Hard Light Productions Forums
Site Management => Site Support / Feedback => Topic started by: karajorma on October 30, 2020, 03:41:48 am
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So the last time the admins, moderators and project heads had any serious conversation about HLP's future appears to have been nearly four years ago. It seems like we're more than overdue for a conversation about it. And this time, in light of the changes that have happened since then and the drama of the last month, I'd rather we made it public.
In the last couple of years we've seen more of HLP's action move from the boards to the discord. That does partly raise the question of what is this board for, and how can we make it better? As we move towards 2021 and away from this horrible year, I want to know what people expect HLP to become and how willing they are to help achieve it. I have some ideas and I'll be looking over the previous threads for ideas on what can be done and we'll see how much can feasibly be implemented.
Some things that are planned include
- Reevaluating the way HLP is run. We already have a split between community and technical admins. I'd like to see this boundary increased so that those admins who are there to deal with the technical running of the site do that, while the rest of us concentrate on working with the community to make this place better
- Hiring more people to deal with the technical issues and community outreach that we require
- Updating the rules of the forum so that they are clearer and less prone to being gamed
- Talking to the individual projects heads to find out what they need from us
- Working on HLP's presence away from the boards. We have a Twitter, Facebook and Youtube channel. How are they used? How can we use them better?
- Looking at the main website. How can we change that into something that will attract new people?
Any ideas will be gratefully accepted but can people please make an effort not to bog the thread down in discussion over a single point. That has often been a problem in the past. And the whole point of this thread is to avoid making the same mistakes.
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I'd like to offer a few suggestions based on the list you wrote about looking at HLP as a whole.
- Social Media Aspect: I've been almost completely unaware of the existence of the HLP Twitter/Facebook/Youtube, and despite being one of the more active members here, I was actually very surprised to find all three actually existed.
The core problem is that neither of the three accounts really try to make people aware that it exists. They just post news and that's it. Social Media is a ruthless desert where everyone fights for attention, so it'd help to make their presence a bit more "aggressive". Perhaps by generously using appropriate space related hashtags on Twitter can already help improve its presence (lord knows it helped me with my art account, for how little I used it).
- Main Website: The question "What are the boards even good for?" is one I see occasionally tossed around. So far their main point is to act as a bulletin board for mods, how to install them, etc. But it doesn't have to be that. Something to engage the forum population, get them interested, organise friendly modding competition to inspire fresh modders, bring back the monthly HLP Newsletter. Stuff like that.
I'd write more but I also need to work towards my studies a bit. Expect more later.
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- 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.
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Everything I wanted to say was said better by Math
The rules as they are right now are pretty solid. I think the main issue with people trying to game them is that those people were admins and had an eagerness to game them in their favour.
I like how we looked at the frontpage and it was changed into something that was less attracitve then we had before :P
I'll try to make a mock up later.
With Twitter and Facebook it's probably a decent idea to get into contact with games journalists and make them retweet your stuff. I remember when Dominic Tarason made a FS2 post on Rock Paper Shotgun (https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/02/04/freespace-2-deploys-massive-mods-and-fangames-from-knossos/) and I'm quite sure that did a lot of work. There's various people out there who are interested in mods.
Also, I will have to point out that if you google "Freespace Open" you end up on the FSOInstaller website, and that's just bad.
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I'd really like to see that. The goal with the mainpage was to make it into something that attracted people to the game. I don't think this one does that even if it tries harder than the last one (which honestly was a mess).
I used the Team Fortress website (https://www.teamfortress.com/) as an example of what I'd like to see. Feel free to start a new thread about the mainpage and what it should look like if you want to discuss it.
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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.).
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I've always viewed the HLP forums as a sort of "info dump" - good for getting lots of information in one place. It's somewhat clunky for actual, active conversation, however - it used to be the norm for us to edit our posts instead of double-posting, but the latter seems more prevalent these days, especially in really active discussions.
This view has a flaw: what's the Wiki for then? Does it share the same purpose as the forums? Is the sort of information there different from the information you can find on the forums? And given this community, it's definitely not the ideal place for any serious discussion.
For active conversations, we have the Discord. Between Matth, Nyc, and I, we've sorted out two double-edit embarrassments I've made on the Wiki over the past year, and it is they, not me, who took the initiative to contact me on Discord, rather than on the Wiki itself, about it. Granted, this may be because we use Discord heavily, but if two people from two different countries, cultures, etc. with two different issues chose the same option to settle their issues, it may be a rough indication that the Discord is a better place for more active conversation.
