Reorganizing&Adding boards

[Aury]

I'm going to be fiddling with the boards in bit, and I'm going to want to see what people think after we've let them run for a bit.

The reason I'm doing this is actually not one reason, but several.
First off, I've noticed that there has been greater than a two-fold increase in new member registrations per day. That just might be an effect of not having pesky bot accounts hiding the real users, and me not having to go through every several weeks and look for users needing registration, or perhaps a backlog of users that we acquired during the forum downtime, but at any rate, we have been getting more new members, and I thought that it might as well be best to do this earlier than later, so that less people will have to suffer the change. And we have new forum software, and that's a rather large change already, so might as well just get it all over with for the next while.

Secondly I've noticed that the quantity of purple prose in bug reports and just fanfic-esq stuff has been rising, and thought I'd offer you guys a place to put it & show it off without it getting lost among other threads or requiring off-site linking. I know this has been proposed before, but back on phpbb2 it wasn't something I really wanted to mess with.

Third is something that only concerns the staff, so you wouldn't really need to worry about it, but it will prevent accidental/mistaken discipline of posters in the future.

And lastly, Off topic really shouldn't be on top of the modding boards >.>

If you have any suggestions (including name-changes of boards and categories already suggested!), I'm open to implementing them over the next few weeks while we try out the new arrangement (don't worry, not much will change in this first round of reorganization, I'm just moving off topic and community discussions down to the bottom, so as to make the more oft-used modding forums more easily accessible than the less-used off-topic and community discussion boards)

The current changes I'm making is simply creating the "Community Talk" category and dumping Community Discussions and Off Topic in there.

Proposed boards: format is [Board - Category]
Transcendence Fanfic - Community Talk [This one seems very likely at the time of this edit for trial inclusion, so if it gets more positive feedback today, I'll have it up sometime tonight.]
Tech Support - Transcendence
Official Extensions - Transcendence Mods
Completed Mods - Transcendence Mods

--edit1: updated list with other suggestions

[Aury]

Apparently there were a number of instances of supporting a fanfic board, including a recent post by the privateer and the earliest being one from yugi.

Anyways, IIRC, there was a suggestion for a tech support sort of board where people could ask for help regarding things like getting the game to run, configuring it to do certain things, etc.
We could also probably have a link to a FAQ on the wiki or something I suppose. Not sure how useful it would be at this stage myself, but I'll put it out there.

And I think there was another that I'm forgetting...

--edit - now I remember, it was my own suggestion for an official mods board
There was also one from a related discussion (IRC?) with one for completed mods.

[ThePrivateer]

I like what you have done so far Wolfy! The forum really needed some organization.

I will be glad to see the fanfic board, as well as a tech board, as some threads often got mingled within the hazy maze of Commonwealth and Bugs/Brainstorms.

Keep it up!

[Aury]

Hmmm, what if we has a specific subforum for getting modding help specficially? (That would be in the shipyards main board)

[ThePrivateer]

My mental image looked like:

Transcendence
---Commonwealth (general, anything else gets moved)
---Fan Fic
---Beginners Luck
---Bugs and Brainstorms
---Tech Help

Transcendence Mods
---Shipyard (for general mod discussion, anything else gets moved)
---WIP
---Complete
---Extension
---Script

Community
---Community Talk
---Off Topic

[SpongeJr]

My mental image looked like:

Transcendence Mods
---Shipyard (for general mod discussion, anything else gets moved)
---WIP
---Complete
---Extension
---Script

OK, so general mod discussion goes in "Shipyard", announcements and discussions on completed mods and stuff goes in "Complete", Works-In-Progress go in "WIP" (I'll be posting there a lot, I never finish anything)... but... "Extension" and "Script"? You mean like the current "Extension reference" and "Script reference" forums?
Do you think we should have just a single forum for "Modding Help and Tutorials" or something? Currently we have:

Extension Reference: This is a moderated forum that collects tutorials, guides, and references for creating Transcendence extensions.
and
Script Reference:This is a moderated forum that collects tutorials, guides, and references for using Transcendence script.

This almost seems redundant to me... if I need help with creating Transcendence extensions, I probably need help with T-Script... and if I'm looking for help with T-Script, I'm probably creating an extension... right?

BUT this is just a suggestion... maybe there's a good reason to not merge the two. Other than that I think what you have right there is perfect and should organize the board better than it is. Good work!

[alterecco]

I have always thought it was slightly silly that Extension/Scripting Reference were separate. To merge them would seem fine to me. I don't really like the WIP/Complete names, but the idea seems quite sound. Perhaps "Work in Progress" and "Mod Announcements"?

In addition I would suggest we add an "Announcements" forum to the Main section, and move all Georges release announcements in there.

It is also worth considering creating subforums for reporting bugs for each version (at least the current stable and current beta). When a new version comes out the posts could be merged into one large subforum for Bugs?

[ThePrivateer]

This almost seems redundant to me... if I need help with creating Transcendence extensions, I probably need help with T-Script... and if I'm looking for help with T-Script, I'm probably creating an extension... right?

