Your Opinions re RailWorks forum layout ?

[CaptScarlet]

Hi all,

What are your opinions regarding the current structure of the Railworks forums ?

Are there any logical changes you think would make them better for everyone to use and enjoy ?

It could be for instance fewer sub forums, different organization or grouping of the forums , extra forums to fill a gap, no change at all, and so on.


Feel free to discuss and tell us your opinion but please stay on topic ?


John

[transadelaide]

I would definitely not suggest any more, except for a new Route Building challenge. It's already hard enough to find what you're looking for at times with RW2 topics split over so many sub-forums.

Perhaps the Beginners' Help and Steam Help forums could be combined into a single new RW Support & Tutorial forum. Support-style threads could then be moved from the General Discussion forum into the new support forum so they are all concentrated in one location.

[CaptScarlet]

I would definitely not suggest any more,

What about a separate Payware discussion sub forum where all discussion of payware takes place, instead of it being on the general forum ? Would that be of any benefit or use ?

John

[FoggyMorning]

I would tend to agree that some rationalization of the number of sub-forums would be the way to go here.

For example, there are relatively few active threads in the Screenshots forum and relatively few users posting in the Videos forum, so perhaps the two could be combined in to one Screenshots and Videos forum.

Likewise with the 3D modelling sub-forums; in addition to those on the main board Index there are four fairly low-trafficked sub-forums within the RW board; these could perhaps be reduced to two with Cab View Creation incorporated within Building Rolling Stock, a separate board for Scenic Item Creation and threads from the "general" 3D modelling forum incorporated in to whichever of the two "new" boards the subject is most appropriate to.

I would not be in favour of segregating discussion of commercial products from General Discussion; I think the outcome of that would more than likely be quite a lot of user confusion as to what topic belongs where. However, I think it might be worth considering introducing a sub-board somewhere for commercial producers' to announce products only. This could have the advantage of allowing users to see announcements of forthcoming products all in one place while avoiding any unwanted "advertising" and any potentially libelous/defamatory criticisms thereof on the discussion boards proper.

Steve

[transadelaide]

I would definitely not suggest any more,

What about a separate Payware discussion sub forum where all discussion of payware takes place, instead of it being on the general forum ? Would that be of any benefit or use ?

John

I don't think so. The main issue I see with things currently is that there are too many different RW sub-forums, and you see that confusing people who give in on working out where to find or put things and posting their topic on General instead of finding the appropriate pigeon hole. A good example of this happened just in the last 48 hours when a thread popped up in General asking about a Steam issue that had already been posted on the Steam Help forum only hours before.

In my mind the General Discussion forum would be the perfect place for discussing payware releases, general freeware discussion, ideas, program updates and general news around the RW2 scene. We usually only see discussions on payware addons in the time elapsing between first announcement and a week or so after release, after which they become less active and stop completely some time not long after dropping off the first page. If they are kept to one thread per payware topic then there's hardly a chance of payware threads taking over the General forum, and if people decided to talk about more than payware there would be even less of a chance.

Maybe a different approach to proactive moderation could be in order - by shifting more threads off General to their appropriate homes. Currently the first page of General is about half filled with support threads about individual issues, with these clogging it up it's no wonder that the General forum looks clogged with payware threads since many of the support threads name the product involved in the thread title. Hence my suggestion of combining Help for Beginners and Steam Help into a one-stop RW Support forum where all problems, bugs, questions could go. I know that UKTS is not an official support channel, but supporting each other is the kind of thing communities do, and if somebody has posted a solution to a problem in the right place it can sort of become a knowledge base for others who come across the same issue.

Another thing that could be done is reviewing which topics are pinned to the top of the list - that notice about job opportunities at RS.com has been there a very long time and could probably be allowed to melt into the background at some point.

