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[Mephansteras]

It's also going to show up on a lot of searches for the people who DO use the search engine.

Hmm...one of the common problems with searching is that it's easy to miss threads if you don't use the same terms other people do. Maybe if we notice those situations we can have the entries here add in more of the key words people are searching on? That way this thread will show up and people will actually be able to tell that a suggestion has been made before.

[Granite26]

Kinda like what FootkerChief did

Guns, Gunpowder, Explosives & Pyrotechnics

Only more

Guns & Gunpowder (Cannons, Explosives, Muskets, Arquebuses, Pyrotechnics, Rockets, Fireworks, Explosions, Pistols)

For example???

I'm pro that

[Deathworks]

Hello!

Actually, when I posted my suggestion for the limited secret door, I searched for both "secret door" and "hidden door", using the standard search at the top of the forum. However, when secret doors were added to this index, there was actually a thread the suggestion in which was nearly identical with my own. I have not seen that thread show up in the search, even though it was titled "secret doors"... So, I either failed to notice or the search missed this... In either case, a good reminder that things do go wrong.

Anyhow, while I am not against improved structuring per se, Mikademus, I would rather not encourage using further subfora as they are bound to create actually more redundancy and confusion:

* Posters are likely to miss a thread in an unexpected subforum, so that the same suggestion can end up made several times in different fora
* Suggestions can be very complex and involve various aspects of the game, even in single elements. Thus, deciding where a suggestion belongs can become a problem (do "magical secret doors"  go into the magic subforum or the secret door subforum?). This puts posters at the risk of being attacked over the decision where they posted the suggestion.
* During the discussion, suggestions can also be altered and improved, and it may very well be that a suggestion changes in a fundamental way as far as the subfora are concerned. Do you then want to have the thread moved to the correct subforum? In order to be consistant, it would be necessary, but it means additional moderation work.

Thus, I believe that dividing the suggestion forum into subfora is not the kind of solution we should aim for.

Deathworks

[Footkerchief]

Guns & Gunpowder (Cannons, Explosives, Muskets, Arquebuses, Pyrotechnics, Rockets, Fireworks, Explosions, Pistols)

Yeah, that's a very good idea.  The extra terms could be placed in spoiler tags -- I think it'll still show up in search results, but it won't clutter the page much.

[Granite26]

Dear Lord, we've reinvented meta tags....

[Mephansteras]

Hehe. Very true. But they were invented for just this sort of reason, so we might as well use them too.

[Mikademus]

Anyhow, while I am not against improved structuring per se, Mikademus, I would rather not encourage using further subfora as they are bound to create actually more redundancy and confusion:

The compromise solution suggested by Toady to mandatory tagging was that threads that has been of the first page would be moved to sub-fora and serve as archives. As for that they would make it more difficult to find existing threads, I dispute that claim: if I were looking for an existing thread about runic magic it would be far easier to find it in the "magic" forum with three pages than by querying for "runic magic" since the search function seems to persform sub-optimally and thread names can be... idiosyncratic.

Still, tagging would be a better solution.

[Felblood]

I'm honestly trying to clean up the original post, and make the formatting more consistent. I think the red letters are going to have to go, just to start, and I'm probably going to have to cut down on the average number of links per topic. More spoiler tags are going to be needed, and some of these topics need to be split up into more specific ones.

My eventual goal for this thread isn't for it to be stickied, but for it to be a useful thing to link to.

When you want to correct a post you've seen a million times, instead of hunting out every relevant dev note and conversation, you just link to (or paste the relevant sections from) this thread, where hopefully, volunteers will have already done all the legwork for you. This saves you time and gives newbies a better introduction to the history of discourse on a given topic.

Those chiming in just to say, "This isn't very good" or "You are doomed to failure," please just don't. We know our odds of success, and we're trying anyway.

This thread is pretty chaotic with just the constructive input.

Also, I don't care for the subfora idea. It'll just be more places to search and more rules to break. Voluntary tagging is our best weapon against chaos.

Edit: Half the threads on this forum mutate suddenly on the second page, when someone hits on a new line of thinking or brushes a tender nerve, and the whole conversation goes off the rails for 9+ pages of valuable discourse. How are sub-fora, or even tags going to help with that?

[winner]

"be able to abandon your fortress and have it survive" "resume world gen" "advance time"

[Felblood]

How would one phrase that, such that a person who was skimming a list of spoiler tags, looking for it, could actually find it?

We can't just say "Civilization Arc" and then line the rest out in subcatagories, because the people we need to see it most, won't associate that phrase with it's meaning.

"Global History Progression - (Retire Fortress, Advance History, Resume world Gen)"?

It seems a bit wordy, and I'm absolutely certain that there's a better way to say it, that I just can't put my finger on.

It'll go in as a placeholder for now.

Isn't there another suggestion that I didn't put in yesterday? I can seem to find it, but I seem to remember there was one more, that I didn't get to do yet.

[Granite26]

Ideally, you'd want to put ALL the keywords on it...

[Mikademus]

Bumping these, since they haven't made their way into the master list yet.

* Training dummies
* Less lethal sparring
* Training weapons

Also, magic threads, these should be linked to:
* Magic: By dwarfs for dwarfs (one of the most extensive discussions about magic in the forum)
* Creating a magic system
* Occam's Razor: Dwarven Magic
* Occam's Razor: Elven Magic

Could you also segment the list into sections? "Military and Combat" would be one good section. "Economy and trade" perhaps another.

[Tormy]

Could you also segment the list into sections? "Military and Combat" would be one good section. "Economy and trade" perhaps another.

Yeah, some decent structure would be nice to have in the first post. Example..

[bjlong]

Instead of Global History Progression, why not "Macro Game," or just an abbreviation, such as GHP?

Also, you might want to add a "probably" to the title. If someone looks through these suggestions and suddenly has an epiphany about how gunpowder or explosions could work that obeys Toady's wishes and is pretty novel, they should post it. Even if it causes a flame war. We're trying to get more interesting posts, not less posting.

[Mephansteras]

Or it could be titled: Really Common Suggestions, since the main purpose of this index is to direct people to the main threads about these suggestions. It's not that we don't necessarily want people talking about these issues, we just want them to say something new.