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My only feedback here is going to be on a purely professional basis: No matter what you end up wanting to do with the website, DO NOT ever use WordPress. Just Google "WordPress hacked" if you want to know the reasons why. If you do so, don't forget that the Google search results have pagination links down at the bottom. ;)
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I think a huge point of focus should be in publicity on social media. Pimping knossos a d the standalone games would bring a lot of potential talent. Just working out where to pimp stuff is the key.
Obvs 3d modeling pages / Sci fi pages etc.
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- Hiring more people to deal with the technical issues and community outreach that we require
- Talking to the individual projects heads to find out what they need from us
- Working on HLP's presence away from the boards. We have a Twitter, Facebook and Youtube channel. How are they used? How can we use them better?
- Looking at the main website. How can we change that into something that will attract new people?
I think that all sounds good, there's just 1 problem: I've suggested all of that before, but for a number of reasons nothing became out of it. Even though there has been much talking recently I'm wondering whether anybody will take action.
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I think the idea of social media / attraction is good but if my own experiences are anything to go by, the big problem as Nightmare illustrates is - getting someone to do it and maintain it such that it doesn't appear dead.
I'd be hesitant to suggest anyone commit to starting or maintaining channels that they can't find time to push the content out regularly on. THAT SAID it can certainly be done. Perhaps variety is the key - not trying to get a new video out every day but instead doing a blog piece one day, update the next, screenshot the next and so on.
Switch it up a bit so that content doesn't always have to be the same and suddenly there'll be a lot more to choose from.
That's just my thoughts on the social media side of things. In terms of what I believe HLP should be... I decline to speak too loudly. You guys should decide.
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Notable point: Social media accounts can totally be run by multiple people.
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Good point worth taking on - the more people to contribute, the better and greater the content generated!
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Notable point: Social media accounts can totally be run by multiple people.
Yes. The problem however was to find just *1* person to do that.
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The thing is that we did find a person, but that person seemed to have done it to boost their career in games journalism.
But okay: I volunteer. I am perpetually lurking here anyway.
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I know Strygon also volunteered so there's that.
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None of this would have actually happened if the admins simply had an established process for dealing with issues internally. Everyone cannot be always right, and validated in their opinion, because they have the "administrator" tag next to their name, in perpetuity.
You need an adjudication program or person. Either a democratic one, or concentrated to one person. When there is discord between the admins, and a path forward is not clear, let Zacam decide, or something like that. And that person's word is final then, and everyone understands that the contract for doing things that way has been pre-established. Or, since there seem to be many of you, make the binding vote democratic, so that what the majority says goes. There are problems with that, but at least the outcome is definitive, and people aren't just wrangling back and forth.
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The most important thing imo is a ruthless commitment to not moderating in a conflict of interest. That means if you posted in the same thread, if you have strong feelings about the subject matter, or have strong feelings (positive or negative) about the individual involved.
And Blackdove comes a very close second. There needs to be rules in place for the next time staff member X abuses their powers, rules that take personal feelings about staff member X out of the equation, and we need to see these rules as well.
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None of this would have actually happened if the admins simply had an established process for dealing with issues internally.
I can't speak for everyone but some of us (and I don't think it's just me) aren't always around where some of the Mods have been. We don't know. So there's been some 'going in half cocked' going on.
That's not intended as an excuse, more of in the vein of 'to improve, we need to understand what happened'. That's being discussed internally too - it isn't something anyone will forget (or try to forget).
I agree a code of conduct or something to outline a process is a good idea moving forward.
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There are (generally) two ways to use social media: "content curating" and "content generating". For a site like this, your content is not going to be daily, for the most part. So, if you're generating, you will have to find something to do, content-wise, that isn't the mod news. Playthroughs, reviews, interviews, etc. Otoh, if it is curation, then you can still do all of the above - just don't try to generate it on a schedule. Report it as it happens. Pick a longer schedule tail, with fewer updates.
I'm not going to concentrate on our forum as a daily update. It is one channel of many to communicate on, with a particular set of uses. Forums are a midway point between article and comment - long form conversation with a much more interactive basis than articles, but not as chaotic as live chat. Use your various channels of communication with a purpose for each of them designed into your overall media plan.
