Forum entropy?

Sawakita · 2011-08-02 20:05:51

I was wondering if it is just me or this forum is becoming a mess: I mean, there are many threads that are posted randomly, in sections that don't exactly suit. A better definition might be required for what each section is.
For example what are Gen I and Gen II boards for? Shouldn't only actual documents and tutorial be posted there? Afterall Idea section is the place for hacking question threads.
Finding documents in Gen I/II boards might become hard in the future, if this general behaviour will keep going.

Your opinion?

Mateo · 2011-08-02 20:23:32

Indeed. Thats what the boards were intended for, posting documents and tutorials, and people don't read. But then again we haven't really done anything to enforce it either, so its not any one person's fault. I'll try to do some cleaning up of the board and stick things in the appropriate forum, and add some stickies saying what does and doesn't belong there.

EDIT: I tried to go through and get things moved into more proper places. A lot of them are now in the new Help/Questions forum

Last edited by Mateo (2011-08-02 22:14:20)

Sawakita · 2011-08-02 22:26:17

Wow, good job! You have done a great cleaning!

Mateo · 2011-08-02 22:33:20

Thanks! Hopefully we can keep it that way

IIMarckus · 2011-08-03 01:04:54

Sawakita wrote:

For example what are Gen I and Gen II boards for? Shouldn't only actual documents and tutorial be posted there? Afterall Idea section is the place for hacking question threads.

Part of the issue is that topics that start out as questions may wind up being documentation (like this one, which I personally think should go in Gen I). So we either have to constantly move stuff or make the categories sufficiently broad, neither of which I’m happy with. This will take some thought.

It reminds me of this discussion, though I never cleaned things up all that much. In particular, I find “Ideas Discussion”’s purpose to be nebulous; people put both hack ideas and open questions there. In fact, I’ll go in right now and move all the hacks out.

Unrelated: Mateo, what do you think of merging the Skeetendo subforums into the regular hacks and tools subforums? It seems a bit of a waste to have two boards with only six topics between them…

Last edited by IIMarckus (2011-08-03 01:11:03)

Mateo · 2011-08-03 02:33:30

Yeah, merging them does make sense.

On the discussions lending information issue, that is true. There is often a lot of helpful documentation that comes out of that. I have often felt that it would work better to be restructured and reposted as a standalone documentation or structured tutorial, as that is more easy to follow for others. Like, for example, when something seems like a sufficient question to explain with a tutorial, I write a tutorial and post it, then link to it. But in all honesty the real problem is a lot bigger. Its just hard to sufficiently categorize things appropriately. It will probably take a good restructuring to get things to be really sorted out right.

Sawakita · 2011-08-03 20:14:19

IIMarckus wrote:

we either have to constantly move stuff or make the categories sufficiently broad, neither of which I’m happy with. This will take some thought.
It reminds me of this discussion

By the way, I especially like the idea that Mateo posted in that discussion: when you have an exhaustive answer to some question post a stand-alone thread for it and then link to it in the question's thread.
This way you'd have questions (with linked answers) in the Questions board, and pure documentation in the Docs & Tutorials boards. The only problem with this is that it's not as straight-forward and fast as answering directly in the original question's thread (I, for one, am guilty of not following this "policy", since I often answer in the question's thread). Nonetheless it feel like this is the way to go, at least until a better solution is figured out.

IIMarckus · 2011-08-04 01:38:32

kkj1116 wrote:

Just a suggestion here: adding [SCRIPTING], [ASM], [SPRITES] and other tags before the tutorials might help people navigate through them better. Once that is done, a stickied thread could me made where it is shown like this:
Gen. II Hacking Tutorials:
[SCRIPTING]
- Give Item Script
(link to that tutorial)
- Fat Man gives you berry
(link to that tutorial)
[HEX]
-Editing Trainer Data
(link)
etc.
Then when someone asks a question that is off-topic, a moderator could edit the person's post/reply to that person's post with a link to that thread.
If they are having an issue with the instructions on the tutorial, they could PM the tutorial-author or just post it on the tutorial's thread.

I like the idea of tags, but they’d be a new feature, and thus it will take me a while to find time to implement them.

Tauwasser · 2011-08-04 06:33:48

Is http://fluxbb.org/resources/mods/topict … eases/1.0/ any good?

cYa,

Tauwasser

tekcoR · 2011-08-04 11:42:47

Thanks for rearranging the threads, it's a lot more clear. But it could be a bit misleading for newbies to have the Help/Question subforum under Off-Topic.

Anyways, it might be off-topic but I looked through the mod section of FluxBB Tauwasser posted and I think some those "upgrades" are really useful. (e.g. Poll mod, PM system, Easy BBCode, reCaptcha at registration for spam bot protection) I don't know how difficult it is to install mods for FluxBB but that could be worth it.

Mateo · 2011-08-04 16:54:47

True, that's a good point. Should probably move it to the section with hacking or something so that it is clear that it is where to ask hacking questions, not off topic questions like "so do you play legend of zelda" or something.

IIMarckus · 2011-08-05 02:59:23

Tauwasser wrote:

Is http://fluxbb.org/resources/mods/topict … eases/1.0/ any good?

I will look into it. But the code for this board has diverged (though probably not significantly, yet) from upstream.

tekcoR wrote:

Anyways, it might be off-topic but I looked through the mod section of FluxBB Tauwasser posted and I think some those "upgrades" are really useful. (e.g. Poll mod, PM system, Easy BBCode, reCaptcha at registration for spam bot protection) I don't know how difficult it is to install mods for FluxBB but that could be worth it.

PMs won’t happen; that’s what email is for.

CAPTCHAs won’t happen either, because they hurt usability. I plan to use public blacklists to keep spam down in the future.

Miksy91 · 2011-08-05 16:58:36

Great job indeed !
I remember creating lots of topics in Gen II tutorials back then for just asking questions about doing this and that.
Moving them elsewhere will surely help beginners find the information they need better.

Skeetendo

#1 2011-08-02 20:05:51

Forum entropy?

#2 2011-08-02 20:23:32

Re: Forum entropy?

#3 2011-08-02 22:26:17

Re: Forum entropy?

#4 2011-08-02 22:33:20

Re: Forum entropy?

#5 2011-08-03 01:04:54

Re: Forum entropy?

#6 2011-08-03 02:33:30

Re: Forum entropy?

#7 2011-08-03 20:14:19

Re: Forum entropy?

#8 2011-08-04 01:38:32

Re: Forum entropy?

#9 2011-08-04 06:33:48

Re: Forum entropy?

#10 2011-08-04 11:42:47

Re: Forum entropy?

#11 2011-08-04 16:54:47

Re: Forum entropy?

#12 2011-08-05 02:59:23

Re: Forum entropy?

#13 2011-08-05 16:58:36

Re: Forum entropy?

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