Archived Thread Prefixes and Labels

[Skaldarnar]

In an attempt to make the forum use handier Cervator and I discussed the use of thread prefixes (as provided by Xenforo) and labels. These can be used to give a better overview of threads and group them by categories/topics.

The current plan I worked out looks like follows:

• Prefixes can be added additionally to the thread title. Therefore, they can show some additional information about the thread status (e.g. support status like "solved") or general categorization (e.g. "engine" or "gametype" as prefixes in Incubator).
• Labels are part of the thread title and should be used to group several threads to a specific topic, e.g. label all Ligth and Shadow related threads with "[LaS]".

The prefixes I came up with, grouped by sub-forums, are the following:

• Support: Solved, Help, Bug, Error
• Incubator: Engine, Module, Gametype (maybe more specific ones like Graphics, AI, World Gen, ...)
• Art & Media: Request, WIP, Finished/Final

Discussion about this is wished-for

 

[Skaldarnar]

A first use-case I tested can be seen in the Support section, namely applying the "Solved" prefix to a thread

http://forum.movingblocks.net/threads/hs_err_pid7380-at-startup.957/

 

[Cervator]

Thanks for taking the initiative to start this - been on my list on a long time. Am eager to dig in and apply some stuff and come up with more, but still uncharacteristically swamped. Soon(tm)!

Definitely also relates to general forum organization like incubator vs modding, modules vs game modes, etc. Fun stuff for logistics types, borderline bike-shedding for others, wee!

 

[Skaldarnar]

Me wantz logistics badge

 

[Marcin Sciesinski]

Me wantz logistics badge

Are you collecting badges? Can we call you a "badger" then?

 

[Skaldarnar]

Are you collecting badges? Can we call you a "badger" then?

I like badges But possibly one badge would be easier

 

[Marcin Sciesinski]

In that case, I want a "modder" badge

 

[Skaldarnar]

-> http://forum.movingblocks.net/threads/art-request-mascot-logo-badges.318/

 

[Cervator]

Skaldarnar - Oh hah, I didn't even realize I hadn't thrown Logistics at you yet

Marcin Sciesinski - in the beginning I made "World" to cover both world gen and world content, back when we didn't have much mod/module action going yet. We need a "Modder" badge for sure. Pinging SuperSnark

Although I had sort of thought "Modder" would indicate a more loose affiliation with the "team" badges being a specialty among core project contributors. Bikeshedding badgers hooooo!

(I suppose you could actually be both a modder and a contributor, although that seems a tad superfluous !)

Edit: Skaldarnar we need to get you a custom title one of these days! And Marcin you've got one now let me know if you prefer something else

Later edit: Came up with a title for Skaldarnar that as a bonus made the mini profile even longer, teehee

 

[Skaldarnar]

Perfect, that should be enough for the moment Maybe I should start working on 3D-wizardry....

 

[Cervator]

To continue the original topic here's a forum overhaul proposal:

Make forums more on topic - one module one thread, one engine feature one thread, anything beyond that goes elsewhere

• Incubator -> (Name?): Discussion & Documentation for MovingBlocks repos (engine, facades, libs) - one thread per feature.
  • Examples: NUI, block support, behavior trees, crash reporter, AWT Facade
• New -> Module Forum (Name?): Discussion & Documentation for Terasology repos (modules) - one thread per module, prefaced with an automatic template updated by Jenkins
  • Examples: WoodAndStone, AnotherWorld, Fluid (each module needs its own thread, Throughout the Ages should have a game type thread elsewhere)
• Suggestions: Actual, gasp, suggestions! Anything that's not ready for a module or a feature thread yet, not just random suggestions from new users, the active core needs to start using this more too
• Dev Portal: Discussion that isn't scoped to a single feature or module (Alpha MoSCoW for instance should be in there, or even in LTP)
• Questionable: Discussion that spans multiple modules such as Throughout the Ages or Light and Shadow - where do they go ? Art thread for L&S makes sense, where would gameplay discussion go?

