Special page for offering/recruiting help and assistance?

[Babar]

ALSO, for clean-up purposes, posts by people with only 1 or 2 posts, from 2 years ago, requesting a team- deleted?

I think there was a discussion about making users searchable with their skills and the games they made (was it in this thread?). Its probably too complicated to set up, but I'm just bringing the idea as something to think about.

[LimpingFish]

ALSO, for clean-up purposes, posts by people with only 1 or 2 posts, from 2 years ago, requesting a team- deleted?

Ideally it would be an offer help board, so no requests for help would actually be posted.

People who want help would read the board and apply to any available members through PM. I think it would function far more effectively than the system already in place.

EDIT: Or did you mean the current RAT thread, Babar? I agree that it could do with a fair dose of pruning. Of course, replacing it with a whole new system would take care of that.

[Babar]

People who want help would read the board and apply to any available members through PM. I think it would function far more effectively than the system already in place.

I was looking for someone to help me with Puzzle work a while back, so I went through the Offer your services thread, and checked the posters one by one for the Story Design icon, along with something in their posts about puzzles (this is already an incomplete search, because many people can have a story design icon, and like doing puzzles, but not have posted there). There were many who had the story design icon, although weirdly, quite a few had something along the lines of "I'm not that good with story design" as the mouse-over text. I think there were 5 or 6 that specifically mentioned puzzles in their posts or their mouse-over text, and of those, the last active date ranged from 2 years ago to 5 months ago. There was only 1 person who had worked on any sort of completed game.

That's why I think a user search function would be useful. You wouldn't have to clutter up the forum with "I want a person to do this and this" requests, because they'd just directly search for what they want, and it'd be easier to find what you need as well.

And yeah...I was talking about the RAT thread, but also the Offer Your Services thread. Most people are kind enough to edit their RAT posts to show that they're not needing anyone anymore, though.

[zabnat]

Suggestion -

OFFER HELP BOARD.

A thread for each specialty - scripting, writing, etc. A post per person, each person describes what he/she can do in that area, the expertise, etc. Examples of what the person can do not mandatory but highly reccomended.

If extra-neatness is required, then it can just be one post in which all the people and their abilities are listed (still in a "Writing" thread, "Scripting" thread etc. division). Then, I don't know, people can post about their experiences with person X (or person X can post and say "I'm not available for this at the moment, sorry), and a moderator, or someone else who could be in charge of the thread/post, would delete that post and add the information in the main post.

This would be very nice, only downside would be that it will require some additional work from the moderator.

As I stated before. My idea was similiar, but every member would make their own offer help thread in the offer help board.
They would make the title something like "MemberName, [story design] [graphics] [music]" and in their post they could give more specific details about their skills.

Then when searching, one could use the forum search function, check only the offer help board and then check both Show results as messages and Search in topic subjects only boxes. Then search for for example "story design". The search result will be nice list of people offering help on story design and the specific would be visible also. (If one prefers, show results as messages can left unticked).

This way no new technology need to be introduced to the search and moderators workload does not increase so much.

[LimpingFish]

Excuse me, but I've completely overlooked the fact that we've had an OYS thread since 2004! :o

Proof, if it were needed, that it's not the most overtly noticeable thread on the boards.   :

EDIT: Well, I've taken a look at the OYS thread, and the one thing that it seems to be lacking is examples of previous work by those offering their services. There's also a lot of offers of a similar nature (Proof-reading, Story Design, etc) that, due to their very nature, aren't easy to determine somebody's purported ability in. But concerning music/sound/art/scripting, it's fairly straightfoward to show somebody how talented, or not, you actually are.

[ciborium]

Checking one's ability to proof-read is easy.

Read their post!

if it Look like this un   - then pass.

That is, of course, if you can tell the difference yourself.

[Dualnames]

How about you make a whole thread full of topics asking for help. I could become moderator if you want. Just think of it. Thread name: Help
make some rules then let it flow.

[Nikolas]

Hem...

There is one already: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=30347.0

[Dualnames]

You don't get it.
Like making a part of the forums called (HELP). Like In production is.

[zabnat]

He didn't get it because you said "thread" instead of "board" and "topics" instead of "threads".