Idea: New Sub-forum for all combinator related topics!

[Klonan]

I'm burried in some work for the past 2 and next 1-2 days, this is not forgotten.

I don't see me as "driver" of this topic, so if someone wants to increase progress of this discussion feel free. Advertising in other boards.

Would be useful, if some dev could also write an opinion.

I think a combinator sub-board is a great idea,
But i worry about over segmenting the forums again

I think a few broad categories are better than a lot of specific categories
I will look at what categories might fit, something like:

• General "Show your creations"
• Combinator creations
• Railway setups

However i am cautious about being over strict with these, I'd rather they be more so suggested categories for you post, opposed to "All combinator stuff belongs in the combinator forum"

I don't think any more specific categories are needed, the rest would be at home in the general forum, as i highly doubt other specific forums would see a lot of traffic

[siggboy]

These are good points you're making. If the forum topic is too specific and there's one post a week it's really not helpful. Some of the categories I've suggested might suffer from that ("Energy", for example).

Probably "Combinatorio" and Railroads/Trains actually deserve separate categories, as these are really commonly discussed topics.

Would you be open to the idea of maybe creating a few more sub-forums than we currently have? I feel that maybe "Megabase" and "Factory Designs" might not be bad candidates for sub-forums. Plus, the "General" board is really a bit overcrowded and monolithic right now.

My reasoning is that as soon as these categories exist, players might be more inspired to actually write articles about the topic. Likewise, if you have a question and it's very easy to find the right place to ask, it's probably more likely to happen.

Putting some of the, supposedly, less frequented topics into sub-forums will also help to keep the hierarchy clean and don't overload it with very low frequency boards.

[ssilk]

Well, with that input now this idea seems to become more "form".

How about this:

Code: Select all

...
Show your Creations
     General [the current Show your Creations]
     Videos [the current Videos in Show your Creations]
     Combinatorio [still like the name]
     Railway Setups
...

That might work.

Next good question: Is Show your Creations then in General or is it an own main category?

[siggboy]

I'd call it "Trains and Railroads" instead of "Railway Setups". Make it as clear and explicit as possible (also the term "setup" is overused and carries no real meaning; even simply "Railroads" would be better than "Railroad Setups").

About the other question here's what I think: if you create sub-forums under the (already existing) "Show your Creations", you have more freedom without the danger of overcrowding the top level. This comes at the price that the sub-forums are a little less visible (one does have to navigate into "Show your Creations" in order to even see them.

On the other hand, if you do it that way (and it's not a bad idea), then "Show Your Creations" more and more becomes a general discussion forum for game play related questions -- and then the name "Show Your Creations" is not very useful any longer.

Also, I'd like to be able to post a question about Railways without having to "show one of my creations". If you put "Railway" under "Show..." then you will be constraining the use of the forum without a real reason.

So I don't think you should group them under "Show your Creations" at all. Group them under the "General" forum (as sub-forums), or clean up the "General" top level category a little and put the forums there.

[DaveMcW]

For people worried about sub forums being hidden. There are two useful phpBB options for this:

List subforums in legend
List subforum in parent-forum’s legend

When both are ticked, the sub forums show up the main forum's description.


On the topic of creating new forums, I would like a "Strategy Articles" subforum of Gameplay Help. There are many useful articles that are scattered around the forum because there is nowhere to put them.

[Loewchen]

I don't really see the point yet. If you have a question about combinator setups you go to Gameplay help, if you have a build you want to share you post in Show your creations. Making a category somewhere in the middle will make it harder to find stuff that has already been posted.

A policy of adding a tag to topics like: [Train], [Energy], [Combat], [Circuit], [...] feels more useful to me.

[siggboy]

I don't really see the point yet. If you have a question about combinator setups you go to Gameplay help, if you have a build you want to share you post in Show your creations. Making a category somewhere in the middle will make it harder to find stuff that has already been posted.

The new category (or categories) are orthogonal to the classification that currently exists.

"Gameplay help" and "Show your creations" are very broad and cover all sorts of topics that have not much to do with eachother.

Of course it can always be argued if you want to structure the forums into topics or not. The reason why the combinator forum was suggested (by more than one person, by the way), is that it's currently difficult to find information about this topic. You can not search the forums for topics, only for key words.