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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
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By the way, might want to unsticky Goober, and sticky this.
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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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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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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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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.
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Real-time communication with various mod teams and a more relaxed environment overall would be a start.
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- 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.
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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.
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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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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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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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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?
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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.
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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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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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It looks to me like someone would make an excellent addition to a community promotion and reinforcement group.
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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?
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-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. ;)
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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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Just a quick thought - is there an equivalent of a thumbs up / thumbs down button on here. If not would it be possible to add one? Quite often I see great posts that I would like to show my appreciation of but I'm too busy, tired, lazy etc. to put it into words.
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TBH I think part of HLPs charme was that we didn't need that, but the Discord has it for a month or 2 now so it's possible.
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looking at this forum at midnight has just made me think of something else - is there a way to change fonts and text size on here at the reader's end since the default text size it is very small?
I know we can use different fonts and sizes when we write stuff, but a universal setting at the viewers end could be very handy, something along the lines of a large print viewer, or one that uses the fonts designed to be more easily readable by those with dyslexia and the like. Is this doable?
I.e. this: OpenDyslexia
A free-to-use typeface designed to be more easily readable by those with dyslexia.
https://www.opendyslexic.org
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Just as a minor note: attempt, very heartily, to avoid putting all your eggs in one basket, as far as community goes. The vagaries of chosen forms of communication will, by their very nature, lead to a bit of fragmentation in the community. Short of some way (or reason to) centralize it, consider this one of the costs of doing business - but incentivize cross-pollination by using your *most* central assets as bridges between the sub-communities - namely, the website, including wiki & forums - and frequently refer your sub-communities back to those centralized assets for reference and the feeling of belonging. In other words, nobody on any platform under your banner should go very long without knowing the other platforms which exist under your aegis - but conversely, neglected platforms need either frequent updates (especially social media), some sort of easily visible schedule (especially video), or an announced hiatus (with archives) until there is a manager on that platform.
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Pretty much agree with everything karajorma and Ryan listed, among others. I think the overarching priority here should be to make HLP a place that draws new members in and effectively advertises the amazing work that's being done here. That starts with the main page of the site getting a huge revamp that puts content front-and-center. There was a discussion on Discord about how the total conversions need to be advertised loudly and proudly as Free Honest-to-God Games. Get Discord integrated into the site in a huge way, since it's where much of the everyday chatter takes place now. Get the social media accounts pumping out content on a regular basis, even if it's something as simple as glamour shots. If possible, see if we can find someone with the knowledge to take point on Knossos dev to help push it forward. (And if there is the possibility of finishing up a new forum theme, please tell me it's actually decent on mobile...)
On the staff side, I definitely agree that everyone with some official role in the community should get access to a staff forum, since that makes cross-platform coordination much easier. We need to clearly define everyone's roles, and there needs to be a clean break between the technical and community moderation side of things. As has been stated, we're also desperately in need of some new staff in all roles. As stated in the other thread, I am all in favor of retaining PolDisc, albeit with careful consideration of its guidelines. And the rules as a whole need an overhaul to discourage lawyering and encourage respectful, productive discussion.
...that's not so much, right?
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The way I envisioned the last site redesign was a big banner that just simply said "Our free games!" with all the TCs on it and "Our paid games" and just put Freespace in the latter section. Once someone clicks on it, they can be told the true story that we don't own Freespace.
Instead we got a history lesson about Freespace.
Drag them in with the free stuff. If someone has come here because of Freespace, they'll find it when they scroll down a little.
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looking at this forum at midnight has just made me think of something else - is there a way to change fonts and text size on here at the reader's end since the default text size it is very small?
I know we can use different fonts and sizes when we write stuff, but a universal setting at the viewers end could be very handy, something along the lines of a large print viewer, or one that uses the fonts designed to be more easily readable by those with dyslexia and the like. Is this doable?
I.e. this: OpenDyslexia
A free-to-use typeface designed to be more easily readable by those with dyslexia.
https://www.opendyslexic.org
I was wondering why that site was trying to pass off Comic Sans as their own OpenDyslexic font. :wtf: Then I opened devtools and realized the browser is blocking their own font from rendering due to CORS. :rolleyes:
Regardless, I know the current forum theme isn't perfect (since I made it but never fully completed it), but it is fully responsive, meaning that it works on small screens just as well as on large ones. So you should be able to simply increase the zoom (CTRL-mousewheel or CTRL-+) in-browser to get the perfect screen size for you. The browser should remember that zoom level per-domain.
