Newsbox on springrts.com frontpage

[knorke]

A thread for discussing how the " Spring Community News" on frontpage should work.
To be clear, that means the yellow marked area:


If you want to talk about spring-news on twitter or myspace or third party sites, then go to a different thread.

-springinfo can not be used for this: It never worked right for this purpose because it had different ideas about what should be included in news.
(For example adding 20 tourney videos at once might be useful for springinfo's "video archive" or whatever but is of course useless for springrts.com frontpage.
There one would rather only have the one hand-written post about the tourney.)
There are supposedly ways to filter it, but in years that was never set up or never worked, so imo unrealistic that this should change now.


Better way is imo:
http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... 22#p561809

first proposal:
http://test.springrts.com/
it uses the subforums game & map releases + the tournements.

In similiar way to above, I propose to create a subforum named: "Frontpage News"
Any thread created there posts to frontpage, just like the subforums added by abma.

*This gives every forum user an easy and reliable way to publish a news.

*If someone abuses it and post something that should not be on frontpage, then that thread can be deleted: Same situation as when someone was to post offtopic in other forums.
(Assuming that there is a technical way that deleting the thread also makes the news disappear.)

*There is no depedency on third party sites

[Silentwings]

I think trying to create a general automated/open-access newsfeed is a bad idea. Real news is rare and an open door to posting on the main page just becomes an invitation for the over-enthusiastic. My best idea:

a simple "X unique players online in last 24 hours, Y players online in last 7 days, Z minutes total ingame over last 7 days" box and one permalink to some content page/feed/SpringInfo page for each game that wants/maintains it. Could also include an "active topics" link to http://springrts.com/phpbb/search.php?s ... ive_topics.

[AF]

I propose we scrap the box, it was a terrible UI, and has a terrible design that doesn't fit in with the rest of the page.

Replace it instead with a full width section that has multiple lists that reference different things so that someone can't push releases off of the front page with other things that may be interesting but are much noisier.

Latest Spring Info posts, latest SpringInfo release/announcements feed, and most recently updated forum threads

[knorke]

an open door to posting on the main page just becomes an invitation for the over-enthusiastic

If someone posts things that obviously do not belong there, then it can be dealt with, like off-topic anywhere else is dealt with.

a simple "X unique players online in last 24 hours, Y players online in last 7 days, Z minutes total ingame over last 7 days" box

That might be good, but it is something different.
The other ideas (active topics, springinfo link) do not seem useful to me.
Who actually needs "recently updated forum threads" on frontpage, that seems more like a question of "How can we fill up some empty space?"

I think there would be enough "real news" so that it does not need this fillers.

[AF]

Real News? No true scotsman

NEWS FLASH: Recent advances have determined that nothing about this project is necessary

[Jools]

How about a new k itchen? We ship from Lancashire...

[knorke]

@AF: What does that mean? You think that spring is dead?
Yes, I agree, and would be interessting topic to discuss but my thread on that was deleted and the one ones by jj and CarRepairer got merged and closed. So maybe try your luck and open a thread on that, in this thread we pretend that something like spring news actually matters.

imo there are, or at least were, enough interessting things going on that could have been or could be mentiond in news. For example ChiliLobby:
http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... =0#p561799
That is also a case where just adding an automatic youtube feed just gives a bunch of strange videos, because without the background text of the post they mean nothing.

[jK]

Never understood why content devs never requested to be able to create threads in news.
Giving them their own news subforum with auto rights to post there, is a great idea.

To bad I want to get 98 done afap, and after that I want to help gajop on chililobby & mapper.
So html/php work is far away in my dev cycle.

[Jools]

I think what abma suggested is an acceptable solution for now.

[gajop]

@AF: What does that mean? You think that spring is dead?
Yes, I agree, and would be interessting topic to discuss but my thread on that was deleted and the one ones by jj and CarRepairer got merged and closed. So maybe try your luck and open a thread on that, in this thread we pretend that something like spring news actually matters.

I don't know about your thread, but jj's had very little substance and CarRepairer just posted a 'funny picture' . I also wouldn't want to see such a topic (but will allow it if stays within forum rules), because I don't see what it can do besides depress people. Discussing concrete problems such as the lack of engine devs (or even the EvoRTS issues, although things went a bit too emotional there imo) seems more sensible as it could potentially have a solution, whereas posts about the ultimate doom and gloom of Spring don't.

