Improving the Community

[sake-bento]

- Close Works in Progress and replace it with a monthly WIP annoucement/progress thread in Game Maker's Corner.

I don't think that the WIP section is breaking up the community. If anything it makes newcomers feel more welcome because it generates immediate interest and support for their projects. Getting feedback on an in progress game is a wonderful thing, plus I am much more likely to play a finished game if I've been following it in the WIP forum.

- Close Art/Music/Writing, moving the Art Dumpage and Circum-Critique threads into GMC.

This is probably a useful thing.

[DaFool]

While I'm not sure about the individual subforums to close, I agree there are now too many sections within LSF.

I only concentrate on General Discussion, Gamemaker's Corner, and Ren'Py Development. Every now and then I check on Completed Games, Other Visual Novels, and Anime/Games from Japan to see that I haven't missed anything, but that's about it.

It's crucial for new members to have Works In Progress and general Ren'Py technical, but the people who patrol them must not feel like it's a chore, especially when encountering the same technical concerns or the next overly-ambitious project.

The people more likely to complete something will generally maintain their own progress blog, start their own forum (for big collaborations), or go totally silent (meaning they believe in themselves so much as to not require feedback anymore from other VN creators/players, at least until the project is complete).

[Blue Sky]

I don't think that taking the WIP section out would be a smart decision. After all, it's helping people gain an audience for their visual novels and find partners to work with. Otherwise, they would just spam the game maker's corner with such things, which you don't want.

However, I have to admit that the art section isn't getting much activity. :(

[Wintermoon]

- Close Works in Progress and replace it with a monthly WIP annoucement/progress thread in Game Maker's Corner.

How does that fit in with your earlier offer to provide private forums for ongoing collaborative works in progress? Will these no longer be available?

(Not that I have any interest in a private forum. I'm merely asking for clarification.)

- Close Art/Music/Writing, moving the Art Dumpage and Circum-Critique threads into GMC.

I've been arguing against private art threads from the beginning, so this has my full support.

[DaFool]

Old articles, but still relevant:

http://www.cracked.com/article_16765_5- ... ernet.html

http://www.informationweek.com/shared/p ... =199600005

If I had a community built around a creation I made and see it going to the dogs, I would want to crack down as well.

Technically-minded people are more likely to be combative in internet forums, since it is in their nature to deconstruct and debate merits. Ironically, they're also the creators of software that runs the forums they troll on.

Also, good article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magaz ... =1&_r=3&hp

One promising answer comes from the computer scientist Jon Postel, now known as “god of the Internet” for the influence he exercised over the emerging network. In 1981, he formulated what’s known as Postel’s Law: “Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others.” Originally intended to foster “interoperability,” the ability of multiple computer systems to understand one another, Postel’s Law is now recognized as having wider applications. To build a robust global network with no central authority, engineers were encouraged to write code that could “speak” as clearly as possible yet “listen” to the widest possible range of other speakers, including those who do not conform perfectly to the rules of the road. The human equivalent of this robustness is a combination of eloquence and tolerance — the spirit of good conversation. Trolls embody the opposite principle. They are liberal in what they do and conservative in what they construe as acceptable behavior from others. You, the troll says, are not worthy of my understanding; I, therefore, will do everything I can to confound you.

Sounds similar to how LSF treats VNs and new creators (everything is acceptable as a form of expression; accord respect to each creator), versus how the enemies of LSF treat VNs and their creators (it must be of the highest caliber; shoot down anything that isn't up to par).

[Voight-Kampff]

Close Works in Progress and replace it with a monthly WIP annoucement/progress thread in Game Maker's Corner.

So, if someone wanted to make an announcement on LSF that they're making a game at the beginning of a month, they'd have to wait a month before it gets disseminated to the rest of the forum?

Or do you mean, "In the Game Maker's Corner, we will create a new WIP thread every month. At the end of the month, the thread is locked and a new WIP thread is created for the next month"?

The idea is to narrow the LSF focus to the inter-project part of visual novel development, and to start expecting intra-project discussions to be held elsewhere.

I think I can understand your desire to nudge people away from becoming too self-absorbed in their own threads. But I have to wonder if limiting peoples' ability gather attention and discussion on their individual projects will do much to foster more community spirit. An unintended consequence may result in people joining up to make a post announcing their game, gathering up some people from the forum, and then spiriting them off to their own forum - since continued discussion about their individual project on LSF will be a no-no.