With more exact forums we can develop more exact thread prefixes plus tie each thread (for engine features and modules at least) to a wiki doc page (engine) or module repo/readme

 

[Adeon]

• New -> Module Forum (Name?): Discussion & Documentation for Terasology repos (modules) - one thread per module, prefaced with an automatic template updated by Jenkins
  • Examples: WoodAndStone, AnotherWorld, Fluid (each module needs its own thread, Throughout the Ages should have a game type thread elsewhere)

I like this idea!

 

[Skaldarnar]

After some discussion about new (sub) forums and organization I came up with the structure given below. Most important, the Development sub forum is reworked to be more specific about thread contents. Ideally, each thread will have an automatic updated copy of github README.md or similar in its first post.

I've put possible thread prefixes behind the subforum entry ([prefix1, prefix2]), and gave some examples for threads in the categories. (Sub) forum entries start with a »+«, threads with a »*«.

Modules (in the sense of mods) live in a separate subforum as game types. This way, we can decouple overall gametype discussion from specific module implementations.

Spoiler: New Structure

+ Community
| + Announcements
| + General
| + Support [Solved, Help, Bug, Error]
| + Suggestions [Mod, Game Type, Engine, Tool, Library]
| + Games & Books Club
+ Development []
| + Contributor Introductions
| + MovingBlocks Internals []
| | * Crash Reporter
| | * Terasology Launcher
| | * NUI
| | * Behaviour Tree
| | * AWT Facade
| | * PC Facade
| | * TeraMath
| + Modules [WIP, Maintenance]
| | * Wood and Stone
| | * Another World
| | * ...
| + Game Types []
| | * Throughout the Ages
| | * Light and Shadow
| | * ...
| + Developer Support [Question, Answered]
| + Art & Media [Request, WIP, Finished]
| | * Light and Shadow Art
| | * Voxel Shop
| | * ...
+ International
| + German
| + French
| + ...
+ Administrative
| + Sites & Services
| + Long Term Planning
| | * Alpha
| | * Beta
| + Core Team Discussion

 

[mkalb]

I like it, except the forum "Long Term Planning".

 

[Skaldarnar]

I corrected the indetation a bit (was off for the last entries under »Administrative«). @mmkalbdo you have suggestions where we should discuss alpha/beta milestones and other »long term planning« (don't know, but Steam Greenlight and co came up once or twice, as well as other crowd funding sites).

 

[mkalb]

I would add an "Off-topic" or similiar to "Community".

And I would move "Long term planning" under "Development" (not "Administrative"). But this is only my suggestion.

What is the intention of "Core Team Discussison"?

 

[Skaldarnar]

"Core Team Discussion" is already present in the current setup and I didn't touch it. It holds various topics about milestones, related projects, projects/sites we've been mentioned in, etc. The forum description says

"OLD FORUM - intending to move some/most topics from here to Long Term Planning when permissions are set right"

so I think it makes sense to try to merge the topics into other (sub) forums.

"Off-topic" might be useful, although I'm not really sure for what. Maybe non-Terasology related announcements could go there, although they fit into "General" as well. Would it be an option to just take "General" as possible "Off-topic"?

Regarding the LTP/Administrative/Core Team Discussion category, we might call the sub forum for our own projects/tools/libraries/engine "MovingBlocks Projects" and take "MovingBlocks Internals" or "MovingBlocks Discussion" for discussions, planning and other related administrative stuff.

