[Goober5000]

I've added General Discussion to the list of boards excluded from Show Unread Posts.  Currently, that is the only public board that is excluded.

The thread tagging feature was previously mentioned in the staff discussions.  There is an SMF mod that enables tagging, and that's something I can install even before the move to the new server.  Do we want to go ahead and try that out?

[AndrewofDoom]

I would like to see that, Goober. It would be nice to add. Is it possible to have it be retroactively added to existing threads?

[Black Wolf]

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.

Thank you for this useful and constructive post.

One solution might be to simply make it option. Projects that want their own board can have one, projects that would prefer a communal one go that way. After six months we can take a look and see if things worked.

Optional is... less than ideal. The plan more or less relies on the idea that all Freespace related campaign discussion is together, to concentrate activity and promote spillover of interest and activity between projects. If made optional, the most likely outcome would be the most active projects maintain their own forums because they think they need/deserve it, and the least active maintain their own because nobody bothers to merge them.

That way you get neither the spillover benefits nor the cleaner main index benefits (I.e. Fewer dead forums).

[karajorma]

Make it opt out. i.e your forums get merged unless you say not to. It might be worth just asking the project heads to report in with their points of view to see now who would be up for it.

[mjn.mixael]

But what's the point then? It still leaves the boards in pretty much the same position. Some mods are discussed and released in the general board and others have their own board because reasons. It's not any more or less intuitive for new people.

[karajorma]

Yeah, but we can't force people to integrate their boards who don't want to, can we? That's why I'm asking the project heads. Is Blue Planet the only mod that isn't willing to try this out?

[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.

Thank you for this useful and constructive post.

I presume you actually read the thread and considered the arguments already presented before posting. Right? You were taking care to be useful and constructive?

Yeah, but we can't force people to integrate their boards who don't want to, can we? That's why I'm asking the project heads. Is Blue Planet the only mod that isn't willing to try this out?

I mean, I assume Diaspora, TBP, Wing Commander Saga, and probably Wings of Dawn aren't going to want to either.

The Blue Planet board alone is bigger than Missions and Campaigns or the MediaVPs forum, and about the same size as every single standalone board combined. The pinned library thread (a masterpiece of efficiency!) links 23 separate fiction items, including material that you'll never find by searching HLP (such as 'Morrigan in the Sunglare', Year's Best Military Science Fiction 2014, and 'Morrigan in Shadow', Year's Best Military Science Fiction 2015)! During the voice acting effort, the pinned voice acting thread helped unite people coming in from all across the Internet and keep them up to date on what had been done, what needed to be done, and what still seemed out of reach. During the GRANITE HUNTER alternate reality game, the forum and the IRC channel were flooded with people trying to interact with the game's characters and figure out the mechanics of the game. During release seasons, the forum helped keep threads for individual bugfixings cleanly separated from the campaign discussion. All of these are great reasons to have a specific subforum.

Maybe most importantly, reams and reams of carefully thought out speculation have been written on everything from Ubuntu socioeconomics to the subspace mechanics of post-Zuse rechnender raum to the dialogue between Blue Planet's notions of simulationism and the real challenges of AI development. It would be a ****ing crime to dump all that hard work by users like Phantom Hoover, Luis Dias, Buckshee Rounds, Scotty, Leeko, and more into a homogenous pot.

The same goes for the Wings of Dawn forum and its long-running strategy game. Or the Diaspora forum and its very user-specific support requests.

And the opposite case is what? That by removing a series of clearly marked project boards with cool little blurbs, and replacing this with a single forum of project threads mixed in with general discussion and asset discussion and all the rest, we could improve visibility for new users? As if they'll have an easier time figuring out what to play from a constantly shifting list of threads than plainly separate project forums?

That is, with all due respect, dumb as ****. Nothing has ever suggested, at any point in HLP's history, that users are stuck in mod specific bubbles — with the exception of users very loyal to an IP-based TC. The problem is not helping people choose between FSO content.

The whole ****ing problem, which no amount of forum reorganization will do anything about, is attracting people to FSO, getting it installed and running on their computers, and getting them in-game. The second biggest problem is getting people to register their enjoyment.

[General Battuta]

Empirical endnote: when we tried to salvage the launch debacle on Steam (big shoutout to everyone who pitched in over there!) we sent nobody to the HLP forums. We sent them to the FSO Installer. Straight to the source. If any of them then registered for HLP, they could check out the mods the installer was already trying to sell them on.

Here's what would work, outside the context of a forum entirely: a clearly organized, graphically simple presentation of mods with a striking screenshot and a couple lines of text each, like Apple's cover flow or Netflix's streaming presentation.

YouTube. Let's Plays. Striking clips and screenshots for Reddit, GAF, SA, whatever. That will get you users. Swirling various levels of forum around ain't ****.

