Ok guys, you're pissed about the changes? Here is your chance to make your true opinion hold.
Now I want everyone to realize that I am working on a new forum theme, that will make the subcats show in much less space, It's just not done yet :)
If you vote Option 2: Limited Sub Cats. I expect you to post a reasonable idea of what they should be, or be agreeing with someone else.
This will run for 7 days and everyone can vote only once. I'm going to revert the subcats for the time being. At the end of this 7 day period I WILL GIVE THE USERS WHAT THEY WISH FOR. So be careful :) Happy voting.
Where do "limited" become ?
Personnaly i really like the WowI ace classification with little modifs, that is:
Core (with libraries)
Chat/comm
Class specific
Combat
Raid
Interface enhancements
Inventory/items
Tradeskills
UnitFrames
And others/misc
I would suggest just creating a specific new category as it appears necessary. For example, you have the raid category presumably because raid addons/discussions got big enough to justify it. Just kind of work it like that. Maybe you could pick a target number. If there are X number of threads for a certain category, move them into a new sub-cat.
Great work on the forum, Kaelten. I like the forum matching the wiki, and I like the look and feel in general.
I'm not "pissed" about the changes but in my opinion it just doesn't work the way it is now. I do appreciate the work you put in it, and I'm looking forward to the new condensed sub forum look & feel. Furthermore I'll abide by the results of this poll whether I personally like it or not.
As for an actual poll comment: I think splitting out a category only when there's a certain amount of addons makes the most sense. That way there's never a subforum that feels empty, which I think is the main "problem" of the category setup.
I think that we, as developers, need to move away from the "dedicated forum thread" paradigm for releasing addons. It, frankly, sucks. Georgely, even.
Perhaps a singe forum for annoucements, locked so that new posts cannot be made. In that forum, have one thread for each X-Category where authors can post a reply with an announcement, link to download, link to a wiki page (or WOWI page or Curse page or whatever).
When people post replies to these threads like "zomg great addon" or "I found a bug", someone with power needs to go in and delete these posts; no warning, no moving, no mercy.
Oh, and stop with the dedicated FuBar threads. FuBar is not a category, it is a dependancy.
I think that we, as developers, need to move away from the "dedicated forum thread" paradigm for releasing addons. It, frankly, sucks. Georgely, even.
Perhaps a singe forum for annoucements, locked so that new posts cannot be made. In that forum, have one thread for each X-Category where authors can post a reply with an announcement, link to download, link to a wiki page (or WOWI page or Curse page or whatever).
When people post replies to these threads like "zomg great addon" or "I found a bug", someone with power needs to go in and delete these posts; no warning, no moving, no mercy.
Oh, and stop with the dedicated FuBar threads. FuBar is not a category, it is a dependancy.
Raid Addons
Frame Addons (Unitframe/Skins etc)
Class Addons
Interface (SCT, Actionbars, FuBar, OneBag etc)
Other.. (can be the main addon forums
1. "RAID ADDONS"
What exactly is a 'raid addon'? BigWigs is, yes. What else? Is an emergency monitor that can be used in parties too a raid addon? Is Detox a raid addon? Are PvP-raid related addons such as AV timers raid addons? Is CorkFu a raid addon (no real need for a buff-watch tool in parties). What about RDX (if it was Ace)?... Also please consider that with BC most new instances will be 5-20man limited, therefor the difference between parties and raids will be even smaller (as we might have BigWigs for future 5man *party* instances).
I'd therefor suggest to rename "Raid addons" to something like "Party and Raid addons", which has everything in there that is not really usable when soloing, but not restricted to 40man raids.
2. "FRAME ADDONS"
What are frame addons? Non-developers don't even know what a frame is. Stuff like oSkin should better be in the interface forum, leaving unit frames for this category only? Similar question to above, where will PerfectRaid, an Ace'd RDX, Squishy,... be located? I'd say rather in the "party and raid addons", which would then also be the home of all unit frame addons.
I therefor suggest to completely remove this category.
3. "CLASS ADDONS"
Thats okay, but I wouldnt start adding categories like "dps" or "healer" or "caster", as we'd then again have the problem where to place addons. I think it's better to restrict this category to addons you NEED to be a specific class (e.g. a rogue poison application addon, a warlock shard addon, a druid battlerez addon,...). And not have e.g. Detox in there which can be used by several classes.
4. "INTERFACE ADDONS"
Fine with that.
5. "OTHER ADDONS"
Having something named "other" will result in lots of crap in there noone will find. I'd like to see a different category name therefor. I'm also missing a category for tradeskills and other non-combat related addons (the complete Auctioneer/Enchantrix world would be there if aced, stuff like Fu_ClockFu, MoneyFu, DurabilityFu, ToFu,...) - so why not call it "NON-COMBAT ADDONS"?