[AndyM77]

I think that perhaps now we're into Railworks2, the 'RailSimulator' section should be archived (i.e the same as the MSTS2 section). I think by now most of the shop copies of RailSimulator will no longer be on shelves and users will only be able to get it second hand. Any RailSimulator questions could quite easily be asked within the Railworks sections and I doubt there would be many cropping up. Besides, the knowledge gained with Railworks 2 will be even better utilised with any RailSimulator specific questions.

As for the current subforums, they are pretty much fine as they are. Perhaps 'Scenic Items' & 'Building Rolling Stock' could be merged somehow, especially since they both need the useage of a 3D Modelling program. There isn't a 'Physics' section with Railworks but there is with RailSimulator, either one could be made OR the RailSimulator one can come into the Railworks section (I'd be wary of simply moving this over though, just in case "old" information breaks the current sim - although it shouldn't! )

Add a 'Crazy Talk' section? You know, to store those posts made with crazy ideas, rants, letting of steam threads, etc.. keeping 'General Discussion' more civilised...

There are loads of possiblilities, making the section smaller / bigger / whatever - just keep it roughly the same and we'll be happy

[transadelaide]

As for the current subforums, they are pretty much fine as they are. Perhaps 'Scenic Items' & 'Building Rolling Stock' could be merged somehow, especially since they both need the useage of a 3D Modelling program. There isn't a 'Physics' section with Railworks but there is with RailSimulator, either one could be made OR the RailSimulator one can come into the Railworks section (I'd be wary of simply moving this over though, just in case "old" information breaks the current sim - although it shouldn't! )

Currently there are subforums for

• [RW] Building Rolling Stock
• [RW] Cab View Creation
• [RW] Scenic Item Creation
• [RW] 3D Modelling

I like the sound of keeping the building forums for stuff that moves and stuff that doesn't separate. So maybe what could work is combining Cab Views into the rolling stock forum, and moving the 3D Modelling threads to the Rolling Stock or Scenic Item forums depending on which topic they are relevant to.

[MFMPorter]

What about a single search facility to cover all forums for a particular simulator?

So, one to cover all MSTS, one for RW and so on, so that if you want to see if a particular subject is covered without having to go to each individual forum you can do a "combined" search and save time.

For instance, I put up a post a few weeks ago about a transfer point on the RW Templecombe route, having looked first to see if my question had previously been covered. With my proposal I could have covered RW General Discussion and Help for Beginners (perhaps also Route Building) all in one go.

I hope that's clear.

David W.

[FoggyMorning]

I think that perhaps now we're into Railworks2, the 'RailSimulator' section should be archived (i.e the same as the MSTS2 section). I think by now most of the shop copies of RailSimulator will no longer be on shelves and users will only be able to get it second hand. Any RailSimulator questions could quite easily be asked within the Railworks sections and I doubt there would be many cropping up. Besides, the knowledge gained with Railworks 2 will be even better utilised with any RailSimulator specific questions.

As for the current subforums, they are pretty much fine as they are. Perhaps 'Scenic Items' & 'Building Rolling Stock' could be merged somehow, especially since they both need the useage of a 3D Modelling program. There isn't a 'Physics' section with Railworks but there is with RailSimulator, either one could be made OR the RailSimulator one can come into the Railworks section (I'd be wary of simply moving this over though, just in case "old" information breaks the current sim - although it shouldn't! )

Add a 'Crazy Talk' section? You know, to store those posts made with crazy ideas, rants, letting of steam threads, etc.. keeping 'General Discussion' more civilised...

There are loads of possiblilities, making the section smaller / bigger / whatever - just keep it roughly the same and we'll be happy

There is already a Railworks Physics sub-board
http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewforum.php?f=311

[dorlan]

What about a single search facility to cover all forums for a particular simulator?
<snip>

We already have that ability!

[AndyM77]

There is already a Railworks Physics sub-board
http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewforum.php?f=311

Hmmm, so there is...

It doesn't show up on the front page (index page) subforum listings though ( http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewforum.php?f=191 ) which is why I thought there wasn't one.

