Author Topic: What should HLP 2021 be?  (Read 31919 times)

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
Regarding the question of which of the three platforms (forum, wiki, Discord) is for which purpose:
I think, all them have a specific purpose (or can have it). But it has to be clear what that purpose is and how those platforms are both connected and divided.

As someone who has worked with all three types of platform for other projects before, I see it like this:
  • The Forum Boards are for structured communications or long term discussions. Announcements, release threads and anything that has to run over an extended period of time, all those are things that should be placed on the board. Neither Discord, nor the wiki are really good places for such stuff. Discord because it isn't structured enough and important stuff can easily be washed away by later messages, and wiki isn't too good for communicating because of it's rather rigid editing mechanisms.
  • The Wiki should be the place to accumulate knowledge. That's the prime purpose of any wiki and what a wiki does best. So, any tutorials, lore information, lists of mods and assets, etc. basically anything that doesn't require much interaction or communication should be put there.
  • Discord should be for short term communication or chit chat. Anything that doesn't need to be visible for a long time, or that just needs a quick answer.
Of course there will always be fringe cases, that do not exactly fit in one of those categories. And we should also consider that not everyone might want to join all platforms. So, there should for example also be some sort of support section on the forums for those who don't want to join Discord for asking there.

All of that also means, that a lack of activity on one platform doesn't mean it's obsolete or deserted. It just means, there's no need for that particular platform at that moment.

Edit: Just saw that The_E stated some similar point of view on the purpose of the forum in the PolDisc thread. :D
« Last Edit: October 30, 2020, 09:39:06 am by SilverAngelX »

 

Offline BlackDove

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
By the way, might want to unsticky Goober, and sticky this.

 

Offline MP-Ryan

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
Good point BlackDove.

As for the rest, here are the things on my priority list:

1.  The main page needs to be a simple explanation of how to get started and where to go.  It should point first and foremost to Knossos, to the forums, and to Discord.  It needs a short a simple explanation that HLP supports free games and mods, with an emphasis on the FreeSpace Open engine, and can contain a short section about how the community is based in part on the FreeSpace 2 fanbase but that ownership of FS2 is absolutely not required for many of the hosted projects.  Links to the secondary social media should populate a sidebar.

2.  A general rules re-write.  They are severely out of date and unnecessarily long-winded.

3.  A specific, lengthier rules re-write for the board of contention, whatever we call it going forward (my thoughts on PolDisc in the dedicated thread, but as far as I am concerned deletion is completely out of the question and will long-term cause more problems than it solves, as I have personal experience witnessing in other communities).

4.  Staff roles.  Specifically, consolidate all key positions of responsibility from the board, backend, the SCP itself, discord, twitter, youtube, etc as "staff" and make a staff board with key access and control information.  Then, define responsibilities for each staff role and have staff remain in their "wheelhouse," so to speak.  There is no need for Discord staff to moderate the forums and vice versa if the people in question do not have an interest in doing so.

5.  Adding to four, RECRUIT MORE STAFF.  Specifically, dedicated people to maintain the forums at a technical level, dedicated people to maintain the frontpage of the site, and more global moderators.  We also need community level leaders and ambassadors, which is a role some current admins, moderators, and general board users all fill.  Those people should all be recognized and have a role in setting the path for the site.

6.  Explicitly separate (by policy, since system-level separation is much more problematic) moderation duties on the board itself from all other levels of technical access to the site.  In short - and this was Axem's desire and I would very much like to see it implemented - moderators are hired to do that job explicitly based on their community interactions, and not because they know the technical administration side.

In short:  I think HLP should dramatically expand the involvement of its community in actually running things, formally recognize that, and provide places for all of the people actually running things to directly communicate with each other.  That's a fairly simple tweak - adjust and expand the Project heads board's purpose and userbase, and move real-time conversation to discord with posts or information requiring more permanence to be held on the forums themselves.
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Offline karajorma

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
I like Mobius' idea above about adding links to discord on the forum. I think that will help a lot when new people have issues with a mod.
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Offline MP-Ryan

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
I like Mobius' idea above about adding links to discord on the forum. I think that will help a lot when new people have issues with a mod.

Yes, Discord needs a front-and-center placement both on the mainpage and the forums.
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Offline Lorric

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
I like Mobius' idea above about adding links to discord on the forum. I think that will help a lot when new people have issues with a mod.

Yes, Discord needs a front-and-center placement both on the mainpage and the forums.
And a reason to want to use it. I have no idea what goes on there or why would I want to join.

 

Offline Strygon

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
Real-time communication with various mod teams and a more relaxed environment overall would be a start.
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Offline Iain Baker

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
- Delete PolDisc. Won't expand here, see relevant thread.