Therefor my suggestion is:
- PARTY / RAID ADDONS (oRA, BigWigs, ag_UnitFrames, PerfectRaid, Squishy, Detox, HealWatch,...)
- CLASS SPECIFIC ADDONS (GotWood, SwiftShift, Cyclone, Druidcom,...)
- INTERFACE / LAYOUT ADDONS (Bartender, BattleChat, Clique, FuBar, idChat, OneBag, TinyTip)
- NON-COMBAT / TRADESKILL ADDONS (BagBoy, ClockFu, MoneyFu, DurabilityFu, ToFu,...)
We won't even really need subforums in the class specific addons board - I think we currently have less than 20 class specific addons with active discussion in total.
Anything that doesn't fit gets tossed to the main forum. Okay, this is pretty much the same as what Ammo said except that I think having an "Interface" subcat is too generic to be useful for differentiating addons.
I want to stress that I, as a user and not a developer, deeply appreciate the work you put into the forums, addons and ace in general. I'm very grateful that you took this step in an attempt to make the forums more navigateable. I also don't think it's working out, but I couldn't be sure of that before the system was tried.
In addition to any categorising, I imagine that rising use of Flyspray & the wiki will make the forums much more navigateable in the long run. Currently the threads are often used for addon releases, bug reports, feature requests and general comments all at once - which makes for a whole lot of noise if you're looking for something specific.
I know that this probably will be a hard one, but how about a setting in profile that lets you switch between categorized and uncategorized view? This could satisfy everyone :)
I think that we, as developers, need to move away from the "dedicated forum thread" paradigm for releasing addons. It, frankly, sucks. Georgely, even.
Exactly. Addon forum threads has been used for two things for some time now... bug reports/feature suggestions and spreading general information. The general info part needs moved to the wiki, period, end of story.
Bug reports, well we need to get something worked out here. Some devs might be fine with a wiki talk page here, I know I would be. We've also got flyspray, but many users are unable to get registration emails, that's a problem... I guess I would be okey with a single per-author thread for reporting bugs into if that's what the author wants... but stop with the per-mod threads.
So that leaves basic addon discussions, you know, stuff like "I'm designing a mod like this, need ideas" and the like. I would be very happy to see this be the only threads that crop up.
I very much like the idea of having a stickie'd "Announcement" thread where everyone can announce a new mod and link to it's wiki page. Further links out to wowi and such can be added to the wiki page (as all that will be needed is a TOC metadata field to auto-populate the addon infobox).
So I say, move all old topics to an archive subforum forum and lets start encouraging people to make wiki pages and lock their own addon threads.
Absolutely no more than 6 sub-categories
NO sub-sub-categories
Raid and Party
Class Specific (again, no sub-sub-categories)
Combat & Data
Inventory & Tradeskill
Interface
General and Miscellaneous goes into the parent thread (Ace 2 Addons)
After deciding and implementing the subcategories, all relevant threads should immediately be moved into those categories to make sure we actually use them.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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Now I want everyone to realize that I am working on a new forum theme, that will make the subcats show in much less space, It's just not done yet :)
If you vote Option 2: Limited Sub Cats. I expect you to post a reasonable idea of what they should be, or be agreeing with someone else.
This will run for 7 days and everyone can vote only once. I'm going to revert the subcats for the time being. At the end of this 7 day period I WILL GIVE THE USERS WHAT THEY WISH FOR. So be careful :) Happy voting.
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Curse PremiumRaid Addons
Frame Addons (Unitframe/Skins etc)
Class Addons
Interface (SCT, Actionbars, FuBar, OneBag etc)
Other.. (can be the main addon forums
-Ammo
sounds good
Ditto
Yep sound good...
I like this method also
Personnaly i really like the WowI ace classification with little modifs, that is:
Core (with libraries)
Chat/comm
Class specific
Combat
Raid
Interface enhancements
Inventory/items
Tradeskills
UnitFrames
And others/misc
Great work on the forum, Kaelten. I like the forum matching the wiki, and I like the look and feel in general.
Another concur with Ammo. Limited... Short and sweet... but I do agree with Turan... set a #, and when there are enough to fill a catagory, create it.
Also, My agree with Turan includes the compliment on all your hard work.
I'm not "pissed" about the changes but in my opinion it just doesn't work the way it is now. I do appreciate the work you put in it, and I'm looking forward to the new condensed sub forum look & feel. Furthermore I'll abide by the results of this poll whether I personally like it or not.
As for an actual poll comment: I think splitting out a category only when there's a certain amount of addons makes the most sense. That way there's never a subforum that feels empty, which I think is the main "problem" of the category setup.
Thanks for going through with this!
Perhaps a singe forum for annoucements, locked so that new posts cannot be made. In that forum, have one thread for each X-Category where authors can post a reply with an announcement, link to download, link to a wiki page (or WOWI page or Curse page or whatever).
