Glest Board Changes

[Omega]

Update 2012-9-28: This thread is mostly in reverse. The majority of posts are now outdated, and the thread should be treated as a means of reporting issues, ideas, or comments about the Glest Board and the way it is run. Generally only the last few pages of comments here will be up to date.


All right, as Admin, I will do most major changes on a popularity system, so please vote for the things you'd like to see. You can vote multiple times, and things will be implimented based on popularity. If you DON'T want to see something happen, please post so and give a reason (and possibly an example?) why.

1. Off Topic Board: Simply stated, a board where you can post anything. Is good because sometimes people just want to post about something not related to glest while talking to their friends on the Glest Board. Also keeps the Off Topic posts off the 'real' boards. Downsides could be spam, but bots don't make a difference, as they can't recognize one board from another, not to mention I think Arch will do a pretty good job here...

2. MegaGlest Board: As its name implies, a board for MegaGlest, which is a Glest/GAE hybrid, so doesn't really fit into either topic. Doesn't have a lot of topics on yet, but that can grow, and another board may help keep things neat.

3. Contributions Board: A board for user submitted contributions that aren't a mod, map, tileset, or scenario. Example include videos and wallpaper. May help get more contributions. Downside is small number of posts about that.

4. Board Theme: Older users may remember the Glest Board's original theme (I sure do) and probably would like to see something better than the current default one. I had a really nice one I saw before, but will have to find it again to show you guys, though I can assure you it fits glest well (not like the old theme, but pretty good still). Of course, you guys are welcome to search the SMF mods site for thousands of themes, and show the ones you think would fit the glest board. I would also apply a Glest logo at the top instead of the text.

5. Reorganized Ranks: Most of the ranks end at archmage with only about 100 posts. Many old time users have well over that, so I'd like to reorganize the ranks to have say, 10 different ranks more evenly spaced out for the posters, as well as some master and grandmaster ranks for the heavy posters. Downsides include that people may lose ranks because of that.

6. Karma System: Or a token system, etc; where the users can be given positive or negative karma, which can more accurately tell of a person than the post count. Could be abused though or turn off a good person for a tiny mistake. On the other hand, modders can be more accurately rated for their work. On the other other hand, modders who unleash an unfinished testing beta could unfairly lose karma for what was meant to be an unfinished beta. This would require great thinking to decide wether to impliment.

7. Feature Wanted Board: A separate board to hold features wanted for users who want to request new GAE/MegaGlest features. Downside is that the appropriate boards for that may be a better place, abet, having two locations (wonder if its possible to mirror a topic?).

8. Blender Board: A board dedicated to blender, which could stop other boards from being flooded with questions, as well as allow tutorials, etc to be posted.


My opinions on the ideas:
1. YES - Stop other boards from flooding with off topic posts, and to add some more fun to the board.
2. YES - MegaGlest has great potential, and may grow into something as big as GAE eventually. It replaces vanilla glest anyway.
3. YES - Keeps off slightly OT posts in other boards while keeping the contributions easy to find.
4. YES - I miss the old theme...
5. YES - The board ranks are obsolete.
6. NO - I'm too unfamiliar with such a system, and it's too easy for great people to recieve uncalled for negative karma, especially if they make enemies.
7. NO - The megaGlest and GAE boards might be a better place. Perhaps it's possible to link or mirror to one topic in the other board?!?
8. YES - A great help to get more people modeling, and you know what that means (better mods!).

[ElimiNator]

My opinions on the ideas:
1. YES - Would be good so there will be no more OT in other topics.
2. YES - MegaGlest is quite good and there is a GAE board, Only fair.
3. NO - Can be posted in the oftopic board.
4. YES - Would be cool to have a theme that maches the glest site.
5. YES - The board ranks are obsolete.
6. Yes - The ranks end too fast.
7. NO - The megaGlest and GAE boards are a better place.
8. YES - All the videos and tutors won't go the the bottom any more.