Of course, that assumes a person has enough resources to do that in the first place - and can cajole people into joining yet another forum.

- Close Art/Music/Writing, moving the Art Dumpage and Circum-Critique threads into GMC.

Really? I thought that forum was one of the best for fostering community discussion about general topics - I've found it very useful for getting differing views of writing techniques and the like.

I don't think that the WIP section is breaking up the community. If anything it makes newcomers feel more welcome because it generates immediate interest and support for their projects. Getting feedback on an in progress game is a wonderful thing, plus I am much more likely to play a finished game if I've been following it in the WIP forum.

I agree completely.

I suspect eliminating it might result in people being less involved and/or lurk more.

[Jake]

I'd still expect to read every forum post, regardless of moderation.

It was an extreme example, but the problem would remain in other senses as well. And yes, to the earlier question - I think some people would mod Delta down just for the way that he goes about posting his criticism of Ren'Py without thinking of how valid it is, some of the people on this forum are remarkably defensive about Ren'Py for whatever reason. I realise that a Slashdot-esqe system is not something that's likely to happen, but I do think that this aspect of forum behaviour is something that needs to be considered in whatever approach you consider taking.

On a similar note, something that needs to be borne in mind: I notice that the link on renpy.org that used to point to the Ren'Py subforum now points to the whole LSF, giving the impression that this is a Ren'Py forum rather than a VN-development forum. (Which at least explains why we semi-frequently get Ren'Py questions in General Discussion or GMC or other non-Ren'Py subforums.) So, is this supposed to be a Ren'Py forum, now? Or is it remaining as it has been for years (at least since the Lemmasoft-specific bits were taken away) a general VN-development-and-discussion forum?

Modding down posts the community doesn't like regardless of their 'objective value' is not necessarily a bad thing if what you're trying to achieve is a harmonious environment. In terms of what we do here, what's so important that it absolutely must be shouted from the rooftops despite the community actively not wanting to hear about it?

If this is supposed to be a Ren'Py forum, then from a public-image, technical-support and so on point of view, harmony is more important than integrity - and you're right, silencing dissenting voices is one way to acheive harmony. But if - as is my understanding - this is supposed to be a general VN-development forum, then integrity is more important. I know from personal experience that criticism - sometimes of the harsh variety - is a very important factor in one's development as a creator, be it an artist, writer or even programmer. People who discourage, ignore, brush off or find excuses for criticism generally fail to progress, get stuck in the rut of their own making and never improve themselves. Sure, sometimes it's important to moderate your criticism of someone's work, and it has to be appropriate to the level they're at - there's no point criticising someone who's five for not drawing photorealistic faces, it'll just put them off drawing - but removing that honesty in the name of harmony would put the nail in the coffin of this forum as a useful place for developing VNs. It's already widely-regarded as a circle-jerk, and not entirely without reason.

One of the problem I'm seeing is when threads that are nominally about one topic begin to deviate onto other topics... often becoming about personalities more than the underlying disagreement. Thinking about it, dealing with that sort of deviation is what I've been having problems with.

Insofar as off-topic posts go: for a long time I was a very active moderator on another forum, and when a thread went off-topic my retort was to split it into two threads, carefully picking out the parts of the discussion that belonged in one or the other, and renaming the split-off thread to reflect the new topic. It seemed to work very well, nobody ever complained and topics were far more frequently actually about what it said in the forum index, but of course it involved actual work. I would recommend the same thing here, at least as far as off-topic posts with an actual topic are concerned.

To address this, I'm thinking of instituting a rule that posts about user's behavior (either forward- or backward-looking) are off-topic. If you disagree with a user's behavior, you should use the report button. (The little exclamation point on the bottom-right of the post.) A moderator will look at the posts in question and decide, in private, what will be done.

The problem with this is twofold.

Firstly, a lack of transparency. Say a couple of users think someone's out of line criticising your Ren'Py design decisions; if you delete this user's posts, then they'll wonder whether you deleted them because they were out of line or whether you deleted them because you don't like being criticised; if you don't delete the posts, then the people who reported them will keep reporting them, and you'll have to make a public announcement that this isn't the kind of thing the report button is for, and you'll get a public discussion about that user's behaviour anyway. Or, you know, put up with your inbox filling every time they post.

