Think the community's state is /worth discussing/?

Why no shoutbox? why everyone hate shoutbox?   It is only beneficial to everyone.
I come here for ks levels first hand and since the release and think most others do to. Supporting nifflas is not really what the forum is about mostly I don't understand where you all get that idea.

[mod]removed small text. Please read the Official Forum Rules again.[/mod]

we can always disable the off-topic forum again.

You honestly don't consider me to put something on with the idea that I'll remove it again when things go out of hand again?

Seriously, thats not how a forum works. If I'd enable a feature and disable it everytime things get out of hand, we'd have a really messy forum.

You can only add functionality when you expect it to work properly. Its the first thing you learn when doing management. Otherwise people will not take you seriously.

And if we enable something with the idea that our members are mature enough to use the report to moderator feature, we'd be a really bad forum. The report to moderator function is only to assist us, not to manage a forum with.

With a forum, the organisation goes like this: staff actively monitors every aspect of the forum and deals with the situations preferably before it has been reported, because that means, not many members had to face this problem. To most users that will appear as "the forum runs smoothly". If we do not respond to a problem and it just remains here, people will see this as: "meh, the staff is lazy here. I'm going somewhere else where the staff actually cares."

So the only way for us to have a feature is when I can ensure that the staff actually manages that feature.

Why no shoutbox?

We used to have one. Basically its the same with a shoutbox as the off-topic forum. Although this one is easier to manage, it does get the same idea with the off-topic forum. Not to mention that we still have an IRC chat.

Besides, how many times didn't I have to ban you from the shoutbox Salmoneous?

You honestly don't consider me to put something on with the idea that I'll remove it again when things go out of hand again?

Seriously, thats not how a forum works. If I'd enable a feature and disable it everytime things get out of hand, we'd have a really messy forum.

You can only add functionality when you expect it to work properly. Its the first thing you learn when doing management. Otherwise people will not take you seriously.

I do expect it to work properly, as long as it's either well-moderated or the activity level is relatively low. I was just saying if it DOES get out of hand you can shut it down.

So the only way for us to have a feature is when I can ensure that the staff actually manages that feature.

I think that should be a priority then.

I was never banned from shoutbox 

I was never banned from shoutbox 

My bad, I confused you with someone else. I looked back at my history and indeed didn't find a mention of you being banned under any of the aliases you use/used.

My humble apologies.

And if we enable something with the idea that our members are mature enough to use the report to moderator feature, we'd be a really bad forum. The report to moderator function is only to assist us, not to manage a forum with.

I quite disagree. Usually on (bigger) forums staff is not expected or required to read everything all the time, since that'd be impossible anyways.
I think the underlying problem is that the staff would have to care at all, and the current one can't really be bothered, since none of us really see a benefit in it. Also there's quite few really active staff members, mostly because the forum overall is not that active that it'd require more, but also because, again, the interest is not that great.
So, personally speaking, I don't mind if there's gonna be an offtopic forum or whatnot in whatever form, because to me it really doesn't matter. And that's not exactly a good starting ground to implement something new or different if nobody can be bothered to implement and care for it.

"And what if we have a designated new staff member to manage it?"
--Well...perhaps? But then again, do you think we'll find anyone at least a bit dedicated to the idea, given previous experience with how difficult it is to find new staff members in the first place and how low the activity overall is and so on and so on? So overall I still doubt it's worth it.

I find myself agreeing with LPchip on a general chat forum.
Sorry for bumping the discussion, but I don't think that side of the argument is being treated very fairly.
Most forums do have general discussion boards and most forums that do tend to have more active users. This particular forum, however, was not created to have a lot of activity and chatter. It was made for the sole purpose of promoting Nifflas' games and their discussion. From that perspective, there really is no need to make this forum conform to the shape of other, more active ones. Sure, maybe we could have a very well-maintained discussion thread and sure, maybe it would increase activity. But why? If you want a general chat forum, frankly you can visit somewhere else and only come here for professional purposes.


Then rises the argument, "but this forum has very intelligent and philosophical people that I would like to interact with."
This is where I find myself in disagreement with my above statement.. I think it could be a little tedious to maintain, though I don't think it would be by any means impossible. But, rather than effortlessly babble about it, I'll propose how I would run it.
Debates forum:

Also, I also thought I remembered you being banned from the shoutbox, Salmoneous...
Was your personal text ever "Banned from the Shoutbox" as a joke or something?
I know I've seen that somewhere...

I tend to really love Dj's idea.  An "intellectual's bar" would very nice.  I would tend to be here more often if we had that, but as has been said, the forum doesn't exist just to be social.  But then again, I think a well done smart forum would only increase the creativity of the forums as a whole. 

I am, however, very sensitive to the concerns raised by trolling, off topic traffic jams, all kinds of other ugliness.  I was also thinking myself of the idea of new moderators for any chat areas since the one's we have are so busy, but I'm also aware that even the shift towards a new area, and finding good moderators, can be a lot of work. 

Finally, I was thinking... what if there was something like a secret forum you have to get invited into?  Once someone is on the forum with 10 or so positive posts they get invited.  That way, a person's activity on the forum acts as a form of pre-moderation.

Finally, I was thinking... what if there was something like a secret forum you have to get invited into?  Once someone is on the forum with 10 or so positive posts they get invited.  That way, a person's activity on the forum acts as a form of pre-moderation.

This is pretty easy to implement. I can set it so that based on the post count you have, if you have more than x posts, you get into a permission group. That group then gives access to a hidden forum. The only problem is that, since its this easy to get in such forum, people will actually be triggered to spam more, just to get into that forum.