[Omega]

In other news, two new themes are now available, though neither is glestified yet, nor defaulted. Still looking for a wide range of choices, and if enough people want a theme, we can vote on one. For now, it's possible to choose one for just you from your profile page.

In other news, ranks have been modified. Grats to those with Grandmaster rankings (1000+). I may also try my hand at making a theme from scratch.

[ultifd]

My opinions on the ideas:

1. NO, because of the mayhem that there will probably be...and lots of other reasons...yes if can be controlled  
2. YES, since we shouldn't keep posting about megaglest stuff in the Mods board.
3. YES, There needs to be a place for "media" related stuff. Videos, wallpapers, logos, screenshots, etc.
+ this could make Glest more popular. 

3. NO - Can be posted in the oftopic board.

Not stuff that is related to Glest...
4. YES, ...
5. YES, ... there should probably be even more ranks than now... Grandmasters   more! more!  
6. NO, because of hate and...
7. NO, maybe we could have a sub section of the GAE/ Megaglest board???
8. YES, this will be helpful.  


I have a feeling that the votes will be tight though.    

[ElimiNator]

I stated a grandmaster 

[ultifd]

I stated a grandmaster 

lol, well I'm a Dragon, the basically most powerful original unit in Glest!   
But there should be more ranks in the future, in my opinion...
We should have a theme making contest (for the forum). 

[John.d.h]

1. Yes, an off topic board might help keep things tidier, and the current off-topic thread isn't really adequate since it tends to gravitate around a single subject.
2. No, I don't think MegaGlest really warrants a whole board since it only has a couple threads.  If the project really takes off, then maybe a new board will be needed, but currently I don't think so.  Perhaps merge it with the GAE board, into the "GAE and Engine Development" board?
3. Either.  I could see why you might want one, but I'm not sure it's really necessary.  I don't really care either way.
4. Either.  The current theme looks better in my opinion, but the old one looked more Glest-y.
5. Either.  I've never really cared about the board rankings.  It seems you've already changed them, so this is a moot point anyway.
6. No, I think members build enough of a reputation without being officially ranked, and I've never been a big fan of popularity contests.
7. No, we've got more than enough feature requests already, and since the features are being implemented in GAE and MegaGlest, the requests should be grouped with the relevant engines as they are now.
8. Yes, I think a Blender board would be very helpful and it would clean up the Mods board.  It would be much easier to point someone to a relevant thread on the Blender board than to have to answer the same questions over and over.

[jda]

1. YES, it's costumary on most any forum... And ... some people may want to discuss this and others that and if it all goes in the same thread... well, it kind of becomes either just-noise or mute.

2. NOT JUST YET! (though I don't even remember just now what i voted! lol). The project, having potential, also is kind of redundant (there already was an engine fork: GAE) and moreover... I don't think enough time has gone by for it to mature (NOT talking about code stability here!). I mean... what's the purpose? It started as Titi adding stuff to vanilla because he thought GAE wasn't stable enough (though half of the first release was GAE's), then softocder came in and worked on the network/multiplayer - which was then ported to GAE! There have semi-prophecies of a MegaGAE but that seems to have died (AFAICT). More recently megaglest kind of oposed/competeded-with/drifted-away-from gae due to its unique units' particle systems... So... where is MegaGlest going anyways?... A few questions that should probably be sorted out before...?
On a personal note, I do believe such a board will be useful in the future. But I'm really just playing psychic here... DON'T trust my word for it!

3.  YES. It is NOT offtopic as it relates to Glest! But it doesn't really fit in any of the other categories. And we have a few people on the videos and wallpapers front already so... why not? More people may come in and the artistic inspirations may flow wider and larger.

