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[Kaelem Gaen]

This sounds interesting, I'm looking at the one made by chmod at the moment to see if it could be resurrected,

On a sidenote A lot of you are saying "ask on irc" that one's very subjective, though I asked my questions in #DFmodding and I got a few answers but most of the time people were idle, though that might have been my problem since I was going on at weird hours and asking stuff.    Do people get more questions answered in #Bay12Games?  I was worried about co-opting the room with DF questions when it was for all the bay12 games, or modding questions when there was already #DFmodding.

[G-Flex]

People will answer things on #bay12games, no reason why not. Usually the conversation isn't even on that topic or anything close to it, but if somewhere there knows the answer, they'll give it more often than not.

[RCIX]

I don't get this, to be totally honest. Duplicated questions are a problem, yes. But how would a stack exchange site stop duplicated questions? The best I've been able to infer from this thread is that moderators would lock the duplicate questions and post a link to the 'original' question which would have been answered long before. In this sense, the only difference is that moderators can easily deal with the duplicates by locking them. Well, that or people hypothetically don't ask duplicate questions because they use the search function and find the 'original question' themselves. I'm going to assume that the stack exchange site has a better search engine (few places don't, really), so there's that in favour, but would Gameplay Questions moderators be sufficient to improve the current question/answer system without requiring a whole new site branch?

The system used at stack exchange is that you close vote a question as duplicate, then when it gets 5 close votes then it's locked and the link to the duplicate is auto-posted at the top. It's deisgned to be easy to do this. IIRC, also after a time it auto-"deletes" the page (making only visible to moderators and those with high rep).

THe thing about how the community will just upvote stupid but funny answers: i presume there's enough people here that don't encourage that sort of thing, and if they came over to the hypothetical SE site, then you'd have enough force to downvote the "funny" stuff into oblivion and help enforce that aspect.

I've already more-or-less given up on this, thanks to the complete lack of sensible thinking on the part of you guys. It could work, it has worked before. Trust me, programmers can be just as bad with memes as gamers, and it worked out for Stack Overflow. I've already more-or-less given up on this though. (repeated so you don't think that i'm still trying to push the idea)

And i said i'd be happy to be one of the mods, but you missed that. Either that, or you were "strongly opposed".

This is what I was talking about when I said I was strongly opposed - you mostly ignored the points we were making instead of responding to them, and you are now saying that there's a 'complete lack of sensible thinking' on the part of anyone who opposed your idea. I also ask you to consider that you're new to the community - whether or not you know what you're talking about, you would have to build up some cred first before people would consider you a valid mod.

I did respond to them. You simply:
 * Assumed users are idiots and won't want the site to work, and will refuse to cooperate
 * Called the method of how SE works regarding expanding on someone's point ridiculous
 * said that moderators are next to useless for cleaning up situations where users do behave like idiots.
I am new to the community, but i'm pointing out that if i proposed the site then i would (probably) end up being the "grand-daddy mod" by default. I don't have much experience with DF but do have plenty of experience with that model of site, and i think i could help a lot in making it run smoothly. If requested, i'd be more than happy to let someone else propose the site.

Now, I'll say I am only currently opposed to the idea of a DFSE. While I could hypothetically be convinced that it would be a good system, it would require more than just saying that it works for other people. And I do agree that the forums aren't perfect, but the stack exchange proposal is currently failing to convince me that it's the right way to improve it. I also agree with those who are worried about the community itself - if a new system was to work, it would need Toady to throw his full support behind it and to lock GQ in order to a) give the new system the support it needs and b) not break up a fairly small community among more sites.

What is failing to convince you? the fact that the forums are "good enough" right now? Footkerchief himself said that there are a ton of questions that keep getting asked over and over again. These are questions that would presumably gain a ton of upvotes and land on the most voted page which is out there for all to see. Which is much easier than trying to find the right forum search terms or look on the (helpful but) opaque wiki

I certainly understand the concerns about community; which is why we'd ask Toady if we got enough support.

RCIX: I take it you are posting this in relation to your constructed-floors-to-walls thread?