On topic, I agree with jk, have devs decide what constitutes news, and in addition to that add newsworthy community events such as tournament announcements & final results.
Also someone should redesign the news 'format', these current titles are really not informative, e.g. instead of "tournament: 17 to 24/02/2014 : BA 7.91 »» 1v1 Tourney" it should probably be something like "BA 1v1 tournament announced".

[FLOZi]

Never understood why content devs never requested to be able to create threads in news.
Giving them their own news subforum with auto rights to post there, is a great idea.

To bad I want to get 98 done afap, and after that I want to help gajop on chililobby & mapper.
So html/php work is far away in my dev cycle.

Pretty sure it used to be like this years ago fwiw.

[knorke]

I think what abma suggested is an acceptable solution for now.

Yes, it is step to right direction.
But directly pulling each thread as news from various subforums is not good.
For example in the tourney subforum a player might ask "When is the next tourney?" or "Would you participate in BA 1v1 tournament?" - perfectly normal use of the forum, but does not belong on frontpage news.

There already used to be a subforum similiar to this idea, titled "Community News" but it was not connected to frontpage. At least nothing happen when I tried posting there. Eventually it got removed.
Another time when I made a post there it was deleted and I never figured out why or who did it. No wonder it failed?

But even if it had been technical functioned, there simply never was much use to post news because the frontpage was always so broken. No fun to post anything if it disappears after 2 days because of whatever broken/old spam is currently flooding the feed.


In hindsight it is totally pants on head to just throw together random youtubes from content devs or upload-sites and think that this mess will magically create something worth reading.
What it creates is a bunch of videos and download links without context.
Instead all that is needed imo was a way for content devs to make posts appear on the frontpage, to give bit more visibility to interessting things.

On top of "news subforum" maybe add a few relevant feeds, that have proven to be "good content", problem-free (like no flooding with reposts from years ago), and generally "frontpage friendly", at the moment the only such feed I can think off is the zero-K news.

I think this can be done with existing tools without any/much html/php work?
1) Create "News subforum" - just clicking around in forum panel.
2) Make threads from "News subforum" appear on frontpage - if "Tourney" forum can be added, so can other forums.

[abma]

current idea is to increase "space" of the community news. spring releases are rare and and posts about it are mostly interesting for game/map devs and not gamers.

only thing thats a problem is the content, we don't have one currently :)

i dislike to much control as it distracts people from posting news. also i trust in people that they won't spam it with useless crap as they won't have any benefit from it. if they do i guess they'll get proper feedback, you know

1) Create "News subforum" - just clicking around in forum panel.
2) Make threads from "News subforum" appear on frontpage - if "Tourney" forum can be added, so can other forums.

basicly this is the same/similar idea which forb had/has but sadly the acceptance for his changes / using wordpress were pretty bad.

+1 for news directly taken from forum as we also have control about it and can interfere if something bad was/is posted. this wasn't possible when using the content feed from springinfo.

=> revive the spring community news forum?! (=blog)

[knorke]

only thing thats a problem is the content, we don't have one currently :)

More pessimistic than me
There are still a mix of gamer&develop things that could be taken to spring frontpage.

Quick example list from last few days, not complete:
ChiliLobby post with video

zero-K Planet Wars was...
...redesigned
..round started
..round ended

various videos on youtube

map releases (if the creator wants to write something more detailed, just a link to springfiles ist not good for frontpage)

NOTA tourney last weekend
...announcement
...results

zK tourney last week
...announcement
...results

i dislike to much control as it distracts people from posting news. also i trust in people that they won't spam it with useless crap as they won't have any benefit from it. if they do i guess they'll get proper feedback, you know

Yes. Although in past people were spamming with useless crap on the frontpage. There was no benefit to it but no direct disadvantage either, no reason to care...

=> revive the spring community news forum?! (=blog)

+1

[smoth]

=> revive the spring community news forum?! (=blog)

+1

+1

[Forboding Angel]

Community news forum never actually worked. No one would bother posting. Was a good idea, but sadly nothing ever really materialized out of it.

I still think it is a good idea though. I also think that getting rid of the headlines box would be wise. It was a way to make the main spring site not look completely dead and actually have some relevance. It wasn't a good solution then and it's not a good solution now, but it did work... more or less.

My only consternation is when I end up having to post things in multiple places. E.G. Site, social media, etc. This is where rss excels. Unfortunately, thanks to the disjointed nature of spring, it is also one of the crappiest areas.