[JSRNerdo]

The Blue Planet board alone is bigger than Missions and Campaigns or the MediaVPs forum, and about the same size as every single standalone board combined. The pinned library thread (a masterpiece of efficiency!) links 23 separate fiction items, including material that you'll never find by searching HLP (such as 'Morrigan in the Sunglare', Year's Best Military Science Fiction 2014, and 'Morrigan in Shadow', Year's Best Military Science Fiction 2015)! During the voice acting effort, the pinned voice acting thread helped unite people coming in from all across the Internet and keep them up to date on what had been done, what needed to be done, and what still seemed out of reach. During the GRANITE HUNTER alternate reality game, the forum and the IRC channel were flooded with people trying to interact with the game's characters and figure out the mechanics of the game.

...

That is, with all due respect, dumb as ****. Nothing has ever suggested, at any point in HLP's history, that users are stuck in mod specific bubbles

uh dude if bubbles weren't a thing maybe all of every non-hosted mission and campaign ever posted about would not be smaller than blue planet??? just a thought~~~

[AdmiralRalwood]

uh dude if bubbles weren't a thing maybe all of every non-hosted mission and campaign ever posted about would not be smaller than blue planet??? just a thought~~~

...Okay, I honestly can't tell if this is sarcastic or not. Like, I'm pretty sure it is, but I'm not 100% sure it is.

[JSRNerdo]

unfortunately it was not.

[AdmiralRalwood]

unfortunately it was not.

you literally released one mission and took over conversation in #bp; how does that suggest people being stuck in a bubble?

[General Battuta]

unfortunately it was not.

You dumbass (and I mean that in the most loving way cause we're buds), do you understand that people posting in one forum doesn't prevent them from posting in another? I guarantee you that nigh on everyone who's ever played Blue Planet has also played other campaigns. They can make thirty posts about Admiral Steele's manscaping tactics and three "loved this campaign, especially XYZ" posts in missions and campaigns and that's still four campaigns played.

This just highlights how incomprehensibly dumb a unified FS forum would be! Who wants to read thirty posts about the importance of crime as an alternative method of legal protection in Reconstruction-era Antares for every one post in your capship mission thread? This is moon logic to me.

It's figuratively literally incomprehensible to me that anyone can see people playing campaigns as zero-sum resources. Everybody who loves BtA or WoD or JaD or BP is going to want more! Good campaigns pull players in and get them involved! I am ****ing thrilled that BtA is amazing because it means people are actually playing the goddamn game instead of World of Tanks.

There is basically only one bubble of exclusive participation on HLP and that's the gendisc crew that doesn't play anything new.

[General Battuta]

I mean I'd ****ing love to read those thirty posts, but I don't think they'd make me feel that the forum was effectively highlighting my single mission release.

[karajorma]

The whole ****ing problem, which no amount of forum reorganization will do anything about, is attracting people to FSO, getting it installed and running on their computers, and getting them in-game. The second biggest problem is getting people to register their enjoyment.

I tend to agree with this. Our biggest issue at the moment is getting new people to play.

Here's what would work, outside the context of a forum entirely: a clearly organized, graphically simple presentation of mods with a striking screenshot and a couple lines of text each, like Apple's cover flow or Netflix's streaming presentation.

Yep. Strongly agree. This is exactly the sort of thing that should be on the new HLP website.

[tomimaki]

In my opinion merged hosted projects won't bring activity to less (active?) popular campaigns. More likely it will be grave for them. If new users don't scroll down to check hosted mods, they won't click on 2. page in Missions and Campaigns to check what campaign is there.
For example Frontlines. Right now it's visible on first page forum, after change it could be flooded by posts: I can't install fso, broken joystick etc and be very fast on 2. page.

offtopic
Btw why frontlines release topic is not pinned and why FL team never brought this campaign to the installer?

[karajorma]

I had an idea when it comes to the Aide teams actually. I think it would be a great idea to have one in charge of website design (with cross over the the PR team). Most of the hosted projects look shockingly dated. If we can't do something like the ModDB does and help everyone make their own pages that way, we really should get someone to look at those pages and get them looking a bit more professional.

[Phantom Hoover]

Yeah absolutely. When you google 'blue planet freespace' the top result is the old, unloved webpage rather than the actually useful release posts.

[Sandwich]

Sorry I'm late to the thread, but I only just saw it now. I'll be picking some bits to respond to as I encounter them. Sorry it's a bit long; I'll try to keep my replies terse and to the point.

This gets into monetary territory, but would it be worth having regular contests for new comers to win a full copy of FS2? I'd be willing to donate $10 a month for that. It's not an idea that scales up well, but we don't get that many newcomers right now, so it might be easy to pull off in the short term.

That could potentially lead to a rash of new registrations of people that don't contribute. It might work better if it was tied to something like a new (past year or so?) user getting X upvotes on a thread or post—if we had a thread/post upvoting feature. I would like to see that happen TBH—yes, even though I occasionally post those oh-so-controversial threads in GenDisc.

My suggestion was(and is) an aggressive push on places like Reddit, Facebook, etc. Images and videos of campaigns and other things FreeSpace related.

This. But it needs to come from the community at large, not just admins or mods or even project heads.

I'd like to figure out some way to make it basically one-click easy to share a thread, post, image on the forums, website page, or whatever on the various social media platforms. I'm thinking of something like you hover over an amazing FS2 image in a thread, and little InstaFaceTwitPin icons appear.

