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Original Post
S+I Board Reshuffle Jamberoo Extreme Plus 2.0 :: The Revenge of the S+I board
S+I board is really fuck right now I mean look at this thread huh I bet you forgot about that one already - even though hampa said he was gonna do it like who even knows?? In a nutshell: S+I board needs a rework.

Why:

Jamming all 2 billion ideas into one board is really sub-optimal because it hides a ton of decent information and makes the board tiresome to read through at best - for users and more importantly for devs and staff.

Furthermore, a cleaner system promotes communication and transparency - you can see what has been ignored, if devs are seeing what you're suggesting, whether the relevant staff are actually discussing your ideas for so-and-so board. Rather than SkulFuk appearing and saying 'yeah sounds good' followed by potential radio silence, clearer and more organised communication/action will be observable by everyone involved. Did you guys even know gynx is our community manager? Because he's not that was a myth


How:

S+I becomes its own section (like Clans or Market). Within this section, we get three boards:
  • Game Dev
  • Site Dev
  • Community
Each board has an 'Approved' subforum.

People post ideas in the relevant board, and when an idea is approved for development it is moved from the board into the board's Approved subforum and tagged:
  • [Pending]
  • [InDev]
  • [Implemented] -- should be closed also

I think this is healthier than simple post tagging because things which are pending/indev won't suspiciously disappear off the first page to never be seen again - the lifetime of a suggestion will be far more apparent.
Last edited by Fear; Oct 9, 2016 at 07:07 PM.
Who is it decided by and how is it determined which suggestions will be moved to the Approved subforum?

Obviously, you'd think someone like Gynx (our community manager) is meant to be in charge of this board, but clearly he doesn't think so. It might be worth having each subforum have its own 'leader' who browses the ideas and decides which ideas to elevate (you know, so shit actually gets done).

If we want to be more democratic about things, then we should instead require new threads to come with polls with agree/disagree options. If the idea gets over a certain number of agree votes, and there's proportionally a much higher amount of people voting yes on the idea, then that idea should get moved to the Approved section.

Imo, we could structure this board in the perfect way and have this really incredible system, but it means shit-all if there's nobody competant and energised willing to run it the way it should be run, it's all for naught - Different car, same shitty driver.

To sum up, the big issue is the lack of the central authority figure who's meant to be in charge of this board. There's nobody around here who's decision-making. That's why this board is so clogged and useless.

I support your idea, but it won't work if nobody gives a shit again and there's inactive leadership. So I'd suggest implementing a method that reduces the perceived necessity of the community manager (by hiring capable 'subcommunity' managers (Site, game, community)) or by giving more power to the people instead (with the I agree/disagree votes).
Last edited by Ele; Sep 29, 2016 at 06:05 AM.
Originally Posted by Ele View Post
If we want to be more democratic about things, then we should instead require new threads to come with polls with agree/disagree options. If the idea gets over a certain number of agree votes, and there's proportionally a much higher amount of people voting yes on the idea, then that idea should get moved to the Approved section.

Originally Posted by Ele View Post
I support your idea, but it won't work if nobody gives a shit again and there's inactive leadership. So I'd suggest implementing a method that reduces the perceived necessity of the community manager (by hiring capable 'subcommunity' managers (Site, game, community)) or by giving more power to the people instead (with the I agree/disagree votes).

Sure, but not everything the community wants is either doable (20 player tb PLEAS HAMAP) or (in SOME cases) even healthy. Polls are nice but I'd rather the sub-community managers be the ones who approve/dissaprove, by their own intelligence but also by communicating with the devs and staff who would be necessary to implement such a change. Forcing this interaction brings devs out from the shadow realm which they currently reside in and connects them with the community through the managers - bolstering activity and interest on both sides.
Sounds good, although people posting ideas in wrong subsections would certainly be a small issue. Still, radio silence needs to be broken and the process of development certain user ideas needs to be more visible. That would help with that. You've got my sword.
retired
Oddly a discussion regarding this happening in ToriPrime also, here's a suggestion I have regarding the tags/general management of the board as it might spruce the place up a bit. The notion of splitting up boards/making new ones tends to be a fickle topic so we'd probably need more of a consensus on that.
Consider this: Having a usergroup or (active) LMods do the following