- On the point of the forums' usage: I agree that most of the daily activity has moved away from the boards and towards discord. The forums' main role, as far as I can tell, is as a place for announcements, releases and status updates. There are a lot of people that are very active on discord (and on modding-related stuff, not just general discussion) and haven't posted on the forums in years.
I don't think this is necessarily a problem, but more of a natural movement (forums in general are a very 2001 internet phenomenon), so the way I see it, any evolution of the forums should try to accompany this trend rather than desperately try to fight against it.


- On a similar subject, I think it would be wise to add links to the forums and the discord (and possibly social media as well) directly on Knossos. Announcement feeds on a Knossos "main page" would also be nice to have.
The reason is that, last time people checked the download numbers for FSNebula, turns out that there's a LOT more downloads than forum or even discord activity would suggest. More than ever, knossos seems to be the forefront of player activity, and this should be leveraged.


Yep - agree with all of this. Discord is where it's at atm. I have seen several on-line communities migrate towards it. It has the advantage of being real-time, it has a dedicated app which is great for mobile etc.

FYI - the HLP forums don't play nice with mobiles. For example, I have never been able to remove the blacked out spoiler thing when looking at the forum, wiki etc on a mobile.

The other problem is that forums have their on way of doing things, lingo etc. which isn't all the intuitive for people who have not frequented them much in the past - which probably includes most people over UNDER the age of 20. I remember when I first started I found the forums to be intimidating and not especially welcoming TBH. I was made to feel like a dumbass due to not knowing what all the forum jargon abbreviation ment. The words 'Elitist' and 'gatekeeping' sprang to mind. Some of the guides and advice I was given wasn't especially helpful since it assumed that I knew what they were talking about. If I knew what they were talking about I wouldn't have asked in the first place.

This is why I have focused more getting the 'getting started' wiki up to date, creating the Knossos settings guide etc. than on other social media stuff - enticing new members only to have them leave soon after due to frustration or feeling insulted would be counterproductive. The situation does appear to have improved since then, which is handy.

Re the main site. It could so with looking a little 'sexier' than it is at present, the landing page especially - it looks dated and boring, which is a problem if it the first thing people see. Perhaps create an up-to-date version of the retail vs MPVs mission/cutscene thingy on YT then embed it on the front page. Moving eye-candy with sounds is sure to grab the attention.

I will confess I'm probably not the best choice for being the social media guy, because although I know how to use it, I bloody hate doing so. I use social media grudgingly as a means to an end - a necessary evil. You will probably be better of with recruiting someone who is a natural at it, someone who tweets and instagrams 24/7 any way. Welcoming new peeps, showing them the ropes, creating user-friendly guides and the like I'm great at, tweeting every 50 seconds - not so much  :lol:

Plus I'm getting more involved in mod development / proof-reading now so I don't have a lot of free time anymore.
« Last Edit: October 30, 2020, 06:59:09 pm by Iain Baker »
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Offline TheUnforgiving

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
As someone who has only passingly lurked here, eating up the meme threads, for years, only actually registering a couple years ago, and only choosing to actually get a bit more involved days before the precipitating events happened, I speak very much as an outsider to HLP's culture.  Take it for what that's worth.

Fineus and RazorsKiss make some excellent points about how to use social media to the community's advantage.  I found HLP because a friend who'd been here for a while pointed me here after they'd found something entertaining and thought I might like.  That's the power of the network effect: your friends to tell their friends, who read something interesting or funny, who then share it with their friends on social media and maybe get curious and decide to dip their toes in. That's how D&D has become a cultural juggernaut again, not just the monolith of a niche hobby it was 20 years ago.  It'll work for HLP, too.  In specific, what my friend introduced me to HLP with, and what convinced me to check back every few months, were some of Battuta's...idiosyncratic dev diaries for War in Heaven.  I think those kinds of threads -- weird and wild tales from the modding mines or just plain interesting technical hurdles from the SCP (that one time ShivanSpS found out ModelView had been stripping needed padding from model files for decades, causing memory issues on ARM systems comes to mind) -- would be great to add to the social media feeds. While they don't really go viral on a world-wide scale, they to tend to get passed around in the special-interest groups they're relevant to.   

As someone who hangs around the Twitter art community a lot, retweeting old posts or pulling old content "from the vaults" is a great way to shore up your feed when you don't have anything new at hand.  Posts on Twitter, by design, are transient, and very few people will see them more than a couple hours after the posts go up unless they get a lot of engagement from other users.  Retweeting and reposting moves stuff back to the top of the pile and it's really effective, especially for reaching audiences outside your timezone who may've missed it because they were sleeping or at work.  I vaguely recall there being a "Best of HLP" thread somewhere, but if there isn't, going back through the archives, putting one together, and keeping it curated would give the social media team a good resource of classic content to draw on during periods of low activity. Screenshots of conversations in the Discord absolutely qualify for this as well. 

