with the way this tipe o foum handle categories and the general organisation of the forum not a single chance anything good will come out of it but anyway that seem like the general concensus and most of what i think has been said befo in the current thread
I tend to agree with your point of view. Hard to bounce off a few words, and since I’m not a big writer usually …
Anyway, the flat design of the forum is not the best IMO. It’s good when you don’t have a lot of threads, but what happens when we’ll be “overrun” ? Too much main threads with non-stop “new or updated topic” header ^^
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The best would probably be to put the “categories” page as the default forum homepage, if possible.
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This.
We can get away with Latest as the default only because of the low thread count. When we have thousands (tens of thousands 
) of users, making categories as the default view would be a nice touch. I’ve looked in preferences, but I can’t seem to find anything that allows for that there. It would have to be done by @INovaeKeith.
On another note, I found a function that would allow you to download all of your posts. You can’t download anybody else’s posts, just yours. I’m not sure what the use is in that… 
I know that I’d like to have all my posts from the old forums. A lot of work went into those things.
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Just putting this here where it belongs and to support the statement again:
I used to come across old posts on the old forums (from like a year or two previous to reading) and thinking “That’s really well expressed. I wish I could write as well as that guy,” only to look at the poster’s name and find out it was my post.
That sounds way more egotistical than I mean it to be! There were plenty of times it wasn’t me, too! But looking back, I also wish I had my old posts archived somewhere.
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“hey guys I am giving up on infinity because they take too long to develop and so its obviously vaporware”
“hey guys you are noobs for not letting people donate to the project”
“hey guys infinity is obviously vaporware they never release updates we should all get to use the engine for free right now”
So, I saw this article come up elsewhere. It’s not exactly constructive, but it’s illustrative of some of the issues that very active forums can have when changes are introduced, with some commentary on the attitudes that online communities focused on narrowly focused subject matter. I don’t necessarily agree with everything that’s said in it, but I’ve been a member of countless special interest forums over the years, and have moderated quite a few of them, too, and have seen much of the same behaviour, so I thought I’d throw it up here for discussion:
It was an interesting read, but he seems to make the mistake of thinking that a forum community is one cohesive entity. Forum communities are composed of wildly diverse personalities, with equally diverse preferences, frequently in diametric opposition. No matter what is done by the owners, somebody is going to complain. That seems to be the way most people view forums; to complain.
Something that has been said many times on the web is that forum participants are often the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. When the product owners rely on a forum to understand their customers, they may be walking down a garden path to self-delusion. They need to employ broader measures to understand what’s really going on amongst their users. In an MMO, that’s pretty easy because the company can collect statistics on how their users interact with the product. In a private-server game such as Infinity:Battlescape, it can be more challenging.
As for the unwashed masses descending on these forums, I just hope that folks won’t feed the trolls. They will come in and make all sorts of wild claims, and I hope that we don’t waste too much time debating such points.
I also hope that The Old Guard will be known for the warm welcome it delivers to newcomers.
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I think the author’s experience being on the receiving end of that “no matter what is done” club comes across very clearly in the article. Maybe I was reading too much into it, but I could feel a thread of exhaustion in the writing. He’s taken his lumps, and I’m not sure he can hide the bruises.
Pretty much exactly. I think the one thing he really hit on the head was that the vocal forum users are the most fanatical of the fan-base or user-base. They aren’t (or, I suppose, we won’t be) a representative sample of the player-base, and their needs or wants shouldn’t be serviced or addressed with any higher priority than any other segment of the playerbase.
This is actually something I feel CCP has done wrong with EVE. They’ve put too much effort into courting the vocal, hardcore EVE player, and while it is nice and smart of them to acknowledge and support their most active players, I’ve always found EVE to be terribly unbalanced.
IMHO, we used to do really well around here on the old forums. Things were set up well, with the Beginners forum being a bit of a free-for-all, and having rules like “don’t try to enforce petty social norms”. It really forced people posting in that sub-forum to be tolerant and accepting and extra friendly. I don’t know how well that would scale up to what could potentially be a huge cohort of new members, but the base model really is already there in this community’s DNA.
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Now this has made looong threads on many, many different forums, especially gamer forums.
On a large customer basis, on most concerns there will be a “vocal minority” (they post relatively a lot on one or many aspects of the product) and a “silent majority” (those ones post no or very little messages).
Both use the product (play the game, for instance) probably on a equal measure. Problem is, only a few will have the time / will / whatever / to give feedback, comments and critics on the forums.
Of course, you can’t only rely on the “vocal minority” to completely assess your product, but again, you can’t either dismiss what they say because they’re also your customers and made the effort to invest into the feedback. While some of them will give extreme point of views and fight badly for it, you will also collect some very valuable information that you couldn’t possibly gather through any other form (like questionnaires). The reason for the latter is simple: the feedback is honed, argumented and much more constructed than something given “on the fly”, even for a written questionnaire. The post can as well affect specific edge cases that can hardly (or even not) be seen through statistics.
So while you’ll probably find some “mud”, you’ll find also the natural landscape of the current mood / expectations of (most of) your community, and also some gems.
As long as you can measure / read the need of the other people, I agree with you. The problem is that you can’t always scan everything or that other people simply don’t speak, for whatever reason.
