Topics, Scan, ...

Par Twists le 12/3/2001 à 18:08:00 (#457003)

Hiya..
I think the forum will be ready soon so we should talk about the topics *smiles*
Utildayael wrote: "I talked to James, he said that every 2-3 weeks he can swing by that board and answer a dozen or so posts. "

I think thats 4 topics for each page ;) Lets write em down as soon as possible and tell Scan that the board is ready ;)

Par Kaal le 12/3/2001 à 21:22:00 (#457004)

Ok, time to get to the meat of this Eurodev forum :)

This is how we will work at Fomalhaut

1) we will open a new forum on our site. Our visitors will be encouraged to post their questions and comments to the dev team in French or in English.

2) The Fomalhaut staff will make a selection among those posts and copy/paste the selected messages on the Eurodev forum

Now we have to agree on what messages exactly will pass the selection otherwise, site A can end up with 120 posts half of which cover dead topics or stuff from the FAQ while site B will have just a dozen questions.

I suggest we all agree to weed out :

1) all questions that are already answered in the FAQ

2) all questions about topics that have been declared out of bounds by AE (ie magic and death, do you see any others ?)

3) comments about "dead" topics : permanent death, communications (the chat system, /tells etc) , any others?

I would not eliminate interesting comments and interesting suggestions about taboo subjects as this could give the devs ideas and/or encourage Scan into making revealing comments (who knows?).

Personally I intend to let questions from the French visitors ‘mature’ on Fomalhaut before I post them on Eurodev. By maturing I mean a question will perhaps trigger a sub-question or a comment from another visitor and then I will combine all of that in one single questions or comment that will be much more interesting than the initial post. I know from experience that most questions will be boring, unnecessary or downright ridiculous but if you combine several posts, you can end up with something new and intelligent.

What are your views on this ?

Par Twists le 12/3/2001 à 21:55:00 (#457005)

Thats how we do it at horizonsweb.
We have an 'Ask AE' Forum since we launched the page and there were some interesting topics discussed at it - we'll translate a 'summary' of em and post em at the dev-board ;)

Par Shang le 12/3/2001 à 22:35:00 (#457006)

I have to agree with you both here.
But also, i guess on Horizonsweb we have a very mature Community, there are many P&P Roleplayers between our visitors, so, some of the questions are already very nice from the beginning, and after maturing, they are great, in my opinion :D.
I think the best Idea would be to set a quote for every participating Site, about how many questions they have.
If we set in Stone, that Scan will be answering "a dozen or so posts", we can say every Site participating at the Moment will have roughly about 4 Questions/Suggestions per month.....
That would be good, imho, we would have 12 questions for the European Community that would be unique, what could we want more ;)

Greetings, Shang

Par Kaal le 13/3/2001 à 14:09:00 (#457007)

Well this is going suprisingly well !

Good to see we'll work in about the same way. Now are we agreed on the topics (questions and/or comments) that will not pass the selection process ? I'll list them one more time

1) Nothing about death, magic or the beta
2) Nothing that is already answered in the FAQ (official and unofficial), those questions we answer ourselves on our respective forums
3) No dead horses (chat & /tell, PvP switch, female demons, etc)

The quota system is a good idea but let us build in some flexibility. Say Fomalhaut doesn't have enough questions to fill in the quota, it would be silly to make the other sites wait until our quota is filled before we can ask Scan to visit the forum. I would build in a time limit. Each site has a month (counting from Scan's last visit) to fill its quota, but if it doesn't manage to do so within that month, the other sites will be allowed to fill up Fomalhaut's missing questions/comments.

Also, I propose we post more than a dozen questions. Util said Scan would answer a dozen questions but he will not want to answer every single question that has been posted. We need to give hom some leeway there. What if we each get a quota of 6 questions, for a total of 18. When we have 18 questions/comments, we call Scan.

PS
Where's Frodolf ? We don't hear anything from him !

