Mod Release announcement thread?

[Diazo]

Alright, as people may have noticed, the Add-On Releases sub-forum moves fast.

Yesterday I posted an update to one of my mods and it took less then an hour for it to be knocked off the front page. Of the twenty threads that had posts after mine to do this, I believe only 2 or 3 were mods that released or updated, the rest were people talking about mods.

Now, it is good thing that there is this much discussion going on as it shows the strength of our mod community. However, especially with Spaceport going down, there is no location where you can go to find recently released, or updated, mods.

In another thread (which I can't find at the moment, it was a side-track to that thread's topic), there was discussion about doing something like this, so it has come up before and it seemed like people liked the idea at the time. With no one stepping up to do it however, it kind of just petered out.

So I'm seeing if people still like the idea and if so I will create the thread. Note that this thread will simply be a place for authors to post when they release or update a mod so players can see they have done so, I'm not going to try and index or archive the thread in any way.

So, question for the poll: Should I create a thread in the Add-On Releases and Projects Showcase sub-forum with a thread title of "Recently released or updated mods" with an opening post as follows, and then submit a request to Squad to sticky it. I am open to revising the text in the opening post if anyone has suggestions, the yes/no in the poll is if you want this thread to happen, it does not lock in my example post that follows.

Opening post:

-------------(Start example post)------------------

Recently released or updated mods

Welcome to the mod release and updated announcement thread. You can find recent announcements at the end of the thread. If you are logged in, the "View First Unread" option will take you to the first post that is new since your last visit.

Note that this thread is for mod authors only to post in when they release or update a mod. All discussion in relation to a mod should happen in that mod's thread.

As this thread is effectively a "news release", when you are posting about your mod in this thread, please refer to the following example to insure your post has all the information it needs without being overly long.

------

Mod Name: Action Groups Extended

Link to thread.

Download link

Increase the number of action groups available to 250 with the ability to name action groups and edit them in flight. Includes 5 different keysets you can switch between so keys 1 through 10 activate groups 1 through 10 for your mothership and keys 1 through 10 activate groups 11 through 20 when you switch to your lander.

Latest version 1.4 (June 07/14): Bugfix and stability release.

[short description of you mod, no more then 5 lines. No screenshots or video links. All that should be in your release thread that you link to.]

-------------(End example post)------------------

What are people's thoughts?

Edited June 8, 2014 by Diazo

[somnambulist]

Yes and I also vote that it be stickied and heavily moderated so it ONLY includes announcement posts. Otherwise we're going to end up with "Why my rocket broke with FAR?! HALP!" posts.

[Faark]

No, it doesn't make a lot sense. A place where "all mods" battle around attention isn't the right place to get informed about updates, since this solution "doesn't scale well" and you always will be slammed information you don't care about. A better approach might be to make a subforum where mod devs can make an extra thread for each mod only to announce updates, beside the usual thread for that mod. It would serve as a changelog and this way we could even subscribe & get e-mail notifications when loved mods are updated.

[DMagic]

I think I like Faark's idea better, having a dedicated sub-forum. A single thread might have the same problem that the release forum has, too frequent updates that would push everything off onto previous pages. A dedicated forum would allow for easier tracking of the mods you actually care about through subscriptions and/or signature links.

How you would moderate something like that might be a problem though. Is it possible to allow only the original author to post in a thread? You wouldn't want to get updates on a thread whenever someone makes a "great update" post (which will always happen despite any instructions not to do so), and forcing moderators to closely watch over such a sub-forum doesn't seem feasible. Locking a thread and unlocking only for updates by the author also doesn't seem like something moderators would like.

[Diazo]

1) All mods battling for attention.

The entire point of this is that it gets attention on mods that would otherwise be missed under the discussion posts on other mods.

Restricting the thread to only be posted by mod authors when they release or update one of their mods, and the suggested format of a short post without screenshots or other media, is intended to avoid this "battling" effect.

Yes, this would require moderation and so involvement from Squad by please see my closing comment about Squad's involvement.

2) Information I don't care about.

This release and update thread is actually my attempt to remove the information I don't want. I care about what mods have been released and/or updated. While interesting, all the discussion is just chaff I have to wade through to find this out when I'm trying to add new mods or update my existing ones.

For example, I go away on vacation for two weeks, I get back and I want to know what mods have been released. At the moment, this information is buried in each mod's individual thread. For reference, to visit each thread in the Add-On and Development sub-forum that has a post in the past two weeks, I have to go all the way back to page 14. It simply isn't practical to visit each of those threads so how else do I find out what's new and updated? At the moment, I don't.

3) Sub-Forum for mod release updates only

I agree that this would be a better solution, assuming you can automatically lock all threads in the sub-forum so only the thread author can make new posts. Otherwise this is a bigger burden on Squad to moderate and that is something I am trying to avoid.

When I made the opening post, I did not think this would be a practical solution. If it is and we can get Squad on board, this would be the way to go.

4) Squads involvement (New sub-forum, moderation load)

One of the biggest factors in this is that for this to work it has to not be an additional load on the moderation staff that monitors the board. I am not a big enough name in the mod community to have directly talked with Squad before, but submitting a request to a mod to have a thread stickied seemed likely to be approved. The more involved we make anything, the harder it will be to get Squad on board, especially with the forum upgrade they are trying to accomplish.

As for moderating the thread, I was hopeful that we as a community could self-moderate and would only require mod help for people actually trying to cause a problem.

5) Overall goal

My goal with this can be summed up with my example from point 2. I'm away for X days/weeks, how do I find out which mods have released or updated? I am not aware of any method to do so right now and this method was the best I could come up with.

D.

Edited June 9, 2014 by Diazo

[sumghai]

My personal solution would be for add-on authors to simply append their most recent version number and last updated date in the thread title itself, as well as in their signature lines.

[Devo]

My personal solution would be for add-on authors to simply append their most recent version number and last updated date in the thread title itself, as well as in their signature lines.

Amazingly I agree with you Alex.

[Justin Kerbice]

We have this thread (it is sticky in release sub-forum)

We just need one moderator/people who are willing to care about it and update it regularly. In order to make it humanly possible and effective, admin/moderator/Squad could create a dedicated mailbox/shared forum account (shared among a few moderators willing to do this job). Modders release their thing, hen send a mail to this box/account with all data (link, version, date, compatibility, ...), thread is updated with the data (which could be in a standard format ).

@Diazo: your idea is quite good but I have to say digging into release thread is also part of the game , finding some rare jewels among all those more or less precious stones or dirt is a game on its own.

But knowing how people are and behave, such thread should be read only for everyone, with write right to only modders, quite a nightmare to manage in term of forum settings, we have no other choice than a team of moderators or reliable peoples with new role I guess.

But modders have also to do their part of the job, posting an update notice/a workaround/anything people have to be aware about on the 504861844th page of a big release threads, letting some additional related content be buried in 6468484, 35644, 84511 and 33434344849th pages also is bad practice.

People also should do it, how many time we've seen people in suggestion sub-forum asking for this to that which is included in number of mods ?

Typical:

solar panels, bigger or circular => there is mods for that.

3.75m, 5m parts => there is mods for that.

bigger command pods => there is mods for that (I guess ).

and so on.

Regarding this, I have an idea and will post something on Add-on Requests and Support forum later.