A Couple Suggestions

[Archived]

Archived

[aero]

So for the Lunalua subforum part of your post, I disagree. I don't feel it belongs anywhere else more than it does in General. It's for sharing creations in lua and asking for help which don't always pertain to creating levels or episodes.

Now for the rest about the Levels forum, I agree of course since I kept bringing up the issue to have the system changed. And it is a mess, and bad that some people haven't been following the new system. But to be fair to them the announcement of the new system has been archived, after several years of people being used to the old system.

With that said there's some easy fixes such as using this extension (https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/exte ... 614433abb5) to create a group of people who have made a topic in the forum from being unable to make new ones, and automatically enforce the system in place now.

Also it should be possible for levels to be hosted directly on the site in a repository, however I have no idea what the community would think about that nor the rest of the staff and Kley.

I don't really have a stake in what happens so whatever is the most optimal fix is what I'll support. As long as it's not a downgrade into the old system with Level Judges, then the current state of the forum or any other modifications made would be fine and I won't cling to one or the other.

[MECHDRAGON777]

So for the Lunalua subforum part of your post, I disagree. I don't feel it belongs anywhere else more than it does in General. It's for sharing creations in lua and asking for help which don't always pertain to creating levels or episodes.

Now for the rest about the Levels forum, I agree of course since I kept bringing up the issue to have the system changed. And it is a mess, and bad that some people haven't been following the new system. But to be fair to them the announcement of the new system has been archived, after several years of people being used to the old system.

With that said there's some easy fixes such as using this extension (https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/exte ... 614433abb5) to create a group of people who have made a topic in the forum from being unable to make new ones, and automatically enforce the system in place now.

Also it should be possible for levels to be hosted directly on the site in a repository, however I have no idea what the community would think about that nor the rest of the staff and Kley.

I don't really have a stake in what happens so whatever is the most optimal fix is what I'll support. As long as it's not a downgrade into the old system with Level Judges, then the current state of the forum or any other modifications made would be fine and I won't cling to one or the other.

I am actually more keen to that. As for the extension, what about people who make a thread for people no longer on the forums? (Eclipsed made a level thread that is a list of all other level threads so...)

[PixelPest]

Here's my thoughts:

In terms of the LunaLua subforum, it doesn't make sense to put it under Levels or Projects as people don't just use it for their own levels or episodes (and you'd have to choose between the two) but also post code to share with others and ask for help. Also there was discussion a while ago of possibly promoting it to forum status instead of being a subforum come a later release of SMBX2 as it is seeing more traffic and it's a great feature of the game.

Pertaining to the Levels forum issue, the first rule in the Levels forum rules says that all levels by a single user must be posted in the same topic. There was also an announcement that's now archived that stated this when it was introduced. Therefore feel free to report any topics that don't follow this rule. (Sometimes people have asked to start over so please respect that too.) Also I went through a while ago and performed something like 20 or 30 merges to try to handle this issue but staff are human so we miss things

[Cedur]

The vast majority of new members doesn't take the effort to look for rules and just do what they think is most plausible, which is making new threads for new levels. The subforum's description is the only thing they internalize so it would probably help if the collection thread rule is immediately mentioned in the description. By the same line of thought it would also be useful to emphasize "no WIPs" for the Episode's description and something like "read the rules to learn the requirements" for Projects. Granted, violations will never be prevented completely.

As for the current state, yeah, just merge duplicate threads again.

And as long as there's no way to embed images directly on the site a la Discord, we're also inherently dependant on the state of image hosting servers and our images can quickly die down.

[GforGoomba]

Why should levels be merged to one thread? Levels are seperate entities and shall be treated as such.

[RudeGuy]

Why should levels be merged to one thread? Levels are seperate entities and shall be treated as such.

It's not just one thread, it's one thread per author. Levels are organized this way for searching purpose and because the levels forum would be cluttered if there was a thread for each level.

[Archived]

Archived

[aero]

With that said there's some easy fixes such as using this extension (https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/exte ... 614433abb5) to create a group of people who have made a topic in the forum from being unable to make new ones, and automatically enforce the system in place now.

I completely disagree with these two points because some people have reasons to have more than one thread in the levels forum such as an overall compilation and a levels compilation thread or threads inquiring about their lost levels from a time gone by. Added on to what PixelPest expressed, some people do not want to have a permanent showcase and criticism on their old levels and want to start afresh or anew and that is a wish that people should respect and this extension indirectly goes against that.

This would be taken into consideration and things would be adjusted to accommodate these people. Automatic enforce sometimes runs into problems with exceptions of the rules, but it's not something that can't be worked around if necessary.

I just did some testing by clicking on the subforums and once you click on one, the first two threads you see are in announcements as in month of June and last night's downtime. An issue here is that on sub-forums some people would want to scroll down to the new topic button and completely miss the levels forum rules thread. While, I believe that everyone when signing up reads the overall rules thread, it is more likely they leave subforum rules threads until they need to use it, thereby with the first two sentences it increases their likelihood of missing the system due to either just forgetting or completely missing it.

The forum rules at the top of the forum in red state "-Showcase all of your levels in one topic. " before any of the forums. The problem might just people used to the old system more than the rules not being visible enough.

[PixelPest]

As Aero mentioned, sure people may not be aware immediately of the new rules, however they're posted in two different spots on the Levels forum and they should be able to see many topics that follow this. If they aren't reading the rules either in the red banner at the top or in the Levels Forum Rules thread, or just generally being observant, I'm not sure what else can really be done to enforce it, other than just catching it the first time it happens with some new users

[Archived]

Archived

[WildW]

Why should levels be merged to one thread? Levels are seperate entities and shall be treated as such.

It's not just one thread, it's one thread per author. Levels are organized this way for searching purpose and because the levels forum would be cluttered if there was a thread for each level.

Or maybe we could just use the spreadsheets that have been made to help find more levels made by a certain person but that would require constant updates so I think the old system would work as well

[PixelPest]

Why should levels be merged to one thread? Levels are seperate entities and shall be treated as such.

It's not just one thread, it's one thread per author. Levels are organized this way for searching purpose and because the levels forum would be cluttered if there was a thread for each level.

Or maybe we could just use the spreadsheets that have been made to help find more levels made by a certain person but that would require constant updates so I think the old system would work as well

I'm also just trying to think about how much chaos switching back to the old system would cause with the current state of the Levels forum

[ElectriKong]

Why should levels be merged to one thread? Levels are seperate entities and shall be treated as such.

It's not just one thread, it's one thread per author. Levels are organized this way for searching purpose and because the levels forum would be cluttered if there was a thread for each level.

Or maybe we could just use the spreadsheets that have been made to help find more levels made by a certain person but that would require constant updates so I think the old system would work as well

Pretty sure the spreadsheets were made so that levels in the archived forums would not be forgotten about.
I cannot see a spreadsheet for sorting levels working.

[Archived]

Archived

[aero]

The repository could be made with some decent site front-end plugins that handle the uploading and browsing, however it may not be completely optimal for organizing levels.