psgels' ideas on site-design

[psgels]

Again, just with Erk and Anaryu: you should take this with a grain of salt, I do not claim to be right, but these are my own ideas I've been having about the new site and forums.

The main idea should be to focus on support and finished content. I've seen a lot of people complain how the users on rmxp.org start way too ambitious projects, which never get finished. If they do get finished, the quality is uber-low. Basically, we could find ways to enforce these ideas on the forums, just like how rmxp.org had a strong mentality against pirated software in the past.

For the main site, users can be able to submit their finished content, so that it'll get featured on it, with a link to the topic in the forum, belonging to said content, and the ability to write reviews about this content. This could be as much as judging a drawing that someone just made, as the review of a fully fledged game. I don't think we should re-implement the download-manager, though. No offence to Erk, but that one just didn't work. Instead, the finished content should be heavily integrated with the main site. It might be a good idea to include a moderation queue in order to filter out the really bad ones.

The main site also should have a strong emphasis on articles and tutorials. Basically, they can just submit articles, perhaps of a minimum amount of words (say, 400), and give some tips to new members, and share their knowledge about creation. Perhaps another tag-system can be used to sort both the articles and the finished content.

[Anaryu]

The finished content idea is interesting, and probably the first point of possible differing opinions yet! (Congrats!)

Depending on what you mean by "finished content" I think that could a big question mark, for example I agree completely that 90% of the "New Project" posts that I remember seeing on previous forums were just NOT ready for review, in those cases it would be best if their individual ideas were presented for support or feedback, for example it would be a shame if people couldn't ask about an idea:

"Story Premise: A character wakes up washed ashore with no memory and it turns out they're a direct descendant of an old hero and they fall in love with and have to save a princess from an evil sorcerer who destroys her father and their kingdom, is this original?"

and not be able to get feedback on it because it's still in the development stages. (Although, from the way you're describing it it sounds like you might be considering that "support" for the idea instead.)

I think some clarification on "finished content" would help make this a bit more clear;

Does a demo of a battle system count as "finished" enough for feedback?
Should it only be after the game is completed?
Does that count as support?
Will support and finished content then have a huge "split" to the point where "support" becomes too important and "finished content" becomes like a "Complete Game Thread," an empty shell that people tend to ignore because it's unused.

I do like the idea of focusing on helping/supporting/reviewing ideas that have reached a certain "point" where they have enough value, but I think a clearer idea might be in order.

Thoughts?

[psgels]

You're right: finished content isn't really the right phrase. I basically meant full projects and demos and similar things, though I have no idea how to put that in just one phrase. This idea originally formed when I hadn't heard Erk's take on it.

I think that demos of over ten minutes around ten minutes length are enough, in order to prevent the section from turning into a ghost-town, like you mentioned. For art, I think that completed drawings and the like can be considered as finished content, though a line has to be drawn somewhere, in order to prevent stick figures from making it on the front page. Same for music and programming, and anything else I forgot. The hard thing indeed is defining clear rules about it.

Does anyone else have any opinions on this?

[Anaryu]

The community could kind of manage it itself if a precedence is set. By this I mean that if people simply ignore things that aren't far enough along, they'll fade off the page and people will feel compelled to finish more before posting.

That's a difficult thing to do however, but it would be ideal if the situations managed themselves.

Thoughts about that?

[psgels]

Well, what we can do is make it so that the main site features, beyond a general directory with all the "content" which has been submitted, and two lists: one list containing the newest submitted ones, and one containing the "content" with the most views/post (not sure which one we should choose). If the forum grows, we can make that last one in the "contents" with the mst views/post for the past x weeks. Ideally, we could feature said lists on the main page of the site, to give the "content" in question a bit of extra attention. Furthermore, if the users do decide to use this system, and new kinds of "content" gets submitted regularly, it also provides us with a regularly updated main-page, which will keep visitors interested to check back there once in a while. Compare this to rmxp.org, where the main page rarely gets updated, and nobody to my knowledge visits it anymore.

Any opinions on this? (I'm going to put "content" between quotation marks for now, until I find some good phrase to describe it)

[Ronove]

I have an opinion on the project stuff! Cause I know people weren't planning to have them... well, since this site is for helping and learning, right? In projects, people can post them to have them be played, read, seen or whatever (the projects really don't have to be just rmxp, they can probably be like animation projects (like animating an episode or something) or something) and have them there to be commented, and helped with. Like a critique of their stories, and various aspects about their project. It can easily stay a learning and helping thing that we wanted. Right?

[Mr_Smit]

Basically, we could find ways to enforce these ideas on the forums, just like how rmxp.org had a strong mentality against pirated software in the past.


psgels, I think its good that are against pirated software, because in my eyes rmxp.org is the main rmxp support site, so they dont support pirated software.
Just like I think SponGen also dont must support it...

[psgels]

Mr_Smit: you raised a good issue, and you're right about how we shouldn't allow any illegal activity on the forums. Do others agree with this?

[FoxDemonSoavi]

Yes. no roms no rips no illegal software discussion.