Now don't go barraging me with links on how to do social share buttons; I know all that—I wasn't born yesterday, and I work professionally in the web development field. It's more a matter of getting the chance to do it.

Do you remember the pre millennial layout? With a well organised download section?  I kinda miss that.

I've been wanting to have a downloads section on the website for years. Ideally torrent-based, with an Amazon S3 account acting as the seedbox (it supports torrenting files natively). IIRC, the financial cost of operating an S3 account were the main reason why we never went ahead with it. We can handle a ~$10 monthly S3 cost, maybe $20, but if it ballooned beyond that, we'd have to shut it down. :-/

I refer you to my social media comments regarding fan base attraction and maybe a pic of the day on instagram or twitter?

I'd like to throw Imgur onto that pile. It's certainly not as big as the two you mentioned, but it does have a front page that's seen by the vast majority of users, and it's relatively easy to get on (a well-curated album about an indie video game should have no problem).

Don't forget to include a banana for scale in the Colossus glamor pics.

Well you start using hastags that are vague in terms of gaming, space sims, mods and that stuff but also specific ones to your group (#freespace). Tweet your game or videos or whatever at people who do game reviews, lets plays whatever. The more people are talking to each other with and about the game, it increases the people who can see it.

This. #sim #space #spacesim #spacefighter #xwing #fighter, etc. Those are the kinds of generic or semi-generic hashtags that will expand the reach of our posts. Space sim junkies would certainly set up watchlists for at least one of those.

An official trailer which gives viewers an actual idea of what they may typically encounter when playing FSO would be an excellent way to get the game out there. However, trying to create a trailer by committee or group opinion will end up going nowhere because people are going to argue about what should and shouldn't be in it.

I still wanna see a trailer done to Hall of the Mountain King...

I want to have a dev blog for my thing, which would be cool considering the sort of hacks I have to do to get these missions working...

Noted. I'd love to see this as well, and I have some premature ideas...

Figured this was worth a separate post: whatever we do, we DESPERATELY need a way to consolidate and standardize FSO installation instructions.

This is one of the main things the new website will launch with.

...
Really?  I find it hard to believe that no one has asked about or looked for what I'm looking for, maybe it doesn't exist, but I'm persistent so ...
...

One of the first things I'd like to add to the website after it launches is an official FAQ section, with standing instructions to the community to submit entries there if anyone ever asks a question which is already answered somewhere (i.e. it gets asked more than once, into the FAQ it goes).

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).

Noted.

I may be the only one who thinks this way and that's fine for me, but getting people to sign up on the forums is the last great step for all this. People should be able to come here, find out about the game, where to get it, download mods or whatever and peace out without signing up. That way the people who do sign up are at least partway committed to leaving comments or working on their own projects.

In my opinion the less hoops we make people jump through, the better it is for getting eyes on pages. So as little effort in them getting what they want after they see it ~somewhere~ is best I think.

QFT. This is the overarching goal I have with the website.

I've added General Discussion to the list of boards excluded from Show Unread Posts.  Currently, that is the only public board that is excluded.

Good solution IMO. Time will tell if it's sufficient. BTW, to all y'all complaining about how GenDisc shouldn't be the first thing newcomers see... is nobody old enough to remember when GenDisc was at the top of the forums? We moved it to (nearly) the very bottom years ago, for the very reason that it was indeed off-topic from HLP's purpose de existance (fake French alert).

The thread tagging feature was previously mentioned in the staff discussions.  There is an SMF mod that enables tagging, and that's something I can install even before the move to the new server.  Do we want to go ahead and try that out?

Yes, but is there a way for tags to be community-moderated? We don't need trolls tagging something maliciously and it having the same level of legitimacy as an accurate tag. Community moderation would be good, or perhaps something where any given tag doesn't show on a thread until X number of people have suggested it?

Here's what would work, outside the context of a forum entirely: a clearly organized, graphically simple presentation of mods with a striking screenshot and a couple lines of text each, like Apple's cover flow or Netflix's streaming presentation.

Come up with a mockup of this and I'll see about getting it into the website; while reading this thread I've been wondering how to present the various projects on the website, and this sounds at least as good as anything I came up with.

If we can't do something like the ModDB does and help everyone make their own pages that way, we really should get someone to look at those pages and get them looking a bit more professional.

We can, and it's part of what we can call Phase 2 for the website (Phase 1 being the absolute essentials to launch with, which are basically anything related to getting newbies started with playing FS2+).


Finally, I'd strongly advise against merging public project boards. As things stand now, each project is fairly treated and has effectively equal exposure on the forums (disregarding the sorting order of the projects). Merge them all together and you're left with a forum that will have 99% of the first page be BP posts (or whatever's the most popular—I'm woefully out of date!), effectively giving all the smaller projects the shaft, exposure-wise.

Keep things separated, and figure out ways to improve exposure of smaller projects. Personally I feel the website, post Phase 2, will go a long way to achieving this goal.

[Spoon]

[Long Battuta post]

I agree.

There is basically only one bubble of exclusive participation on HLP and that's the gendisc crew that doesn't play anything new.

Delete gendisc, nothing of value will be lost.