The best way to counter this is for I-Novae to explicitly state what their product is about. A FAQ, or whatever general definition post can be given. This post should also provide some background history about the team I think.
Speaking of categories and @INovaeKeith or @INovaeFlavien, mind if I clear up the uncategorized section? Both the topics in there seem to fit nicely under development and I believe it’s part of my awesome Regular powers, but since they were made by you guys I thought I’d ask first.
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There’s a big difference between using the best data you have and believing you have the best data, though. So long as data analysis is done with the understanding that you have the former and not the latter, it’s all good, because you’re not tricking yourself into believing you’re making the best of all possible decisions; just the best of the decisions you’re not completely blind to.
I know it seems like an insignificant distinction, but it’s really not.
I agree.
Something that I forgot to mention was a point that was brought up a long time ago on the MUD-Dev mailing list. Folks there observed that the fanatical types are very important for a product’s success because they are so engrossed in the product that they talk about it. They post. They tweet. They invite friends into the game. They generate buzz.
That’s obviously valuable to a company, and is one more reason that the most vehement members of the game community must be dealt with carefully - if they are sufficiently annoyed, they will generate negative buzz. Certainly there are enough social media platforms out there to spread the word. Just consider what happened when SimCity 5 came out online-only. The Amazon reviews were less than favorable.
That said, the MUD-Dev list predated widespread social media. It may be that with the lowered barrier of entry to social media (a tweet can generate buzz, and requires much lest investment than a forum post), those vehement types that post in the forums aren’t as important as they once were. Just getting a mass of players enthusiastic enough to tweet or link a product page on Facebook might do the trick.
People who are going to make wild claims usually aren’t paying attention to anything but their own experience. They dive in however they choose, then find something to complain about. They may not bother to play the game, watch gameplay videos or read a single line of commentary. Instead, their buddy saw the colon in the name of the game, noticed that it’s about spaceships and declared it to be a clone of Elite:Dangerous. That was enough for them to come to the forums and start making claims. The claims may even be “honed, argumented and constructed”. I just hope that The Old Guard won’t get carried away with battling trolls.
I do agree that INS should be very careful about how their product is presented. Early emphasis of the most unique aspects of the gameplay would ensure that people’s first impressions set Infinity:Battlescape apart from other games - even if the most unique aspects of the gameplay (e.g. seamless transitions) are not at the core of the product’s gameplay (e.g. large-scale cinematic spaceship battles).
Perhaps even more than seeing their product idea, I’m looking forward to INS’s Kickstarter to see how they’ve chosen to present it.
They also play more, and under a subscription model are more likely to stick around and pay for multiple accounts. In very small markets, or in the early days of adoption, they may very well make up a significant percentage of your user base, too.
They also tend to be highly resistant to change, though, and will put up a giant fuss over changes that objectively improve things, but somehow alter their own personal routine.
As far as the community goes, there will be big changes coming, and we’re just going to have to be prepared for it, and make sure we have some of our friendliest faces forward. Small communities – especially internet forums – tend to circle the wagons pretty tightly in the face of “strangers”, and can be susceptible to “small town unfriendliness”. There’s often a distinct undertone of “follow the unstated, undocumented rules of HERE that we won’t actually tell you about or GTFO” on online forums that actually only truly applies to new members (established members get to be as “eccentric” as they want, by virtue of people being used to them). Every online community is susceptible to this, as they’re comprised of a self-selected group of people. The best way to not fall into that trap, IMO, is to simply be conscious of the fact that such a trap exists, and for us, as a community, to be self-aware.
I’m hopeful we can do that. I’ve always seen this as a very accepting group of people, which is, honestly, the only reason I’ve stuck around after the fall of the old forums.
In complete fairness, though, SimCity (5) was broken beyond any and all reasonable standards at launch, and the online-only DRM was a huge, huge part of that. When people can’t play your single player game because the login server has crashed, you’ve made some poor choices (or, rather, you’ve had some poor choices foisted upon you).
There’s a debate to be had surrounding DRM. There isn’t a debate to be had over whether SimCity deserved to be absolutely slagged in those early days.
I think the lesson to be learned from the SimCity debacle is that first impressions matter. That’s true whether it’s a casual player or a die-hard fan that you’re impressing upon. Both will happily spread bad word of mouth. Casual players may be less vocal if the product is good, though.
I honestly feel that forum members shouldn’t deal with trolls at all. It just makes everyone look combative. Once it’s clear that someone isn’t arguing in good faith, let the mods or the marketers deal with them.
Go ahead and organize the uncategorized posts.
Now, define “best data” 
Joke aside, I think you’re running around in the same room: if you’re honest with yourself and your objective is really to improve the game, you will take the best data available and believe it is. The distinction you defined only exists when the improvement of the game is not your main goal, but just a mean to keep your clients (gamers, whatever) in line.
Human mistakes, however, always exist and the process of your best data can be flawed.
I would, but we’re not supposed to discuss religious issues on these fora 
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Is this not one forum? Yes there are multiple topics/conversations, but isn’t this Discourse installation a singular forum/meeting place?
Are you calling each topic a forum?