pwnaz0r
2008-10-06 21:37:35
Hey guys, its been awhile since I have been here long (like 9 months maybe? :p). Anyways I have been back for a week and I just saw the whole situation with Starblaster.
I think that while he went about it in the completely wrong way, he did have some semi good points. Understand that the outcome of that situation has come and past, and some of us are angry, some upset with his remarks. but why did he do it? He was obviously in a position where he could change it if he wanted. Sort of hypocritical on the point of being "active" eh :).
Anyhow, if you think about it, he had a reason to have an outburst like that. You don't just create another account and give privileges to every forum for no reason. I know that another thread has been made about this (Smartzkid :p), but I don't know where that topic is necessarily going.
SO, this topic is just about my suggestions of what to do on the forum.
To keep people active in the forum, you are going to have to have some key elements in the design. Some of these principals apply to almost everything in life. It's why you buy a product, invest in stocks, script for runescape and/or run runescape scripts. The golden rule, is "What's in it for me?". This forum has to bring something to the table in order to gain more active participants. That's why I got involved in macro-ing. It was initially for money. Then it was becoming a member (kind of idea of fame). Then for the cups.
I could go on and on, but I do think that you get the point. So the question is how do you make this forum profitable to the public.
I will write more on the other point later, I have alot. Sorry hate to leaves threads unfinished like this, but I have bigger responsibilities (homework :)). I will write about them later.
By the way, hopefully anything you take offensive to this will be dismissed by the fact that you asked as administrators on how to make this community better. Therefore, I am going about it in a civilized manner, using psychology and reason to find the roots of what makes a community good and I explain them the best I can, and give possible solutions.
I think that while he went about it in the completely wrong way, he did have some semi good points. Understand that the outcome of that situation has come and past, and some of us are angry, some upset with his remarks. but why did he do it? He was obviously in a position where he could change it if he wanted. Sort of hypocritical on the point of being "active" eh :).
Anyhow, if you think about it, he had a reason to have an outburst like that. You don't just create another account and give privileges to every forum for no reason. I know that another thread has been made about this (Smartzkid :p), but I don't know where that topic is necessarily going.
SO, this topic is just about my suggestions of what to do on the forum.
To keep people active in the forum, you are going to have to have some key elements in the design. Some of these principals apply to almost everything in life. It's why you buy a product, invest in stocks, script for runescape and/or run runescape scripts. The golden rule, is "What's in it for me?". This forum has to bring something to the table in order to gain more active participants. That's why I got involved in macro-ing. It was initially for money. Then it was becoming a member (kind of idea of fame). Then for the cups.
I could go on and on, but I do think that you get the point. So the question is how do you make this forum profitable to the public.
- Needs to be simple to use - Whenever I go to forums where something is hard to use or I can't receive help I need, I just leave, because it is not profitable to me. The second rules of this idea is people want what they want now. It's human nature, and the sooner you can provide that, the better off they are, thus the better off we are as a forum. How to do this? I think pruning is one main thing this forum needs to do. And I'm talking about threads and members. I know that many have said this, but it's true, nothing great has been done. I'm not talking about members that have been away for 3 months, I'm talking about users that have been away for 3 years. I also think a huge thing would be to get the tutorial section up to status quo. Divide them into sections like DDTMs, Bitmaps, Looping, Basics, Colorfinding, Colors - Advanced, Reflection, etc. It would be alot easier, and to be honest more eye pleasing, which is a huge plus. I hear use search button alot, but I think if I were a new member, I would want to be able to go to tutorial section and see that done and be impressed with the way the forum is structured. Something to say, wow this place has it going on, I can learn about anything I want in a matter of seconds, at my own pace, find anything! rather than getting a responce "USE SEARCH BUTTON NOOB". And there is also one more thing I would like to tag on here. I would like to see more advanced tutorials, maybe more developers should be appointed, or the current developers should get together and start writing tutorials on those really advanced things they seem to know about to get the community active. I know I got bored with SRL last time because I literally knew everything this forum had to offer in the tutorials sections and much more, which was very difficult to find outside of this site. In conclusion of this point, more advanced tutorials = more advanced scripters = better scripts and possible more developer materials = more people using scripts and more developing SRL. That is the equation for community growth…
- Needs to be goals to achieve - (crap accidently pressed back and lost this whole point, in short this is what I said). You need to create goals for scripters. To keep a growing audience you need to keep both scripters and script users happy. Script users will be happy if the scripts are quality, the more quality scripts, the more they will tell their friends, etc. So how then do you keep scripters happy? First thing that comes to mind is competitions, but they are a hassle to deal with, especially with one or two judges (take SB100's competitions as an example). They were long to grade, tedious, and overall unfair because everyone could join. By the third competition, alot of people weren't joining because the dev's were joining. Maybe its time for a new era of Competitions for SRL? I think that the post below me has some very good ideas, me and smartz thought of them. Public vote is a great idea by smartz. Unfairness will not be an issue because of all of the high level tutorials that will be out. Soon the scripting levels will level out and not be all over the place for members and non-members alike (those two are not on the same level, however, they will both level out within their own group). The script of the month idea is good I think. This could be how its done. Script of the month is posted in sticky. People script for it, encourage them to do the best they can, instruct no outside help. If any script is deemed good enough, or advanced enough, or best running, you could (a) enter it into srl member app for them (b) encourage them to do so © make the prize SRL membership.
I will write more on the other point later, I have alot. Sorry hate to leaves threads unfinished like this, but I have bigger responsibilities (homework :)). I will write about them later.
By the way, hopefully anything you take offensive to this will be dismissed by the fact that you asked as administrators on how to make this community better. Therefore, I am going about it in a civilized manner, using psychology and reason to find the roots of what makes a community good and I explain them the best I can, and give possible solutions.