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[Granite26]

I always feel like I'm being called an idiot.  Dwarves using guns!!! now why didn't I think of that?!?!?

[SirHoneyBadger]

I always feel like I'm being called an idiot.  Dwarves using guns!!! now why didn't I think of that?!?!?

I don't mean any offense-and I'll be happy to confirm to anyone that you're definitely *not* an idiot, Granite26 (infact, you're one of the posters I specifically keep track of)-but that's the kind of situation where we let out egos start to override our brains.

People post those kinds of comments because they're ignorant of what's been said before.

(And they just don't know enough about us to make an informed opinion on whether we're idiots, or not.)

Sure, people will occasionally do it to be trolls, but that's just good old perversity at work.

If we can let them know that, "why yes, guns *have* been suggested before, believe it or not! here, and here, and here, and this is why guns are considered controversial in DF=___" in a way that doesn't make them feel like they're being called an idiot/disrespected (because it goes both ways), then there's a decent chance it will not only educate them on the specific subject, but give them an incentive to dig a little deeper into what's been suggested before.

If they then take an interest in really learning what's going on in the Forums, then it gives us a shot at a new face around here, which helps Toady.

If not, they'll just fade away, and no real harm done.

[Techhead]

You can put a message at the top of the suggestions page saying that bumping an old topic is encouraged if you have something to add to it. You know, next to the "Please search" reminder.

[Randominality]

one thing i just want to add to this is that i cannot fathom people flaming already suggested suggestions. Surely, the best thing to do would be to simply not reply or as has been suggested here have ONE person post a link to the topic already discussing it. That way the thread can just sink to the back of the forum.

When people post with (mostly) pointless flaming theyre just pushing the topic back to the top.

Just thought i'd point out the obvious cos i havent seen anyone say this yet

[Felblood]

The first step is to stop bumping the waste threads.

...

I think it's important to address the larger concern, and this isn't to stop redundant posting as I'm reading this discussion.  The question is, what more can we get out of the forum structure for the purpose of collecting ideas on highly active topics in the most refined and Synergistic way so that people genuinely interested in building on what already exists can contribute novel material?  Even in a system with no redundant threads, this issue is not addressed, as various related ideas are still not connected unless people are willing to do some massive forum diving, which isn't going to happen in general.

Let's work with the single stickied index idea a bit, and say it indexes non-stickied summary threads for any active topic with more than a few redundant threads.  If the summary threads are living off in their own little child forum, it might keep the front page cleaner.  For especially active/broad ones like magic, I think it's important that the summary threads, as Eagleon points out, be receptive to linking from the OP to side discussions that might spring up in additional threads, rather than trying to work within a single megathread framework.  The summary can link to any active and categorized discussions.  This requires effort and dedicated OPs, but with links in place, it's very easy to help redundant posters along if you like.  As somebody suggested, a template could be provided there to copy-paste in your message if you want.

Now, for most topics, this won't be necessary at all.  There will be single threads as there usually are.  I don't think there are currently so many redundant threads that discussion on any topic is impossible (in the sense that redundant topics fill out the front page), but I think the added structure would help a bit for those that are talked about a lot.  In the end, if a thread is truly redundant, and there is one single nice person posting a link, it'll drop off the front page rapidly, and a glut won't be possible unless this place gets ten times as many people.  At that point, after the nice person says something, threads can be locked and/or deleted, and I can send them a nice PM or something.  I don't know.  That's way far off.

Something like Felblood's index thingy would be part of the process, but just linking to something like Underground Diversity wasn't what I'm getting at.  The Underground Diversity summary would somehow need to incorporate other discussions that come up, if Eagleon's saying he doesn't feel comfortable posting in a single thread like that.  I dunno.  Getting at all the magic threads into a summarized form that then links off to whatever people are talking about and then continues to build that into the summary sounds like a pain in the ass to me, but the lack of that sort of structure is what I hear people complaining about here.  Not so much the redundant threads themselves.  I haven't decided on anything, so please don't start creating anything now.  I'm not sure if the best system might not even involve me being the one OPing those threads.  It depends.

A/the wiki would probably be better for that sort of interaction, but as the wiki is more easily mutable and not under my control and not as easily checked for newness, I would not be able to use it easily for dev. 
...