 

[Cervator]

Mega-post powers active! Gathered up existing drafts and ideas including from the recent office hours. Consider this a meaty draft needing a few more tweaks then maybe this weekend after office hours we can finalize and start applying the new design.
Overarching goal: Make forums more on topic - one module one thread, one engine feature one thread, anything beyond that goes elsewhere. Funnel general / starting stuff into specific forums and promote from there if needed. New forums show up naturally when there's enough activity to justify one.
Prefixes included below consider a focus on forum / development status instead of logical categorization as that doesn't generally change and might be better indicated by the actual forum the thread is in and/or a header in the top of each thread (which in some cases can be automated, like module type parsed from module.txt by Jenkins. Maybe this could be injected into the thread title like a secondary static prefix)
Community: General stuff including off topic. No heavy dev topics here, although the Suggestions forum is sort of a gateway drug to development

• Announcements - like now, only thing that posts to the Xenforo portal front page. Announcements and events
• • Description: OK as-is
  • Prefixes: Could add some on the type of news, but probably no point so far. Maybe later if we also start to "blog" on topics, distinct from stable builds, events, etc
• Support - already covered pretty well. Maybe flesh out the sticky a little more, include some notes on the launcher and crash reporter, add more links, add a link to a "Known Issues" wiki page / Bug issues on GitHub
• • Description: OK as-is
  • Prefixes: Resolved (green or transparent-y, or not set), Question (blue - instead of "Help" ? How do I do x), Problem (yellow- instead of "Bug" or "Error", which are confusingly similar; covers something we might need to fix), Crash (red - a more specific type of problem. Might not be needed but moar prefixes/colors!), Archived (gray - not relevant anymore - like a vague thread with no follow-up from author)
• Suggestions - need to use this more and get a sticky or two up (a how-to use the forum and a backlog for one-line suggestions/summaries/links waiting for somebody to put effort into). Ideally we'll start more threads here and move them into a more specific forum as the idea matures
• • Description: "Post suggestions here. Look around first to see if it has already been suggested (backlog) or is being worked on (engine/module forums). Good ideas with willing contributors may be moved into the engine or module forum"
  • Prefixes: Pretty substantial in here, if we can stay on top of them this could be a great forum. Colors chosen to highlight the thread's need for attention
  • • Suggested (or not set - blue) - new suggestion just posted, needs some attention to evaluate the idea
    • Design / Review (green) - somebody is actively trying to figure out if/how we can do this. We need to keep an eye out for these going inactive and if so set inactive, archive or backlog
    • Inactive (red) - this was actively being worked on to become an interesting feature but the contributor seems to have gone missing. At least some design work has gone into this, we like the feature, and we would love for somebody to pick it back up.
    • Backlogged (yellow) - suggestion is reasonable but needs a volunteer. An summary entry has been made in the backlog sticky (later automation potential?). Thread doesn't need further attention until there's a volunteer - it isn't a highly needed feature and/or little to no work has been done on it
    • Archived (gray)- this might not be a great fit, at least without some dedicated volunteer who really wants to make it happen. We discussed it some and there was little to no interest in keeping it in the backlog.
    • Dupe (transparent-y) - already have a better thread for this elsewhere (be sure to post a link in the dupe thread)
  • Extras: If an idea has an active volunteer and is solid enough to start coding (or making art assets for a module repo) the thread gets moved into either the module forum or the engine/lib forum. Conversely if in those forums an idea goes inactive before there's a notable module repo the thread might get moved back until there is interest again (offers a way to keep clutter out of those forums and maybe even delete incomplete module repos/jobs in Jenkins)
• Game & Book Club - this is really a long-term idea. Mix between community building (playing games together) and analysis (how did game x do y)
• • Description: OK as-is
  • Prefixes: Probably not needed yet. Long-term could highlight "Community" games that we might play together, "Analysis" for highly interesting games or books that relate to Terasology, anything else ? Hesitant to use Book / Game / MMO / Voxel to highlight since that's static and could go in the thread, but then I suppose these are topics that are unlikely to change much over time.
• General & Off-Topic - to keep forum count down we mark this more clearly as OK for off-topic stuff as well. Occasionally stuff is posted here that could go in a more specific forum (like this prefix thread itself really could be in Site & Services). Even some questions could go into Support instead (more structured / obvious when something is waiting for an answer - move the thread if needed).
• • Description: "Anything that doesn't fit in a more specific forum: General topics about Terasology, off-topic stuff, interesting screenshots, observations of things that might relate or be useful for Terasology, and so on"
  • Prefixes: Topics here are probably too random to categorize

