Forums balancing.
Author
So I'm looking at the forums here on Gamedev, and as I read the titles to myself, it gets me wondering. There are 12 or so forums for programmers, the "technical" side, as it were. There is one forum for game art. Somehow to me, this seems a little unbalanced. I understand that perhaps a large chunk of the community here is programmers, however, I think that there could be sub-forums for the graphical area (e.g. 3D, 2D, animation, concept/character art, etc.) The only downside to this that I see is that the graphics forums move slow enough already. Anyone have any opinion on this?
~Alex
P.S. Forgive me if I'm overstepping any proverbial bounds by questioning the high supreme rulers of GD.
Honestly, because people need more help with programming usually, than how to model a head, or make a gunshot noise.
As you point out, the Visual Arts forum is already low-traffic. Splitting it up would do it a disservice.
Quote:Original post by Fruny
As you point out, the Visual Arts forum is already low-traffic. Splitting it up would do it a disservice.
And unfortunately, the traffic is all very similar - basically just some miscellaneous package questions and occassional concept art. There doesn't seem to be any genuine interest in photography, video editing, broadcast, production, etc.
Quote:Original post by SalsaQuote:Original post by Fruny
As you point out, the Visual Arts forum is already low-traffic. Splitting it up would do it a disservice.
And unfortunately, the traffic is all very similar - basically just some miscellaneous package questions and occassional concept art. There doesn't seem to be any genuine interest in photography, video editing, broadcast, production, etc.
There are other websites better suited for such topics.
Quote:Original post by CGameProgrammerAnd therein lies the problem.Quote:Original post by SalsaThere are other websites better suited for such topics.
There doesn't seem to be any genuine interest in photography, video editing, broadcast, production, etc.
GameDev.net can't be everything, even if it wanted to. There are, as CGameProgrammer pointed out, other sites and communities that are organized exclusively around various visual arts disciplines, while GameDev.net is likely to only attract those with a particular interest in creating video games, which I posit is a relatively small subset of the whole.
Perhaps a better option would be to explore various partnering initiatives with these other sites/resources/communities? (Note: personal opinion, not official comment!)
When you are operating a set of internet forums, you ideally want as few forums as possible. The only reason forums should be split/created is to stop a large amount of traffic about one specific subject from crowding out the rest of the content. If you create too many forums, then there isn't enough traffic to fill them all.
Just picture a lot of the newbie sites that open up with 10 or more forums pre-created for all possible subjects in their genre. Inevidably most of them sit empty or with just 1 or 2 threads. The reason is that people will post to and read active forums, while the empty forums will be rarely read, and rarely posted to (as posts there draw little to no attention). Because of this, the attempt to organize discussion backfires, with the most 1-3 most general purpose of the forums carrying 99% of the traffic, even though many of the posts technically belong in one of the specific forums.
The proper way is to start out with the smallest number of forums possible, then expand/split them as needed so that you never have unused forums. The Game Art forum is one the less active forums, putting it near the bottom of the list for the possiblity of a split.
Just picture a lot of the newbie sites that open up with 10 or more forums pre-created for all possible subjects in their genre. Inevidably most of them sit empty or with just 1 or 2 threads. The reason is that people will post to and read active forums, while the empty forums will be rarely read, and rarely posted to (as posts there draw little to no attention). Because of this, the attempt to organize discussion backfires, with the most 1-3 most general purpose of the forums carrying 99% of the traffic, even though many of the posts technically belong in one of the specific forums.
The proper way is to start out with the smallest number of forums possible, then expand/split them as needed so that you never have unused forums. The Game Art forum is one the less active forums, putting it near the bottom of the list for the possiblity of a split.
Actually, the best way to organize a forum is similar to the way GMail organizes e-mails -- use labels instead of categories, with the difference being multiple labels can be applied to a single thread, and threads don't have to be separated by category.
So if someone posts a basic question about Direct3D, they can mark it as both a "Beginner" and "DirectX" thread (to prevent forum spamming, probably only two labels should be allowed per thread). Then if someone is viewing the Beginner's forum, they see the thread, or if they're viewing "DirectX" then they also see the thread. Someone can also view "Beginner OR DirectX" to view threads from both categories, or "Beginner AND DirectX" to only view threads that have both labels applied. You know? I think this would solve alot of problems, and it'll be easy to implement. Since each thread must already have an integer identifying the category, you just make each label a bitmask (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.) and OR them, and the resultant integer is stored in the "Category" field.
So if someone posts a basic question about Direct3D, they can mark it as both a "Beginner" and "DirectX" thread (to prevent forum spamming, probably only two labels should be allowed per thread). Then if someone is viewing the Beginner's forum, they see the thread, or if they're viewing "DirectX" then they also see the thread. Someone can also view "Beginner OR DirectX" to view threads from both categories, or "Beginner AND DirectX" to only view threads that have both labels applied. You know? I think this would solve alot of problems, and it'll be easy to implement. Since each thread must already have an integer identifying the category, you just make each label a bitmask (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.) and OR them, and the resultant integer is stored in the "Category" field.
As has probably been said, there are so many forums that specialise in this kinda thing. This site has just cohered with where the interest has gone.
ace
ace
If you want a good computer graphics board, go to www.cgtalk.com. Good community there and they even have a couple of game related boards. Also, the 3dbuzz forums are pretty good.
Not of them compare to gamedev, of course ;). But they're more geared towards art.
Good luck!
Not of them compare to gamedev, of course ;). But they're more geared towards art.
Good luck!
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