Nope. It may appear so, but it's not true.

1) How do you solve duplicates? It occurs to me that if people do not bother searching then they will post duplicates, polluting forum.

I explained this at the top of my post

2) How will stack solve obsolete questions and answers? GW is game in develpment and answer for for example military quick-n-dirty setup is bound to be wildly different in different version.

In this case, we would use a tag system with tags like [40d] [.31] etc. and delete questions/answers as they become obsolete.

What I currently see as our problems are duplicate threads (masses of them; as Footkerchief said no matter how much you may like helping people out you eventually just stop answering the same questions over and over) and poor search functionality. I really, really have doubts about the democratic method for voting and the inability to have any sort of repartee between asker and answerer (and DF is such a dense game that new players often don't realize they need to provide information or ask questions so specific that the answer doesn't help their actual problem and the answerers have to pinpoint what the core problem is first), but is there a way to improve the SMF search function, or replace it with a new one?

I do like that SE uses a tag system, I'll say that much.

You do have comments on questions and answers, it's just that it's not suited for long discussion (anything beyond a page or two of comments becomes very bulky, but that's fairly rare as you or Kohaku pointed out). As i said before, you can check http://stackoverflow.com/ to see how well it.s worked. I've been with that community for a long time, and there are still ongoing disputes about some kinds of questions. But overall, anytihng that shouldn't belong (jokes as answers, or incorrect information for instance) gets hammered pretty brutally. If you doubt how well a democracy would work in this setting, then we need more people like you to write a good ruleset and enforce it.

Yeah, I do want to apologize. My earlier remarks were completely uncalled for.

I've been in a really pissy mood this weekend. 100 degree weather and nearly 100% humidity with no AC makes me very cranky. Hard to sleep as well with the weather and humidity. Just been in a bad mood. 



My apologies, RCIX.

Granted I still think the stack exchange thing won't work, but my apologies on the personal attacks.

No problem; i know what it's like to have to deal with very high heat. Never dealt with humid heat though, so it must be that much worse!

if there were good moderators for it.

You sound like a great candidate, as does Retro and possibly Hyndis. If anyone can make it work, it's those who don't believe it can be pulled off.

[Retro]

(oh my god these [responding to multiple parts of a post massive quote] things are getting ridiculous, I'm just going to c/p stuff and y'all can just assume it's from RCIX's post right there)

The system used at stack exchange is that you close vote a question as duplicate, then when it gets 5 close votes then it's locked and the link to the duplicate is auto-posted at the top. It's deisgned to be easy to do this. IIRC, also after a time it auto-"deletes" the page (making only visible to moderators and those with high rep).

Auto-deletion sounds handy, but requiring five votes to close a question as a duplicate doesn't sound all that useful. By the time five different people post in a thread it's quite often been answered already (and I say post rather than view as the people who view an unanswered thread without responding are probably not going to take the time to find that question's original answer and link it). Questions will over time get many more votes than this, of course, but IMO to make a difference a method to deal with a duplicate question is going to have to be very quick. If this system was implemented it would have to rely heavily on the effectiveness of the search function in order to be worth the change over in order to lessen the amount of duplicate questions in the first place - that or a flag feature to have a mod jump over then link-and-lock or something.

I did respond to them. You simply:
 * Assumed users are idiots and won't want the site to work, and will refuse to cooperate
 * Called the method of how SE works regarding expanding on someone's point ridiculous
 * said that moderators are next to useless for cleaning up situations where users do behave like idiots.
I am new to the community, but i'm pointing out that if i proposed the site then i would (probably) end up being the "grand-daddy mod" by default. I don't have much experience with DF but do have plenty of experience with that model of site, and i think i could help a lot in making it run smoothly. If requested, i'd be more than happy to let someone else propose the site.

The site users are not idiots by any means, but they are quite inclined to having a good laugh when the opportunity presents itself (and sometimes when it doesn't). If someone posts something funny, or something banking on a standby community joke, people (especially new members) will rate it up. It's not about intelligence or trying to undermine the process at all. It's like how people will "like" statuses on facebook about earthquakes and stuff. If the option's there, they'll show their enjoyment of humour by voting regardless of the actual point of voting.

