Posted: 7/18/2010 4:11 PM
Post subject: Full Forum Clean-Up
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hero_of_the_day
Player (89)
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1058
Location: United States
I figured I would start this topic because the "Games" sub section of this forum seems like it could use some cleaning up. There is no structure in place when it comes to creating new forum topics. As a result we have duplicate topics being created for the same game (~8 Ocarina of Time topics for example). Additionally we have no standardized naming format for the game topic titles; which leads to misspellings, region errors, capitalization problems, game misidentification, etc. Here is my proposal: - We remove or merge all duplicate game topics into a single topic. It makes no sense to have 6 Super Mario 64 threads. Things such as 100% runs or special type runs such as the swordless Zelda 1 topic, should all be placed into the main thread. - Any topic related to Speed Runs get placed in the SPEED RUN forum. Any topic related to hardware or emulation gets placed in the EMULATOR forum. - We introduce a STANDARD NAMING FORMAT for all topic titles. I strongly believe we should be using the names given by the GoodTools rom renaming software. It is by far the most accurate and complete listing of correct game names. Ex: "SM64" should be "Super Mario 64 (U)" - We need to distinguish the region. All forum topics should generally use (U). There are games that were never released state side, and those should use the standard (J) or (E) in the topic title. Japanese game should use the Japanese title, not the English translation of said title. - This will make forum navigation much easier. It also keeps all the ideas/demo for a specific game in a nice single thread. So since you maybe want an example of what I am proposing, I have gone through the entire N64 forum and created a listing with my suggestions (excel file below). The is currently 150 topics for roughly 105 games, which means there was many unneeded duplicate threads. I have renamed the topic threads based on GoodN64, and gave suggestions for some of the other strange topics in that forum. Of course this is a pretty big task for the admins to do, so I am not sure if it's even worth it, but I would definitely be willing to help. I would like to hear other people's thoughts. http://www.mediafire.com/?l95n11kyd8oo4h5
They're off to find the hero of the day...
Posted: 7/18/2010 5:18 PM
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Derakon
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Most of these sound good, but I'm a little worried about the "use the Japanese title when the game was never released in an English-speaking country" one. On the one hand, it provides consistency; on the other, nobody who doesn't speak Japanese will be able to tell what the thread is for until they learn "Oh, Maza Suri is Mother 3". And of course, Romanizing Japanese is errorprone; the alternative of using Japanese glyphs would just create even more confusion.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 7/18/2010 5:20 PM
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adelikat
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3573)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4754
Location: Tennessee
TASer of 2010 NES TASer of 2010 DS TASer of 2010 Arcade TAS of 2010 NES TASer of 2008 NES TAS of 2008 Funny TAS of 2008 TASer of 2007 NES TASer of 2007 Funny TAS of 2007
The problem with redundant threads isn't the lack of concern or the lack of time on mods. It is the fact that this is an ancient phpbb2 forum and mods don't have the ability to merge threads. That has to be done by someone with direct database access, and it is a rather tedious thing to do. All your proposed changes sound great in theory though.
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Posted: 7/18/2010 6:02 PM
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McHazard
Active player (379)
Joined: 7/12/2010
Posts: 22
Derakon wrote:
...I'm a little worried about the "use the Japanese title when the game was never released in an English-speaking country" one. On the one hand, it provides consistency; on the other, nobody who doesn't speak Japanese will be able to tell what the thread is for until they learn "Oh, Maza Suri is Mother 3"....
That would be a problem. Perhaps putting the English name next to the Japanese name for well-known games like that?
adelikat wrote:
The problem with redundant threads isn't the lack of concern or the lack of time on mods. It is the fact that this is an ancient phpbb2 forum and mods don't have the ability to merge threads....
Well, why don't you upgrade or switch or something?
Posted: 7/18/2010 6:06 PM
Post subject: Re: Full Forum Clean-Up
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Sticky
Joined: 2/26/2007
Posts: 1365
Location: Minnesota
hero of the day wrote:
- We remove or merge all duplicate game topics into a single topic. It makes no sense to have 6 Super Mario 64 threads. Things such as 100% runs or special type runs such as the swordless Zelda 1 topic, should all be placed into the main thread.
The only one I have a problem with. It keeps the discussion of, say Mario CCC-less as just CCC-less. There is no confusion if someone was posting about the Low%, 100% or CCC-less run. I just think it is a better organization that way. The best optimization would be making a sub-sub-forum for Mario 64 in the N64 sub-forum, but that would be a little ridiculous.
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
Posted: 7/19/2010 7:34 AM
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OmnipotentEntity
He/Him
Player (36)
Joined: 9/11/2004
Posts: 2630
@Nach and @adelikat: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=149057
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day, Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Posted: 7/19/2010 7:37 AM
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Dada
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Unless there are 6 active SM64 topics, why would you want to merge them? These topics tend to become large, and they're usually manually split up (by starting a new topic after a while) for the express reason of making sure topics don't become ludicrously large.
Posted: 7/19/2010 12:34 PM
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Warp
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
I can see one major problem with the proposition: Creating one single thread for one game would mean that with very popular games you end up with threads with hundreds, if not even thousands of posts. There will be zero organization of these posts, and instead they will simply be all concatenated in one single gigantic thread. Trying to find a discussion about a specific feature of the game is going to be next to impossible. I really think that's a bad idea in the long run. The idea may work with less popular games, where the size of the thread is sensible, but not with hugely popular games which are being TASed for years and years. Instead, what would be optimal is if it was possible to create subgroups for each popular game, and then have different threads for different (more or less independent) discussions about that game. Then it would be much easier to find discussions related to a specific topic. (Of course the currently used phpBB software probably doesn't support this, so it would need to be implemented in some other way.)
Posted: 7/19/2010 12:50 PM
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Flygon
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Warp wrote:
Instead, what would be optimal is if it was possible to create subgroups for each popular game, and then have different threads for different (more or less independent) discussions about that game. Then it would be much easier to find discussions related to a specific topic.)
I agree with this statement wholeheartedly. Full steam ahead, for the lack of better terms I could use in my slightly muddled state of mind.
Posted: 7/20/2010 8:39 PM
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OmnipotentEntity
He/Him
Player (36)
Joined: 9/11/2004
Posts: 2630
Upgrade to phpbb3 and you get subforums for your troubles. But this BB is heavily modified and most modifications will have to be completely rewritten. Another possible problem with that idea is that there will be politics surrounding which games get subforums and so on, as well as fragmentation of the board and increased amounts of clicks to get any good information. I like Nach's idea of merging the threads. All of the good important information should be on the wiki. Right? RIGHT?
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day, Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Posted: 7/21/2010 2:03 PM
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Warp
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
Another possible problem with that idea is that there will be politics surrounding which games get subforums and so on
That's what we have admins for. Nobody asks an admin why he eg. merged two threads. Likewise I don't think anybody would complain when an admin creates a subforum for a game which is getting more than a half dozen of threads. (And if someone did complain, then who cares, really?)
as well as fragmentation of the board and increased amounts of clicks to get any good information.
Personally I prefer information being hierarchically categorized than everything at the same level. It's much easier to find information that way.
Posted: 7/21/2010 2:42 PM
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Sticky
Joined: 2/26/2007
Posts: 1365
Location: Minnesota
At least TASVideos' forums aren't "categorized" like SDA's :(
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.