4. I did not vote YES which does not mean I vote NO! I don't really care.

5. Yeah, why not? Then again.... why? Look at the goddamn number of posts to get it straight!

6. NO, definitely. I don't remember one forum using this that actually kept it for very long. Well... launchpad.net does... BUT launchpad attributes this on a "per-action" automated basis, so it's really more of a "post count" than a user-to-user attibuted karma.
And the downsides: popularity contest race, hate-biases, post focus on author's status quo rather than actual post content, ...

7. NOPE. Makes no sense. For GAE you have the GAE board and the proper place: its sourceforge.net "tickets" system.
Pretty sure MegaGlest will have that too, if not already, then soon.
Any discussion regarding the requests could be carried out on each engine's board (MegaGlest's on its current threads).

8. DEFINITELY YES but NOT ONLY BLENDER! Should be all tools modding-related: blender, possibly 3DS Max too, g3d related (viewer, importer, exporter), map editor, GIMP and other paint programs, XML parsers/editors such as GAM, and so on and so on and so on...
Might actually be a section with several sub-boards:
* XML's (folders and files too I guess)
* 3D Modelling and Animating (Blender, 3DS MAX, AutoCAD or others too?...)
* Texture painting: GIMP, PhotoShop, etc
* Other tools: filters, importers/exporters, scripts, installers, editors, evaluators, etc

[silnarm]

10 star ranks... new smiley faces... holy crap, someone gave Omega the keys!

Hold on folks, we're in for some chop.

1. Off Topic Board: meh.
2. MegaGlest Board: titi is admin now too, he can make the call on this one alone I think.
3. Contributions Board: meh.
4. Board Theme: meh.
5. Reorganized Ranks: Grrrr!!!!!!  8 would have been sufficient, 9 & 10 look not so good when they are the 'big' stars  
6. Karma System: No, could cause divisiveness.
7. Feature Wanted Board: Probably belongs in General Discussion, I don't think it needs a board to itself.
8. Blender Board: Is the community big enough for this? Perhaps a generic 'Getting Help with ...' board, for help requests with anything... that might lighten the load in Mods a bit.

@Omega: Please remember to respect the speed limit, and for God's sake try not to crash it  

[wciow]

1. Yes - we need an off topic board to stop people spamming the other boards with off topic posts.

2. No - I think we need to merge this with the GAE board into a 'development' board.

3. No - pointless really since all of the other boards are for contributions.

4. No - but I don't really care one way or the other.

5. Yes - Put things back like they were 9 STARS FFS!!

6. NO - this is not Digg/Reddit or whatever

7. Yes - This will stop people spamming all the other boards with "I want blah blah blah features" posts.

8. Maybe - I'm undecided on this one 

[titi]

In general: I don't like the idea to have too many different boards! Once created you'll never get rid of them!

Off Topic Board:
1. YES.Also this whould mean a new board, its a good Idea!

2. MegaGlest Board..
Yes, but maybe its better to merge the GAE/Megaglest board to a developer board as wciow said? I'm a bit undecided here, but the current state with only one or two topics in the Mods section is not so good. A seperate megaglest board on the other hand doesn't confuse people which are not involved in the whole development.
Lets wait 2 more weeks before we decide what we do here!

3. Contributions Board:
Maybee, a good idea, Screenshots/Videos are always good to show what glest can do!
But probabaly this can be done with renaming the "General Discussions" to "General Discussions & Media"

4. Board Theme:
yes

5. Reorganized Ranks:
Yes but 10 stars are too much! I vote for lets say 5 stars which are much harder to reach. ( please really not more than 8 stars! )

6. Karma System:
No

7. Feature Wanted Board:
Maybe ( more a NO ), but I don't think this will help a lot. All those "good idea" people will continue to post everywhere.

8. Blender Board:
Maybe ,
Well there aren't so many topics about this yet in my opinion and we are all no real blender pros, but we will see.

[hailstone]

1. Off Topic Board: No, I don't think this will stop people from posting off topic in non-off topic places. Just like jda said "it's customary on most any forum", so if people really want to post about something that isn't Glest related I'm sure they could post on one of the other gazillion forums that have it. I can understand a little off topic but I don't think it's good to encourage it with a whole board (see CEGUI below for a "no off topic" forums).