I'm not sure what you're referencing with the second point - is it the editing thing? I do find that quite ridiculous. I had asked about a way to add to someone else's answer if it needed expanding upon or wasn't quite accurate and you said that to expand on someone's point you edit their answer. I am going to assume that this only applies if you're a moderator, which would mean regular people would have to post their response in an answer and just hope their answer gets voted up if they wanted to simply add onto someone's message. The comment thing solves that concern - I still think the idea of editing someone's answer to expand a bit is ridiculous, though.

In terms of the moderators themselves, I certainly don't think they would be next to useless, but they would have to be strongly relied upon to keep the unrelated chit-chat and humour-without-actual-answer down. The GQ forums currently have no moderators and work fine outside of the masses of duplicate questions which are primarily a result of a poor search function if you ask me - so if we switched to a stack exchange we would be switching from a system without moderators to one which relied upon them, which I find to be a negative. I'll admit I could be wrong and a DFSE could work fine and not really need heavy moderation, but I don't feel that way.

And yes, I understand that by proposing the idea that you feel you would be a mod by default, but the known-to-the-community and has-put-in-time-being-helpful-around-the-forums points stand superior in my view.

What is failing to convince you? the fact that the forums are "good enough" right now? Footkerchief himself said that there are a ton of questions that keep getting asked over and over again. These are questions that would presumably gain a ton of upvotes and land on the most voted page which is out there for all to see. Which is much easier than trying to find the right forum search terms or look on the (helpful but) opaque wiki

I certainly understand the concerns about community; which is why we'd ask Toady if we got enough support.

Yes, questions keep getting asked repeatedly, and they will continue to be asked repeatedly. I expressed my hesistation about SE's five-votes-to-lock thing further up in the post. And yes, I do feel that the forums are a good system. GQ might work a bit better, but replacing a part of the forums with another site branch is - and this is a point that I've made a few times but I'm not sure you're giving the proper weight to - a big deal. Right now I still don't feel that a SE would be the way to replace it if we were going to, and even if I did feel that they were equally effective that wouldn't necessitate a jump either. The problems with GQ are not actual problems so much as annoyances - people keep asking the same questions primarily because the search function sucks. Does this validate switching over to a new system, presuming that a SE would work about the same? Not really. And if a SE could somehow be proven to work better, it would have to be very noticeably better to be worth making the change, and I currently don't feel that it is.

For me to give my support to a DFSE I would not have to be convinced that a SE is a bit better but far better. I'll admit that I've been swayed on a few points (and my lack of experience vs. your experience with stack exchanges is probably getting pretty annoying to you, heh), but not enough for me to find replacing GQ with a SE to be a better option.

[Protactinium]

I'm still honestly unsure why there's such a resistance to trying StackExchange out again with some community effort and elbow grease. There are all these predictions of how a certain feature will or won't work and how people will or won't act. We can discuss the potentials of the different features but not assert that the features will or won't work. Instead, we should actually try to get it running, and see how it develops, if it develops at all.

[zwei]

Instead, we should actually try to get it running, and see how it develops, if it develops at all.

Okay, lets see about that. If I am bored, I will look at http://df.stackexchange.com and see if something needs answering .

[RCIX]

@zwei: we should actually try and found a new SE site, because that one is no longer supported by the devs (it's a previous version). Moreover, there's a system in place that ensures that the site gets pre-seeded with a bunch of good users and content before it can launch, so that's another thing going. It's also free

I'm about this close: | |
to proposing the new site, but i want to make sure the proposal won't just not get anywhere.

[Toady One]

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with another external site -- I didn't see how ads and how that work (they are mentioned in one of the FAQs), or how the support has been, and it seems (?) that there's some central place where sites are proposed but that some version of the software is also available for installation on a site (like the forums).

