Newsbox on springrts.com frontpage

[PicassoCT]

What is news to the user?

Actually, most of the users do care about only filtered events.
Things of Interest are:

User Interface Bugs fixed.
Game Balance Changes.
Eyecandy releases.
Balance discussions.
Flamewars.
Obsucre scientifical threads and diy-homeprojects

[Forboding Angel]

Well for the multi-posting thing, this would fix a lot of the problem:

https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... &t=2218256

That way with open graph implemented, sharing on social media (fb, twitter, g+, etc) would look professional and well done.

In fact, as soon as I have some extra time, I'm going to be converting the evo site over to me posting news on it instead of G+ (and using feeds to make it go elsewhere). That way, I can make nice posts on the site, and reshare them from the G+ page, and still use twitterfeed to crosspost them to the desura feed.

I would bother posting on desura, but the problem is, when you post news there, it, in many cases, takes DAYS before they approve the posting, making it very much not worth it. Steam you have a lot more control over timing of posting.

On a happy note (of sorts), steam uses a pseudo form of bbcode for posting, so posts made here could probably be copy pasted to steam as well (if you used imgur or something for the images).

The setup that I had made with the new site design was very well set up to handle all this cross postage goodness and dealt very well with the garbage in/garbage out situation.

[knorke]

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.

That is the same imo: it should not need guidelines that tell how for example some two-sentence-blog-post does not count as "news worthy."
That should be so obvious to anyone that I think if it really needs written rules for that, then the rules are going to be broken anyway.
Either way, a draft is below:

1) News must be directly about spring or a spring-project.
("My computer broke and now I can not post about spring for a while" is not a post about spring.)

2) Any spring related topic is okay, if it is major enough:
-a new map
-a new game or major game version
-large change in engine
-something else "big", for example a collection of models or a Lua gadget or long text
-generally some effort / thought must have gone into it.
"Fixed some typos" or "Added 2 more mex spots to south" is not major.

3) News must be understandable and interessting to outsiders too:
If something needs background-info to be understood then news must give that info.
If the topic is super-technical-complicated then it needs to be explained how it matters for players/other devs.

4) News gives non-trivial information that goes beyond the basics.
Common style, especially in "new map" threads is a post as this:
"My new something XY. Should work for all games. Thanks to bla and blub. Download here: [link]

• "
  That is way too general: Barely giving basic info like authors is not interessting.
  Instead describe how it was made, what is special, how does it work etc.
  
  4) Images as forum attachments to post, so that they do not disappear.
  No file-hosting sites, no private websites - no matter how reliable you think they are.
  
  5) A seperate headlines on frontpage for every new draft is not nessecary.
  If your news is still at top of the front pages and you want to post a follow-up, for example announcing a new version then avoid something like this:
  "Map Blabla-land released!"
  "Map Blabla-land released! v2"
  "Map Blabla-land released! v2.1 (wind fixed)"
  "Map Blabla-land released! 2.1c (now works with zK)"
  "Map Blabla-land released! 3.10 (wind fixed for real)"
  Instead reply to your original post with the updates, or edit the post.

[AF]

This all sounds like a lot of manual work and effort.

I asked for people who might be able to help in such a respect on SpringInfo and got almost nothing. Similar things happened to the last community news.

Most of all, posting in a forum leaves us with the same problem we always had, our content isn't discoverable. The best content on springrts.com was always inside a phpbb forum thread that was difficult to find or surface automatically, or share via social media etc.. It's like shooting yourself in the foot.

Thus we have a problem. Either the news is intended for the community itself, at which point we already have forums and all the stuff inside it. Or it's aimed externally at new people and the rest of the gaming community to attract new blood. Optimising for both will give us crap.

Firstly. Community news != engine news. If you insist on doing it, make it separately discoverable. Separate RSS feed, separate section on the front page.

Secondly, there's nothing stopping someone curating the relevant posts into a tag on SpringInfo then using that tags RSS as the front page feed. Full 100% manual control over what goes in there.

