Discussion: A 'releases' Subforum / Official Release Threads

[gruso]

First, let me say that if we have many more subforums we'll need to issue new visitors with GPS enabled tour guides. In general I'm not a fan of adding more. However, I've had this little vision and I thought I'd throw it out there for a hypothetical discussion.

The 'Releases' subforum would contain one thread for every piece of software. New threads would require approval just like the News forums, to keep it ordered, with consistent thread naming and no duplication. An alphabetic, linked index would be pinned at the top.

Each release thread could contain the readme in the first post. If you needed help with a game that was released six months ago, rather than start a new thread you would look it up in the Releases forum and bump the appropriate thread without fear of being flamed. Over time each thread would evolve into a comprehensive, dynamic FAQ.

We could do much the same on the wiki of course, but most people find forums more accessible. Plus they can ask questions and get answers, without creating the 57th Quake thread.

It wouldn't be a great deal of work to set up; anyone would be able to start a thread, and assuming a duplicate didn't exist it would go into place as the 'official' thread for that forum. We'd probably have to think about interactions with the News forum too, perhaps moving/merging News threads to the Releases forum after a week of high rotation.

Too ambitious? Too anal? Or both useful and doable? Discuss.

 

[sebt3]

this sound like a merge of the news and beta sub-section to me. IMHO

 

[Eniko]

this sound like a merge of the news and beta sub-section to me. IMHO

Which are confusing as it stands, if you ask me.

 

[sebt3]

this sound like a merge of the news and beta sub-section to me. IMHO

Which are confusing as it stands, if you ask me.

I didn't say it was a bad idea either

 

[Eniko]

Agreement is a beautiful thing.

 

[Bosbeetle]

I think a rename of the news to releases would be enough then

 

[gruso]

this sound like a merge of the news and beta sub-section to me. IMHO

I guess the idea would be for beta & news threads to "graduate" to a permanent spot in the Releases forum at the appropriate time. The overlap would have to be managed carefully.

Not that I'm pushing for the idea at this stage - just a discussion.

 

[Eniko]

Another subforum to check for software? I dunno man, that doesn't sound like such a great idea to me! Besides, a beta release is still a release, and I personally never understood why the news section became the release section, even though I suppose releases are also news.

 

[mindlord]

A thread a program in Beta or News that matures enough to be considered a release could simply be moved or merged by a moderator.

I think this is an OK idea, but is something better suited to a Wiki.

 

[Pickle]

I think it would be overwhelming, theres a lot of software out there. Even if you made a thread for each there no way all of them would show up in the listing.
I think a typical new user would take one look and post in new thread anyway, which would be more work for mods to merge threads.

 

[skeezix]

Isn't that what _News_ is?

ie: the name "news" implies 'new' perhaps, but really it also serves as an achive; the News forum is where releases are put (if they're newsworthy), and the frontpage shows the latest X news items). So the News forum serves as the archive for old releases.

Maybe the News forum should be "News and archives", but forum users should be cogent enough to know?

I'm confused, but thats nothing new

jeff

 

[cosam]

My only comment would be to keep the Beta stuff separate, like it is now. I'll post any old crap to Beta, but only proper releases to the "News" forum. If they're all bundled together folk are likely to expect the same level of completeness and support from very early releases as they do for finished software.

I'm confused, but thats nothing new

Duly archived ;-)

 

[Blue Ion]

Isn't that what _News_ is?

ie: the name "news" implies 'new' perhaps, but really it also serves as an achive; the News forum is where releases are put (if they're newsworthy), and the frontpage shows the latest X news items). So the News forum serves as the archive for old releases.

Maybe the News forum should be "News and archives", but forum users should be cogent enough to know?

I'm confused, but thats nothing new

jeff

I agree with that, I always took the news as some kind of news and releases, though since actual news are very scarce and more often than not they get buried in the General section (that why we have the Pandora Press ) I took it for the release forum. I mean, take a look at the wiz and dingoo news section, it happens exactly the same with 90% of the posts with software releases.
Perhaps changing the name to "news and releases" would help new folk, but other than that, the threads there already act as support for the release, and archive.

My only compliant is how the front page messes up the formatting of the post, but that's passable.

I also like to keep the beta forum around as to mess around with your software, try new things and the like.

However, I too agree that sometimes some software will always stay as beta (see, emulators) and will never see a formal release at the news section, but as long as they are the exception. Also they could be moved once the software has reached a level of maturity and keep the discussion on the news section.

 

[sebt3]

this sound like a merge of the news and beta sub-section to me. IMHO

I guess the idea would be for beta & news threads to "graduate" to a permanent spot in the Releases forum at the appropriate time. The overlap would have to be managed carefully.

Not that I'm pushing for the idea at this stage - just a discussion.