It doesn't seem like a bad idea overall, I guess, although we get okay coverage with the wiki.  Maybe somebody mentioned this already but how well does a stack exchange respond to changing content?  Mods can't hunt everything down quickly enough.  Can somebody pick up a bad rep for having their perfectly correct answer become totally wrong in a subsequent version?  I don't like reputation systems in general because of things like that.  I don't want people to get ground up in any gears, whether your numbers decrease or there's just a big red X somewhere with your name on for no reason.

[RCIX]

 * Support's been good. The developers have made a living out of this (it seems, at least). As i understand it, they host and support the site for the forseeable future, and do it for free.
 * The "version you install on a site yourself" -- i think that's the old model they tried, which is unsupported now. They're working out a new central system to propose sites. You can see that at area51.stackexchange.com. It's still being hammered out, but it's certainly usable to get a proposal going. Only one site is currently being launched as beta, but assuming that goes off well they'll enable it for more of the ready to launch proposals.
 * In this case, we'd use the tag system to designate versions, and we would get one new batch of questions with each major new version you release (like the change from 40d to .31.xx). Things that don't change from version to version could probably have a special variant of the duplicate close reason: "duplicate -- unchanged from last version".
 * Using an SE site for this is a bit of a special case, and it would probably be a bumpy ride, but i think it really could work.

We have a long way to go if we're gonna try this, so we should probably start soon if we do indeed want to do it

[Zajadu]

It seems a bit pointless.
What's the difference between searching the forums for an old question and searching stack exchange? What's the different between a newbie not searching and reposting an old question, be it on the forum or on stack exchange?
I don't see why another site should be thrown into the mix when we already have forums and a wiki, plus IRC. It's just another place to have to sign up and visit. I suppose I'm not against trying it, but as I said, it seems pointless.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

I agree with the inertia viewpoints.  The forums are well used, and already exist.  Switching to something of even approximately equal value is a negative, merely because of the switching itself causing a loss of support.  And having a different URL is even worse.  Frankly I haven't been around all that long myself, but I know that when I look at the question forum, it is usually when I'm bored after looking at whatever I wanted on the Modding or Community Games forum.  I would bet a significant amount of the support from knowledgeable players on the existing forum comes from that sort of thing, they post or read the forums they are interested in, and then either have more time to kill or can't close their browser due to the addictive nature of the interwebs, so they go help some newbs.

Having a different website for these things defeats that motivation, which I think is much more important than you realize.

[RCIX]

It seems a bit pointless.
What's the difference between searching the forums for an old question and searching stack exchange? What's the different between a newbie not searching and reposting an old question, be it on the forum or on stack exchange?
I don't see why another site should be thrown into the mix when we already have forums and a wiki, plus IRC. It's just another place to have to sign up and visit. I suppose I'm not against trying it, but as I said, it seems pointless.

* The search is better on StackExchange sites.
 * With a good community, it gets quickly closed as duplicate (as opposed to several snarky and/or rude and/or terse posts telling people to search the wiki and forums), without any of said comments. This points the user that asked it in the direction of the existing question, "locks the thread", and puts it on it's way towards deletion (so most users don't see it)

@Umbrage:i won't deny there's a lot of inertia to overcome, but an attitude like that simply won't help. For instance, any serious effort would be accompanied by Toady's support, and he would be able to do things like put up a banner at the top saying: "Please do not ask questions here, instead go to [stack exchange url]". It would help, if not completely fix the problem.

[Hyndis]

Then what would the purpose of the forums be?

[RCIX]

Discussion: show your favorite deathtrap, community games, that sort of thing.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

RCIX, having Toady redirect users from the forum allows them to find it, but doesn't address my main point: leaving the forum site.  It is easy to be waiting on a community game post or a reply to something, and casually browse the help forum and maybe answer a question or two.  It is harder to leave the forums (where you have the nice Show New Replies button and the ability to click back to your forum of interest in one click) and then answer a question or two and come back.

Beyond just inertia, I think a lot of the good support we have here comes from time killing, which will honestly never translate.  Actually I think that has a bit to do with all the things that get discovered that people are then too "lazy" to post on the wiki.  It isn't that they meant to and never got around to it so much as that it was an extra step in the thought process that they never really got to.  Out of site, out of mind. (Pun intended).