Speaking of, one of the most important things for capitalizing on the network effect is "low barrier to entry", and Discord is a fantastic way to do that, since it's supplanted Skype, IRC, and in-page chat boxes for communicating with internet friends and communities.  Since most people have a Discord account already, joining a server and getting involved is just a matter of clicking an invite link.  Compare to the "antiquated" effort of filling out a registration page, coming up with a new password, waiting for the validation email, and then figuring out which forum thread you want to use to make your first impression and coming up with a suitable post that doesn't make you look like a random hanger-on.  For someone who is just curious, they may not get to that last part.  Making sure that lower-cost option is put in front of everyone who interacts with HLP's output -- be it social media, Knossos (as Matth suggested), or even the forums themselves (see Mobius) -- will give potential new community members an easier, more comfortable way to get situated. 



On the topic of rules, re-evaluating the forum rules is absolutely important and should be done regularly as a way to monitor the health and direction of the community.  Maybe annually would be a good interval.  However, revising the rules so they're "less likely to be gamed" is the wrong way to approach this.  Rules being gamed is often symptomatic of a prolonged and focused enforcement of only the letter of the rules, not their spirit.  "The rules don't say I can't, so I'm gonna."  Mainly, the spirit of the forum rules, like most rules, boils down to something rather simple: "Don't be a dick".  But, this is the internet, we're all cranky and...if not necessarily friends, at least want on tolerable terms with each other, so a certain level of dickery is permissible. It's up to the moderation team to decide what level of dickery they're willing to put up with and let others put up with.  However, there needs to be a structural commitment to enforcing that level in the moderation process.  If someone's conduct isn't breaking the rules-as-written, but is still quite obviously causing a problem, that conduct needs to be corrected, rules or not, and it needs to be corrected every time.  Enforcement of the rules doesn't need to, and in fact shouldn't, hinge on technicalities to be equitable. Even real world black-letter law allows for a fair bit of judicial discretion and the stakes on an internet forum are far, far lower than those of real world crime and punishment.

To be less brutally utilitarian about it, the spirit of the rules should also reflect the kind of community and audience we want to build with HLP, the kinds of interactions we want to to define the board and present to the outside world.  There's a saying that you get the audience you build, and if you don't try to build it, it will be built for you.  And odds are it'll be the dregs, the people who are too short-sighted, too toxic, and too stubborn to see how their behavior impacts others, to acknowledge or make amends for wrongdoing, who have decided this is their town because it's the one they haven't been chased out of yet, and ultimately drive away the people you want to have around with that behavior.  I've seen it before, and the communities who let those kinds of people stay around tend to end up so consumed by Petty Fandom Drama that nothing else gets done. 

Building a community is in many ways a proactive activity for the moderators.  It's not just a matter of smacking down people who cross a line and then going back to sleep until the next time a problem arises.  There needs to be a consistent effort to promote the the kinds of conduct the staff wants to see in the community.  Often the staff will need to lead from the front on that, conducting themselves (as much as is reasonable, given that they're human beings with lives and problems outside of HLP) in the manner they expect members to.  If the staff has standards of critique for mods or writing, they need to proactively make critiques that meet that standards as models for other members to follow.  Problem behavior needs to be addressed early before it spreads.  Staff needs to check in on people -- especially new people --  who have been made uncomfortable by problem behavior.  That last one is more important that I think a lot of people give it credit for.  It's the difference between "I'm not sure I belong here" and "These people want me to belong here", and that is massively important for member retention.  It's an unrealistic expectation for staff to give every person who visits the forums or the Discord a laurel and hearty handshake, pull out a chair for them, ask them what they want from the bar, as nice as that kind of personal service is for welcoming people to the community.  However, staff taking the time to check in on someone who has been upset by problem behavior changes how that person views the staff; the staff is no longer just concerned with punishing the guilty, the staff is also aware of the effects those offenses have on the community and the need for those effects to be addressed.  And that shift in perception is a powerful, powerful force for making people feel welcome. 

 

Offline Iain Baker

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
Modding, and FreeSpace modding in particular, relies very heavily on forums. Forums have declined in the past few years but we cannot pretend we can move HLP to a Facebook group or Twitter account, and get it to work the same way; the basic structures of release threads, stickied guidelines and so on are all a key factor for community projects.

However, we have to be cautious when people think the lack of activity on a board is a "bad thing". If discussions with fast Q&A lean towards Discord channels and/or other external platforms, said channels must be advertised more in order to prove that there's a lot of activity, except it's elsewhere.

My proposal is to add logos to the tiny boxes seen on the left column of the boards' list, and provide direct links to external sites. Mods with a Discord channel will get their boards to display the Discord logo, as well as a direct link. If a particular topic is discussed on Twitter, the Twitter logo leading to a specific hashtag and all related tweets ("freespace", "freespaceport", etc.) can be added, too. Does the mod or board have its own YouTube channel? Fine, add the logo and a direct link to the channel itself. And so on: visitors will have access to multiple platforms and choose the one they're willing to use in order to interact with the developers and/or the community, depending on the purpose of their request (a fast bug Q&A is better off discussed on Discord, a review is better off posted on the HLP forums, a promo message should go to Twitter, etc.).



