   Request to Add New Forum
  Hello, Not sure if this is the right place to post, if not please move it to where it should be and sorry for the inconvenience.  I would like to request a new help wanted forum.  A list of only developer teams who have shown extremely strong progress, and have proof showing that they know what they are doing to help cipher out the everyday teams who have not yet reached that point in their development, or who are not dedicated enough to do it.Has anyone ever requested this? If so, sorry for the replica!   
  Moving to Comments and Suggestions.   ;  In theory this may sound like a good idea, but IMO it isn't really practical. It puts a lot of work on whoever moderates that forum (or whoever it is that screens applicants to post there) and becomes fairly arbitrary. What qualifies "extremely strong progress", and who has time to look at every single project posted and judge whether the teams progress is "strong enough"? And if a strong team goes stagnant and stops making visible progress, should it be removed from the forum (creating more work for the moderator(s))?If this were created, why would anyone browse the original help wanted forum looking for a project to work on?As it is, promising projects can get stickied in the current Help Wanted forum, which I think is a fine solution.   ;Quote:Original post by Driv3MeFarIn theory this may sound like a good idea, but IMO it isn't really practical. It puts a lot of work on whoever moderates that forum (or whoever it is that screens applicants to post there) and becomes fairly arbitrary. What qualifies "extremely strong progress", and who has time to look at every single project posted and judge whether the teams progress is "strong enough"? And if a strong team goes stagnant and stops making visible progress, should it be removed from the forum (creating more work for the moderator(s))?If this were created, why would anyone browse the original help wanted forum looking for a project to work on?As it is, promising projects can get stickied in the current Help Wanted forum, which I think is a fine solution.Well we were stickied, but it only lasts so long and then a lot of projects that are only beginning, or have not gotten far end up pushing the good posts to the bottom, several pages down.  In theory, I understand that a good project receives many replies and moves back up to the top, but eventually people only have so much to say, which ends up becoming a bump war of updates - which isn't practical for a game dev group.I was under the impression that moderators have specific forums they moderate, for instance Help Wanted had a set group of moderators - but my impressions could be wrong.  If this indeed is true, by creating a new forum and only allowing the best of the best to make threads there, but allow everyone to post - that would remove the constant "I'm building a game but have no experience or understanding of how to do it" threads from pushing the ones with a future further back.I moderate my game dev groups forums, over 30 developers (and I understand that this is far more, but I also am the co-founder www.mmorpg.com and have helped moderate much larger populations) and it's not hard to build user groups - and if the moderators of todays help wanted ads can jump on a post for mandatory templates, it shouldn't be much more work to add that user to a group and move said post to the new forum.  But no pressure, this is just a suggestion which I think would eventually (I think) help gamedev.net grow with more and more solid teams, and help introduce those with a lot of talent to very strong potentials for business, or portfolio building.My thoughtsAdd user to "Strong" groupOnly allow "Strong" Group members to post threadsMove threads that are deemed "Strong" by gamedev to appropriate forumAllow everyone to reply   ;  all independent teams start out somewhere. and since quality is often relative to ones opinion, it is imposable to filter by that. although, perhaps one can say a particular trend is that people who are showcased, intelligent, or helpful, tend to be rated higher, so therefor it would be nice to be able to filter out posts started by members under a certain rating threshold. of course, this would weed out a lot of new members with successful independent projects aswell, but it should weed out the bad projects quickly.   ;Quote:Original post by PaulCesarall independent teams start out somewhere. and since quality is often relative to ones opinion, it is imposable to filter by that. although, perhaps one can say a particular trend is that people who are showcased, intelligent, or helpful, tend to be rated higher, so therefor it would be nice to be able to filter out posts started by members under a certain rating threshold. of course, this would weed out a lot of new members with successful independent projects aswell, but it should weed out the bad projects quickly.I do not mean "Quality" - I mean knowledge, and functioning projects that show the possibility of completion.  If we take a moment and pretend that gamedev.net does this, and it motivates more strong teams with possible futures to post on the help wanted section then as new users they will not have a high user rating, also envy and things of that nature from other projects/users could take effect on peoples ratings.  This would cause a very large problem for the suggested system.;Quote:Original post by JustinJosephI was under the impression that moderators have specific forums they moderate, for instance Help Wanted had a set group of moderatorsEach forum typically has a single moderator assigned to it, and we have a pool of mods not assigned to any particular forum, although they may have specific forums in which they typically choose to help out.I can't give any details at present as things aren't firmly decided yet and it could still be quite a while before things get implemented, but I believe there will be some additions to the next version of the site software that will greatly help out with exposure for some of the 'better' projects.  In the meantime although it's alright I theory, I don't think the idea of a forum for 'better' projects is particularly workable.How about a regular front-page news item with a couple of hand-picked promising projects, sort of like the journal-related news items Drew has been posting?  Again, it would only be a temporary exposure, but it may help a bit, and could contain a section for mentioning older projects that are still active as well as the new ones.  I've actually got some projects picked out and intend to make such a post on the first of next month as a trial.   ;  What if there are 2 help wanted sub forums. One for MMOs and one for non-MMOs. Because, to be quite frank, most MMO projects posted on gamedev will not make it, or evolve into smaller games when the teams realise the workload, and having ones own post pushed down by somebody with no programming or design experience wanting to make the next WOW is a bit annoying.Plus, wasn't there a decision to just delete posts not following the mandatory template.Another rule could be that non-mods can't post on the thread about the poster not following the mandatory template, because that in effect keeps pushing their project to the top all the time, when people who do spend the time writing everything out properly have theirs disappear onto the 2nd page faster.   ;  jbadams,That might be interesting, but what would it cover for said game project?   ;Quote:Original post by jbadamsHow about a regular front-page news item with a couple of hand-picked promising projects, sort of like the journal-related news items Drew has been posting?  Again, it would only be a temporary exposure, but it may help a bit, and could contain a section for mentioning older projects that are still active as well as the new ones.  I've actually got some projects picked out and intend to make such a post on the first of next month as a trial.Emmanuel has suggested this as well. I'd be all for it J.   