[AdmiralRalwood]

So I'm about to run out.. but I had sort of a random thought that may or may not go anywhere...

Is the Steam Workship not an option for us in terms of mods? Obviously there's some issues with the Steam version of FS, but is there nothing we can do there? Or is it even worth it to try and use Steam when it's flooded with thousands and thousands of games?

AFAIK the only FSO-related things we could potentially put on Steam would be standalone TCs containing no IP from another company, and it would have to be freeware. If I were Valve, I would not exactly be jumping at the chance to include that in their library.

[Colonol Dekker]

Can I just interject something which just crossed my mind?

My primary (almost exclusive save for highlights) way of discovering new topics is to click "Show unread posts since your last visit"

And the new replies is my second click,   those two rule the roost.

Can anyone think of a reason or logical positive reason to add another one that says new/latest releases or some such?

[The E]

So I'm about to run out.. but I had sort of a random thought that may or may not go anywhere...

Is the Steam Workship not an option for us in terms of mods? Obviously there's some issues with the Steam version of FS, but is there nothing we can do there? Or is it even worth it to try and use Steam when it's flooded with thousands and thousands of games?

I don't know enough about Steam's installation procedures to be sure about this, but I am very certain that there are strict rules for not being able to interfere with files that you do not own.

That being said, with Steam Greenlight going away and Valve opening the platform for more or less everyone, I think it would be worthwhile to investigate whether or not we can get FSO on there (that's assuming that the initial fee for registration isn't too high for us). That way, we'd have a standardized platform we could use to distribute FSO, wxLauncher, and all the mod content we can produce, all that would be required of the user would be to copy over FS2 retail content from an existing install.

I am not entirely sure about the legality of this, but at this point, I am rather inclined to just go ahead with something like that and see if we can get some sort of reaction out of Interplay or whoever holds the rights now.

[Mongoose]

How would a giant mishmash forum with topics for each release be different from a list of forums for each release.

Like hack-wizard said, it provides one-stop shopping for pretty much everything the community is working on, whether it be entire campaigns/mods or single missions or models or scripts or whatever, and it doesn't involve having to hop between a half-dozen individual project or FREDding or whatever subfolders in order to find what's been released.  This would absolutely be contingent on installing an SMF tagging mod, so if someone was interested in just full campaign releases, they could click on the "Campaigns" tag and see everything listed there conveniently. (If you haven't seen it before, the Minecraft forum provides a good example of what it looks like in practice.)  It would be super-ideal to have every hosted project's release threads auto-aggregated into a folder like this, but barring that, a simple crosspost would work just fine too.

[General Battuta]

Okay, tagging aisde, how is that different from the Highlights forum?

[hack-wizard]

Okay, tagging aisde, how is that different from the Highlights forum?

People don't usually know to look directly in a specifically named subforum

[General Battuta]

For sure, I'm happy to see Highlights made more visible! But that's a matter of placement, not content.

[Phantom Hoover]

The problem that people seem to be trying to solve is 'how can we design the site so that new users are naturally funnelled towards active discussions in the community'. The current site layout is incredibly bad at this. Merging all the boards would be a significant improvement but in almost every other way it'd be disastrously terrible.

[hack-wizard]

Perhaps you could create a "veiw" of sorts that displays select threads or thread sets without removing them from their actual locations?

[General Battuta]

Delete gendisc, 'show unread posts'

[jr2]

How about a preview of new posts scrolling by?  Sort of like we have on the bottom of the main forum site, but scrolling, and floating at the bottom?  (In other words, it stays fixed, scrolling new posts inside itself, while you scroll through the forums, until you pick a sub-forum, at which point it limits itself to new posts from that sub-forum).

[hack-wizard]

Delete gendisc, 'show unread posts'

Perhaps showing recent posts as well?

How about a preview of new posts scrolling by?  Sort of like we have on the bottom of the main forum site, but scrolling, and floating at the bottom?  (In other words, it stays fixed, scrolling new posts inside itself, while you scroll through the forums, until you pick a sub-forum, at which point it limits itself to new posts from that sub-forum).

I like this idea.

[Black Wolf]

Delete gendisc, 'show unread posts'

Show unread doesn't work for people who aren't logged in, and we don't know how much of our traffic that accounts for.

Also, merging project forums wouldn't remove the functionality of Show Unread Posts - that would work just the same as it does now. All that would change would be a bunch of minimally active forums would be replaced with a smaller number of more active forums. Combine that with a tagging system (which I hadn't thought of, but that's a great idea) and the ability to filter by tag, and you have the best of both worlds.

And Gen Disc. (or something like it) should, and almost certainly is, staying. We're trying to grow HLP's userbase, not drive people away.

[General Battuta]

I am sure Gendisc attracts a lot of users for its many fruitful and fascinating discussions of non-FreeSpace related topics. Wait hang on

Project forums go over my dead rancid pale wormlike body.

[AdmiralRalwood]

And Gen Disc. (or something like it) should, and almost certainly is, staying. We're trying to grow HLP's userbase, not drive people away.

You say that like Gen Disc. doesn't actively drive people away (and if you were planning on saying it does not, there are people who only use IRC and stay off the forums specifically because Gen Disc. is a ****hole who would disagree with you).

[JSRNerdo]

Hmm yes deleting practically the only forum anyone even goes to anymore in HLP: A good idea that will bring more activity and people to HLP

[General Battuta]

Hmm yes deleting practically the only forum anyone even goes to anymore in HLP: A good idea that will bring more activity and people to HLP

This, but unironically. GD contributes nothing you can't get at higher quality elsewhere. And it produces a lot of stupid drama.

[General Battuta]

Wow, I can't believe my favorite game is still alive? What's hot? What's everyone talking about? Donald Trump and someone concern trolling about the gays. Oh.

[Lorric]

Even if Gen Disc is eliminated, it shouldn't be DELETED. It should remain what was posted there even if no further posting will be happening.

I have really mixed feelings about removing access to gen disc. Part of me thinks as long as even just two people want it to stay, it should stay. Part of me thinks there should be a vote on it and if ending gen disc comes out on top, it should be locked for a period to let people see how they feel about the absence of it, then have another vote to decide if that becomes permanent or if it gets opened back up.

Normally it would be an easy decision, don't take away something from someone else just because you don't like it, but that place is toxic and could be actively harming HLP keeping it going...

And as for "Arts and Talents", I might not like that name, but **** me, I can't come up with a better one.

[JSRNerdo]

the problem is if you remove gendisc you substitue "donald trump and concern trolling the gays" with "maybe a couple lets plays, and a single mod"

which honestly will probably be a significant improvement but /shrug

if we kill donald trump and concern trolling the gays we should probably let the fun threads stay though, HLP threat down is cool, there's probably 1 or 2 other good threads in gendisc. maybe a no politics rule would be cool