Your Opinions re RailWorks forum layout ?

[AndiS]

I actually just was about to propose a WIP forum. However from my angle that many forums are not bad.
The current WIP thread looked like a turmoil to me whenever I saw it. Certainly encouraging to see so much going on, but creators could benefit from keeping their topic open for a bit than until the next one posts anything regarding his own work.

If installed, such a forum could possibly host future competitions, too, if non-participants don't feel overwhelmed too much. I prefer "initiative" over "competition" anyway, so any prefix in the subject would suffice to put your WIP reports into context, may the thread last long or short.


Regarding the manifold subforums, I think we can distinguish two types of forums. I would call the groups "news" and "repository".

News means that people either report something or ask a question which is likely to be irrelevant in a month or a year. Examples are: Discussion of pending releases and news items from Facebook and other forums; screenshots and videos; WIP.

Repository means asking questions or reporting newly found solutions which are likely to be of interest in a year or two. This includes installation issues with specific add-ons, Steam help, and the content of the topical subforums (from route building to audio) after you subtracted the WIP reports.

The "news" style forums will next to no stickies, which shows more news on a page. The "repository" style forums can have 10 different pointers to tutorial etc. stickied and still room enough for a week's ongoing discussion.


I did not mention the fusion of screenshots and videos because I rarely ever look at the screenshots and never at videos, but that is just me.

[haddock1000]

I think that he idea of a dedicated payware forum is a great idea. The general discussion would then be a little more general than it is now, meaning that relevant topics can be given more airtime.

The screenshot and videos should be merged together under a media section.

Further down the list, I think there should be a little more radical change. I think that there should be 2 separate Threads, one for wip, one for help, for each of the following: route and scenario building, rolling stock building, scenery creation. This will mean that people wanting to find out what is under wip, they don't have to trawl through the help topics.

The steam and beginners help should also be merged, as said above.

Thanks,

chaddockdk

[CaptScarlet]

All interesting comments, please keep them coming even if it is to say nothing should change at all, as you like it as it is.

What do you think about having, a catch all sub forum for content creation ( for instance ) where at the top level you can post generally but then have specific sub forums under that where you post specific content questions ?

As one possible example only :

Content Creation forum - where you can post and which also contains the following sub forums
- 3d modelling forum
- Route building forum
- Signalling forum
- Scenario Creation forum
- Scenic Items creation forum
- RW Tools forum
------------------------------ the following could be separated into a different forum section and again users can post general posts.
- Rolling Stock Building forum
- Cab and Passenger View Creation forum
- Sounds forum
- Physics forum
- direct link to RWtools forum
- direct link to 3d modelling forum

In the above example if it was decided to split it along logical lines then you could name the top level forums "Route building related Content Creation" and "Rolling Stock Related Content Creation". While in the above no forums were merged the main point was to show how it could look. The other thing I have seen at other websites is users posting in the higher level forum which doesn't seem to happen here and I think it perhaps should.

Anyway some might say it is just rearranging the deck chairs for no real purpose but I hope not.

Any thoughts ?

John

[AndiS]

I must admit that I do not get the details of the proposal. In particular, I do not see the difference between the two groups.

The proposal to have a general forum on top of a subgroup and subgroups below that is certainly a good one, although in terms of organisation, it is the same as having another subforum named General besides the others.

Grouping the many subforums of RW into subgroups is certainly a good idea. I could image readers being split into "users" and "creators". But it is not too clear, e.g., scenario creators are rolling stock users and half the people in the signalling forum ask about using signals while the others ask about creating their own. More precisely, many who ask about using get coerced into creating modifications.

In my view, what you really need is your own view of the forums. Henning showed me this trick, which I greatly expanded as you can see:
http://forums.uktrainsim.com/search.php ... &fid[]=278

You simply append "&fid[]=forum id" to the start bit, for all the forums you are interested in. You get their ID by clicking somewhere there, preferably on the post listing. You will see something like f=three-digit number. That is the ID you need.

Short of installing some extension to the software, Matt could hack a little page showing all the subforums with a checkbox next to each name. You would select those you want and then hit a button labelled "generate link" which will bring up a link in the above style, with your own selection. You can then bookmark this link, and have you custom geek view without messing with numbers and &[]=.