Thirdly, it has been established a single feed with a single list does not work. SpringInfo already has feeds for videos. It already has a category for release posts, a feed for humour, a feed for tournament videos, a feed for ZK, a feed for XTA, etc etc. Instead of complaining that the main feed is un-curated and noisy, be specific and use the specific feeds that people think are most relevant.

Lastly, not all spring engine content is built or worked on here. There are entire games that have risen and fallen with their author never registering to this forum.

SpringInfo is built to hoover up everything relevant to the community no matter how small. Images, videos, anything that could possibly be news. I have a system to mark things as irrelevant and publish that some feeds go into as they aren't 100% spring.

Right now you're pulling in the feed for absolutely everything regardless of what you actually want, then expecting relevancy, which is naive. Replacing it with your own manually curated forum sounds nice, but it's a lot of work, and history has already proven multiple times that we haven't the manpower to do it.

At one point I offered up free sites, with free hosting, and automated posting to the forums, giving people their own website and still letting them post news to their forum release thread auto-magically, but pushing to twitter/tumblr/facebook all at the same time! Nobody took me up on the offer. What makes you think they're going to curate and distill everything manually by hand

Except Knorke who's put so much effort into complaining about these things, he could have built spring info and co twice over and manually written and produced all the content himself.

I keep offering solutions but they fall on deaf ears...

[FLOZi]

You keep offering solutions that have been proven to never be implemented in years of trying.


<ADMIN_HAT>

Knorke requested that any discussion about social media etc be in another thread.


From now on this thread is on the KISS implementation proposed by abma and knorke.

Don't like it? Make another thread.

</ADMIN_HAT>

[AF]

I don't run springrts.com, but I can point out that now half the news box is contextless, and makes no sense. Either Post processing is necessary, or thread title changes needed.

[knorke]

What abma put on frontpage few days ago I consider more an emergency fallback. (at least that is my interpretation)

I would suggest to continue as below, as far as I tell, there are no real technical hurdles.

1) Create/unhide subforum "Frontpage News"

2) Connect subforum to frontpage
(Thread titles become headlines, Clicking the headlines goes to thread)

3) Decide if other subforums like "Tourneys" should automatically post as headlines.
IMO: No, there are are too many non-news posts like "When is the next tourney?" or "Here is my map version 3.2 with minor fixes"

4) Come up with guidelines for posting
Proposal: http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... 20#p561887

5) Announcement (global sticky thread) that there is new news-system and anyone can post. (Although "it totally works now" has already gotten bit old)

6) Let people make test posts. See if somone can break it etc. See what happens if you edit or delete a title, see what happens to very long titles etc.
I do no mean post spam like "LOLORROLrofl trololololo" but "Look at this epic replay" or whatever would otherwise be too minor. (Since in short time nobody will probally come up with a "real" news)
That might cause spam news with minor stuff but there was spam for such a long time, I think it is good to allow people get familiar without fear of messing up.

7) Discuss which test-news were good or bad.

After testing is finished, delete threads that are obvious test-threads.

9) Ask people who do content (dev, tourneys, videos, etc) if they want to post it. If they do not want to, ask if they are okay with others posting about it.

10) Maybe add back a few automatic feeds that in past were good & trouble free, if not already covered by other news. (Imo only one is the zero-K feed.)

[FLOZi]

IMO: No, there are are too many non-news posts like "When is the next tourney?" or "Here is my map version 3.2 with minor fixes"

Fixable issues with new subforums and strict moderation. More problematic is that people tend to not actually make new release posts, just update old thread OP.

[knorke]

I think those two examples are ontopic and perfectly okay threads to post in those forums.
It is just happens that they are not news, but one can not turn all forums into news-submission-forums.
More subforums are imo not needed at this stage, lets first see if even one forum gets more than 5 posts.

More problematic is that people tend to not actually make new release posts, just update old thread OP.

That is actually how news-thread should be done imo. One headline (=thread) per "thing".
Initial release is newsworthy, further small fixes not.
See http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... 20#p561887 point 5)

[Silentwings]

Posting new threads for major, but not minor releases is actually already local policy in the game development subforum: http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=12388

But it's true also that some projects have only one release thread and simply add a post to it for all releases.

