by Andrew on Wed Jan 16, 2019 7:20 pm
It's unfortunate that having separate sections for requests and the like no longer works as it did many, many years ago. The thing is that a section like that is also dependent on modders going there to offer help and take up requests, and that wasn't happening. With that in mind, I can't blame people for treating the Releases & Previews sections like the place to post all modding-related topics (as it's now become), otherwise they'd almost never get an answer.
I think the only way it could possibly work is if we had a central Modding category, broken down into Releases & Previews, Requests, Help & Development, and Tutorials, that was open to every game (rather than each game having its own Modding subsection). If we did that, those other sections might get more attention and activity. That's an idea, but then you've got the issue of confusion as to which game a mod is for (or being requested for) if the topic isn't clearly labelled, and it would end up very cluttered and disorganised; even more so than the current sections. Unfortunately, central modding sections for each of the games is the best solution for now, based on community habits. We can always give other sections a try, but history suggests that I'd be merging them again pretty quickly after they went ignored, so I'm reluctant to do so knowing how it's very likely to turn out. It all comes down to what the community is willing to do as a whole.
We could possibly make use of some stickied threads for tracking down external releases, fixing links, and soliciting requests, but it's never a good idea to clutter up a board with too many stickied threads. Furthermore, there's a strange phenomenon where people actually ignore stickied threads because they're stickied, rather than paying attention to them as intended. You also don't want to be too strict about it and force people to only use those threads, because it can come across as draconian and further discourage people from taking part at all. I think our previous Sliders stickies stand as a good example of that; people often just ignored them, and felt put off by having to keep any and all slider discussion in those threads. It helps to have catch-all threads to post in, but it can also feel restrictive, even if there isn't a strict rule about it. Once again though, it's worth a try.
The ad.fly issue is a delicate one. In theory, I wouldn't have a problem saying no more of them, because they are getting problematic. The issue is that if you do that, some people are just not going to post their work here anymore, especially if it's implemented immediately as a drastic no exceptions, zero tolerance rule. Having a rule about one ad link is probably more feasible and a good idea, but then if people are hosting their work externally and linking us to their own websites, it's difficult to police what happens off-site without overstepping bounds. There's only so much we can control and enforce, so I feel a lot of it has to come down to changing attitudes and modding culture (for lack of a better term) so that it's less of an issue.
It's worth discussing these matters though, and the dialogue should continue. However, it's important to note the challenges we face here, and thus evaluate the feasibility of the proposed solutions. That's what I've tried to do here, and with that in mind, perhaps we can come up with some other ideas.