My hat is off to you, sir! These are precisely tho goals I have been pursuing, only much more fully developed, and far better articulated.

That is to say, this is exactly the sort of thing I hope my index project will grow into. At the moment, there isn't much here in the way of useful indexes to index, so I haven't got much to link to, but if I can get people  to make [Index]es of other topics, complete with summaries, and link to those, it should be possible to bring people up to speed on the current state of discourse with comparative ease.

A wiki might be a better platform for such a project, such that the Index Wiki could exist in parallel with the suggestion forum (so one does not impede the functioning of the other), but I don't know much about wiki's other than that they need to have excellent mods or really lax standards, and we have no mods to spare and high expectations.

[Neonivek]

Yikes it seems like toady took the words on this forum a bit too... to heart.

He has over-exploded the Random Nonsense boards...

[Toady One]

I had another suggestion a while ago that might mesh with the thoughts Toady laid out above, a special sub-forum with "golden threads" (or some other name) where the better reference threads are kept. In this forum all threads are open for replies, but only mods can move threads there or start new threads.

My thing here is that sub-forums are not searched when you type in the search field on the top right.  So it would be ideal if content threads stay up top, and more technical things like the contentless summary threads I mentioned went down below.  Of course, even more ideal would be a non-broken search function, but that's beyond my ability.

That is to say, this is exactly the sort of thing I hope my index project will grow into. At the moment, there isn't much here in the way of useful indexes to index, so I haven't got much to link to, but if I can get people  to make [Index]es of other topics, complete with summaries, and link to those, it should be possible to bring people up to speed on the current state of discourse with comparative ease.

I'm not really sure where to start, or how many people are actually on board with the specific suggestion I floated.  There are things like Tormy's index, which I didn't sticky because while it collected threads, I didn't really have an official policy for the listing, which could lead to problems as it looks official but just comes down to what the OP wants to list.  And I still don't have a policy, because I'm not sure what you guys want or need in terms of building on your ideas.

I can ask for volunteers to maintain a variety of topic index/summary threads and establish that framework with everybody's participation, but I'm not sure if there's any interest outside of a few people, even among the readers of this thread.  I guess I could float that in a bit if somebody doesn't have a superior idea I missed.

To recap, the idea is to index a bunch of new threads.  Each of these thread gets a much-discussed topic (e.g. magic), and the thread simply contains links to any discussion involving that topic with a brief summary describing what's up -- the thread itself does Not discuss the topic, aside from posts to discuss organization and to get new links up.  Suggestion-free and indexed, these threads can be safely moved off to a sub-forum.  In this way, people can easily add to a given topic, using a variety of specialized threads to facilitate discussion, and the occasional new person might refrain from a redundant post once in a while.

Are summary threads even necessary though?  I think it adds more flexibility for each topic than just stickying, say, Frequently Posted Suggestions, but it depends on how much action and interest there is.

[Faces of Mu]

I don't have a lot of confidence in summary threads myself as, without a thorough search through the forums and an indexing of every thread related to the topic, they seem to be very subjective in regards to what counts as "most common" or "frequently made".

I'm all for Toady's suggestion there. I was just about to suggest that Toady close any threads once he's read them and if he concludes the thread is closed. That way posters would learn that an ideas are heard and old threads have been marked off and potentially catalogued by Toady. Going by Toady's idea, simply creating reference or index threads and moving indexed threads elsewhere makes a lot of sense and gives forum goers a sense that their suggestions are processed officially in some way (ie., a suggestion made is NOT just voice shouting into the din, but actually has some tangible effect, and the OP is responsible for that effect and might feel that responsiblity more before posting).

[Granite26]

I disagree 200% with the closing off old threads.  Only some of the suggestions are based entirely on their OP.  The suggestion gets made and discussed.  How would this affect Modders? Adventurers? Forts? Future Play Modes and Suggestions?  It gets tweaked.  We want new posters to have new ideas on the subject, just not repost old ones.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The whole point is that we want new users to
A: Have an understanding of what the major future arcs are
B: Understand that there are hundreds of forum goers making suggestions and only one programmer
C: Save everyone some time by familiarizing themselves with previous discussions on the topic.

