Forum Rules Request: Game announcements in ONE thread

Tiny_Ideas

Hi all,

Its time to put all your game announcements into one thread per a member. Why? Because we already have to do the same for Free templates.

Seriously, these new rules have gone beyond a joke. If you were going for a dead forum.... you succeed.
All because two moderators took it upon themselves to make things better for them.

I scroll through the forums to see the game announcements and free or paid templates. Not any more. I barely visit the forums. I barley see any moderators helping out. I don't see Darren any more since you decided to get rid of you most valuable resource. I don t see old friends post any more and if they do its once a month.

I see people always advertising their services. Its got to stop. All of it.

Lets face it, GameSalad was known for its community despite the fact that its lacking behind its rivals. That's why people choose GameSalad if they don't know who to choose. Now, I tell everyone to avoid GameSalad forums. New members get bashed to death by mods for posting in the wrong section.

It is such a waste. All I can say is that those two mods who decided to change the rules. To me, you are the guys who put apple to almost bankruptcy. No respect, not acceptable and its time for the rules to ease up. The joke is over.

tatiang

I assume you're directing this at me but if I'm wrong please let me know.

Personally, I tend to skip over most game announcements because there are so many. Some members who post impressive demos or works-in-progress might get my attention when their game announcement comes out. So I agree with you that there are many announcements on the forums. But I don't think that's really changed much over the couple of years I've been a member. It's a decent idea... but why attack the mods because you have a suggestion for the forums? Perhaps we agree with you...

Being a moderator is often a thankless job and I'm not looking for your sympathy -- I chose to volunteer my time this way because I like this community -- but to suggest that we "took it upon [ourselves] to make things better for [us]" is just... strange. We were responding to members' confusion over existing rules. And yes, some of the changes were due to a few members who were taking advantage of lax rules. We were hearing from members who complained that "so and so is getting special treatment from the moderators" so we tried to make it as fair as we could.

Darren made a choice to leave the forums... sort of. He's still around. And his reasons and comments were different in private conversations than in public so there's always more to the story than you see here. Even though he wasn't fond of our rule changes, we tried to work with him and other people who asked to see if we could come to a compromise. In some cases, we did.

And to your last point about us bankrupting Apple... I guess I don't understand that at all. But as far as easing up on the rules, the rules had been quite lax for a long time and many people were fed up with it. So we swung the other direction and now people are complaining about the rules being too tight, which I get. We can't please everyone.

Anyway, if there's something else you want to recommend, we're listening.

jonmulcahy

i gotta say, seeing this post and your username made me chuckle

as @tatiang said, this was a huge undertaking, and many loose threads were tightened or snipped. It's not perfect, but it also wasn't down to just 2 people. The folks at GS were on board from the beginning, took all of our suggestions into consideration and told us what they wanted.

It's not perfect, but it's better than before, there are a lot more questions and people helping that of the previous 6 mths.

Tiny_Ideas

What a surprise. The two are the first to reply.

You say you are open to suggestions but there have been many people express their concerns over these new rules.

You will not get sympathy from me. GameSalad as hired someone for the forums. There is no need for moderators anymore. This way all things are done by the GS staff themselves rather than people who think they know what's best.

All I am wanting is to go on the forums. See some new free demos. .. in their own thread. And see what games have been made. Yet you felt we should get rid of it to make things better. I call BS.

Not seeing how its better than before. If your seeing that then this forum being run down by mods is much worse then I had hoped. Since you also decided to take a jab at my business name.

Sick of these excuses you keep feeding. You close threads that are helpful because it's old. Looks to me like things aren't going to change and that disappoints. How many people do you need to raise a concern before anything happens?

Socks

@tatiang said:
And to your last point about us bankrupting Apple... I guess I don't understand that at all.

Don't try and feign innocence, we all know about your attempt to convince Apple that the iPhone6+ should have a DVD player built in, shame on you.

jonmulcahy

First, I didn't take a jab at your business name. I thought it was funny that someone with a username of tiny_ideas was complaining that he thought the mods position was 'tiny'.

Second, Who are these two you speak of?

as far as the rules go, hate to break it to you, but between all of us we have HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of complaints about how things were going. People were complaining that the main page was just an advertisement for other services, that when people posted questions they were referred to a paid template, that people were cloning other users hard work and selling it as a template... the list goes on and on and on. Ask anyone that has been here for 4+ years and they will tell you of how awesome the forums were. They got bad. They are getting better.