Yeah I agree with that...merging them will be better than the two seperate ones.

Also, if we are adding new forums, we need to bring together some old ones so the front page doesn't look like the contents page of a Wiki book. >.>

[Aury]

How about this? (Note; the names are meant to be more descriptive in this post and are not actually meant to be the final names; these are merely so you know what idea I am talking about)

each indent means a lower level, ie, - is a board, -- is a subforum (which do not clutter the index, as they appear as links under the parent board's description), and --- is a subsubforum (which do not even show up on the index); none is a category.

Announcements
-Announcements
Transcendence
-Commonwealth
-Beginner's luck
-Bugs & Brains
--Version 1.04 (Beta) Bugs
--Version 1.01 (Stable) Bugs
--Bug archives
---/old bug subforums are moved in here - they will not show up in the index, because they are 2 levels in/
Transcendence Mods
-Released Mods
-WIP Mods
-Modding Help
--Extension Reference
--Script Reference
-Official Mods
Community Talk
-Community Discussion
-Fanfic (As its not actually gameplay related, as I explained on IRC, I think it would be more suited here)
-Off Topic

[alterecco]

I like it, but would like to suggest a few modifications

Code: Select all

Transcendence
  Announcements (no reason to have it's own section imo)
  Commonwealth
  Beginners Luck
  Bugs & Brains
    Brainstorm & Ideas (for general idea spreading)
    Beta Version Bugs
    Stable Version Bugs
    Bugs Archive (like you said, container for oldies)

Modding
  General Modding (basically Shipyards)
  Released Mods
  WIP Mods
  Official Mods
  Modding Reference (collates script and extension reference in one)

Community
  Discussion
  Fanfic
  Offtopic

[Aury]

I suppose that would work, but I think that announcements should have its own section as that would make it a bit more visible (I've seen it done that way before, including one not-so-successful implementation because they put it at the /bottom/ of the page >.<), and that extension reference could go under the general modding (as that would have all the help/questions threads for modding)...? how's that?

[ThePrivateer]

I like it, but would like to suggest a few modifications

Code: Select all

Transcendence
  Announcements (no reason to have it's own section imo)
  Commonwealth
  Beginners Luck
  Bugs & Brains
    Brainstorm & Ideas (for general idea spreading)
    Beta Version Bugs
    Stable Version Bugs
    Bugs Archive (like you said, container for oldies)

Modding
  General Modding (basically Shipyards)
  Released Mods
  WIP Mods
  Official Mods
  Modding Reference (collates script and extension reference in one)

Community
  Discussion
  Fanfic
  Offtopic

Hey I like that one the best! I pick that one!

[alterecco]

I suppose that would work, but I think that announcements should have its own section as that would make it a bit more visible (I've seen it done that way before, including one not-so-successful implementation because they put it at the /bottom/ of the page >.<), and that extension reference could go under the general modding (as that would have all the help/questions threads for modding)...? how's that?

I am fine with a separate section for Announcements.... we can always see how it works i suppose?

Re. reference... i would really like it to be separate... reference is more for explicit explanations on topics, not for general modding help. i.e. you would have a thread about closure support in lambdas, or on what a <Trojan> is or something. More of a topic thread than a help thread...

Also, most of all... George. What do you think? Have any thoughts on this (or should we just mess around with your forums? :)

[Aury]

^^ The main reason behind why I didn't do anything drastic yet - I can reverse it in about... 2 minutes tops. XD

[SpongeJr]

Ooh! I just thought of another one... although actually... this might be best as a locked sticky thread on on a board... actually... maybe there is a thread devoted to this, can't remember offhand. If there is just ignore me but...

OFFICIAL CANON

This would be all the existing stuff straight from George about the factions, the galaxy/universe, history, time and space scale, etc... and would be added to as new releases unfold more canonical material that shouldn't be contradicted when modding... errr... when making any mods that are supposed to fit into the "official" canonical Transcendence universe that is...

I know there's "Notes From George" on the wiki about, well, most of this stuff... but if there isn't a board or thread devoted to it, I think we should have one... as this stuff does change or get added to even in minor releases. And sometimes George drops an important bit of canon (or a teaser!) in an otherwise unrelated thread or discussion... it'd be nice to have that collected with the rest of the official stuff.

I'm actually thinking one of those sub-sub-boards would be good for this instead of just a thread, and I think it'd be better seperated from the rest of the stuff because...

1. It could start with a locked sticky thread of "All The Canon We Know Of" from George which would be, of course, all of the official, verified George stuff.

2. There could be maybe one more sticky thread, like, "The Community Wants To Know" that collects all of the "Big Questions" that the community (players AND modders) has... the unanswered stuff that it'd be nice to have official word on. This might make it easier for George to quickly see relevant questions (instead of having to wade through lots of stuff) and get a finger on the pulse of the community.

3. And then the rest could be open for discussion threads and ideas and stuff. Stuff like, um... this recent thread as well as this one, both currently in the Commonwealth thread. (NOTE: Potentially SPOILER threads for some!)
(Other note: These links will probably break once the forum reorganization is complete)