That should clear up everyone's questions, right? Good ...
As a development team and as a company, we know that the forums are extremely important to some of you, and we know that some of you have put a lot (!!!!) of effort into building up the community here, especially those who have written the more creative poetic stuff. C'mon, how many of you have > 5,000 posts, raise your hands. That amount of effort is *staggering*. Seriously, I think the highest post count I've seen was ~8400? Over 2.5 years, that'd be like 10 posts EVERY DAY since AG2 launched.
The effort of migrating that much data from AG2 to AG3 is almost as staggering, since the guy who wrote the AG2 forum software didn't make it terribly efficient, and the way we're linking accounts, etc., between the two systems might cause problems. Trying to migrate it to AG3 will be a pretty big job, and it will probably fall in my lap since I'm sorta the database guru around here, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's up to me whether I want to do it or not. If Dan says do it, I do it.
Whether we start over, and wipe everything, and build a new forum engine, or implement someone else's forum software, remains to be discussed internally because it's not a critical feature for us yet. That doesn't mean it's not important to us, it just means we have to get core features working like, y'know, logging in.
Will we migrate old posts into the new forum software? It depends whether we can find an easy way to make the old forum data compatible. Nothing's *impossible* but it's also not practical for us to spend development time (read: dollars) for us to spend a big amount of effort trying to sort stuff out so it's all perfect and pristine.
If we start over with forum posts, will we archive the old forums? Again, nothing's impossible, but I can't answer that right now.
What will happen to your armor points for forum posts? Well, since armor points are also up in the air regarding the same sort of "wipe vs migrate" discussions, I can't answer that question right now either.
Please direct people asking about the future of AG2 forums to this thread if they start asking questions in other forums/threads. I'll post updates to this thread as I have more information.
Every game should have their own main thread in : Game Walkthroughs . This should make it easyier to find the game your looking for , with or without an search engine .
The problem with this is that there are 2000+ games on ArmorGames at the minute. That is a lot of threads to put in a forum. Another issue is that not all games need walkthroughs. Easy to find without a search engine? That brings me back to the 2000+ games. A search engine would be required unless instead of pages numbers it was A, B, C and games in alphabetical order.
Let it be possible for some threads to edit your own posts . Then it's less work for you mod's to figure out if it works . Like the thread : Newcomers Forum can be used for an test .
Well, theres a good idea, but it has a couple of problems...
1. If there was a way to edit your post.... Or delete your post, the armor points you earned would have gone.
I think it's too late to add post editing to AG2. Also, AP as we know it will not be in AG3. Therefore, post editing is a good idea for AG3.
A trial period would be good to fix out any bugs it will encounter. Does anybody know if post editing will be available on the public beta? I don't think it should be introduced to AG2 simply because the public beta release i believe (thinking aloud due to the recent email) will be fairly soon.
As for deleting your post: As Patrick said, you won't gain AP for posting in forums on AG3, so a delete button wouldn't affect your score, but it could take away reputation that you earned. If a delete button was introduced for posts, i think it would need to be on the same basis of the edit button: a 5 minute grace period.
Forgive me if we discussed this already, but I think we should make the community more known. Instead of having a little button in the top right we should have a more flashy button, making member wonder "Hmmm, AG has a forum? I would have never guessed!"
Perhaps you ought to summarise the movies in your newest post, and become good friends with a mod who can edit your title to nod towards the newest movie post.
That's nice and all, but I much prefer being able to put all the previous movies that were movies of the week in an opening post where everyone can read it no matter what. I doubt people will read all the pages of a thread such as that. And I'll have to bug a moderator every week for an update on the thread, and I don't think most of them are active, so I'll have to go around most of their profiles posting the same thing, which can be considered spamming. I just don't see why they can't put an unlimited editing option.
Forgive me if we discussed this already, but I think we should make the community more known. Instead of having a little button in the top right we should have a more flashy button, making member wonder "Hmmm, AG has a forum? I would have never guessed!"
Well on AG3 it's "Forum" instead of "Community". I think that's enough.
That's nice and all, but I much prefer being able to put all the previous movies that were movies of the week in an opening post where everyone can read it no matter what. I doubt people will read all the pages of a thread such as that. And I'll have to bug a moderator every week for an update on the thread, and I don't think most of them are active, so I'll have to go around most of their profiles posting the same thing, which can be considered spamming. I just don't see why they can't put an unlimited editing option
My opinion/recommendation for the likes of "Of the week" threads is that if it's stikied, the OP should have an option to edit his main post and title. Just the popular, regularly used threads.
Although how that would happen i don't know, as it would be giving some users additional powers, hmm.
It's why I support the idea of being able to edit freely, rather than having a time limit for editing. If moderators and administrators are able to see previous edits of a post, I don't see much bad coming from it. You'll get an occasional person editing their post to trick them that they didn't do anything bad, but with the feature of being able to see past edits that'll be resolved.
[quote]Forgive me if we discussed this already, but I think we should make the community more known. Instead of having a little button in the top right we should have a more flashy button, making member wonder "Hmmm, AG has a forum? I would have never guessed!"
Well on AG3 it's "Forum" instead of "Community". I think that's enough.[/quote]
"Forum" is more direct and is therefore better than "community," but it shouldn't be overdone as that would attract too many spammers. I agree with GhostOfMatrix (who I single-quoted) on this one.
Whats the difference between forum and community? All I'm saying is let's really get the message out there that we are more than just a gaming site. Like on Google search, it says "Play Free Online Games!" It could say "Play games and discuss stuff"
A forum is the whole shibang of threads that pertain to it. A community is the whole shibang of the shibang. I don't know whether using one or the other would have a greater pull, but I still say that Community should be |~~|>>>Community<<<|~~.
It's why I support the idea of being able to edit freely, rather than having a time limit for editing. If moderators and administrators are able to see previous edits of a post, I don't see much bad coming from it. You'll get an occasional person editing their post to trick them that they didn't do anything bad, but with the feature of being able to see past edits that'll be resolved.
Yeah, if the posts are clearly shown after the edit, kind of like a "Was" "Now" feature, i can't see many problems coming from it either.
I just want to thank you all for the work you've put into this site, which for some has become more than that! I love these forums as this is where everything starts and is conversed. If I could give any support to help you guys here it is:
The only thing missing in forums is a sorta "follow up" button. So that whenever someone posts somthing new you can know, and you get e-mailed or 'beep'ed' on armorgames. Maybe you can make this like a social-network-gaming place.
Auran, your suggestion has been made several times throughout this, and other threads. The specifics of how it will work will depend on which forum engine is chosen, or whether the AG team writes one from scratch.
The specifics of how it will work will depend on which forum engine is chosen, or whether the AG team writes one from scratch.
Hopefully, if you guys choose one, it's not one of those ones with all the really dark colors, and the signatures longer than the post itself, and the quotes that are disgusting squares, and the thousands of emoticons, and the small and lumped together threads/titles, and stuff like that that seem to be the norm on the internet.
I DON'T like something like this. I love the AG2 forums because they're so neat and clean and nice and stuff.
We could always just rule that any post shorter than the signature is spam, and give people unlimited signature space. It would be much easier to clean out, and people would either have to make huge posts (which is good) to counter for a huge sig, or they would have to keep it short (which is also good) and then make a regular length post.