As far as 'new rules'? The rules we have in place now have always been in place, some have been tweaked to give people more freedom. Now, we are more consistent about applying them to everyone. It is no secret that some people got special treatment.

If anyone has a problem with the way mods are doing it, i invite them to message one, or all of us, including the GS Staff, @ForumNinja‌ or @dgackey‌. I can say that since the rules have been put in place and enforced, I have not received a single complaint, suggestion or otherwise in my inbox.

Armelline

@Socks said:
Don't try and feign innocence, we all know about your attempt to convince Apple that the iPhone6+ should have a DVD player built in, shame on you.

Based on my iPhone usage, I think to make it a real success they should have included a toilet roll holder too.

As for this thread - everyone knows my opinion on the one specific rule that bothers me so I'm not going to rehash that here. I think there's a valid point being made somewhere in this thread, though perhaps not in the fairest way. I had very constructive and fair communication with the mods and staff about it all, and while I don't agree with everything, I think it's unfair to pin all the forums problems on any specific people.

BBEnk

game announcements into one thread per a member

When did this start I've seen nothing on this?

jonmulcahy

@BBEnk said:
When did this start I've seen nothing on this?

it didn't, it's not a rule

Tiny_Ideas

If you don't make people combined all their game announcements into one thread. Why on earth do free templates have to be in One thread. Thats my main issue.

LumpApps

Because the forum would get overwhelmed with template adverts? I can build a few assets or templates a week so I am guessing I would be annoying if I'd announced everyone in a separate thread. Making games are what we are all here for anyway and having your game finished after hard work makes it legit to give it a podium. As mentioned before some people (including me) started answering questions with "I have a template for that". It was just getting annoying.
This is just my view but I hope it clarifies things a bit.

The_Gamesalad_Guru

Heck let's restrict the whole forum to one thread then we won't miss anything. Most people I see mostly do a game wip thread and then usually a thread months later on release. In fact because of past copying and the blatant copying, by people who lack their own ideas, most people don't discuss their games prior to release.

pHghost

@Tiny_Ideas said:
If you don't make people combined all their game announcements into one thread. Why on earth do free templates have to be in One thread. Thats my main issue.

I think that makes perfect sense, though.

With free templates, I find it useful to find, say, @Armelline‌'s thread and find all of the templates in one place, without having to hunt down old threads. Free templates are universal like that and seeing them all makes perfect sense from a browsing perspective.

With game announces, each game is a completely individual element and if somebody announces a great new game I want to know about that specific game, not all the other games made in the last three years. Most importantly, if I like the game and want to know about more games the person has done, I click on their iTunes Dev profile link and see all the games listed there, in the App Store, so there is a centralized view. No need to centralize things with app announces here if it is done well by Apple.

Thunder_Child

Personally I like the forums as they exists at this time...

@tatiang Thank you.

Lovejoy

@Thunder_Child said:
Personally I like the forums as they exists at this time...

tatiang Thank you.

I second this.

jay2dx

@Tiny_Ideas said:
If you don't make people combined all their game announcements into one thread. Why on earth do free templates have to be in One thread. Thats my main issue.

I would HATE game announcements to be in one thread! and I feel its totally different than a template announcement! Most peoples game announcements are far and few between but someone can make a vanilla template every day pretty much, I see many templates for very simple games but hardly see ANY templates for more sophisticated games! so I guess that's why game announcements can have their own threads, keeps it all on topic and specific to the game / game updates in question too! Once people move past making only flappy style games and into bigger more in-depth games once they have the hang of GS I don't see your point really!

Also I feel the Mods here are pretty good IMHO

Jay

tatiang

You will not get sympathy from me.

Right, hence my comment "I'm not looking for your sympathy."

GameSalad as hired someone for the forums. There is no need for moderators anymore. This way all things are done by the GS staff themselves rather than people who think they know what's best.

I think you need to have a conversation with the GameSalad staff. @SaladStraightShooter used to run the forums and did a pretty darn good job of it with the help of about ten moderators working (aka volunteering) part time. The current set up is that there really isn't a full-time person overseeing the forums. When moderators need assistance or clarification, we can count on @ForumNinja‌ for help but it's not like he's sitting around reading every post on the forums every day. Guess who is...? Yes, moderators. We also have the complete support of the staff. It's not like we're rogue members just doing whatever we please. We're in contact with the staff and they give us guidelines to follow.