Bring community news back. Maybe if the posts actually become news items on the main page it will actually gain some traction. I even might be arsed to post pics of progress and models and crap. A full post is a lot more alluring than a headline.

p.s. I am far to lazy to give a single fuck, but does phpbb have some sort of a <!-- more --> tag like wordpress uses for custom excerpts (http://en.support.wordpress.com/splitti ... /more-tag/)?

That would be a prudent thing to implement.

[Silentwings]

My only consternation is when I end up having to post things in multiple places. E.G. Site, social media, etc.

This is a point of for me too - currently when I make a release post it already goes in three different forms in three different places, all of which have to be constructed by hand.

If a "news forum" was added I would use it, too. Although it would be easier from my point of view to nominate individual already existing forum posts as news items. Also, I think there should be some convention as to what is eligible to go in else it risks becoming a calender (which is not interesting or needed on the front page imo, although maybe useful elsewhere) or suffering the SpringInfo fate of becoming swamped with interesting stuff but not really providing news. E.g. I'd want to see major game updates, not minor ones, special events rather than weekly events, new maps or major updates to old, etc etc. Obviously some sane person would have to moderate it, but I claim that, given some guidelines, amongst Springs content devs we are (mostly) sane enough people to work out an equilibrium of what to post as news and what not too.

[knorke]

currently when I make a release post it already goes in three different forms in three different places, all of which have to be constructed by hand.

In such case you would just post a thread with nothing but the link in it. The link points to whatever you want to show.

Example:

BA 8.00 Released!

BUT:
At first look it is slightly silly that the news will require the user to click a second time, the advantage is however how fool-proof and easy to maintain it should be.
More importantly, it also allows news-poster to give a bit context to their post:
One might want to explain explain what this "BA 8.00"-thing is. Seems obvious to us but to outside-spring people "BA 8.00" means nothing.
So such news-post might better be like:

The game Balanced Annhilation has released a new version.
It is now even more balanced than ever.
Click here for details.

For develop-stuff it is even more important. For example LuaIntro could have been a good news thing. But if there is simply that thread just like this, then outside-spring-people get no real information from it because it is too obscure.
For spring-inside-people that thread is okay, but for outsiders it needs at least tiny bit of context why something might be interessting.
Does not need much, 3 sentences can be enough:

Spring now gives game makers the ability to create dynamic loadscreens.
The new "LuaIntro" system is an improvement over the static loadscreen pictures that spring has had so until now. In future games will amuse their waiting players with nice load-progress animations or mini games.
LuaIntro

Any content that you want to show in news needs such "wrapper text", one can not simply add some threads or videos and expect people to understand it or be interessted in it.

Although it would be easier from my point of view to nominate individual already existing forum posts as news items

1) Think not possible without some new tools. In past these tools never worked or nobody was reliably maintaining them. So better to go a bit low-tech now.
2) It is not good idea anyway, see text above.

I claim that, given some guidelines, amongst Springs content devs we are (mostly) sane enough people to work out an equilibrium of what to post as news and what not too.

In past years lack of sanity for excactly this issue was the problem. My hope is more that with such system it is harder to came up with lame excuses for that, like "My twitter follower want to know about this!" or "It is meant for my epic huge followship on google."
Instead of posting crap on their myspaceblogs, people will have to take the conscious decision "Yes, I think this is imporant enough and I want to publish it to frontpage."

[Silentwings]

In past years lack of sanity for excactly this issue was the problem.

I disagree. In the most recent few years anyone could place anything on the news feed; there was no common expectation/guidelines for what counts as "news" and no one to enforce it if there had been. These were the problems.

In such case you would just post a thread with nothing but the link in it.

No, I wouldn't (as you say, that would look awful). I would write a few paragraphs of blurb and probably add a picture + wiki link + etc. But this could be done equally well -better imo- on the "real" release post, if there was a point to doing so (which there currently is not; so my current release posts, which are basically just changelogs, are not good examples). Hence my desire not to create 4 release posts instead of the current 3. But as you say, being able to mark individual forum posts as part of the newsfeed may not be possible without upgrade/plugin/etc.

[Jools]

Obviously some sane person would have to moderate it, but I claim that, given some guidelines, amongst Springs content devs we are (mostly) sane enough people to work out an equilibrium of what to post as news and what not too.

Nominate some people as "reporters", a different group from developers, moderators etc, with the task of reporting what happens in the community. If someone actually would do this is the question, but in the fantasy football world there are tonnes of volunteers to do just that.