[scifi]

Websites like Total war center wouldnt have gotten such popularity without a good news section, and they have specific staff that search the forum for interesting things.

Their news forum/section is essentialy a forum post with a link.

Essentialy content devs can ask to be linked and if deemed worthy a link is posted in the news section, indie DB and moddb work pretty much the same way.

But then again these websites main/home pages are all about the news rather than Releases/patches/download links.

[abma]

my first proposal:

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=38

(its not set live yet, some existing posts have been grabed)

for the rules i merged knorkes + the existing spring community news rules.

[knorke]

scifi:
Interessting,that forum seems to work surprisingly similiar to this idea here.
They have subforum "Front Page Announcements" with posts like this:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthre ... eia-Update!
Short text, then a link "Click to see more" or "Check it out here" that leads to article/download.

Their frontpage http://www.twcenter.net/ is basically all the news, with longer text shown and image.
springrts.com only has one line for headlines, so bit more limited and probally does not get clicked that often by new visitors. (=They probally are more likely to click onto something in menu etc)
Maybe at later state that could be done at spring too, the news about engine versions are already like that. But for now I would say one step at time..

Just remembered that the frontpage news on www.tauniverse.com also work by via a news forum:
http://www.tauniverse.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=59
(They have the full-length news on frontpage. I prefer the "preview-way")

--

Some notes on new subforum http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=38 :
The example threads that got moved there look good, that is the kind of stuff that is nice to have as news.

But I think the threads should never actually get moved to new forum, they should remain whereever they were originally posted. Instead make new threads in news-forum with short text that explain what it is about and a "click here for more" link.

Especially the more technical topics like For example [engine] Comparing two float3s would benefit from such introduction. So that thread would have stayed in engine forum and instead the news post would be something like this:

For 3D highpowerperformance projects like spring optimization is very important and every cpu cycle matters. Engine developer jK discusses different methodes to compare two vectors and comes to surprising conclusion that will blow your mind...! Click here to see what he found out.

By the way replying to threads works but posting threads is locked.

[abma]

By the way replying to threads works but posting threads is locked.

should work now for all users which are in some special group. normally registered users can't post, but all (subforum) moderators/lobbydevs/... should be able to create a new thread there.

when first post is made i'll change code to show it on the frontpage (maybe i'll do myself, lets see...)

[knorke]

should work now for all users which are in some special group. normally registered users can't post

Why limit like that?
I think only limit should be that newly registered accounts (newer than 2 weeks or less than 10 posts or so) can not post to keep spam bots out. Think there are a setting in phpbb for that, not sure.

[abma]

I think only limit should be that newly registered accounts (newer than 2 weeks or less than 10 posts or so) can not post to keep spam bots out.

think or do you know that? this restriction is to keep spam bots out. also afaik all active members here are in one special group, so i don't think the restrictions will apply to someone who wants to post there.

[knorke]

Think as in "I think I saw option for that in control panel." iirc there is group "new users" or something and one can set rights for them.
Maybe like that:
https://www.phpbb.com/kb/article/how-to ... um-access/

Imo there are many "normal" users who might be interessted.
Shadowfury (zK videos), Anachird (zK), qray (maps), dansan (replays site), LordMuffe (Eternal Struggle), Licho (zk, server) ...

[gajop]

I agree with abma, and if someone else wants to post, he/she should ask for access.

[gajop]

The question is really why those users aren't in a ZK/Eternal Struggle groups already (are they not?).

[knorke]

I suggest to first look into if there is way to limit posting based on registration date/post count. (see link)

Seems better than endlessly maintaining list of people and their project groups or if they consider themself to be "mapper" or "scripter" or whatever. There is also players who might want to post something without belonging to any real group: for example if somone once makes a video or strategy guide. Relying on people having to ask is hassle and unreliable imo.

And maybe have note where people can discuss about the news forum (for now maybe just this thread or "General Discussion") I think "Posting rules / hints" stickies are not the place for discussions..