Par Shang le 13/3/2001 à 16:25:00 (#457008)

I like the Idea with the flexible Quota, i had about the same thought when i was driving home from work today :D.
So, no problem on that one from my site....
The Topics are fine with me....
We dont want to bother with dead horses on our own Sites, why should we make one of the Dev Team bother with them :D
The other two Topics are also self explaining. Posting Questions wich have been answered in the FAQ annoy Scan, imho, and take precious Space for Questions, so no point on posting anything old.
Also no questions about Death, Magic and Beta is fine, they wouldnt answer it, so again would be a waste of Space.
To post more than 12 Questions is a nice Idea, it would give Scan a little bit more space to decide what he wants to answer and what not.
We should explain it, when we contact him first, so he does not think we want to answer him everything.
Hmm, Frodolf, i dont know, maybe he thinks we will make the right decisions, or he is busy @ the Moment....
sorry, no idea.

Greetings,
Shang

Par Kaal le 14/3/2001 à 11:30:00 (#457009)

Mmm wonder what's left to agree on

I suggest we always add the name of the person or persons who made the initial question/comment.

Back in the days of MEO, we marked all threads as "read" after each visit from the MEO dev team. Of course it was a different software but we could lock all threads after Scan's visit so that he will immediatly see which threads have been added to the board since his last visit. What do you think?

Par Shang le 14/3/2001 à 20:49:00 (#457010)

Hmm, to be honest i think we should stop talking and get started....
We agree in everything without any discussions, so i think it wont be a problem to get started with the Board, and discuss incoming Issues "runtime" :D
This is really nice, i would have never expected such a flawless discussion, with really good constructive Ideas.

Hmm, to add the names of the original Poster may be difficult when we compile a question from the discussion of our boards, but when you like, we can try to do so, and maybe add *multiple posts* or *discussed topic* for compiled Questions.
In DCForum you have two Options, one is Automark, wich automatically marks your read posts, or you can manually mark the posts as read....but i think it is a good Idea to lock the answered Postings, to make it a bit easier for Scan.
How about the Questions @ Fomalhaut ?
How long do you think you need to get some Questions, so we can post, and contact Scan to start the Board ?

Greetings, Shang

PS: I will mail Frodolf to visit this Board...

Par Kaal le 15/3/2001 à 10:30:00 (#457011)

Yes the discussion went very well, but then we're no newbies either :D

Just a reminder so everything is crystal clear :

When you contact Scan with a new proposal or to tell him the board is ready for visiting, I'd like you to sign in our names too, so he will be reminded that this is a three-way affair :). Of course you don't need to do this for technical issues like answering Scan if he asks "how do I delete a post", ... you know what I mean ;)

We will set up our own forum and announce this initiative to the "masses" tonight. Since we're starting from scratch, from the creation of the forum until we get 6 intelligent questions and or comments. Let's say we can call Scan on Sunday night, April 1. I know this is hard for you guys but we really need those two nweeks to catch up with you. I don't want Scan to have 33% of silly questions for his first visit.

Par Shang le 15/3/2001 à 18:36:00 (#457012)

Hey, i never thought you were Newbies !
:D

As for the signing of mails, i agree with you...i havent thought about that, but it makes sense.
We will sign all official (eurodevboard related) Mails we will send to AE with a Signature where all our sites are named....
I will create the signature and posts it here for you to comment is when its ready.
Puh, 1st April is still a long time, but i see that you need to catch up.
Let me make a proposal, we take April 1st as a target Date, but when it seemes like you have enough good questions, we can start earlier.
We will start choosing Questions and proposals from our Forum this weekend, and post them to the Dev Board, so you can see what we have got yet, so we dont have any doublettes.
Would that be ok ?

Greetings, Shang

Par Kaal le 15/3/2001 à 21:10:00 (#457013)

When I said "we're no newbies", I was thinking of all of us here, not just the Fomalhaut team :)

Our forum is up and will be announced within the hour.

Of course if we're ready before April the 1st, we can go ahead. It's just that our audience is totally unprepared for this so we need some time to prepare them and show them what kind of questions are needed.

The signature : if you want to make something special fine, but I was just thinking of something simple, just the names of of the main contact person for each site and a link. Horizonsweb-org can be on top of the list, no problem.

As for your questions from your own forum, I think that's the best way. Whenever we feel we have a good question, we post it so the other sites will know that that has been asked already.

Last thing : it would be wise to change the password for the euroforum now that it will be launched officially.

Par Frodolf le 17/3/2001 à 22:26:00 (#457014)

Hi!
Yep, I'm still here :) Sorry, that I can't answer immediately but I have so much to do for work and school, that its not easy finding time for web-things.
Lets just say, Shang speaks in my words. He talks to me about the important things so I'm always up to date.

-Frodolf