Unofficial spring pages / profiles on social media

[smoth]

The entire site is being overhauled. I am culling an assload of post remnants from when I nuked 200k posts out of my site.

*edits* woot, culled all the orphaned topics!

http://www.moddb.com/engines/spring
Who owns that profile?

I can update any part of it. What needs doing? Moddb HAS to have an engine page for spring. I don't see showing the different mod shots as an issue, even defunct mods show the kind of visuals the engine is capable of.

The moddb site requires an engine to have a page if you want to list that engine as used by your project.

[Pithikos]

I received this message from Knorke and I thought I'll reply here:

Huhu
I was looking at same spring-related pages, especially older ones and what to do with them.
So came across:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Lua_in_SpringRTS
It seems to be from written by you in 2010 mostly.
Since then spring wiki has improved lots so not sure if it is still needed? It seems to have stopped somewhere mid-work too...do you still have plans for it?
In its current state it is more confussing than helpful I fear.
Since it also "disattracts" a bit from spring wiki where some of the information that is missing on wikibooks can be found.
Hope this message does not offend you!

Can also reply in this related thread if you want:
http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... 20#p554804
(reading first post and linked one should be enough, rest is uninteressting blabla)
greets

The reason I made that wiki can be followed on this thread.

Personally there are many things that I don't like in the current wiki:

• Lack of Lua syntax highlighting
• Crazy colors (red makes my eyes bleed)
• Lack of white space (many parts of the documentation is just clutters stuck to each other)
• Organisation (takes me quite some time to figure out where to look for a simple thing)
• No central place to see all the callins/callouts as a list
• There's no filtering of callins/callouts (and it doesn't look like it can be implemented either)

So as most of the (conservative) people here got annoyed when I tried to edit the springrts wiki, I took it in solo. That's the background behind how I started with the wikibook.

Now, Knorke, I don't mind to delete my work but only if there existed something that already full-fills those points. Some people have been mingling with the engine etc. for years and are used to how the springrts wiki is now. They know where to look when they have to create a widget. For a new-comer that is not the case in my opinion. Now, that I received your message, I checked the wiki (after 2-3 years interval) and I can say that it looks like chaos to me as it did when I tried to make my first widget. Probably you and others can't see it because you are more active with Spring than me but if you want to reach other people than the devs and generally people accustomed with the engine, then I think the wikibook is much more organized and easy to digest.

Actually lately I thought of creating 1-2 widgets, but just the thinking of spending hours just to find out how to do simple things, stops me from doing so.

I don't get though why you would want to delete it. The only problem might be that some functions are outdated. Then just deleting those should be fine. At current state I don't plan on continuing with it, but someone else might in the future..

[FLOZi]

Better to create such pages in your user area on the wiki and work with other editors (basically just me, knorke, jk and abma currently) to integrate it with the current pages.

Colours are changeable.

Syntax highlighting would be neat.

Lobby for them in Spring wiki instead of making random page elsewhere noone knows about.

N.B. If we had MediaWiki 1.21 or later we would have syntax highlighting. Sadly we currently have only 1.19.

I checked the wiki (after 2-3 years interval) and I can say that it looks like chaos to me as it did when I tried to make my first widget.

[knorke]

Think details about wiki would be its own thread, so only in general:
spring wiki is of course not perfect and there are some structures that were set years ago and are not really best. Much could be done better, I have ideas of my own butt too:
question is:
a) Is it realistically feasible, will it be finished in reasonable time?
b) Is it *that much* better?
c) Will it create lots of work afterwards?
And new structure like "have each funtion on its own page" or "Lets move whole wiki to wikibooks" might have advantages but do not meet that...

The only problem might be that some functions are outdated.