Development: Heavily related to code and assets directly used in Terasology and immediately related projects. I'm still leaning towards "Site & Services" staying outside this block as that stuff is more peripheral to actual Terasology dev (which is why it is under "Administrative). S&S is sort of about the stealthy logistics behind everything that most don't need to worry about.

• Developer Portal - refocus this some more for assorted reasons. Dev topics not specific to a module or engine feature should go here (like the "Arc" threads or Alpha planning). Suggestions and support questions should go into those forums instead, and go through the "workflows" there. Architectural discussions would be a good fit here. Developing code conventions is another good topic. Organizing documentation and automation in general, plus examples. Etc. Would renaming to "General Development" or indeed "Development Support" be better?
• • Description: Uh, dunno yet. That thing I said above
  • Prefixes: Unsure if needed, is another sort of General forum situation. Anything deserving a prefix workflow might be better off in a more exact forum. Although "Request" and "Resolved" might make sense in some cases (maybe just not everything will have a prefix)
• Contributor Introductions - needs better sticky info, on teams/badges, what gets you a badge, what a badge might earn you (permission to post new thread in module/engine forum, get open source licenses, get @terasology.org email forward if you want), any info on forum trophies if we do that some time, any info on forum "upgrade" badges if we do that some time (donor badges). Maybe encourage people to use their intro thread for personal updates, charting how they're getting set up for development, what they're interested in doing, unrelated stuff they've done on the side, etc
• • Description: Needs update
  • Prefixes: We could maintain a sort of contributor status here, but could that be seen as a negative / belittling thing ? New/blank -> running from source -> contributor -> member of at least one team -> inactive/retired (hopefully avoiding that last one when able!)
• Art & Media - with a module forum for in-game art assets it might be possible to use this as a mixture of Suggestions/Dev Portal for Terasology specific art, lore, music, etc. Unrelated art should probably go in General, but sometimes it might not be certain if something could be used for Terasology or not. This one is sort of tricky. Concept art could start out as a suggestion and get moved into the module forum as it becomes an in-game asset. Unsure. Ideas ?
• • Description: Probably needs an update
  • Prefixes: Not totally sure here, but giving it a try
  • • Request (yellow) - somebody has requested a model, some concept art, a piece of music or a sfx, etc
    • Concept / WIP (green) - concept art, work in progress, etc - being worked on or reviewed
    • Modularize (blue) - essentially complete, is awaiting import into a module. When that happens the thread might then move into module forum or be duplicated there
    • Inactive (red), Archived (gray), Dupe (transparent-y) - all like in Suggestions
    • Note: No "Finished" as at that point the thread would either be moved to a Module (been Modularized) or be set as a Dupe of the new Module thread
• Engine & Related / MovingBlocks Internals / Internals ... (old Incubator) - goes specific to engine features (one thread per) and other MovingBlocks-level projects (everything not a module). Any more name ideas? Stickies need updates, no more inception/design/modding in here. Threads may get split logically over time as features grow and form sub-features large enough to live on their own.
• • Description: "For engine features and non-module projects (MovingBlocks org repos). Contributors can create threads, anybody can comment. Threads may move here from Suggestions"
  • • Further info in sticky: Each engine thread should correspond with a page in the GitHub wiki describing the feature. Each project thread (AWT Facade, etc) should link to the repo, tracker, etc on GitHub, with a README there.
  • Prefixes: Again focused on status rather than type, since that can be put in the thread header (and should be fairly apparent from thread title with the forum more topic-focused). Colors again to match level of attention needed.
  • • Implementation (green) - actively being worked (often initial state when moved in from Suggestions or Art)
    • Modularize (blue) - feature needs to be extracted out from engine/Core into its own module (at which point the thread would move into the module forum)
    • Maintenance (gray) - mostly or entirely feature-complete, may need occasional maintenance
    • Polish (yellow) - mostly or entirely feature-complete, but in need of a round of polish (extra documentation, examples, tutorials, etc) - help wanted!
    • Inactive (red) - this was actively being worked on to become an interesting feature but the contributor seems to have gone missing. Work has gone into this and we would love for somebody to pick it back up.
    • Archived (transparent-y) - was a thing once upon a time but has since been replaced or rendered obsolete
  • Extras: If one day one of the other projects gets big enough for its own sub-forum we could upgrade it as such similar to module -> Game Type sub-forum
• Modules (new!) - is created to hold one thread per module, with a template at the top of the thread updated by automation. Idea is to have threads for all modules (with the possible exception of barely begun modules gone inactive - those might get dumped back into Suggestions) so there's a home for discussion to auto-link from elsewhere and to maybe auto-list issues from GitHub - even if there's no actual discussion. With module threads available for sure we might be better able to stay on topic rather than build mega-threads on a whole game type like L&S or W&S. No design phase modules in this forum - that stays in Suggestions until we create a module repo.
• • Description: "For individual modules (Terasology org repos) that provide features & content when enabled in-game. Contributors can create threads, anybody can comment. Threads may move here from Suggestions. Name should match GitHub module name"
  • Prefixes: Same as Engine & Related (excluding "Modularize")
  • Extras: One thought is to auto-create threads as part of the IRC-Gooey-process that'll make a new module repo, Jenkins job, etc (if no thread already exists). Gooey might own an initial small first post (waffling on whether to use a small template post and/or a Xenforo template tweak) that either mods or IRC-Gooey can update on demand. Additionally game type threads (hosted by the module that defines the game type) could be home for "global" discussion for dev on said game type (but we need to resist globbing feature details from associated modules in there). If that gets big enough, like eventually probable for L&S and W&S, then that thread gets spun into a whole game type sub-forum, also used for general discussion on actually playing the game in that style. That probably comes with a different set of prefixes