Secondly, it assumes that all problems with people's behaviour are problems for moderator action, which generally means threatening to ban someone. Say someone is frequently giving out advice on a subject with an authoritative tone - which generally is a good thing - but the advice they give out isn't good; either they leave out some important details, or they suggest a really bad solution, or whatever. Going around and correcting them all the time or filling in the missing info would take a lot of time, so instead it would be a better solution - if one really cares that much - to tell that user what you think they're doing wrong, probably best done by PM.

We've refactored the forums a few times over the past few years. The WIP forum was split out of the Game-Maker's corner, and the Art/Music/Writing forum was created from the art dumpage thread in the general forum. I'm starting to think that these were mistakes.

What I think has happened is that the LSF has moved to a state where people are focusing on individual threads devoted to their project or their art, rather than community threads where people discuss things together.

I expect that if people are focussing on individual threads devoted to their project or their art rather than community threads, it's probably more likely because there are so many people posting so many threads (and not much love to go 'round; can't you see this is the forum of confusion?) that reading everything would take a long time and bore most users to tears. I used to read everything in the WIP forum; I don't anymore simply because there's too much of it. A while ago I could read through a couple of uninteresting threads in the hope of finding the one or two that interest me, but these days I'd be reading through ten or fifteen threads that I have no interest in, and it's easier to just shrug and tell myself that I'll look at them when they're finished, if they're still interesting then.

That said, it seems a lot of posts in the WIP forum do get a lot of replies, so it's not like it's not being used. Are you suggesting that people shouldn't have a place to discuss the development of their specific project, to ask advice and guidance on project-specific matters? And if you close the WIP forum, where are people going to look for blind recruitment? (I don't know how frequently blind recruitment works on the LSF, of course, but I know there's been at least one group project that basically emerged whole from the forum qite recently.)


(It's also probably worth noting that if you tried to push them all together into a single thread, I probably wouldn't read that at all, while I do go into WIP every now and again to see if anything catches my eye, today. I already very rarely read Planet EVN just 'cause there's too much I'm not interested in amongst the bits that I am.)

One of the best threads I've seen has been the Art Circum-Critique thread, and that stands out as being one that everyone can participate as equals in... and that's something that seems to have been lost.

It's also the one thread recently where people have been told - basically - "do not expect this thread to be all happy bunnies and flowers, people should criticise your work openly in here". As I touched on earlier, I think one of the problems this forum has is that it's swinging too close to 'harmony' over 'integrity'.

- Close Art/Music/Writing, moving the Art Dumpage and Circum-Critique threads into GMC.

Ren suggested something in the Art Dumpage thread a while ago which I think is a good idea, which unfortunately only caught on for a couple of posts - users should comment in some way on a couple of other pieces before posting anything of their own. If you plan to keep a single thread of art for everyone to post in, I would recommend putting something to this effect in the topic title.

[papillon]

Modding down posts the community doesn't like regardless of their 'objective value' is not necessarily a bad thing if what you're trying to achieve is a harmonious environment. In terms of what we do here, what's so important that it absolutely must be shouted from the rooftops despite the community actively not wanting to hear about it?

If this is supposed to be a Ren'Py forum, then from a public-image, technical-support and so on point of view, harmony is more important than integrity - and you're right, silencing dissenting voices is one way to acheive harmony. But if - as is my understanding - this is supposed to be a general VN-development forum, then integrity is more important. I know from personal experience that criticism - sometimes of the harsh variety - is a very important factor in one's development as a creator, be it an artist, writer or even programmer. People who discourage, ignore, brush off or find excuses for criticism generally fail to progress, get stuck in the rut of their own making and never improve themselves.

Criticism is an important factor in development. That doesn't necessarily mean that this is (or isn't!) the right place for it. Crucially, you can't force someone to grow solely by yelling at them. If the community, or the individual poster, actively does not want to listen to it, what's the point? Does it make it a better forum if someone says "Actually, your art sucks" and the original poster ignores it, or replies with "No, YOU suck"?

No, I'm not advocating that everyone should be forced to only say nice things. But if the larger community clearly does not want to hear what you're saying, you do have to wonder if this is the right place to be saying it.

Creative choices are not the kind of critical life decisions where it's crucial that you have the facts regardless of their popularity.

[Jake]

If the community, or the individual poster, actively does not want to listen to it, what's the point? Does it make it a better forum if someone says "Actually, your art sucks" and the original poster ignores it, or replies with "No, YOU suck"?