Most important about documentation is that it is correct&complete.
It must be reliable. If one has to double-check everything read on docu then it is almost useless.
Especially with lua..it would be annoying to find out one was using an older docu where all the parameters are shifted or whatever. Or find out after some time there exists a function that one did could have needed but did not know about.
And thought of going back to a wiki in state of 3 years ago to check everything and update

So as most of the (conservative) people here got annoyed when I tried to edit the springrts wiki, I took it in solo.

Looking at thread it seems like problem was you tried out things on existing pages instead of doing it on same test page/sandbox.

[klapmongool]

Knorke, I feel your pain :)

Good luck!

[smoth]

http://www.moddb.com/engines/spring
Who owns that profile?

I can update any part of it. What needs doing? Moddb HAS to have an engine page for spring. I don't see showing the different mod shots as an issue, even defunct mods show the kind of visuals the engine is capable of.

The moddb site requires an engine to have a page if you want to list that engine as used by your project.

[AF]

I would note that there are social media properties Im responsible for that nobody has mentioned here. Perhaps that is a good thing, but they could have some bearing on whats been said here.

Facebook Group

There is a facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/2258931045/

It's mostly inactive, I have control of the group, and official group policy is to move to:

Facebook Page

https://www.facebook.com/springrtsengine

There is activity on this page, not as much as I would like. The odd comment and some likes. New stuff is posted regularly via the automation.

Twitter

https://twitter.com/SpringRTSNews

Active thanks to the automation, but its setup was mainly opportunistic. Little to no engagement, but not dead.

SpringInfo

SpringInfos automation powers the facebook and twitter presence and stops it from becoming stale. At the moment I haven't the capacity to post to G+, and I've not had the inclination or time to build the necessary tech to automate that ( or fi it would be welcomed/appropriate ).

I have noticed that ZeroK actively uses SpringInfo to tweet ZK news, and I assume this is being done via the RSS feed SpringInfo provides with ZK specific news. Or perhaps thats a part of the plugin that detects these things showing up.

Stuff like that I can expand upon and would be useful for everybody, but I simply don't have the time, and forum threads just aren't suitable for managing the issues are problems that occur. i know there are things Knorke wanted me to do I haven't gotten around to yet, Im not entirely sure what they are but I can guess.

• There are posts that are pulled in as 'pending review' because people mix spring and non-spring stuff that need flagging as irrelevant or published
• Most posts are unclaimed and are assigned to me. If people had accounts I could assign posts to them via automation, only Forboding Angel has done this, which means only his stuff is archived and categorised for easy viewing. Because of this I haven't advertised or exploited these abilities, I could have built a Spring profile with everything from videos/photos/springfiles uploads/new posts/engine commits/etc
• Sometimes Im unable to step in and make changes, I have a job etc, I need help in this regard. Automation is only so good, and I need a bus factor higher than 1.
• There's so much content that I can't surface. Stuff like Smoths junk would be great to have, and Id have it in a separate Dev Journals section, but he's said no, that's fine. Everybody else however has said nothing, and there's so much stuff that goes unreported ( and its the best kind of stuff too =/ ). You want to show that the community is active, the stuff people put in random WIP and buried in the project sub forums is great for that, so long as it's clear it's WIP stuff
• Nobody wants to have editorial access on springinfo. I went as far as offering blogs outright and a site rebuild catered to them, but nobody expressed an interest. Someone said I had the right idea, but thats not really the same thing

So all in all, the news site, the facebook page, and the twitter account, are passively powered by the community simply doing what the community has always done, If I could expand that then we'd have even more relevance on the frontpage, more sections, and more interesting things to look at, but I can only do so much by myself.

[knorke]

Facebook: Again the problem of "trying to represent spring, but it does not work":
In gallery ~35 pictures but only shows 2 games. 30 pictures are from same game.

---
The automatic news on twitter/facebook/SpringInfo all have the same problem: Too much uninteressting "spam."
tl;dr: One can not listen to nice music or have discussion if annoying loud vacuume cleaners drone in same room.