2. MegaGlest Board: Like other people have said, combining GAE board with an Engine Development board might be better.

3. Contributions Board: probably vote no for now, can always add it later.

4. Board Theme: don't mind either way as long as it's easy to read.

5. Reorganized Ranks: don't care

6. Karma System: no

7. Feature Wanted Board: Yes, but GAE has a system (ie GAE trac) in place for requesting features, although, they could reference each other.

8. Blender Board: Tools related to Glest might be better. So then there could be Engine Development and Tools Development/Use boards.

Other Request:
- Bring FAQs up to date
- Beginner Help board (see CEGUI forums)

Examples of boards:
http://springrts.com/phpbb/
http://www.cegui.org.uk/phpBB2/index.php

[-Archmage-]

I like all of them except 1 and 6.

[Omega]

Alright, an offtopic board and tools board (blender, and other tools) have been created based on popular opinion. If anything else reaches 8+ votes, i'll do it to. Also, a silent change to the rankings fixed the overlapping stars. If there's anymore problems (other resolutions???) let me know.

[titi]

Already new boards? 
There is really no need to hurry ! Please lets first discuss a while before creating new boards.

[-Archmage-]

Titi, we don't need to keep on talking and talking and talking, there is a poll, and people have voted, I see no reason not to take action.

[Omega]

Well said arch. I considered 8 votes to be enough, since I haven't seen a lot of polls get huge voters, and not everyone will post of course (mostly only people who want to word their opinion in something more than yes/no.

[-Archmage-]

We need a MegaGlest boards, come on people don't be lazy vote vote vote!

[ultifd]

When are you going to close this poll?  
Cause some people are "busy" and they haven't voted yet...
Only the people that regularly come on the forums have voted...  
-----
Too bad, no contributions board   ... oh well, it's not really needed yet...until Glest becomes more popular. Although, in theory, this board would make Glest more popular in the first place... or not.  

 

[Omega]

When are you going to close this poll? 

Dunno. When it's done? Heh, probably once its final what is and is not going to be done.

When are you going to close this poll? 

Too bad, no contributions board  ... oh well, it's not really needed yet...until Glest becomes more popular.

There's not really a whole lot of contributions though.......

@Concerning MegaGlest Board - Dunno how many votes is 'enough'. I think I'll take the easy approach: Titi, megaGlest is your creation. Why don't YOU decide on wether or not to have a separate board?

[ultifd]

When are you going to close this poll? 

Too bad, no contributions board  ... oh well, it's not really needed yet...until Glest becomes more popular.

There's not really a whole lot of contributions though.......

Yeah I know. That's why maybe we should have a contributions board in the future...when there is more people. I don't really understand why people don't though... I mean I kinda do...but...

Dunno. When it's done? Heh, probably once its final what is and is not going to be done.

I see.

Yeah, Titi's choice. 

[modman]

When are you going to close this poll? 

Too bad, no contributions board  ... oh well, it's not really needed yet...until Glest becomes more popular.

There's not really a whole lot of contributions though.......

We could consider classifying translations as a "contribution", but I think that's pushing it a bit...

//My personal opinion on the MegaGlest board is that if it ain't a mod (finish the sentence)...

[ultifd]

^Yeah.  
If some boards aren't really needed...then we should have some child boards then...http://docs.simplemachines.org/index.php?topic=205.0
For example,
GAE > Features Wanted
General Discussion> Contributions
ETC> ETC

 
EDIT: There might be a problem..."we" ish would have to change the regular boards to "Parent Boards"...  http://docs.simplemachines.org/index.php?topic=193.0

[-Archmage-]

Aaeehhh.......I hate child boards they're kinda confusing.

[John.d.h]

In my opinion, child boards add an unnecessary and inconvenient extra step.