A policy of adding a tag to topics like: [Train], [Energy], [Combat], [Circuit], [...] feels more useful to me.

Who's going to enforce the policy? (Hint: it's not going to be the users who are posting, mark my words.) Having a forum to post in seems a lot easier to me than herding cats all day and adding those tags to all the postings.

[ssilk]

I thought a lot around this. I didn't make it easy, I looked in the boards, I counted threads and so on.

Long way short: I think we should make small steps to improve this forum. Not big. And I think tagging is the way we should go.
Yet.

When I look into Show your Creations I can clearly see some (not yet existing) "Tags". See this list as suggestion:

- Base - Base design, whole maps and how factory parts work together
- Fact - Factory Setups, bigger structures like furnaces, mines; whole maps, overview, development
- Smart - Smart (Production) Setups, small but clever design.
- Comb - Combinatorio - everything around Combinators and Circuits
- Belt - Belt-Magic, smart belt design
- Trans - Railway, Train, Stations, Load/Unload
- NRG - Energy Production
- WIP - Work in Progress
- Desgn - Design, Art

That are tags. Not categories. You can set some per thread-topic. Like "[Belt, Smart] Rainbow Belts and other madness" (see viewtopic.php?f=8&t=28414). But of course not frced to set tags.

I would introduce that to the board and look in some weeks how it is going with that (and watch a bit more into Show your Creations).

I posted this, so that you can nod or shake head and suggest better ideas.

[piriform]

So, I read this thread, and with some exceptions, majority seems in violent agreement. Combinators, need and require a dedicated place.
To a new user especially, searching all over the forum, and not finding it (due to search functions general suckiness) is downright unfriendly. And then we have those hardy (new) souls who spent time and effort reinventing the wheel, post their findings ("Woot, look at my thingamabob") and meet universal yawn.
Several sub categories would not hurt the forum overall. The exact categories don't really matter at first, if the forum remains as vibrant as it has been in the past. The categories will and should evolve over time.
Siggboy offer to curate should be accepted with open arms. He has certainly demonstrated involvement and dept of knowledge necessary for this role.
Given all of the above, my question is: "What's the problem?. Why has this not happened already?"

ps tags are a stopgap that cannot replace properly organized threads

[ssilk]

I counted the threads in Show your Creations belonging to such a subcategory since last week. Result: 1. Other weeks are 0. (And nobody uses the advertised tagging system viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31485 )

So you think, that is worth making an own category? OK, I mean we have such seldom used categories (Wiki etc.) - that is not the problem. (*)

Well. Maybe this is one of those things, where someone like a me has thought too deep into. (*)
Wouldn't be the first time. Maybe - cause the tagging idea doesn't seem to work - we need an own board. I can create this evening such a board in the contributions and we see, how that goes then.

...
...


(*) I said it some posts above. My personal opinion is this: To implement this idea in a way, that is usable and will be used we need
a) moderator(s) and/or
b) a technical solution for tagging.

I'll explain that in detail:

Moderators: I can speak only for me as moderator: I have enough to do in this forum to keep in track with the most important stuff. Now the community says: "We want that", but I can see (and my experience also says) clearly, that it would not work out. It's in this case not enough to make just a new board. Moderators need to move wrong placed threads - just one example of many. And due to the nature of the subject you need to read clearly, about what the post is to be able to decide such stuff. I just have no time for that and I think: If the community wants this, but not willing to invest time, well, then it seem to be not so urgent...

Technical solution: phpBB provides some plugins, that enables tagging while posting an article. In my opinion one of that needs to be chosen and the devs needs to be convinced to install it. It needs also cherished (back to moderators, see above).

[ssilk]

So, I've created two new forums. I mainly followed Klonan's suggestion:
Combinator Creations
This board is to show, discuss and archive useful combinator- and logic-creations.
Smart triggering, counters, useful circuitry, switching as an art.
Please provide if possible always a blueprint of your creation.

Railway Setups
Smart setups of railway stations, intelligent routing, solutions to complex routing problems.
Please provide - only if it makes sense of course - a blueprint of your creation.

[ssilk]

According to these changes I moved now a lot of threads. Expecially some of the gameplay-help-threads.