To suggest that this place would just run itself without any moderators is to ignore other forums that have little to no moderation. They don't just hum along fine. Anyway, I think we will continue to disagree because you're convinced the forums are being ruined by moderators and I'm convinced they function because of moderators. Please take it up with @dgackey‌ since he would be able to address your concerns more directly than I can.

As for this thread, I welcome suggestions such as you provided so if you have more insights about improving the community please share them.

tenrdrmer

@Tiny_Ideas‌ I think actually I'm the second moderator your being feed false information about.

Unfortunately your being told wrong. GS asked us to find, review, the scattered mess of existing forum rules.
Then they specified several issues they would like suggestions on to improve the rules.

Yes it is 100% true @tatiang and I where the ones who did the research and combining everything into one document. However what you Haven't been told is every agile moderator and GS staff involved in the forums have input and discussion one the final set of rules that was in fact approved by GameSalad head chefs.

As for your suggestion I think its absurd to think everyone should have to put all game announcements in one thread. People are not posting maple game announcements a day. They post a few month.

The reason free templates have to be kept to one thread is for organizational purposes as well as to keep the forums third party advertising to a minimum. It's not exactly fair to the people here asking for help to get 10 free templates dumped on too if there thread and no one ever sees they need help now is it.

Let's not forget too all of those free combined thread are right here.

http://forums.gamesalad.com/categories/community-tutorials

In there own easy to browse sub forum. Again. Right here for everyone to find.

As @tatiang has said we are certainly open to constructive suggestions but I'm gonna be honest I feel like this is just someone feeding you misinformation so you will take their jab at the rules for them.

@Armelline said:
Based on my iPhone usage, I think to make it a real success they should have included a toilet roll holder too.

Shhh! I'm working in a waterproof case with this built into the back.

pHghost

@tenrdrmer said:
As for your suggestion I think its absurd to think everyone should have to put all game announcements in one thread.

I think that statement was sarcastic, and he didn't really mean it.

lycettebros

I like the forum and I like the moderators.

PhilipCC

I agree with @Armelline‌ @Thunder_Child‌ @raycur09‌ and @lycettebros‌ The forum is much better now than it was 12 months ago. The two years prior to that I hardly gave it a glance and never bothered to comment. Sure it's a bit messy, but hell, this is a big community! Of recent the moderators and GS Team have continually strived to improve it. I appreciate that and now try to contribute because of their efforts.

Tiny_Ideas

Although this thread has pretty much been run to the ground. Just like to note that I would not dare to make a statement without out first doing the required background research. This and many other issues are discussed with many members before hand.

I didn't approve of what had been decided and don't agree that the forum is better than it was 12 months ago. Each to their own though but there are some rules that have been expressed but never been discussed or had any attention to.

As for Darren, you lost him, what ever you claim you did. I think that's a terrible lost either way.

pHghost

@Tiny_Ideas said:
I [...] don't agree that the forum is better than it was 12 months ago.

That's a very general statement. The only really specific thing you mentioned so far was the template threads -- which, according to the reactions, most people prefer the way they are done now, because it makes a lot more sense.

Could you give more specific examples of things that are worse now than they were 12 months ago? Otherwise it all just sounds as an emotional rant without any footing and it's hard to have a sensible discussion about it.

For all the people who come here regularly, the forums are obviously very helpful and they feel the community is a strong and good one. Yes, there will be small clashes in threads now and then, but we are all human after all (including mods), and that's normal when you have a big community.

New users

get[ting] bashed to death by mods for posting in the wrong section.

is a gross overstatement. Bashed to death? They are informed about what to post where, which is best learned when you start out, instead of after establishing bad habits. But other than that, the community (with the mods) is very helpful to newcomers.

@Tiny_Ideas said:
Just like to note that I would not dare to make a statement without out first doing the required background research.

I respect that you put a lot of effort into it, but instead of just stating you did your research, you should share some particulars. Otherwise it is just an empty statement.

Armelline

@Tiny_Ideas said:
As for Darren, you lost him, what ever you claim you did. I think that's a terrible lost either way.

He still has his website and still makes templates for it and still promotes his templates in threads on a semi-regular basis so I'm not entirely sure what has been lost (practically speaking)? I'm not saying that as disrespect to Darren, but I see this point trotted out regularly and I've never really understood what losing Darren is supposed to mean. He still reads the forums and participates in them, we just get a lot fewer plugs for his website now.