For every interessting post there 20 spammy bad ones.
If a dozen WIP versions of a map get uploaded to springfiles that generates a dozen postings. Nobody wants to read through stuff like this:
Springfiles: Speedballsfun 3.2
Springfiles: Speedballsfun 3.3
Springfiles: Speedballsfun 3.4
Springfiles: Speedballsfun 3.5
Springfiles: Speedballsfun 3.5b
Springfiles: Speedballsfun 3.5b fixed
Springfiles: Speedballsfun 3.5b fixedredux
(Nothing wrong with speedballs or anyone who uploads multiple version of something in short time, not their fault)
I do not think filling every site with these same automated blubber does any good.
Maybe it "shows activity" but not interessting activities.
Needs slower post frequency to not flood away quality.

Nobody wants to have editorial access on springinfo. I went as far as offering blogs outright and a site rebuild catered to them, but nobody expressed an interest.

When I tried logging in it did not work

I had interesst but already said 2 years that with the spam it is no use.
It was then argued to me that all these things are indeed frontpage worthy. When I sometimes post news on zK forum news thing, they also get copied to newsfeed.
Then I can watch how they stay on the page for 12 hours before spam washes it away, never to be seen again. I do not mind, it was meant for forum anyway and appearing on newsfeed is just side effect. But spend time writing on paper that only gets flushed down the spam toilet, no...

There are posts that are pulled in as 'pending review' because people mix spring and non-spring stuff that need flagging as irrelevant or published

I made seperated youtube thingy in 2012 but year later when I asked why my videos show so long to show, was again told because they have to be manually approved.

[jK]

Facebook: Again the problem of "trying to represent spring, but it does not work":
In gallery ~35 pictures but only shows 2 games. 30 pictures are from same game.

Do we need a `share screenshot` button that uploads to reddit, twitter & facebook?

[knorke]

Do we need a `share screenshot` button that uploads to reddit, twitter & facebook?

?
That would just have effect that whatever project spams most is most visible. Just have some few screenshots of different stuff. Personally do not like if a supposedly general spring page/profile becomes "advertisement plattform" of only few games, it is the same problem as the old "People only see spring as TA."

[smoth]

If a dozen WIP versions of a map get uploaded to springfiles that generates a dozen postings. Nobody wants to read through stuff like this:
Springfiles: Speedballsfun 3.2
Springfiles: Speedballsfun 3.3
Springfiles: Speedballsfun 3.4
Springfiles: Speedballsfun 3.5
Springfiles: Speedballsfun 3.5b
Springfiles: Speedballsfun 3.5b fixed
Springfiles: Speedballsfun 3.5b fixedredux
(Nothing wrong with speedballs or anyone who uploads multiple version of something in short time, not their fault)
I do not think filling every site with these same automated blubber does any good.
Maybe it "shows activity" but not interessting activities.
Needs slower post frequency to not flood away quality.

THen that user is doing springfiles wrong. You can update a file as you upload. ODDS are he didn't delete the old file or CBA to actually go and use the site properly

springfiles.com/finder/1/GRTS

no idea why I have a few orphans but most of my maps were updated with proper versions.

[AF]

Posts in a forum thread
They have to be manually approved because by the time I get around to having time to do things, I have to dig through several pages to get to your post. When I get to them I find 2 feeds. 2 unlabelled feeds, that are just URLs dumped at my doorstep, that I don't know how to categorise or what to do with.

Its pretty much the worst way to contact me about springinfo stuff, and your posts aren't formatted or constructed in a way that I can easily pick up and action, it requires me to read a page after and before the post, and mental work to figure out the context.

Logging in
Login wise, yes my restrictions where very harsh, I lowered them. Forb ran into those restrictions, but rather than post in a forum thread with a very high chance of things being lost, he PM'ed me and the issue was resolved, and steps taken to prevent it in the future.

Your feeds
Also your feeds had issues. The feed I currently use has more content in it than the feeds you gave. I'm happy for you to manage and adjust them yourself, but see above.