[Acorncomputer]

I think the Rail Simulator forum should stay but perhaps in a more consolidated form. There is still a lot of information here that is relevant to RailWorks and is useful to link to at times.

Talking of links, would these get broken between forum topics if the forum is re-organised or does the program automatically change the link information to the new location. There are thousands of links in posts and it would be a bit counter productive if these failed to work and posts that included them would probably lose their value.

The modelling forums could be re-organised into a general modelling forum for all types of work .. scenery, rolling stock, etc, .. and then sub groups for queries related to specific 3D Modelling programs. These forums do not get a great deal of traffic but those that do visit are probably interested in all aspects of modelling. Looking at a post of rolling stock modelling/problems would be just as interesting as a scenery modelling/problem.

I use the screenshots forum for showing progress on routes but in practice it is also a bit of a blog. Perhaps a new section for people to use as a blog area where we can all set up our own blog threads to show what we are doing.

Generally I think the set up works quite well and whilst a few consolidations and re-arrangements would be useful, I do not think any radical change is necessary.

[PaulH2]

I think the Rail Simulator forum should stay but perhaps in a more consolidated form. There is still a lot of information here that is relevant to RailWorks and is useful to link to at times.

Actually I think the opposite there (not to the rationalle but to keeping the Rail Simulator forums). As Rail Simulator has been gone for some considerable time now and isn't the target of active development (either payware or community) I think it ought to be put to rest (personally I thought it was a mistake to create a separate RW forum in the first place, but thats another story). It may be better to close it to new postings and keep it as an archive rather than combining it with the RW forums, but it might be nice if searches in an RW forum automatically also searched the corresponding RS forum as there are indeed a lot of gems hidden away in there (and at this point, they really are hidden away).

As for structure of the RW forums, I quite like them the way they are. Perhaps some of the forums could be grouped (e.g. the content development ones) but I'm not sure I'd add / remove / rationalise any of them. As for a dedicated payware forum, I'd like to think its not a bad idea, but can't help feeling it would ultimately just further divide people and lead to yet more silly arguments, so while I think its a good idea in principle, I think its asking for touble in practice, so my "vote" would be no.

Just my 2p...

Paul

[Toldrabald]

All interesting comments, please keep them coming even if it is to say nothing should change at all, as you like it as it is.

What do you think about having, a catch all sub forum for content creation ( for instance ) where at the top level you can post generally but then have specific sub forums under that where you post specific content questions ?

Anyway some might say it is just rearranging the deck chairs for no real purpose but I hope not.

Any thoughts ?

John

Don't clutter it even more up with sub-sub-forums, as confusion is already today at a high level. The sounds and physics forum are barely used, so I don't really see a point of keeping them apart from that there are now nicely ordered ontopic threads only. I would much prefer to let the users choose a tag for their threads from a drop box, with the options of [Sound], [Cab], [Physics], [static scenery], etc. plus a general empty one. So that every thread would get it's fitting prefix and is still easily searchable or you could even show only sound related topics. I don't know if this is a phpBB mod, but I know such thing is possible as I've seen it before elsewhere.

This would be my attempt in setting the forums up:
- Help, Support, Steam
- General
- Screenshots, Videos (with allowance of personal WIP threads)
- Route Building (banning all the WIP threads and keep it with questions and help to the editor only)
- Scenario Building
- Rolling Stock design
- Scenery design
- RWTools
- Challenges

So maybe another WIP board would make sense, but it also fits into the screenshots I guess. And as others posted: the general board is at the moment flooded with topics that could go best into one of the other boards, but are still discussed there like the Steam help mentioned.

[londonarnold]

How about (if it's not already been suggested) a dedicated sub-forum for Computer Hardware and it's relation to Railworks.

I know there's loads of excellent resources on the internet, but there's none specifically dealing with the application of computer technology to Train Simulation.

It surprises me how many users are struggling (and giving up) without the knowledge of a few simple tweaks or hardware upgrades which would drastically improve things.

The scope for this should go beyond the basic 'help for beginners' and encompass discussions for maximising computer performance specific to Train Simulation, perhaps without repeating the other excellent resources available elsewhere on the Internet, but including links to them.

This would also prevent the other threads from getting too 'techy' and veering off topic.