Is that sufficient?
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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?
I'd enforce this, and for a specific reason: if we have no idea what happened to a staff member, we have to assume his or her account may be hacked after a given amount of time, and this may therefore be dangerous especially when it comes to admin powers.
Inactive staff members can get the Aide-de-camp badge or something should they no longer be able to contribute.
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That's a very good point. :yes:
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And if someone that used to be inactive suddenly comes back, they can just wave and ask nicely to get their old status back if they intend to be active again. Little bit of communication never hurt anyone, and a little bit of precautious action on inactive members doesn't sound like a bad idea.
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I've split out the questions about discord moderation their own thread (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=97074.0), as they constitute a vastly different topic.
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looking at this forum at midnight has just made me think of something else - is there a way to change fonts and text size on here at the reader's end since the default text size it is very small?
I know we can use different fonts and sizes when we write stuff, but a universal setting at the viewers end could be very handy, something along the lines of a large print viewer, or one that uses the fonts designed to be more easily readable by those with dyslexia and the like. Is this doable?
I.e. this: OpenDyslexia
A free-to-use typeface designed to be more easily readable by those with dyslexia.
https://www.opendyslexic.org
I was wondering why that site was trying to pass off Comic Sans as their own OpenDyslexic font. :wtf: Then I opened devtools and realized the browser is blocking their own font from rendering due to CORS. :rolleyes:
Regardless, I know the current forum theme isn't perfect (since I made it but never fully completed it), but it is fully responsive, meaning that it works on small screens just as well as on large ones. So you should be able to simply increase the zoom (CTRL-mousewheel or CTRL-+) in-browser to get the perfect screen size for you. The browser should remember that zoom level per-domain.
Is that sufficient?
Yup, that works. I would suggest putting this on the front page for anyone who doesn't already know this (or had forgotten about it)
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Here's a thing that I just thought of: should users be able to edit their own Custom Title? I understand that this was allowed in the very early days of HLP, but it was later restricted to being given out only by admins as a sort of reflection of the user's behaviour based on their actions here.
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I'd like to offer a few suggestions based on the list you wrote about looking at HLP as a whole.
- Social Media Aspect: I've been almost completely unaware of the existence of the HLP Twitter/Facebook/Youtube, and despite being one of the more active members here, I was actually very surprised to find all three actually existed.
The core problem is that neither of the three accounts really try to make people aware that it exists. They just post news and that's it. Social Media is a ruthless desert where everyone fights for attention, so it'd help to make their presence a bit more "aggressive". Perhaps by generously using appropriate space related hashtags on Twitter can already help improve its presence (lord knows it helped me with my art account, for how little I used it).
- Main Website: The question "What are the boards even good for?" is one I see occasionally tossed around. So far their main point is to act as a bulletin board for mods, how to install them, etc. But it doesn't have to be that. Something to engage the forum population, get them interested, organise friendly modding competition to inspire fresh modders, bring back the monthly HLP Newsletter. Stuff like that.
I'd write more but I also need to work towards my studies a bit. Expect more later.
There is an instagram account too, but nothing recent has been posted there...
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Here's a thing that I just thought of: should users be able to edit their own Custom Title? I understand that this was allowed in the very early days of HLP, but it was later restricted to being given out only by admins as a sort of reflection of the user's behaviour based on their actions here.
There are two aren't there?
Aken tigh Dekker is my own shout, HLP is my mistress was karajormas idea once I got married.
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Yep. We stopped giving out titles years ago. But those who already had them get to keep them if they want.
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Yep. We stopped giving out titles years ago. But those who already had them get to keep them if they want.
And you're allowed to get staff to have your custom title removed if you don't like it.
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I've been called worse 😂👍
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I'm still curious what mine would have been, if I were to be given one. :thinking:
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request to name Strygon the Designated Cutie
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Objection.
Evidence of cuteness needs presenting to the floor.
*appropriate cuteness
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A lot of technical questions and remarks have been discussed in this thread so far. But I think one aspect should get more attention and thought: What should our goals for the and as a community be?