SpringInfo and SpringFiles

I agree, your example is spammy. But that doesn't resolve the issue. Lets say I removed SpringFiles, we would then have complaints that only ZeroK or EvolutionRTS ever showed up.

The real problem is quality stuff. It exists yes, but people wont put it in a digestable, accessible format. Sure they've shot themselves in the foot because now their work isn't surfaceable, not just from a "we want to try your game" point of view but a "Hey we need modellers fulltime, if we give you XYZ thousand a year salary will you work for us?", or a "this candidate has hobbies and interests, perhaps we should hire them instead, they're more diverse". This happens, it happened to me, it happened to Forb, it happens to a lot of people.

So quality content that I'm unable to surface because it's not in a processable format:

• Everything to do with Eternal Struggle
• New BAR models and effects
• The vast majority of Picassos work
• Everything Smoth does
• Void/Rebalanced Annihilation/Anything that's released in the game forum that has a forum thread and that's it
• Maps
• MechCommander
• Kernel Panic News
• Metal Factions
• etc

If I had a feed for announcing new downloads/releases for those games, for the screenshots that got posted, or for highlighted forum posts, that'd be brilliant, SpringFiles would be unnecessary.

But I don't, I know Smoth has eventual plans to set something up, but he's busy, but the rest I've heard nothing from. Map wise, it's a forum thread, I cant automate that.

So no, without SpringFiles, a vast amount of stuff that's liked, and gets engagement would never show up. We'd have a slow and painfully stale feed of activity, and things would look a lot deader than they actually are. It'd be great if JJ setup SpringFiles twitter accounts, and SpringFiles facebook pages. Then it could be set apart to one side, but he hasn't.

The Other Side of Quality & Relevance

Part of the automation I set up was categorisation and taxonomies. This I haven't advertised much, but when I pull in a Cursed image from Moddb, it's flagged as being from that game, or when a Zero K video is put up on youtube, it can be flagged as from ZeroK.

This way I can show archives and landing pages tailored to individual games and community members.

The problem here is that for some games I have either no feeds, or very little content. People aren't cooperating to set up that initial stuff, so the data I've collected isn't as impressive as I'd like.

The other side of this, is I can merge all activity related to a game and present an RSS feed.

My plans in the near future

After changing the theme I've decided to install a plugin I use and add some forms, namely:

• News submission form
• Request for editor status/claim a feed for yourself
• I have a new game
• I have a new feed to pull from

[AF]

As a sidenote, I'm happy to start filtering down to specific parts of SpringFiles, or even remove it at all, once I'm happy that I don't have to rely on it to surface a significant amount of what the community does. shouldn't need a file hosters RSS feed to know that there's a new BA release out, that a new game has been put out on the forums, or a new version of a lobby was created, but that's just the way it is.

[AF]

You don't appear to have an account, aside from some throw away accounts, it's just myself and Forboding.

It also seems I DO have the capacity to post to Google+, as well as Path LinkedIn and Tumblr

[smoth]

http://www.moddb.com/engines/spring
Who owns that profile?

I can update any part of it. What needs doing? Moddb HAS to have an engine page for spring. I don't see showing the different mod shots as an issue, even defunct mods show the kind of visuals the engine is capable of.

The moddb site requires an engine to have a page if you want to list that engine as used by your project.

sooooo

[raaar]

problems are:
- outdated information
- information that misrepresents the spring engine or spring games
- useful information drowned in spam
- time-consuming maintenance

possible solutions:
- fewer sites maintained by more community members
- clear and simple standards and conventions for posting content
- broad but different categories for information items, with priorities:
1. new spring engine versions
2. new games and versions
3. new maps
4. community events (get-togethers, tournaments)
5. humour, art display
6. spam

springinfo's entry page could have 6 columns (on for each of the above categories) with lists of items (title, thumbnail pic,summary) which when clicked would lead to the current pages for that category

items for categories 1 through 4 are relatively rare but even they could use some sort of tag that would enable/disable automatic post on spring-related sites and social media


No-one should have to manually read through forums and sites to figure out what to highlight.

if you own a site that highlights spring stuff, ask the corresponding devs to provide adequately "packaged" information items if they want to, don't add them yourself.