We want old users to
A: Understand just how overwhelming the body of work produced both in the dev notes and in the forums is to first time viewers
B: Understand that new users might not comprehend how big the suggestion pile really is.
C: Understand that 'community justice' in giving new posters a hard time does nothing to manage the community, as the next poster will not be accultured either.
D: Be polite and welcoming.

Problem 1

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think part of the variation is based on length of time here.  There's a good bit of churn on this forum.  Nobody reads the old posts UNLESS they are searching.  So if someone posts an idea that they haven't seen before, they'll start the conversation up again.  So for any given idea that's been through a few times, active posters will have seen it between 0 and 5 times.  The people who've seen it often are familiar with the discussion, the plusses and minusses, what the difficulties are.  Someone who hasn't yet seen it will post (often similar discussions to what was previously had), keeping the post new.  In fact there may be users who've seen it before, but haven't seen this variation before.

Problem 2

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Another issue is the controversial nature of some of the general themes.  Gunpowder and Magic, for instance.  There are people who feel that their inclusion would ruin the game and that any developer time spent on them is developer time not spent on features that they themselves (and the large number of players who feel like them) would use.  That starts the trend of people labeling any magic thread as being the same as the last, because it's been discussed before, and they've already said they hated it and posted a 6 paragraph rant explanation of why magic is a bad idea, and why do people have to keep bringing it up?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Finally, we've got the complex suggestions.  Magic is a good one, so we'll stay there.  There are hundreds of different 'this is how magic should work' ideas out there.  Almost all of them are excellent ideas on how magic could work in a fantasy world.  Since this is a fantasy world simulator, they all make good suggestions.  The problem is lose boundaries.  One suggestion bleeds into another.  Good ideas are posted in related threads that never get applied to other applicable situations.  Add to that the fact that people feel the need to push their theme agenda, and you've got a righteous mess on your hands.

Ok, enough crap, here's my suggestions:
Sub-fora for the big boys:  Guns and Magic, maybe Technology.  Just those 3.  You should know if you are suggesting Guns or Magic
Wiki page linked in the intro with the 'common suggestions'.  Something with short headers and long on keywords, with a hard 10-20 limit on total number.
How to write a useful suggestion instructions:  This is up to Toady, but I would recomend something like 'spellcheck, spellcheck the header again, start general and then give examples, and remember to include modding, adventure and non-dwarven forts.
Wiki the Summaries : Summary threads don't work because they are owned and because they disapear.  They rarely offer a balanced overview of the topic, and tend to devolve into ideas threads themselves.  Wiki stuff can be edited by anyone, which means suggestions don't need to bulk the thread, and balance can be better maintained.

[Neonivek]

We don't need to streamline the suggestions...

Good spelling and clear concise layouts are for people who want popular suggestions.

In otherwords they are for the community and not Toady. (well alright... both)

I mean, why else did the Underground suggestion area originally exist ONLY to list suggestions made on other topics? (It evolved to include suggestions made within itself as well as for the author's own suggestions)

[Granite26]

Good spelling and clear concise layouts are for people who want popular suggestions.

Good spelling is for people who don't want to look like idiots when they suggest gunpewder and can't believe it hasn't been suggested before.  Not so important for the whole post, but pretty darn important to spell your keywords right.

I'm not thinking of going all grammer nazi on people about the layout, just...  Here's some helpful tips for thinking about your suggestion before you post it.  Most importantly, consider how it'll fit into the game world as a whole.  'Make Elves blue' is not as useful as 'Allow the flexibility to change elf colors'

[Deathworks]

Hi!

I wish to support the notion that some sort of indexing would be beneficial for the suggestions forums by making a confession.

One reason why I rarely start a topic in the suggestions area is because it is outright intimidating. I mean, besides there being many, many threads, there are a few monstrosities with hundreds of posts. The search function will also get you only that far, for if you miss the one term people used in the relevant thread before, you fail; if you use too common terms, you get a list far too long to work through. I mean, I did my best, tried to check things out, I used the search function before posting my suggestion for a secret door variant using both "hidden door" and "secret door" as terms - and about a day later, I saw in this thread a link to an old thread I hadn't noticed where that variant was indeed suggested. I do consider myself lucky that no one has ripped off my head already for that.