Forum members are free to search the forum for more posts matching into the new categories and report them so that the moderators can move it.


PS: After looking over that new categories, I must say I don't know, why I have been hassling so long around with that; I think mainly due to the big business workload I have had the last months.

[DaveMcW]

Too many subforums now, I will not bother to read them.

[aubergine18]

It's a massive improvement, especially to those of us who struggle with combinators and rail. We now have a much more focussed repository of posts to learn from.

The only place I feel forums are overloaded is in the modding area of the forums. It's like there are multiple forum ecosystems in there. IMO take the 0.12 modding subforums, move them up to top level, and then move all other stuff in to them (WIP mods is still useful forum in its own right tho).

[brunzenstein]

Too many subforums now, I will not bother to read them.

No problem - I will...

[ssilk]

Too many subforums now, I will not bother to read them.

Well, perhaps I have been going a bit too far.

But it was pure purpose. Yesterday I created the boards (it tooks very long to find right descriptions, cause the ideas we had in this thread didn't work well enough). I have sorted the first 5 pages of Show your Creations into the right boards to see, how that works out.

The result (Number of moved posts):
Combinator Creations: 57 (nice, I didn't await that much)
Railway Setups: 16 (Hm, I thought there is more)
Mechanical Thrughput Magic: 21 (also more than awaited)
Power Plants, Energy Storge and Reliable Energy Supply: 6 (I know, there are some more threads, but most are with 0.13 outdated)
Base- and Factory-Design: Main-Bus-Concepts, Modular Design, Megabases: 14 (astonoshing)
Castles: Home, Throne Room, Defence and Decorations: 7 (interesting)


What I learned from that sorting was, that as a player I don't search for combinators, railways etc. I search for something in my current "dimension". Let's say belt (and other stuff) is dimension 1, then combinators are dimension 0.5 and railway, power plants are dimension 2. You can see that, when you need to zoom in or out for construction.

So I think I will join Railway and Power Plant and move the megabase stuff back, cause there is not so much, that can be learned from them,
so that we have in the end 3 or 4 new boards. We will see, I need now some sleep.
I dunno what to do with Mechanical throughput or Castle/Defense... also moving back?

[Klonan]

Too many subforums now, I will not bother to read them.

Well, perhaps I have been going a bit too far.

But it was pure purpose. Yesterday I created the boards (it tooks very long to find right descriptions, cause the ideas we had in this thread didn't work well enough). I have sorted the first 5 pages of Show your Creations into the right boards to see, how that works out.

The result (Number of moved posts):
Combinator Creations: 57 (nice, I didn't await that much)
Railway Setups: 16 (Hm, I thought there is more)
Mechanical Thrughput Magic: 21 (also more than awaited)
Power Plants, Energy Storge and Reliable Energy Supply: 6 (I know, there are some more threads, but most are with 0.13 outdated)
Base- and Factory-Design: Main-Bus-Concepts, Modular Design, Megabases: 14 (astonoshing)
Castles: Home, Throne Room, Defence and Decorations: 7 (interesting)


What I learned from that sorting was, that as a player I don't search for combinators, railways etc. I search for something in my current "dimension". Let's say belt (and other stuff) is dimension 1, then combinators are dimension 0.5 and railway, power plants are dimension 2. You can see that, when you need to zoom in or out for construction.

So I think I will join Railway and Power Plant and move the megabase stuff back, cause there is not so much, that can be learned from them,
so that we have in the end 3 or 4 new boards. We will see, I need now some sleep.
I dunno what to do with Mechanical throughput or Castle/Defense... also moving back?

Yes we will see what the community feedback presents us, for now we consider this a trial period, with many questions attached:

• Do people like the new sub-forums
• Are they more useful then a general board
• Does it promote more discussion and postings
• And many others

So I will keep a lookout, and we will talk about the results of this in a few weeks

[orzelek]

One thing:
Mechanical Throughput Magic

[aubergine18]

I know, there are some more threads, but most are with 0.13 outdated)

IMO even outdated posts are still useful to move to subforums as they still present ideas that others might take and update to make them relevant to more recent game features.

[piriform]

Great start. Thank you for all the hard work.