Hey everyone! 2013 is upon us an it's a great time to reflect over the past year and look at ways to improve our community in the upcoming year. So let's hear it.. what do you want to see from the site this year? We'll continue to work hard to make the site better for the game development community.
Thanks everyone so much.
Well let's see.....
I'd just like to take a moment to thank our entire community for all your support and participation over the last year -- and particularly for your patience with the bugs from our latest software update -- as it really is the community that makes this site such a great resource. Thanks to everyone who has participated in the site in any way, and please let us know what you'd like to see out of the site going forwards! 
Well let's see.....
- Classic Black Theme
- Points breakdown in the name header
- Ability to show different category of points
- People using the upvote/downvote system more
- A system set up for getting points for finishing a game
- GD Showcase for 5.
- GD Mobile App
my vote is for 2, and 3. while i wouldn't mind a black theme, i've grown used to the white look of GD.
i don't know about how #5 would exactly work, but what i'd love to see is more participation in the YA/IOTD and even with journals. but mostly in the YA forum, as it stands now, it's pretty much a graveyard imo.
perhaps a diffrent system could be created for showcasing your creation, rather than as a forum post in a board that seems to get little traffic.
Your Announcements is a bit of a tricky forum, largely thanks to it having quite a bit of overlap with a number of other parts of the site... do you share your latest project in Your Announcements, do you post in Image of The Day, or do you post a journal entry? Perhaps you do all 3... It's also a little unfocussed, with announcements of finished projects, announcements of works-in-progress, and people advertising products or services all in one place.
It's definitely something I'd like to try improving however!
Actually, let's throw the question back at the Staff and Mods.
What would you guys like to see or want to do?
In the future (8-10 months from now), I'd like to write several articles or tutorials on different programming subjects. I'd like to post them on my own website.
I'd also like to repost them on GameDev.net without giving up my rights to them, and this is how I'd like it to happen:
1) I want to create them, update them, edit them, without having to bother moderators or staff, in the same way I create, update, and edit my GameDev.net journal.
2) I want them to appear on my user profile, right with 'Posts' and 'Journal' and etc... (see pic), as well in the "Find content" page.
Everyone's articles would be sorted by highest ranking in an "Articles" hub, and anything that gets negative ranking of, say, -5, just disappears from the main "Articles" hub (while still being accessible through an individual user's 'Content' page).
I know there already is an article submission system (which I've never used yet), but I want it to be easy enough that I can post content without having to go through a hassle to do so. Without having to even really think about it.
Many people have article or tutorial-like content in their journals already. This is great! I want to separate the time-irrelevant content (Articles, tutorials, code snippets) from the content that is time-sensitive (updates on projects, or talking about life).
To encourage this, journal posts should have a "Post as article" button that users can press that (through a tag or something) post the article both as a "Article" and a journal entry at the same time.
[Edit:] Oh, I'd also like to thank the staff for how smoothly the most recent site update went. There was alot of bugs, which weren't your fault, but you responded to them amazingly quickly and smoothly.
[quote name='Alpha_ProgDes' timestamp='1357019847' post='5016288']
Actually, let's throw the question back at the Staff and Mods.
What would you guys like to see or want to do?
[/quote]
One of my major focuses in the next year is going to be improving and growing the classifieds section. I'd really like to get the interface cleaned up, streamlined, and make it as easy as possible to use -- both when posting an ad, and when trying to find projects that are suitable for any given user. I think we've taken a step in the right direction with classifieds (as opposed to the old forum), but I want to continue making progress and improving the system rather than simply letting it stagnate as-is.
As one of the site's sources of income, I'd also really love if classifieds could become popular enough to reduce our reliance on advertising. Unfortunately it takes quite a bit of money to keep the site running, making advertising a bit of a necessary evil, but if we can improve classifieds so that we're providing a really valuable service we might be able to support the site more through that service and remove some of the ads.
Some of the features I'm looking at adding include detailed documentation and instructions -- not just on using the system itself, but also on effective recruiting practices and how successful teams usually operate -- contextually relevant help, and much better exposure for advertisers by more prominently (but unobtrusively) featuring relevant ads elsewhere on the site and perhaps in user-configurable summary emails.
One of the other areas where we're hoping to make huge improvements is in article publishing, and I think Servant of the Lord will be happy with some of the planned changes. We're looking at making the submission process a lot easier, opening up articles to community review, really trying to recognise those who take the time to contribute, and at trying to make it much easier to find relevant, high-quality articles through features such as improved tagging, easy rating of content and possibly subscriptions to topic-based digests. Once we're happy that we have a solid and easy-to-use platform we'll also be making a big push to get new content published on a regular basis.
Drew and Mike may have more details or thoughts to share on the publishing side of things.