Those who are experienced in this forum may have a general idea of what has been going on (actually, I recently noticed that I benefitted from similar knowledge concerning bugs - that is, people described situations and I had a vague feeling I had heard of a bug like that - and I found them in the list afterwards). But those who are new and who might give a new angle to things do not have that advantage. They have to check and read things.

And if they are earnest about being original, they may see those 20 page threads and wonder whether what they are about to suggest may be referred to in a remark on page 12 of one of the threads and commented again on page 14 of that thread - which in turn might cause someone to feel justified to sneer at them for bringing up something "that has already been suggested".

Thus, in the end, there being no index for the suggestion forum might actually discourage participation even before the first key is pressed. At least, that is the way I perceive it.

Deathworks

[Granite26]

DW,

People that are rude, or give anyone a hard time because something was brought up somewhere, in some fashion, are jerks, no two ways about it.

I'll take credit for posting the 'secret doors are common' in the list, and as I specifically said then, your suggestion built on previous ones, came from a knowledge of what came before, and added value. 

You make the poster child for 'sometimes you need a new thread for new elements'

[SirHoneyBadger]

I'll admit that I usually end up reading the entire "20 something pages". It took me like 2 days just to get through all of UD.

On one hand, that's incredibly time-consuming, and a little pedantic, not to mention annoying/frustrating, to have to read through the whole thing.

On the other hand, it's really the best way out there to get a good handle on what's been suggested before, and also to help you refine your own idea to fit the flow of the conversation.

On the gripping hand, not everybody's stuck on the internet for a minimum of 40 hours a week like I am, either.

[Footkerchief]

Deathworks:
1. An indexing scheme that reliably covers topics that narrow is probably much to ask.
2. You don't need to be paranoid about posting threads.  As long as you make a good effort at searching and don't miss anything glaringly obvious, nobody will rip your head off, and who cares if they do?
3. I don't think your fear of posting is at all representative of the community at large.

I'm not really sure where to start, or how many people are actually on board with the specific suggestion I floated.  There are things like Tormy's index, which I didn't sticky because while it collected threads, I didn't really have an official policy for the listing, which could lead to problems as it looks official but just comes down to what the OP wants to list.  And I still don't have a policy, because I'm not sure what you guys want or need in terms of building on your ideas.

I can ask for volunteers to maintain a variety of topic index/summary threads and establish that framework with everybody's participation, but I'm not sure if there's any interest outside of a few people, even among the readers of this thread.  I guess I could float that in a bit if somebody doesn't have a superior idea I missed.

To recap, the idea is to index a bunch of new threads.  Each of these thread gets a much-discussed topic (e.g. magic), and the thread simply contains links to any discussion involving that topic with a brief summary describing what's up -- the thread itself does Not discuss the topic, aside from posts to discuss organization and to get new links up.  Suggestion-free and indexed, these threads can be safely moved off to a sub-forum.  In this way, people can easily add to a given topic, using a variety of specialized threads to facilitate discussion, and the occasional new person might refrain from a redundant post once in a while.

Are summary threads even necessary though?  I think it adds more flexibility for each topic than just stickying, say, Frequently Posted Suggestions, but it depends on how much action and interest there is.

I think this approach would work great for a select few topics, certainly for magic at least.  Graphics and pathfinding might be good candidates too -- they're in-depth topics that sometimes go in novel directions, and I find myself frequently searching to pull up old threads on those topics for reference.  However, a lot of the topics that motivate this whole indexing thing just don't have the same depth -- they're more-or-less redundant feature requests that get posted over and over.  For those, the index thread would be less a coherent summary, and more a list of links to a bunch of people repeating each other.  That's not a problem necessarily, as long as there's an understanding that not all indices are created equal.

I don't know, I'm thinking about the difficulties of trusting people to manage these threads, and trusting them to work with each other so that the index threads themselves don't become redundant, and there's just so much potential for hurt feelings and territorialism, and relatively few people who have the appetite for that kind of forums-trawling to begin with.  I know you, Toady, mentioned that a wiki isn't as easy to check for updates -- does that mean you'd be using these indices for dev?  If not, maybe an (offsite?) Suggestions wiki would be easier.

The status quo is looking pretty good right now.