Subforums for the larger mods

[smoth]

There are free forum hosting setups.

[zwzsg]

Subforums for the larger mods

Not going to happen. It was asked for several times, and never happened, so I see no reason it would go differently this time.

I don't want to figure out who deserves a subforum and who doesn't.

It's pretty easy to get a criterion such as "any mod whose thread is over 5 page long and whose creator ask for a sub-forum", and stick to it.

get off yo asses and make one

Get off yo asses and post in this KP forum!. I feel lonely there.

Mods should really have their own hosting and communities anyways, the spring site isn't open to be used as an e-penis size contest.

No, scattered we die, together we stand. Why are you talking about Penises? You're just throwing irrelevant obscene word to throw discredit over a sensible request.

There's no reason a mod should be doing anything here that requires a subforum.

There is. To gather all discussion about a mod on the same place, while being able to have more than one discussion at once concerning a mod. To not have repliers realise only after posting twice this isn't about BA.

Just make a forum that you can make multiple threads per mod, flagging them with [XTA] or [KP] or whatever.

Still not as convenient as a subforum per mod. If I want to see recent threads about a mod, I can't really, if a mod has ten times more discussion, it drowns out the other, and, well, basically, the whole forum software, the search box, the moderator system, etc.. was conceived by having in mind it would be used by creating subforums, not by using tags in thread names. Anyway, half the people will forget about putting [mods] tags in thread name, the other half will always spell it differently and the thread title will become less readable. So idea is maybe better than nothin, but much worse than proper subforum.

1.) Moderator time. Will the effort of setting up the subforums and subforum moderators

Werewolf subforum ffs!

Beside, for having created subforums on another place in my times, I know the times taken to create them is so small no one who hasn't the time to should have been appointed moderator in the first place.

One thing I could do is create a KP thread a day until Spring forum moderators give up! Would be interesting if only as an experiment to see how much more more replies I'd get there and thus prove that going offshore is not the solution.

Anyway, despite their declaration, the absence of mod specific subforum proves the admins of Spring forum do not care about mods (or games, as the FGJL lobbied to call them).

so BA/CA/XTA/NOTA would get there own forums ?? that makes Spring look like TAspring again which is what the engine is trying to get away from.

To the contrary. Having mods confined to mere threads shows they are not worthy of consideration, that there is only one Spring game, which of course would be BA.

Also, have a look at TAUniverse: They keep creating and archiving subforums for about any mod or any hosted that ask for, and have a far more active mod community, relatively to player population and game age, than Spring. And this, I claim, only because they're not shy about giving mods subforums!

Until we have a solid mod to fall back onto, most players will sick with OTA mods.

I myself would like to scrap OTA and go onto something new but until there's actually something that isn't buggy, plays as well as OTA mods and is a complete replacement for OTA, I'm sticking with OTA.

EE.

[Otherside]

http://bannihilation.11.forumer.com/index.php

:D

1 minutes work

[zwzsg]

http://bannihilation.11.forumer.com/index.php

:D

1 minutes work

1 post.

You could retort it's too soon, so I propose you come back in a month, and we'll compare the amount of BA threads created within a month between http://spring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/ and http://bannihilation.11.forumer.com

[Columbus]

Geez, just create the subforums, what is there to discuss about?!
It's not like it's going to rip the fabric of the universe or kill 9000 babies....I think

[SwiftSpear]

The werewolf forum took like 30 minutes to set up. I'm not doing that for every second mod.

If I wasn't personally a TWG fan the game wouldn't have a subforum... Which means it wouldn't run, because the host needs special accesses to the game thread that we don't allow on these forums and it's a huge hassle if random dudes wreak the game.

Forb is offering free hosting to games including thier own facepage and forums. Smoth offers forum space to games. Wouldn't you prefer forum space you can actually administrate?

If there's really a demand I can set up mod based subforums, but they're not going to be glorious.

[Jazcash]

The werewolf forum took like 30 minutes to set up.

LEARN2PHPBB

[IllvilJa]

Forb is offering free hosting to games including thier own facepage and forums. Smoth offers forum space to games. Wouldn't you prefer forum space you can actually administrate?

If there's really a demand I can set up mod based subforums, but they're not going to be glorious.

There is really a demand, honest! Also, we don't need anything glorious. As a mod player (not mod creator), I would very much appreciate mod based subforums as I can participate in those discussions without creating yet another account (and checking yet another forum). I would personally love to see a subforum for P.U.R.E for instance, given that I only use the forum here at clan-sy.com to discuss that particular mod.

Forb's and Smoth's offers do save time for those who decide to setup and administer separate communities, that is true but the problem is to some extent that those communities are separated from the community here. Having a bunch of subforums herebased on mod/group-of-mods will ease crosspolination between different mods, as more people will tend to check out threads belonging to "other" mods than those they usually discuss, simply because it is convenient to "slip over" to discussions for such "other" mods. Setting up separate mod communities will create a barrierbetween mods I think that would make that cross pollination much harder.

