I’m going to try my best to be as objective as I can in this post.
After surfing the collab section for weeks, it really seems that many of the discussions end up lectures to others that “should work on smaller projects” or the original posters is caught in a flame battle… which is pretty understandable.
I’m quite sure most of us have seen or has got caught in a MMO,“Ambitious Twelve-year-old”, or “Ideas Guy” thread, so I’m not going into a lot of detail about that. I’m also pretty sure that many of us have seen people being bashed when trying to either showcase themselves in an attempt to get people on their team, or people who aren’t presenting an idea are getting bashed after people are mistakenly thinking the thread is in regard to an actual project that is in development.
Despite the Rules Thread and the advice given daily by the members of the forum that visit the Collab section, unorganized or “poorly thought out” projects end up mixed in with projects that are seeking serious/experienced teams and/or members.
It just seems that it is hard to locate a promising project, team, or members on the collaboration section at times, and while that isn’t the responsibility of the moderators to control, it seems like that it would be best if there was a way to split the Collab section into sub-sections. Examples:
Collaboration Section:
New Project Recruitment
Existing Team Recruitment
MOG/MMO Team Recruitment
Volunteers (or something that)
Idea Collaboration (not really needed, but hey )
Beginners/Learning Section (for those new members that want to learn Unity together in teams)
This is only a suggestion, but it seems like it would help out a lot of people.
I admin a large-ish game dev forum and believe me when I say that there’s such a thing as over-categorising. It becomes a pain to navigate, and most people will just post in the wrong sections anyways.
Forums are designed to be viewed chronologically as well, so they don’t lend themselves particularly brilliantly to the presentation of ideas/projects. The general solution is some sort of project database but that’s a fair chunk of work.
I definitely understand where you are coming from… some people don’t really know what they are getting into with their lofty ideas (but they are clearly new… so it’s hard to say how they should know without trying?), and these threads usually end up in flame wars or lectures which end up being bumped with each new comment added to the thread.
It’s hard to find decent projects, but I don’t think the answer would be to put more categories in an attempt to “section off the crap”. Perhaps there is a better way to have the uninteresting/un-thought out projects sink quickly in the thread list. I’ve seen a thumbs-up/thumbs-down voting system be suggested before… and that might actually be something to look into. Posts that are clearly just troll-bait could be downvoted by folks who don’t want to see a flame-war mucking up a list of projects that they are looking to follow… hard to say.
I don’t think there’s enough traffic to warrant separating them yet. People who are actively recruiting keep their threads bumped, and there just isn’t that many each day.
Back in 1976 I wanted this car that I saw on the car lot. It was two years old and was loaded. ya know power steering, power brakes, power windows, cruise, AC . I wanted it really bad so I went to a friend and had him go to the dealer and ask the sticker price. $5900 bucks. So the next day my friend and I were changing out his motor in his $90,000 race car. I was dirty had like 3 days beard, my jeans were torn and t-shirt was ripped. I stopped at the bank on the way home and grabbed some money and had him drop me at the dealer.
The salesman totally ignored me. I looked at the vehicle and opened the hood., pulled the dipstick and finally being a bit impatient asked if I could test drive it. The guy was a total dick about it and being arrogant so I said ‘OK how much to buy it? He actually laughed at me. Said $4000 buck if you have it KID. I said sounds great and pulled out the big wad and started counting. He pissed his pants (for real)
I took this knowledge with me into the internet in the late 1990’s where I do all my recruiting, outsourcing and business because I get the true colors of people so I can judge who I would want on a multi-million dollar project and who is throwing their career away because they ar arrogant ass hats that think being anonymous they can wield their swords of wit.
Little they know that it is a two edge with serious consequences…
)