No, I'm not advocating that everyone should be forced to only say nice things. But if the larger community clearly does not want to hear what you're saying, you do have to wonder if this is the right place to be saying it.

If the original poster - or at least, the person being criticised - doesn't want to hear it, then fine; it's pointless giving them critique. (Noting that 'your art sucks' isn't useful criticism at all, of course.) However, the community as a whole here is presently less tolerant of dissenting opinions than an individual may be, and I expect a lot of people who might have constructive things to say are dissuaded from saying them by the prevailing wind.

The most obvious example I can think of: it's true that the guy from 4LS who was very scathing of Mikey's game a year or so ago could have said what he said in a more polite manner, and was quite possibly trolling, but the overwhelming community reaction wasn't "you're being impolite" or "stop trolling", it was "don't criticise his game". In the end, Mikey accepted the criticism far more graciously than pretty much everyone else in the thread. On a more personal note, I was basically told off by at least one forum member just last week for having the audacity to suggest that Deji wasn't so good a colourist as to be irreplacable...!



Essentially, if you're going to try and promote harmony by forcing people to pander to 'the larger community' all the time, then you're going to kill this place as a place to develop VNs. Maybe it'll still be a good place to market releases or get Ren'Py technical support, but there will be no place for creativity here, because creativity cannot flourish in a community which is stifled to the lowest common denominator. And thus, it would essentially be saying "this is not a VN development community, it is a Ren'Py-specific community".

[papillon]

Essentially, if you're going to try and promote harmony by forcing people to pander to 'the larger community' all the time, then you're going to kill this place as a place to develop VNs. Maybe it'll still be a good place to market releases or get Ren'Py technical support, but there will be no place for creativity here, because creativity cannot flourish in a community which is stifled to the lowest common denominator. And thus, it would essentially be saying "this is not a VN development community, it is a Ren'Py-specific community".

I'm not sure this ever has been a place to 'develop' VNs, so much as to generally enthuse about them and share things you've made.

Many people here work for ages and ages on an individual project, then finally release it and hope for some praise. How many people ever edit their completed works in response to criticism? Some, I'm sure. But to a large extent, once it hits Completed Works it's too late for big changes. What criticism you get may vaguely filter into your next looooong devcycle, but if you really didn't 'get' what was being said, it'll be a long time before you produce another result for people to critique.

I'd *like* to see more workshopping here, with people taking on microprojects (like, a single scene) and putting them up for in-depth critique, honing their technique, judging the effect of small changes, etc. I think a lot could be learned. But I think the last time I mentioned the idea, people wandered off into making a big group project instead. Most people here seem to be a lot more interested in creating a finished product than in working on meaningless things purely for skill upgrade purposes.

(Of course, as a non RenPy user, I don't think of this as a RenPy-specific community!)

[Enerccio]

Old articles, but still relevant:

http://www.cracked.com/article_16765_5- ... ernet.html

This is one huge baww.
Trolls ruining economy, what the crap?!

[PyTom]

To clarify my thoughts on WIP, which I didn't express clearly (and perhaps didn't even formulate correctly):

My original idea was that we'd have a new thread opened each month, into which people could post discussion of works in progress. A new thread would be opened and stickied each month, and the old one left to fade away. My thinking is that now that we have Planet EVN, it's the right place for following games in development.

At the very least, I think WIP needs a stronger mandate as to what is on and off topic, and what to do when good-faith off-topic material is posted in WIP.

How does that fit in with your earlier offer to provide private forums for ongoing collaborative works in progress? Will these no longer be available?

Frankly, these have been largely a failure.

I notice that the link on renpy.org that used to point to the Ren'Py subforum now points to the whole LSF, giving the impression that this is a Ren'Py forum rather than a VN-development forum.

I've changed the link on the Ren'Py page to point to both the Ren'Py section and the LSF. I do want to use renpy.org to help new people join our community, but you may be right that people were asking for support in the wrong places.

That said, it seems a lot of posts in the WIP forum do get a lot of replies, so it's not like it's not being used. Are you suggesting that people shouldn't have a place to discuss the development of their specific project, to ask advice and guidance on project-specific matters? And if you close the WIP forum, where are people going to look for blind recruitment?

