negative impact on whatever other forums are open to them, and that ultimately the better course will be to accept that the Ideas forum is by the nature of the thing going to have a low SNR.

The dev fora are another matter. Those should be closed to new users for sure, and I can definitely understand making them a by-invitation thing. This allows all of us to *read* the developers' discussions amongst themselves; whereas, otherwise, they might tend to go to IRC or whatnot instead and leave us all in the dark, which would be worse.

Cuyo Quiz · Post by **Cuyo Quiz** » February 18th, 2006, 7:33 pm

Thing is... i think there are two main reasons for people registering on the forums: one is for help for technical problems/creation, and the other is to give feedback/ideas. I'm with Sangel in the Ideas forum/newcomers thing, many will feel left out, as the place was like the plaza of the community, where the populi discussed openly.

Of course, if you don't read the sticky threads it will get annoying most of the time. I am mostly brainstorming type, and it is the give and take what makes it go round, and if no feedback was given, the thing died on its own anyway, and after that it could be cutted out properly with minimal repercussion.

Meh, one shouldn't live fearing change or putting prejudice to it, so lets see what gives this new setting.

EDIT: four posts as i wrote one, this thing feels like a Wesnoth announcement already.

Tux2B · Post by **Tux2B** » February 18th, 2006, 7:34 pm

jonadab wrote:
Sangel wrote:However, I think that many users come to the forums specifically to give their ideas on Wesnoth.
I agree with this assessment, and furthermore I figure that if there is any forum open to new users, they will post their ideas there. We can experiment with having the Ideas forum closed to new users, but I suspect we will find out that has a negative impact on whatever other forums are open to them, and that ultimately the better course will be to accept that the Ideas forum is by the nature of the thing going to have a low SNR.

The dev fora are another matter. Those should be closed to new users for sure, and I can definitely understand making them a by-invitation thing. This allows all of us to *read* the developers' discussions amongst themselves; whereas, otherwise, they might tend to go to IRC or whatnot instead and leave us all in the dark, which would be worse.

I agree with you.

jg · Post by jg » February 18th, 2006, 7:37 pm

Are those all the groups you are going to have? Or are you still going through the posts?(Not ment offensive)

Assasin · Post by **Assasin** » February 18th, 2006, 10:02 pm

I have ran out of ideas. I like Wesnoth just the way it is anyway. I'd just like to help people get started really. Like a guide. The new format for the forum is much better though. It's very organized.

JW · Post by JW » February 18th, 2006, 10:37 pm

There should probably be a place for ideas for new users to post, and then perhaps good ideas could be transferred to the restricted forums so as to not be cluttered?

This probably isn't practical (probably also bad) and also has several flaws, such as the need to still sift through the basically old ideas forum, but hopefully it will inspire some thought.

drachefly · Post by **drachefly** » February 18th, 2006, 10:54 pm

Perhaps there would be a sort of outer-layer of the ideas. It is explicitly stated here that the devs WILL NOT in general peruse this section. However, if experienced forum users find that an idea put in there is worthwhile, they may of course bring it into the dev-populated areas. A person who posts such an idea would be put on the fast-track to becoming a 'trusted user' in that sense.

I think this will keep the random-silly ideas out of the hair of the devs and all ideas, silly or sublime, out of the non-idea forums where they would be off-topic.

As far as I can tell, this WAS how it used to be set up with Ideas and Developer Discussions. So perhaps the best change would be to demote the importance of Ideas, so people wouldn't feel like you were actively going out of your way to get new ones; and the devs would just stop worrying about it so much.

Problem: you would still need a moderator.
Mitigation to problem: these ideas are going to come whether you ask for them or not; at least this'll group them together, so what moderation happens will be easier.

Of course, maybe another idea would be to revoke the rule on being negative towards ideas. Maybe people would be a bit more self-critical before putting things forth.

(edited for grammar)

Post by **turin** » February 18th, 2006, 11:01 pm

drachefly wrote:Of course, maybe another idea would be to revoke the rule on being negative towards ideas. Maybe people would be a bit more self-critical before putting things forth.

*clap clap clap*

This is a brilliant idea. I've never understood why that rule was implemented in the first place - and it was never truly followed, which meant that newbies would come and expect it to be followed, but then... it wasn't. Removing it would go a long way towards improving the ideas forum...

Post by **Zhukov** » February 19th, 2006, 1:09 am

drachefly wrote:Of course, maybe another idea would be to revoke the rule on being negative towards ideas. Maybe people would be a bit more self-critical before putting things forth.

I agree with this. As it is, that rule is not strictly enforced. The critisism that new people would draw may seem harsh, but in the long run it could, as drachefly pointed out, make new members think twice about thrusting their often unpalatable ideas into the collective face of the community.

Hmm, I can easily imagine Turin bouncing up and down in glee at the idea of being able to ruthlessly pulp uninformed ideas.

MadMax · Post by **MadMax** » February 19th, 2006, 4:15 am

How would you decide whether to post an idea/question/whatever in the open forum or the restricted forum? I'm not really sure about the criteria.