If this setup will "promote" *A mods by giving them "additional attention/credit/etc" don't forget that it will also promote other mods like Spring44 (yes, that quality mod should have it's own subforum here, even if it already have a community site) and P.U.R.E (which also is an excellent showcase mod) etc. At the end of the day I'm convinced that mods like Spring44 and P.U.R.E are the ones that will win the most on subforums (especially if the *A mods all get to share a single, common subdirectory for TA-derived mods, like a dumpster for them... ooops,the "organize stuff according to my personal preferences"-ego of me has spoken ).

The reasoning that "we must not organize the forum so discussions related to mods like spring44, P.U.R.E, Kernel Panic etc get easier to manage because then we make it easier to discuss TA-derived mods and we don't want to be associated with the latter" feels a bit backwards, sorry for being blunt about it.

Look at 'argh'. He's mainly working with P.U.R.E (or rather, that's the only mod he works on right now). Still he is participating in threads about other mods as well (and IMHO, he usually provides some value to those discussions, for a bunch of reasons). If P.U.R.E were confined to it's own community web site, args participation in all those threads probably should be much less.

(And look at me. I often, if not always, write far too much. Like now. So I'll better stop here.).

PS. Isn't it possible to filter away stuff in certain subforums so those threads never show up in 'New posts'? If so, then a separate subforum called 'TA-derived Mods' would be fantastic, as I simply could edit my preferences to filter away that subforum and presto I don't have to see those *A threads at all when I check for new posts!.

[zwzsg]

The werewolf forum took like 30 minutes to set up.

[Forboding Angel]

These forums are for the Spring Engine.

/thread

Most of us other mods don't have much to do with this forum because we don't want our games thrown in the same hat as Stolen Content, and this place is Rife with it.

I have 2 threads here, one showing off the work we've been doing with the remodel (which is mirrored on the evo forums), and one release thread in the mods section which is now probably 4 pages down. All other discussion I want to take place either on the Evo forums or in #evolution

However, if subforums here were offered I would be pretty much forced to accept one cause otherwise I would be doing a disservice to myself and the game.

This is the ENGINE. Should CS or L4D fans post rabidly on the Source Engine forums, of in their own communities?

/thread

Edit, I just thought of a solution, brb.

[zwzsg]

Should CS or L4D fans post rabidly on the Source Engine forums, of in their own communities?

CS, L4D, and Source Engine are all subforums of the same forum!!
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/f ... ay.php?f=7 <- CS
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/f ... .php?f=130 <- L4D
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/f ... .php?f=195 <- Source

[IllvilJa]

Edit, I just thought of a solution, brb.

Sounds cool. Keeping our fingers crossed!

[Forboding Angel]

Ok, you want mods forums in a highly visible place that gets lots of traffic?

Done.

http://www.springinfo.info/?page_id=614

http://forums.springinfo.info << If you get redirected back to these forums it means that DNS Hasn't propagated yet.

As far as I'm concerned any mod can have forums here. The Databases are linked, so if you've already got an account on springinfo, you have an account on the forums.

Some of you will notice that I left off gundam, ee, evo and a few others. The reason is that we already have forums and would prefer that our traffic be directed there (I'm only speaking for myself, smoth and fang would need to let me know if they wanted one, but I'm making an educated guess that they probably don't).

Springinfo sees an asston of traffic, and random users comment on posts quite frequently, it would be a good idea if the creators started paying attention so that I don't have to be the one obligated to reply to their users for them. (Smoth and argh, I'm looking at you)

Also these forums support a lot more features than the spring forums do, and in particular, group forum rss feeds, and individual forum rss feeds. So if you use a reader, you can subscribe to a feed of the particular forum you want to pay attention to, and can have nearly realtime updates on new stuff.

There are a lot of other really nice things as well, but that's a pretty decent nutshell of the whole deal. SubForums for BA, CA, SA, NOTA, XTA, PURE, S44, and kernel panic have already been created. If you want your mod added to the list of subforums, just let me know.

This takes pressure off of the admins/mods/devs here and arguably puts things in the spot that they should be anyway.

[SwiftSpear]

Personally, I think it makes sense to have a subforum which in return contains a number of "subsubforums", one per mod.

I'm willing to implement this. First I want to know if actual game representatives are legitimately interested, not counting people who have made 1 or 2 units for CA. It does take my time to set each forum up, so I want some indication that I'm not wasting my time.

I still highly advocate that game builders set up your own forums. As you're not even going to be able to moderate your own forums here, they will be under our forum rules, you won't be able to set up stickied topics or other things (I'll do it, but I'm going to allocate you a limited number)

I'm not willing to make mod forums for games who's creators don't want forums here. I don't care if the players want them or not, it's the perogitive of the game builder to attempt to control their community however they see fit. We are not a "X mod" fan site, we don't want any part of drama between a game's creator and it's community base.

[SpliFF]

It's an offer I would take up once my mod has a player-base. It's premature to be asking your question now because most of the current mods have made other arrangements.