Then I would prefer that the beta-tests threads somehow graduate to the news section once ready then
I was reluctant to create a news every time I package an app, as most aren't news worthy IMHO (think XFE).

But having a single thread as help request/FAQ per package is a great idea and very usefull for the dev : Following general section + news + beta + I need help + the comments on the differents apps store is somewhat painfull. I did miss some request/bug report on my packages because of this. And If I did, I'm pretty sure Pickle did too (just to name one).

 

[CPUnltd]

this reminds me of a discussion I was part of over at the Unity Linux mailing list that summed up as a discussion about the overall "flow of information"... problems essentially the same... too many avenues for the same info to be sent through... so duplications were common and oversights frequent. I propose this discussion be geared more toward establishing a uniformed flow of info that can be copy/pasted (so-to-speak) to every device handled here at gp32x. Especially since so many devs make software and port games for multiple devices here. Not to hijack the thread or anything...

just my 2 cents... hope it leads to change.

 

[MonkeyChops]

I think having a complete list of software available for the pandora would be nice to have within the forums. I tried to do that with this tread:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/54923-the-pandora-apps-thread/
But it became to much to keep up with.

Changing the name of the news forum to news/releases and doing an alphabetic, linked index pinned at the top sounds like the way to go to me. I'd even put an index in the beta forum as well. If a program graduated to the news/releases forum and got moved, the link in the beta forum index would still work. It would just point to the discussion in the news/releases forum, would in not? Or perhaps it would be just as well to put the same index in both forums and just specify in the index if its beta or not and link to the correct discussion, this would solve the problem of emu's always being beta for the most part.

 

[tsh]

just rename news. I thought news was more 'project news' (as in BBC), rather than 'latests', but seems maybe that isn't the intention.

Edit: Am I imagining it, or are releases appearing faster now? Seems the devs/porting team are gathering momentum, which is great.

 

[-Tj-]

My only concern with something like this is that with open forums can lead to clutter. It could turn into an FAQ session (like a wiki, as was mentioned), but forums, especially here, tend toward getting off topic for pages at a time, or a lot of "great job, looks good! " and such which can unnecessarily add too much to an otherwise informative thread.

That's not to say I'm not for it, or that any of what I said above is necessarily bad (nay, it can bring the forums together), I'm just thinking it would be good if it were heavily moderated to keep things tidy. These days I find myself skipping pages at a time if a thread is too long to find any useful info.

 

[gruso]

Some interesting discussion then. I don't for a minute think we're going to restructure the forums, but we have identified some niggles. Custom Processing Unlimited put it well, it all comes down to flow of information. The issue is not unique to this device, or even this scene. It's a universal thing that often goes unaddressed.

This whole thing started in my mind a little while back when I was looking into the state of Atari ST emulation on the Wiz. And a few weeks later, MAME 106 for Pandora. In both cases I found threads that didn't answer my questions, and I didn't really think the situation was worth a bump, or a new thread. And I thought, wouldn't it be sweet if there was one official discussion for each release? And I could join it now, without adding clutter or invoking the necropost lynch mob?

Pipe dream perhaps, but that doesn't mean we can't improve things. Newbies don't know 'News' means 'Release archive', and many think search is broken because the quick search box doesn't act like Google. If people knew there was an index to visit first, half the battle to find info would be won. And there is an index already, thanks to the fine folk contributing to the wiki

http://pandorawiki.org/Software_projects
http://pandorawiki.org/Emulator_list
http://pandorawiki.org/Games

I think we'll get these pages linked on Pandorapress for starters.

From here, people need to be able to join a conversation. Many of those wiki entries include thread links, which is great. But what's going to happen when someone bumps one of those in a year? Are we going to jump down their throat and lock the thread (suggest: no), or are we going to shift the GP32X zeitgeist a little to allow old threads to be revived? (suggest: yes).

Idea:

Forget the 'releases' subforum. We take some inspiration from neogaf.com. They have a culture of creating 'official' threads. Each game release gets an official thread, and all discussion takes place in that thread. (Suffice to say their reasons are very different to ours, but anyway..)

So a Pandora dev starts a thread for his/her release (once it's out of beta), and it becomes the official thread. It would have [official] in the title (mods can take care of this if devs don't). This official thread gets linked on the wiki. Future users can bump official threads without fear, because that's where they're supposed to post anyway. Stray threads are merged with the official one.

- For devs: It's no extra work, they can just go about their business. Perhaps less work, as they only have to track bugs in one thread.

- For users: Less work, less searching, more gaming.

- For mods & wiki contributors: A little extra effort for a good cause.

- For the forum itself: No changes required, it's all in the hands of the community.

In summary: We improve the flow of information without actually changing the forums in any way.

Thoughts? Again, just a discussion.

 

[mali]

+1 to reviving old threads("gravedigging" poll suggests the majority is ok with it)
+1 to "official" threads for apps