And if people get into the forum, then who says they won't go spammy suddenly? True, Its not allowed anywhere else on the forum either, but it depends on the context of that forum. If it'd be an all topics forum (general chatter), then there are no rules preventing anyone from spamming. My biggest fear with such cases, is that people start topics there that they can post very well in any other place. (this is a common item on many forums)

This idea would work better with a status. For example: someone who's active and always friendly could be rewarded with a certain status, and this status has new access assigned to it.

The biggest problem with this idea, however, is that its against Nifflas' vision of a forum. For Nifflas, everyone is equal. Nifflas even dislikes having a staff, but that obviously is necessary. He didn't want to have a title either, but I gave him the Game designer title because its his forum, and without it, it just looks silly.

Respecting Nifflas' wishes, it'll be really hard to implement something like this.

And I haven't even asked the most important question yet: what would the forum be about, and how would you make it so that it can be kept manageable (from inside, but also from preventing people to post there while they should post it somewhere else?)

It's true that we all should respect Niffla's point of view in this forum and how it select it's members. And I personally think that it's not the best way to proceed, and I also aprove that everyone should be equals. I did not read the whole Topic ( and that's why i'm not interposing much) but why not ask Nifflas personally? maybe he can come up with an idea we haven't tought about. Or maybe it has already been done.

Ok, just had to share this...

http://xkcd.com/810/

Also hover over the image for another good comment.  

edit: it's on topic, I swear.

I don't really like the idea of having a post-count based general forum since people could spam to automatically get into the general forum, and that defeats the purpose, but I also agree that having people which special access to post in a forum is not entirely agreeable neither because everyone should be given a fair chance to post there. I honestly think the problem here is that there doesn't seem like any current staff are willing to moderate this type of off-topic or perhaps structured off-topic forum, or perhaps they aren't looking for more things to do is all.

I have to entertain the idea of the 'karma' function of the forum, which is disabled right now. Perhaps if you can only give good karma, then you can make a forum that allows people with decent posts to enter an area otherwise off-limits. If they abuse this function, and admin could (I assume) reset their karma, forcing them to work hard yet again for privileges to the forum. Of course, it's probably possible to ban them from a specific forum too, instead of resetting karma- just make them wait a satisfactory time as a punishment before accessing it again. The idea is that if people can only give good karma, then there's no way to abuse it, especially if you limit the amount of karma one can give in 24 hours. And since the person getting the privileges must rely on others to give them this ability, it seems likely that the amount of karma and access they have will be reflected by the quality of the posts they make. Another thing is that this isn't entirely against Nifflas' wishes, just because if anyone can eventually gain access to secret area just by participating in the forum, there's no way it can be counted as unfair. The only problem I foresee is that newcomers might need to work harder to gain this status, but this might not be entirely unfair either since giving direct access is I think the things the staff worry about.

I haven't played around with SMF in a while, but I think this is possible, if not with just SMF, I'm sure there's a simple mod for it. Either way, it's just a suggestion.

Hello! This is my first post since like... a very long time.
I just wanted to say that I think it's funny how you get a meta-discussion going for nearly 1.5 years.
I also think, that the communitys state is not worth discussing, it seems perfectly fine to me.
Ever since the big crash, activity has slowly been declining, just to shoot up shortly after new releases.
There is not much one can do about this, except posting! Actual posting, no meta-stuff like this.
If you want the forums to become more active, you have to be more active.

That probably sounds super-lame and obvious but I don't see this discussion resulting in anything else than mights and might nots. This is not a question of forum-categories or features.
New features and categories don't cause activity - it's the other way round.

edit: Hah, yes! The only thing one *could* change would be those temporary subforums for level creation. Those have been temporary for what? Years? Since those sections are the main selling point of the forums, I'd restore them to their old beauty. I think they are incredibly messy and difficult to navigate. Yes.

I agree with Wetako. Altough it's true that there is not much activity on the forum. But "being more active" dosen't mean that we should start posting more if it means doing it just for the sake of "being active". This might result in boring of spamming posts wich would not attract  more poeple.

Just to post my two cents...

I had been a Nifflas fan ever since I stumbled upon Within a Deep Forest shortly after its release. I didn't actually discover the Nifflas Support Forum until Knytt Stories came out, and I assume it was the same for a lot of other people.

Because of the success and popularity of Knytt Stories when the editor first came out, there was a lot of activity and a lot of new people showed up. Tons of levels with new concepts came out, and they were generally entertaining. There was almost a sense of friendly competition going around, people trying to out-do each other and make the best levels with original concepts and content. I got in on the action because I had played a lot of really well done levels and they inspired me to create The Great Race, which was received pretty well and earned some positive feedback which I absolutely loved. It was just all-around a very active and enjoyable time.

But of course, things are only new for so long. Knytt Stories lost a lot of its momentum, though new levels are still released to this day which I find pretty impressive. I think that, although Knytt Stories still has nearly limitless potential to explore some fresh concepts for levels, the hype has died down with the passage of time (and with the crash of the old forum, which was unfortunate to say the least). And with a lower level of activity, there's a bit less incentive to create new levels since there's a feeling that less people will probably see them. I've been working off and on on an environmental level, and sometimes I will make some progress since a few people will still probably see it and like it, but I know it is highly unlikely to receive the warm feeling of releasing a new level "back in the day" when you could post your level before going to bed and wake up to literally dozens of comments.

Knytt Stories isn't the only Nifflas game out there to discuss on the Nifflas Support Forum, after all, but it was by far the game that did the best job of pulling people together to discuss and create some truly inspiring stuff. As a Nifflas fan, I can say with certainty that this forum will last a long time due to the outstanding quality of material Nifflas continues to produce, but unless another game comes out that pulls the community together as much as Knytt Stories does, we can probably expect the forum to have the activity level it does now.