International - same as current, maybe some sticky improvements with translation framework info? Especially when we, you know, have a translation framework (for the main game and everything other than the shiny launcher)

Administrative - mostly same as current, not high emphasis on threads here

• Site & Services - logistical stuff
• Private Discussion (old "Long-term planning") - name stopped being accurate long ago and we've grown more open anyway. De-emphasize its use for anything we're OK discussing in public instead. Could also be for side-projects
• Core Team Discussion - still inactive and old, but holds a few resources like passwords that shouldn't be in the private forum. To highlight the sheer age of this there are two threads with posts from 2013 and none for 2014
• Optional: new Archive forum for moving threads to that no longer fit anywhere and/or have no purpose. If we get into a spring cleaning habit some outdated "Archived" prefixed threads (or similar) could get scooped in here occasionally.

 

[Cervator]

New forums created, some descriptions adjusted, prefixes prepared:

Feedback? Now we just need to start applying them and moving threads around, which will take much longer, woo. Probably will be me and Skaldarnar doing it over time but feel free to help out if able. Still need to update some stickies to explain as well.

Edit: Added "Resource" for art (light blue) since not everything there necessarily either leads to a game asset or archive/inactive

Edit Sept 30: Changed "Polish" to "Tweaking" to be less confusing on an international project. Plans for "German" tag delayed indefinitely.

Edit March 16th 2015: Added "Project" prefix in orange to Modules and Core Projects, which itself I plot to rename simply to "Core" to cover everything central not a module. A "Project" is meant to be a time limited topic that will later be archived as complete rather than stick around as documentation. Likely it'll result in updates to other permanent threads during its execution. Example: An "Alpha" phase push for a subset of functionality.