Yup - all of this. Different communication channels for different types and lengths of content and for different types of engagement. I know of mod making communities where if you went by facebook alone you would assume they are DOA, but head over to discord and its thriving.

Definitely have links in each platform/channel to all the other platforms and channels. Perhaps even spell it out what each one tends to be used for so visitors will know where best to go. If we put membership figures next to the logos links it can show that different channels are doing well in their specific niches. (Well fingers crossed they are doing well anyway)
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Offline MP-Ryan

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
I was once an administrator in a community whose only posted rule was "Don't be a douchebag."  Which worked remarkably well until we had to add more admins and suddenly discovered that people's understanding of what is and isn't douchebaggery differs dramatically.
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Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
I own the Twitter handle. Let me know who needs access.

Regarding staff. HLP doesn't really update it's staff. IMO, after N days not logging in and N attempts at communicating, a position should be vacated and filled by someone currently active. When was the last time HLP got a new global mod? How many GMs or Admins are on the roles but haven't logged in this year?

The Discord link suggestion is a good one. As is the Knossos suggestion. In fact, I designed a bit in the UI specifically for shorthand announcements, but it's currently non-functional. We need a dedicated dev to work on Knossos since ngld is not around. Did we ever get access to the Nebula side to work on that as well? I am very invested in the Knossos project and would like to actively work with someone on making it feature complete and bug-free. Knossos gets a lot of traffic. It deserves the effort.
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Offline Lorric

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
I was once an administrator in a community whose only posted rule was "Don't be a douchebag."  Which worked remarkably well until we had to add more admins and suddenly discovered that people's understanding of what is and isn't douchebaggery differs dramatically.
Even things that used to be clear need explanation now. Example, put up don't be racist, are we using the normal definition or the far left definition?

 

Offline Lorric

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
That's an impressive post from TheUnforgiving. I don't have anything I want to single out, but I didn't want it to go unacknowledged.

 

Offline DefCynodont119

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
That's an impressive post from TheUnforgiving. I don't have anything I want to single out, but I didn't want it to go unacknowledged.

I agree, I wish I could get all my thoughts across like that.  :yes:

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Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
I've got "Hard-light" on Facebook, NOT hard light productions,  I started the shorter one years before and a key difference is that users can post 👍👍
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Offline MP-Ryan

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
-snip-

It looks to me like someone would make an excellent addition to a community promotion and reinforcement group.
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Offline TheUnforgiving

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
-snip-

It looks to me like someone would make an excellent addition to a community promotion and reinforcement group.

Ah, ****.  I done volunteered myself, haven't I?

 

Offline Lorric

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
-snip-

It looks to me like someone would make an excellent addition to a community promotion and reinforcement group.

Ah, ****.  I done volunteered myself, haven't I?
No good deed goes unpunished. ;)

 

Offline Sandwich

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Re: What should HLP 2021 be?
1.  The main page needs to be a simple explanation of how to get started and where to go. 

...

5.  Adding to four, RECRUIT MORE STAFF.  Specifically, dedicated people to maintain the forums at a technical level, dedicated people to maintain the frontpage of the site, and more global moderators.

And for gosh's sake, call it a website, not a "main page". Hopefully that will help change any perception that it's merely a gateway, and give people more ideas of what can be done with it.

For example, make a FS database. Yes, I know about the wiki... while it's a great reference chock full of information, a portion of that same information could be shown on the website in a far more appealing presentation. If the wiki is the tech specs on the back of a product box, think of the website as the splash image on the front and the highlighted features on the sides. Big hero images, well-written marketing-esque descriptions, tons of white-space... done right, you could make FS look like a brand new game, just on account of a slick website. :yes:

Also... don't over-plan things! Just be active and lively. Most successful YouTube channels' first videos looked very different from what they became when they found their stride. The most important thing above all else is to post regularly. That doesn't mean you have to have a strict schedule for when you do XYZ. It just means that if there's something to tweet about, some new screenshot to add to the highlights, some video cutscene to pimp - do it! Keep the activity going; don't worry if it's not polished.

Finally... while SMF is functionally powerful and flexible, the core experience of posting messages feels quite out-dated. Where's the Markdown support? The live preview-as-you-type? The #hashtag support? Heck, it doesn't even support unicode emojis: %uD83D%uDE25 <-- this should be this(ish):  :(

That said, I've poked around a little bit, and I don't necessarily see anything better that still qualifies as forum software. :-/ Maybe there's mods that would fit the gaps?

Anyway, I really hope all these new ideas work out for y'all. :nod:
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