I'm not sure why you wouldn't give mod leaders moderation rights in their subforum. That seems to conflict with your whole "not being bothered" philosphy. A trusted and interested administrator in each subforum would reduce your workload. The alternative is being constantly hassled to do stickies, thread merging, moderation and cleanup. If the mod leader turns out to be a pain, or power-mad, or just lazy you reserve the right to boot their whole subforum. I don't see the problem.

[BlueTemplar]

Forboding Angel, thank you for creating these forums.
But I'm not sure this is the best idea, for the same reason that I find weird that Spring has now TWO sites. Unless of course the idea is to migrate all the discussion not strictly related to development to springinfo (even then, where AI and LuaUI discussion should belong? And technical help?). And why having bothered with creating such a great spring.clan-sy.com front page?

Other thought I had about this topic, I'm not sure they are relevant now, but I don't feel like deleting them after having taken time to write them:

yep, I don't have a lot of noobs posting random crap! I also have very specific things covered. My site isn't for all the fuckwitts of the community, it is for a controlled environment for people to have a forum if they need one. So development can be discussed without all the stupid bullshit that is on this forum. to that point and purpose it has less activity.

The point is exactly to separate modding discussion from player discussion (or "random crap" as you call it), for the mods that are big enough.

I just want the forum to be divided up more so we don't keep getting topics in places where they shouldn't be.

all discussion related to P.U.R.E that I read and is participating (to some minor extent, I admit) is exclusively on this forum

The whole point is that this rule is retarded. It makes reasonable discussion about any mod impossible. It defies the principle of an internet forum.
Having mutliple topics in one thread reduces a forum into a chat. It takes aways all structure, and forces a user wanting to know something to read through dozens of pages.

To the contrary. Having mods confined to mere threads shows they are not worthy of consideration, that there is only one Spring game, which of course would be BA.

QFT


- A forum serves a totally different purpose than a chat. For instance it prevents the same question to be asked a zillion times.

- Since when the moderators are expected to read every single post from every single subforum? There's a "Report this post" button for a reason!

- I play most of the mods available under the Spring engine, and I'm not going to bother to register and check regularly each and every of the other site forums, if one of them is created for each mod.

Also, if a forum is created about well-known mods on another site, it will be less likely that the people discussing this mod over there will learn about the other mods, especially if they are small.

And again, the Spring community is not big enough for this.

- It's not only about BA, others mods like CA would greatly benefit from it too, as I've already shown.

- It's also about separating the modding and the player discussion for the biggest mods. (Actually, maybe BA wouldn't need that separation, since almost all the changes are about unit balance)

- The biggest mods should get their own subforum to host the player discussion, the other mods - the "Other mods" subforum. Same logic for modding discussion. How do you know when a mod is big enough to have it's own subforum? When there are enough threads created regularly about it so that it starts competing for thread space with other mods!
An example (though it doesn't have a "Other mods" subforum, and modding and player discussion isnt really separated, but that's also because the community is even smaller than for Spring):
http://spaceempires.net/forum-69.html&s ... bb967b583d

(As you can see, sub-forum moderators include mod creators)

EDIT:Damn forum cutting edited links... Is there a way to fix that?
And what about being able to forum search for a specific phrase without having to use search on google with site:http://spring.clan-sy.com "search phrase"?

[SwiftSpear]

It's an offer I would take up once my mod has a player-base. It's premature to be asking your question now because most of the current mods have made other arrangements.

I'm not sure why you wouldn't give mod leaders moderation rights in their subforum. That seems to conflict with your whole "not being bothered" philosphy. A trusted and interested administrator in each subforum would reduce your workload. The alternative is being constantly hassled to do stickies, thread merging, moderation and cleanup. If the mod leader turns out to be a pain, or power-mad, or just lazy you reserve the right to boot their whole subforum. I don't see the problem.

I didn't want to create usergroups for subforums. The majority of our rights and privileges work is done through usergroups, and if there's enough of a crowd of them it makes nearly any forum administration a bigger hassle. To a degree, it's just going beyond the scope of phpbb3. If user groups had better organization and filters I'd be less apprehensive.

[Forboding Angel]

Use the url tags

The new spring site is basically not accessible (which is why I said to use wordpress in the first place...). That's the problem, plus it is news for the engine, not the players.

Springinfo = Information for players
Spring Site = Information for everyone else (or both if you happen to belong to both categories)

So do I keep the forums or delete them?

[Nemo]

I wouldn't mind having a subforum for S44 - it'd be nice to be able to put guides and such in a more visible place that isn't full of changelogs and fixes and bugreports. That said, we do have our own forums with a reasonable amount of activity, so it would really just be an audience-level thing, since spring.com gets a load more traffic than s44.com.

Also I don't think it'd be worthwhile to still have the mods with a subforum use the main modding forum - seems silly to have all substantive discussion in one place, and bug reports/changelogs in another. I figure a bugreport sticky and a dev update sticky in a subforum would suffice.

[SpliFF]

I don't have a problem with using springinfo. It's no different to the situation I was in with Supcom where general engine/modding took place on the gpgnet forums and some of the hosted mods were on SupComUniverse.com.

At least you can access several mod/game forums with one account which is presumably the main point of this exercise.