When people post replies to these threads like "zomg great addon" or "I found a bug", someone with power needs to go in and delete these posts; no warning, no moving, no mercy.
Oh, and stop with the dedicated FuBar threads. FuBar is not a category, it is a dependancy.
Theondry wins
1. "RAID ADDONS"
What exactly is a 'raid addon'? BigWigs is, yes. What else? Is an emergency monitor that can be used in parties too a raid addon? Is Detox a raid addon? Are PvP-raid related addons such as AV timers raid addons? Is CorkFu a raid addon (no real need for a buff-watch tool in parties). What about RDX (if it was Ace)?... Also please consider that with BC most new instances will be 5-20man limited, therefor the difference between parties and raids will be even smaller (as we might have BigWigs for future 5man *party* instances).
I'd therefor suggest to rename "Raid addons" to something like "Party and Raid addons", which has everything in there that is not really usable when soloing, but not restricted to 40man raids.
2. "FRAME ADDONS"
What are frame addons? Non-developers don't even know what a frame is. Stuff like oSkin should better be in the interface forum, leaving unit frames for this category only? Similar question to above, where will PerfectRaid, an Ace'd RDX, Squishy,... be located? I'd say rather in the "party and raid addons", which would then also be the home of all unit frame addons.
I therefor suggest to completely remove this category.
3. "CLASS ADDONS"
Thats okay, but I wouldnt start adding categories like "dps" or "healer" or "caster", as we'd then again have the problem where to place addons. I think it's better to restrict this category to addons you NEED to be a specific class (e.g. a rogue poison application addon, a warlock shard addon, a druid battlerez addon,...). And not have e.g. Detox in there which can be used by several classes.
4. "INTERFACE ADDONS"
Fine with that.
5. "OTHER ADDONS"
Having something named "other" will result in lots of crap in there noone will find. I'd like to see a different category name therefor. I'm also missing a category for tradeskills and other non-combat related addons (the complete Auctioneer/Enchantrix world would be there if aced, stuff like Fu_ClockFu, MoneyFu, DurabilityFu, ToFu,...) - so why not call it "NON-COMBAT ADDONS"?
Therefor my suggestion is:
- PARTY / RAID ADDONS (oRA, BigWigs, ag_UnitFrames, PerfectRaid, Squishy, Detox, HealWatch,...)
- CLASS SPECIFIC ADDONS (GotWood, SwiftShift, Cyclone, Druidcom,...)
- INTERFACE / LAYOUT ADDONS (Bartender, BattleChat, Clique, FuBar, idChat, OneBag, TinyTip)
- NON-COMBAT / TRADESKILL ADDONS (BagBoy, ClockFu, MoneyFu, DurabilityFu, ToFu,...)
We won't even really need subforums in the class specific addons board - I think we currently have less than 20 class specific addons with active discussion in total.
Interface Frames
Action Buttons & Bars
Raiding
Class-Specific
Anything that doesn't fit gets tossed to the main forum. Okay, this is pretty much the same as what Ammo said except that I think having an "Interface" subcat is too generic to be useful for differentiating addons.
I want to stress that I, as a user and not a developer, deeply appreciate the work you put into the forums, addons and ace in general. I'm very grateful that you took this step in an attempt to make the forums more navigateable. I also don't think it's working out, but I couldn't be sure of that before the system was tried.
In addition to any categorising, I imagine that rising use of Flyspray & the wiki will make the forums much more navigateable in the long run. Currently the threads are often used for addon releases, bug reports, feature requests and general comments all at once - which makes for a whole lot of noise if you're looking for something specific.
Exactly. Addon forum threads has been used for two things for some time now... bug reports/feature suggestions and spreading general information. The general info part needs moved to the wiki, period, end of story.
Bug reports, well we need to get something worked out here. Some devs might be fine with a wiki talk page here, I know I would be. We've also got flyspray, but many users are unable to get registration emails, that's a problem... I guess I would be okey with a single per-author thread for reporting bugs into if that's what the author wants... but stop with the per-mod threads.
So that leaves basic addon discussions, you know, stuff like "I'm designing a mod like this, need ideas" and the like. I would be very happy to see this be the only threads that crop up.
I very much like the idea of having a stickie'd "Announcement" thread where everyone can announce a new mod and link to it's wiki page. Further links out to wowi and such can be added to the wiki page (as all that will be needed is a TOC metadata field to auto-populate the addon infobox).
So I say, move all old topics to an archive subforum forum and lets start encouraging people to make wiki pages and lock their own addon threads.
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Curse PremiumI wrote that list down quickly. Good comments, I concur.
-Ammo
NO sub-sub-categories
Raid and Party
Class Specific (again, no sub-sub-categories)
Combat & Data
Inventory & Tradeskill
Interface
General and Miscellaneous goes into the parent thread (Ace 2 Addons)
After deciding and implementing the subcategories, all relevant threads should immediately be moved into those categories to make sure we actually use them.