Best Regards,

Ben

[AndiS]

The problem with the prefix solution is that (1) people tend to forget it (at least some of them) and (2) searching for, e.g., sound posts, will become more difficult. You need to put the prefix into the search term, which means that you need to get acquainted with the wildcard notation, which is different in each search engine, and will lead to frustration by the less programmer-minded persons.

On the other hand, the prefix notation assembles all the new threads of low-frequency forums in a single forum. Now the question is whether someone interested in physics will be interested in sounds (or cab modelling). So the benefit from merging the news on these areas will be small for this person.


A similar effect could be obtained if Matt could clone the "View new posts" into about three: On showing only the RW and KRS department, one showing MSTS and OR, one showing the rest. Then you would still need to trawl through those topics which do not interest you, for "your" simulation platform, but you will be saved from the other half or two thirds which rarely interest you. Of course, the Trainz people might demand equal status with RW & MSTS -- no idea personally.

The advantage of this would be that you are not forced to hack your own URL as in my own solution, and you still get some filtering. With UKTS hosting several rather disjunct communities, the basic "View new posts" function of phpBB is a bit useless (for me).

The downside is that you still see a lot of posts in subforums you are not interested in.

Therefore, the real break-through would be if phpBB would permit the configuration of forums such that the parent forum shows all the posts in the subforums, merged together! Imagine forum "Asset Creation" having subforums Physics, Sounds, Cabs, Rolling Stock, Scenery, then clicking on Asset Creation would not bring a general forum for asset creation, but all the posts in Physics, Sounds, Cabs, etc., maybe with an automatically generated prefix. That would give those, who think there are too many subforums, a unified view but maintain the specificity for those who like it (notably for searching).

The downside of that is that it would be a hack or at least an extension of phpBB, and Matt explained at the last update how these extensions waste his time.

[bigvern]

I would actually suggest a radical simplification, something along the lines of TS.com who have what, 4 or 5 sub sections.

I would support keeping a "Beginners" forum though newbie queries tend to crop up on the GD board anyway.

While understanding Andi's view on the "technical" forums, the sad fact is most often times you post something down there only a few people look at it and even fewer respond.

I asked a few times about Regional forums but have to agree with 95% of the discussiion on UKTS being about UK stuff any "Rest of the World" is best just left in the main sub-categories. Most discussion about North American stuff tends to revolve around TS and RWA and I suspect there are similar boards for Europe where users probably prefer to communicate in their native tongue.

I still believe a separate payware forum is needed particularly where developers themselves are announcing products or news and it would keep support for those items in one easily referenced area, particularly for those who might only be visiting the board to get some help.

[markpullinger]

Hi Vern, as most of the payware people have there own websites and support, it might be better to provide the support information & links to these in the payware section with a sticky FAQ section for each of them. This hopefully will reduce the amount of repeat questions in different threads. It will also reduce the public floggings, where a quiet email would have done the job better.

[gswindale]

Hmm,

What to say.

Personally I think the screenshots forum needs some work (are there really no shots from E-G or Portsmouth Direct or even none from WCML North?). I'm interested in seeing other people's pictures of some stuff, but not all that keen about looking through a 50page generic thread just on the off-chance that there's a nice shot of a new add-on or something.

Commercial products should ideally be kept separate from general discussion - maybe a "Commercial Products" heading with links to the relevant support pages; along with discussion about the products, but with guidance to suggest that problems should be reported either through a support ticket on the developers site or a link to their forum.

[hertsbob]

...are there really no shots from...WCML North

http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 2&t=109493

Just a few.

Cheers

Bob

[rivimey]

Generally, I'm pretty happy about the forums themselves. I can see the point of consolidating some of the item creation forums - bring physics and rolling stock together, for example.

The main thing I'd like changed is that "View new posts", "View unanswered posts" and "View active topics" all applied to the current forum and it's children. So if you were looking at the main "Railworks" list, "View XX posts" applied to all railworks posts but no MSTS posts; within the RW General Discussion forum it only applied to that, and so on.

Not sure if it's in-scope here but there are changes I'd like to see on the main archive too. The simplest is that if you are logged in, the "which simulator" Q has a default value that is either the last one you set or one you can define in your profile (don't mind which option). I also find the search tool very hard to use effectively. Ideally, form values would be remembered, so if you did a search, clicked Back, the previous search setup was still there.

HTH,
Ruth

[ihavenonamenoreallyidont]

I support a simplification, too, Vern.