Code: Select all

Subforums: [RW] Help for Beginners, [RW] General RW Discussion, [RW] Steam Help, [RW] Screenshots, [RW] Videos, [RW] Route Building, [RW] Route Building Challenge 1, [RW] Route Building Challenge 2, [RW] Building Rolling Stock, [RW] Scenario Creation, [RW] Cab View Creation, [RW] Scenic Item Creation, [RW] Signalling, [RW] 3D Modelling, [RW] Atomic Distribution Network

is all I can see on the front page

[AndiS]

The physics board never made it into the list of RW subforums, but it exists. Now would be a good moment to fix that.

I am all for keeping the more esoteric subforums (signalling, physics, sounds, cabs, ...) because they form a long-term reference source which should be maintained in purity.

I think that there is no need currently for regional subforums (continents or countries), as there is little outside UK and US.

Whether it is time to archive the KRS department is something to ask there. I would not put pressure on anyone. The attraction of the RW forums will show its effect sooner or later, without hard feelings of anyone.

A payware forum would not be a bad idea, for me, personally. I sometimes get a bit bored about "when will X be released?", "is X good?", and similar thread. I never own X nor plan to buy X. Therefore, I also cannot help people with X, generally.

It is easy enough to ignore such threads, they are generally marked out well. But having purely product-focussed threads somewhere else would have some interesting benefits.

• Any problem discussion and help given there would have to be taken to a more general level, by discussing wagons, engines, etc. instead of wagon X and engine Y. When the person seeking help knows he is talking to people who do not own X, he will put the question into a form that will help many (together with the answer, of course).
• Threads will stay on top longer which can only be a good thing for that forum. Currently, it is a bit fast-turning.
• It will help people to get away from this "mandatory payware" feeling. At times, you feel a bit strange when half the threads there are about WCML or similar, and not about the game proper, or freeware.

I did wonder about the orthogonal role of the 3D Modelling subforum. There must be some overlap with rolling stock creation and scenery creation. But I think that this is unavoidable and interested people came to get used to look at both.

For the route building challenges, I thing when they become 5 or so, they could go into a subgroup of themselves. But keeping each challenge in its own subforum is a good thing, and not just PR. Maybe in the long run, there will be a forum for long past challenges, but only when the last developer completed his route. I am not a competition man, but I love the impulse it gave to the community, and continued development of these routes can only be a good thing.

[markpullinger]

Hi, if you click the railworks bit of the forum rather than the individual subforums, it lists all of the subforums rather than just the normal list you see - there were quite a few more then. You can also see the RW tools forum as well then!

[crumplezone]

The following could be adopted, combining similar themed sub forums into one area, for example:

Rolling Stock creation :- This could take the current rolling stock, 3D modelling, cab view, physics and sounds into one sub forum, all these are relevant of each other besides 3D modelling which would also cover scenery 3D modelling.

Scenery creation: This pretty much would become a exclusive sub forum for itself seperate of the rolling stock as there is not as much required on the technical side unless ofcourse you are having animated scenery.

Route: This could be combination of the current route building section, the signalling section and the scenario section, they are all under the same means and are all used in conjunction with each other to complete a route.

Screenshot and Video: Combination of these would centralise it and keep it neat, mdjesus our resident video guru could easily make a thread dedicated purely to his videos if there is a issue of creating multiple video threads.

Effectively you go from 10 sub forums down to 4 if you combined the above.

[styckx]

Imo this forum has the same problem many forums have. Too many forums to cater to very little activity. I mean if we had 1000 members a day posting RW topics I could see the micro-management of forum topics. Right now (imo) it is overkill. I forget the other sections are even there half the time. I browse only four of them. General, Screenshots, Videos, Route Building.

It could be narrowed down to

*General
*Screenshots/videos (merge both into one)
*Worklogs of WIP projects ranging from audio, assets, rollingstock, routes. Just work logs only.
*A forum for the tech questions, tinkering questions etc. Basically an off topic version of general dicusson that gets more in depth with the game and problem solving. Whether it is with blueprints, signaling etc.