As someone who hasn't been an active part of this community until a few months ago, I can't help but notice that there seem to be quite a lot of grudges and grievances in this community, among its members and also between some members and its staff. Some of those grudges have reached their boiling point recently, as evidenced by some of the recent threads in this sub-forum. And while I'm part of forum communities long enough to know that conflicts are inevitable among communities larger than one person, those in this community seem to be rather well-fed and becoming increasingly volatile.
So, the question is: What are we gonna do about it going forward? How do we deal with those conflicts as a community and especially what shall the role of moderators be? When should they intervene and how? The question of rules has been asked, but there's then also the question in which manner these rules shall be enforced.
I don't want to pretend that I know the answers to those questions. From what I'm seeing, right now some long withheld feelings are being vented, which can be a good start, but it then has to be moved towards some form of constructive change. Alternatively, a way must be found to lay those conflicts to rest, let go and then start anew. Most importantly this has to be the case for the grudges towards the staff, since a lack of trust in those in power can be fatal for any change attempted by this community. Again, I don't have any patent remedy to this issue, especially as I don't know the backstory of those conflicts. So, I can only offer my observations from a somewhat outside perspective.
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I'm splitting out the Nazi stuff. While it might be something to talk about, it's not really the most important thing when we're talking about HLP's future
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Snip
Okay. Let's talk about reality. Ryan, I know you want civil discourse to take place here, this is impossible right now. It comes down to whether you're (all staff) willing to intervene to stop the "cultivating" that is practiced here, or does it continue as it has for years?
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(https://cdn.frankerfacez.com/emoticon/303369/4)
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will HLP be less whiny for 2021 than it has been in the past month
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will HLP be less whiny for 2021 than it has been in the past month
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Snip
Okay. Let's talk about reality. Ryan, I know you want civil discourse to take place here, this is impossible right now. It comes down to whether you're (all staff) willing to intervene to stop the "cultivating" that is practiced here, or does it continue as it has for years?
are you now accusing HLP of being a grow op or something
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My 2 cents, after watching the blowup here so soon after returning...
This isn't the first project or gaming-related forum to have a poldisc section. IME, they all end up causing bad blood between members that spills into the nominal reason they have for community cohesion - and this has been something I have found to be true over decades of online interaction. OTOH, this is 2020, people are mucho stressed out, and this is on the end of a nice little decade-long cycle of mutual animosity between two generally hostile socio-political movements, which has had a spillover into every facet of interpersonal dynamics, much of it coming to a head the past few years.
I have run IRC servers and channels for a long time - even the ones where most of the members have approximately similar views, the tiniest differences in political views are eventual causes for drama. I get why people want to keep political boards around - they can be fun if you have people who are able to get along discussing the topics - but our ability to get along seems to have decreased markedly in the past decade or so. In such a powderkeg of an environment, why keep a clacker and detcord hooked up to that powderkeg at all times? I would absolutely ban anything socio-political when it comes to current events, were it me. No news, no op-ed, no nada. While I know many of us pride ourselves on being open-minded, purely objective conversationalists - we're not - and practically everyone else we know isn't either. That being the case, we are almost certain to have those same enculturated responses to particular stimuli that are a hallmark of modern western society - and knee-jerk accordingly - which results in the sort of rabid piling on we see most on Twitter and Facebook. When it comes to places like this, we're surprised - but we shouldn't be. We aren't free of our culture's habits and idiosyncrasies.
PolDisc is dangerous to small communities because it threatens (at the expense of friendships and cohesion) the smaller, immediate community for the sake of larger, more nebulous allegiances to which we may also belong - and which we have a habit of defending on *other* platforms in a way which lends itself more to lynch mobs than discussion groups. Yeah, it often is mitigated to some extent by friendships - but what about those people who just rub you the wrong way? There's always a temptation to just unload on them the way you would on some rando on Twitter - and which leads us here. Especially after the 10th or 12th unloading from either "side" of the revolving discussion.
So, for tldr purposes - poldisc runs an everpresent risk of dragging cultural baggage into *everything* you do - unless you ban it altogether.
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Not to backseat moderate, but I wonder if the last post might be better suited to the "Let's burn PolDisc" thread?
In any case, this thread has some excellent posts from TheUnforgiving, RazorsKiss, and SilverAngelX, among others. The "recently joined" perspective that some can bring is especially valuable IMO.
While the community aspects of the discussion are definitely worth exploring more, I can speak better to the technical side.
