Forum Restructuring

Started by Snarky, Thu 12/04/2012 20:42:54

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Snarky

So you may have noticed some changes around here.

As he mentioned in a previous thread, CJ has made AGA a server and forum admin (congratulations, AGA!), and as his first order of business he has restructured the forums a bit.

This is actually according to a plan the moderators have been kicking around for a while now. Most importantly, you'll see that there are two new forums to discuss development of the AGS engine and editor. Hopefully having all the discussion in a single place will make it easier to organize and execute on the open source efforts. We've moved a number of existing threads over already (if we missed some, you can report it), and over the weekend I'll try to collect the most important information that prospective contributors will want to know into a single sticky post (and if you have any hints/additional info about that, please PM me).

Other changes include putting the two technical help forums together (currently the Beginners Technical Questions is a sub-forum pending a likely merge), and sorting the community and talk forums into one section that is for making and creating things (games, art, etc.) and one that is for discussion and chat. The "Popular Threads" forum is now the Rumpus Room, for persistent topics and some of the sillier threads that might previously have been locked in Gen-Gen (and conversely we'll expect a bit more substance from threads in General Discussion). We'll probably move some of the threads that don't quite fit in there any more to other forums.

There's also a new Recruitment board, which means that you can now have separate recruiting threads for different games, instead of all of them going into one thread (making it hard to find out whether a position has been filled).

Some things will no doubt feel unfamiliar and take some getting used to, but we hope you'll give the new structure a chance. This is not a final thing set in stone for all eternity; not every aspect has been updated, and there are likely to be a few further changes and tweaks coming up. If you do have any comments or suggestions, feel free to offer them here. Your opinion will be heard if not necessarily followed.

Babar

Scary changes! :D

By the way, the Beginner's Tech forum seems to be locked to replies? Also, it may possibly be a bad idea to have the Beginners Tech be a smaller link on the main forum page, and then another click once you've got to the Technical Forums. Ideally, people should think before posting, ask pertinent questions, all that, but...it'd probably streamline use a bit more if it was more obviously accessible on the main page.
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bicilotti

#2
Nice move, folks!
Good luck, regent AGA!

Stupot

Yikes! It's all different!
I like the changes though.  Especially having a dedicated 'Recruitment' thread. That might encourage people to ask for help, and might stop newbies from posting 'I need help' threads in other boards.

I don't think the Beginner's Tech board should be merged with the regular Tech board, because there's quite a difference in level between the two and could scare off newbies.  When I was new (I kinda still am tech-wise) I spent a lot of time in the Beginner's board but didn't dare veture into the main Tech forum for ages.  It was kind of welcoming to have a special place for the basic stuff, and I'm all about making the n00bs feel welcome (before pwning them).

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Then I met the man with no feet.

bicilotti

Quote from: Stupot+ on Thu 12/04/2012 21:23:36
I don't think the Beginner's Tech board should be merged with the regular Tech board, because there's quite a difference in level between the two and could scare off newbies. 

+1

AGA

I'm kinda torn about beginners' tech too, but for the time being it's still there, but locked to new posts.  I basically didn't want to move all the threads over into general tech without being sure it was going to stay that way, since that would have been irreversible.

Ghost

It would be nice to keep those old threads indeed; there's some good advice in them, and maybe they could be trimmed sometime.

Nice move all the way around; I like the new structure!

WHAM

I like the change, good show!
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selmiak

prefixes in the tech forum that indicate about which AGS version the question is would be a great addition... That also means that these prefixes should be seen when searching the forums of course.

The change is good and needed, but childboards are *ugh*, or rather *meh* ;)

Eric

Quote from: Stupot+ on Thu 12/04/2012 21:23:36I spent a lot of time in the Beginner's board but didn't dare veture into the main Tech forum for ages.

This is me, currently.

Armageddon

#11
NOOOOOOOOO!!!

Sorry, I'm just so used to having everything lined up perfectly. :=

I don't like the rumpus room, a lot of those threads belong in adventure talk. :-X

AGA

Quote from: Armageddon on Thu 12/04/2012 22:15:00
I don't like the rumpus room, a lot of those threads belong in adventure talk. :-X

We're going to try and go through soon and make sure all threads are in the right place.

straydogstrut

#13
Yeah this caught me by surprise too..

Good work AGA. I think I like it but it will take some getting used to.

I agree the beginner's tech thread should be more visible on the front of the forum. It seems very developer-oriented with the way things have been moved around and reworded. Not a bad thing - this is obviously the way AGS is going - but I think beginner's (me included!) need a nice friendly visible board.

EDIT: Lol! Changed already! That's what I call service :)

AGA

And beginners' tech is now back where it was, since people apparently do rely on it being separate.

The reason it was hidden away as a child forum was it was being depreciated (and you couldn't actually post there anymore).  However there's obviously more of a demand than we thought.

Snarky

Having Beginners Tech as a child board was just a temporary thing while we decided what to do about it. The plan was to merge it with the Technical Help board, but as AGA said he didn't want to do it before he was absolutely sure, because it's irreversible. Good thing he didn't!

The point about making sure it's not too intimidating for newbies was also my only concern about the merge. On the other hand, I don't really think the difference is that clear, you quite often see threads that get posted to (arguably) the wrong one, and the same people help out in both. The moderators felt that it was just additional overhead and could make it more confusing for people deciding where to post, and people looking for answers. OK, let's give that some more consideration...

Perhaps the order of the forum sections may also change in order to make it more non-techie friendly.

There's no plan to delete any posts, either way.

DoorKnobHandle

Please move the beginner's technical forum above the advanced one, makes a lot more sense that way to me and it's the way it always was! :)

Good changes, exciting times!

FrankT

Actually this makes things a little more convenient for me! Especially since I was trying to recruit people for assistance.

Icey

I can say the best thing yet is the forum for recruitment. I thought that should of been added long before. But at least it's finally here.  :)

monkey0506

I like this. 8) One thing though, there's not a very clear location for suggestions/requests for AGS. I feel that it could reasonably be added to the bug report forum. Something else we definitely need to take a fresh look at is the tracker as well.

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