  • Round off unrealistic or unreasonable suggestions, closing them.
  • Monitor threads by reading and keeping up to date on new suggestions.
  • Forward suggestions to me and tag them as elevated, letting the community know they are in the process of being pitched to the devs.
  • Where necessary, I will post on the elevated threads to make sure the idea I'm pitching is what the community wants or explain certain limitations/aspects that had not been considered.
  • Once the idea has been pitched the thread will be tagged as such and left open in case any developments are made regarding the suggestion itself.
  • I will give them progress reports on updates where they may tag certain threads as implemented in future if they come up again.

EDIT: Feel free to chop and change this as much as you like by the way, and I'll also chase up your previous suggestion. One thing you have to appreciate is development cycles aren't very quick and you came in during the middle of a modmaker overhaul. These things take time.
Last edited by Gynx; Oct 8, 2016 at 05:24 PM.
collect snots from the nose
Originally Posted by Gynx View Post
Oddly a discussion regarding this happening in ToriPrime also, here's a suggestion I have regarding the tags/general management of the board as it might spruce the place up a bit. The notion of splitting up boards/making new ones tends to be a fickle topic so we'd probably need more of a consensus on that.


EDIT: Feel free to chop and change this as much as you like by the way, and I'll also chase up your previous suggestion. One thing you have to appreciate is development cycles aren't very quick and you came in during the middle of a modmaker overhaul. These things take time.

This was pretty much how I was already moderating this board bar elevating the good ones to you. I think it's a good idea overall and it really prevents a clutter of dumb ideas from being everpresent.
I think I might be retired.
I'm wondering if switching to using the built-in vB thread tagging system, which as I recall is actually specifically searchable by itself (if I'm not misremembering things) might be a good idea for S&I. I'll look into that a bit to see whether or not that could help.

Edit: Yes, the built-in prefixing system is instantly searchable (without ToriPrime, even). However, that system only allows one prefix per thread, so we'd end up with something like:
[Site] [Game] [Event] [Community] [Other] [Elevated] [Implemented] [Will Not Be Implemented]
where the bold tags would only be settable by the people who can contact the devs and figure that stuff out.

Using at least one of these prefixes would then be mandatory on all new threads. (This would not preclude you from manually adding other tags, but you would need to choose at least one of these specified ones if we were to implement this.)
Last edited by suomynona; Oct 10, 2016 at 08:39 AM.
Squad Squad Squad lead?
The standardization of Toribash Squad roles may have gone too far!
If we want to keep the system the way it's structured now, that would be a good way to do it. If we roll with Fear's suggestion though, then none of that becomes necessary (since suggestions would already be classed by the subforum they're in).

The bold prioritisation tags could be somewhat automated if we really want to or we could just manually add the tags easily without any coding. Fear's idea of having a subforum in each section devoted to approved/in-dev suggestions would also work well I think.
Last edited by Ele; Oct 10, 2016 at 09:38 AM.
I prefer the option with that results in the least boards, because we already have a LOT of boards. I'm also of the opinion that having all of the suggestions available in a single board means that opportunity glances might result in a dev who wouldn't ordinarily have looked at a suggestion saying "Hrm, that might actually be neat, can I make it happen?"

Boards are a lot more complicated than tags, and I don't believe automated tagging is particularly necessary. Anything that's going to get a mod tag should be getting the at least 5 minutes of attention it deserves anyways, and what does another 30 seconds of clicking really mean in that case?
Squad Squad Squad lead?
The standardization of Toribash Squad roles may have gone too far!
More comunication to the devs and understanding how difficult or simple an idea is to implement would be a lot better. We could learn how stuff works around here and a ton of impossible ideas would be avoided.
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