Using other social media as a replacement for the forum may also alienate some users. i've played some evo recently and when i wanted to post something on the forum section i gave up as it leads to google+ page for which i don't have account and the layout seemed confusing (forum is tidier).

[FireStorm_]

I advise to read zwzsg's post again.
It illustrates the situation quite nicely, i think.

Then I if you still think a satellite-page in some others company's domain is a good idea, you may want to ask yourself this:

"What is the page supposed to do? what is its ultimate function and its goal?"
(And is it serving that goal? Or perhaps even competing with other sites?)

If I'd invest in maintaining and improving a page, I'd invest in springrts.com, before I'd look anywhere else.
I think the most important thing any promotion-satellite-page page should do is linking to that one: springrts.com
So instead of building another springrts.com somewhere from the ground up, I'd just link to it. (saves time, I think, if nothing else )

(to clarify: I talk about promotional-satalite-pages. not sites with clear supporting alternative function like i.e. a spring-replay-site.)

[AF]

Which is why everything on springinfo redirects to the original source.

There will always be satellite pages, because:

• We cant upload videos and stuff here, hence youtube channels and profiles
• Only posting on springrts.com is a highly ineffective way to market and spread word about your game
• This site and forum is terrible for surfacing new content. Few people have the time to read each and every thread, that day passed several years ago ( I should know, I posted in every thread I could at the time and succeeded for quite a long time )

Re: SpringInfo

6 columns may be too many but I agree, and until the recent theme change, I did have sections on the frontpage for different things. I'm working towards regaining that, and landing pages etc. I had a page dedicated to ZK with information, latest videos, latest images, latest news, etc that I was trying as a testbed.

Individual games can be filtered down e.g.
http://www.springinfo.info/Games/balanced-annihilation/

Humour I have covered, engine releases too, maps I don't ( via springfiles ), games I have partially.

The other side is that I'm unaware of stuff, some projects are hidden deep inside the forum where I may not normally look.

Also, this is the feed minus springfiles:

http://www.springinfo.info/feed/?cat=-19

[FireStorm_]

Are you responding to what I said AF. It seems so to me.
Firing bullet-points at me? I'll try to deflect them.

1
I tried to make a distinction between promotional-pages and supporting-functional-sites.
I think (in example) a so called social-media-page falls into the first category, and you-tube in the second one.

2
I think people who made a game should market it themselves in their own chosen way, if they wish to do so.

3
I don't get this point. The first half is a repetition of point2, and the second half seems to be about you having lots of opinions without taking the time to read up on the subject or current affairs. I'm not trying to be mean: I have no trouble reading this whole tread.

To summarise my thought on the subject:
I think Linking is more time efficient (and can be just as effective) than rebuilding. Also I think it better to promote a single game then the engine as a whole.
And if you don't agree: Why not work to improve Springrts.com?

[AF]

I tried, it failed, that subject has been talked about extensively elsewhere on these forums so I wont go into it.

SpringInfo is at the end of the day a news site, to help surface and collate what's happening in the community. I'm pretty happy for people to build their own sites for their own games, like Forb & Evo or the ZK site have done, that's great, we should have more of that.

If there's anything I can do to increase the number of active game specific sites, that'd be brilliant. It also means I have more RSS feeds to tweet/fb post/put on the springrts.com frontpage/organise and curate.

I'd be even more thrilled if people wanted to write posts themselves and have real human produced content directly.


If anyone is interested in microsites, dev journals, or any other kind of small site ( maybe even just a gallery a download button and a brief paragraph explaining what the game was and where to find the forums ) let me know