Re: social media, yes it would be great if there are people willing to regularly promote HLP and its creations on those channels, and spreading the work among multiple people would definitely help reduce the risk of burnout. That's especially true for YouTube, since producing video content can be a lot of work.
FWIW, when I briefly ran a YT channel for a charity fundraiser a few months back, I found that YouTube's Creator Academy (https://creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/home) had a lot of good advice on how to make videos that others want to watch and how to manage a channel that others want to follow. This video on fundamentals of a creative strategy (https://creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/lesson/creative-fundamentals-bootcamp?cid=great-content&hl=en) was particularly helpful.
Since a few people mentioned building on top of Knossos, it would be fantastic to find a coder who's able and willing to commit to it.
I can provide some support and some bug fixes (https://github.com/ngld/knossos/pulls) and maybe investigate how a feature could be implemented, but I can't take on anything bigger than that.
I can, however, try to recruit someone to join Knossos development and hopefully fill that role, and I can give them some guidance of the sort that Iss Mneur gave me when I took up wxLauncher. When I'm ready to go looking for someone, I'd definitely appreciate help with spreading the word, including perhaps on our social media channels? :)
EDIT: Oh, also, maybe it's time to remove the "HLP on IRC" submenu from the "HLP" menu on the top navbar?
EDIT 2: Similarly, probably best to remove "SCP Mantis" from the "Reporting Bugs" navbar menu, and just generally go through all the top navbar menus for obsolete links.
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Recruiting for Knossos isn't a bad idea. The skill set needed to work on it is quite different from that needed for FS2_Open.
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What's the required skill set in question if I may ask?
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I'm sure other members of the SCP can answer that one better than me. But I'd imagine that because the code base is much more modern and isn't held back by design decisions made 20 years ago it would be much easier to work with than FS2_Open.
Also, in the end, Knossos is just a application. There's no need to be familiar with how games work.
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What's the required skill set in question if I may ask?
Python and Javascript, at least for the client.
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Yup and the Nebula server is PHP, which I have no experience with.
And yup it’s completely different from game coding like FSO. More like conventional client/Web server application programming,
ngld and I were talking the other day about how it’d be great if we could rewrite Knossos to use Electron, the technology that powers Discord, so then it could be 100% JavaScript, among other big benefits, but neither of us has the bandwidth for that.
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Yup and the Nebula server is PHP, which I have no experience with.
https://github.com/ngld/fsnebula
It's python/flask isn't it?
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Yup and the Nebula server is PHP, which I have no experience with.
https://github.com/ngld/fsnebula
It's python/flask isn't it?
Hmm, guess the one I was thinking of is now out-of-date: https://github.com/ngld/hlp-nebula
Well, one fewer language to deal with is a good thing. :yes:
And if Nebula is ever in need of a rewrite, might be worth considering node.js. Then, if we ever manage to switch Knossos to using Electron, we'll be down to just one programming language for Knossos/Nebula. That would sure be cool. :nod:
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As someone very new to HLP I can only share my limited view point.
I do not get involved or read anything here that is not related to the game. All the other stuff is just noise to me and I have enough of that in real life.
This is an escape from all that for me.
One simple thing that I would love to see as a newbie is the Wiki Campaign list updated for all the campaigns so we know what is the best order to play them in and where they fit in the time line. It would be nice to show which are available on Knossos.
One thing I have experienced is how helpful everyone one is here. Anytime I had a problem with the learning curve or getting a campaign to run someone was here to walk me through it and get it all running.
I have had a great time playing since joining here.
Thanks
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I made the same argument years ago that is echoed by some people here. I am still for a promotion of Freespace and HLP on social media but we ran into roadblocks because no one really knew who "owned" HLP and what could be done from there. It kind of died after that.
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Do you have a link to that thread? I'd be interested in seeing what the roadblocks were before I stubble into them again.
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I made the same argument years ago that is echoed by some people here. I am still for a promotion of Freespace and HLP on social media but we ran into roadblocks because no one really knew who "owned" HLP and what could be done from there. It kind of died after that.
Huh, it's actually the first time that I heard of there being "road blocks". Roughly the same suggestions have been made in 2017, 2018 and 2019, the problem was always to find people who volunteer, and wouldn't quit right afterwards.
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Came across this thread (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=93134.0) while...looking through Blue Lion's posts. :nervous:
It's 23 pages long but the Google Docs link on the first post still works.