I'm wondering if the rule should be something like "WIP and Art posts should end with a question." The idea should be that if you're going to post here about your own project, it should be done in a way that encourages community: asking people for feedback on your game, or for help with some issue. News posts are the domain of blogs and deviantart.

[PrettySammy09]

Unfortunately, I think this has a lot to do with the sheer size of the community. Not that having a large community is a bad thing, but the more people LemmaSoft attracts, the differing agendas will continue to develop as well.

For example, there are plenty of members who jump right to the "Works in Progress" thread to simply post about their games. Their post count can be found entirely in their own game's thread. These users have no interest in facilitating community, they simply want to get the word out about their game.

Now while that in itself isn't a bad thing, it certainly does deter the community spirit when you have a "one man to a boat" mindset. Having a project is a great thing! Share it with us! But while these users seem to insist on feedback or encouragement from other users, they themselves refuse to participate in the community, thus creating a bit of an imbalance.

How to remedy this is an entirely different issue all together. I don't think closing the "Works in Progress" thread is necessarily a good idea, because some of those threads really do facilitate good discussion and collaboration. Like that 10th anniversary game thread - we might see some good stuff out of that (if it's still going?).

You can't really stop people from just posting in one thread - it's their right to do so after all. Maybe instead focus on the core group of members who discuss in other forums - make THEIR experience as good as possible in terms of community standards. Having a good community here will naturally attract other members who want that same experience, not just members making VNs who want to advertise in the WIP forum.

[Jake]

I'm not sure this ever has been a place to 'develop' VNs, so much as to generally enthuse about them and share things you've made.

It seemed when I first joined to be a "visual novel development community", put it that way. And sure, often the route is to work in silence and then release and not radically change the finished product post-release, but good critique is applicable to future works as well as past ones; I know I learned some things with - for example - Each Uisge that I'm not interested in fixing up in that game, but will bear in mind to try and make my next game better and more interesting.

I'd *like* to see more workshopping here, with people taking on microprojects (like, a single scene) and putting them up for in-depth critique, honing their technique, judging the effect of small changes, etc. I think a lot could be learned.

Likewise. And I think that encouraging that kind of thing would be far more productive to building a community spirit than fiddling around with forums and threads.

But I think this is one of the effects of a larger community, really, and possibly egged on by some of the more prominent names over the years; in general, humans like praise and will often have that as their prime motivator when doing something creative, and this forum presently seems to encourage that rather than encouraging people to get better and produce better and better things, which will in turn lead to more deserved praise as a side-effect.

But I think the last time I mentioned the idea, people wandered off into making a big group project instead. Most people here seem to be a lot more interested in creating a finished product than in working on meaningless things purely for skill upgrade purposes.

For the record, I would certainly be more interested in that kind of thing. I expect one big problem with that kind of thing is mostly that people need some structure and some guidelines before they'll get involved in the first place... and even then a lot of people will look at such a thing with the point of view of "why should I spend a week on this when I could spend a week on my project which is going to be so cool and make me mini-famous?"


...I wonder, would PyTom be willing to entertain a separate 'workshops/challenges' forum if a few of us would agree to work in rotation/unison/whatever to come up with a new themed activity periodically - say, once a month - if people were actually joining in? I'm thinking something like:

"Exposition: getting information to your reader without them noticing.

Week one: Simon works as a maths teacher at a high school in the suburbs; he has been dating a co-worker - a geography teacher - for several months, but he's secretly been planning to emigrate to the other side of the world for a couple of years and hasn't told her yet. Write a single scene in which the reader learns all of this information.
Week two/three: everyone's scenes are posted, the good and bad points and potential improvements discussed. People iteratively re-work their scenes based on feedback, leaving all prior versions uploaded so anyone who comes across the thread can see how the changes went.
Optional Week three: based on your feedback, how would you change your writing if you could use two scenes to tell the same information? Alter your project accordingly."

...or maybe it's just not the right forum for it at all...

[PyTom]

...I wonder, would PyTom be willing to entertain a separate 'workshops/challenges' forum if a few of us would agree to work in rotation/unison/whatever to come up with a new themed activity periodically - say, once a month - if people were actually joining in?

Yes, I'd certainly be willing to entertain this. I'm wondering if it makes sense to rename or replace "Art/Music/Writing" to "Skill Improvement", and have it be the home for this and the critique threads. But fundamentally, this looks like a good idea, and I support it.