Would dividing the forum up into levels work, e.g. Basic Scipting, Scripting, Advanced Scripting work?
But then if I want to help someone I have to check 3x more forums for the same data. It’s not like the current forums move that quickly.
Also, how would a person know which forum to post on? Things that are ‘basic scripting’ to me may be very advanced concepts to someone who is just starting programming.
I’ve seen this sort of concept requested in different forms(we need a “Pro” section is similar) and at different times, and it always comes off as a self-serving “I want help from people above me, but don’t want to help people below me”. What does an experienced section provide, other than allowing you to ignore people who are not ‘experienced’? If I were in basic scripting, I would want people in scripting and advanced scripting to try to help if they knew, and if I was in scripting I would want people in advanced scripting to help as well. All that adding more experience tiers to forums does is make it harder for people to advance up these tiers of knowledge, and make it harder for people here to help to be able to help as many as they can.
The tiers would just be open forum branches not levels, and the potential reason for it is the amount of churn on the forum, if it were categorised you could then more easily see what level to look in for basic help and where to look to find out more advanced help.
And yes you would start to see that as you learn the ropes with unity you would be posting more in the advanced section but could help people out more in the basic section.
And not everyone is advanced in every area of unity e.g. Shaders, Scripting, GUI, Multiplayer, iOS, Android, Flash ect.
See… that is so not true. I, like almost all programmers, have a God complex, so there is nobody “above us” in terms of ability or knowledge. And because of this, we are willing, and have demonstrated on many an occasion, to help out those that are below us with code and advice and direction.
What you will most likely find though is that anybody with a modicum of ability will eventually get tired of answering the same old crap questions equal to “HOW I MINE FOR VAR IN SCRIPT!!!” that could be answered inside of 15 seconds with Google or a decent book. Most people who are newbs are not newbs because they do not know how to program, but because they are obtusely ignorant and unwilling to try or offer any kind of commitment.
I have at least six active posts giving direct solutions in the past week or so, where the question was asked and I answered, and there is no “thanks” for it. The next action the questioner takes is because someone answered their last question so well they will now PM the answerer multiple times demanding that they write more code for the next round of inane questions. This is why most reasonably advanced people want a “Pro” section, to separate the committed from those that should be.
I and many others don’t do it for the thanks, we do it to share, and to show our superiority God complex, but we also want a little more feedback than “I’m too lazy to think for myself now that you have ably demonstrated that you will do it for me if I whine loudly enough and bump my posts often enough.”
Beside, not sure I want to divide by complexity level as the poster below states, but I do want a “Pro” only forum. When I’m reading something that requires a financial commitment, I am reasonably assured of the person’s sincerity in their questions, i.e. they actually tried something before asking rather than just using these forums as a surrogate Google.
Dividing by complexity level isn’t practical or desirable. People will ask in the wrong subsections and it will be harder to find previous answers. Plus more work to browse the forums, meaning less answered questions.
So the moderators will have to stay on their toes.
What about linking the forum to UnityAnswers where a new thread posts automatically get’s a response listing the best answers from UnityAnswers and only if you declare that what you are looking for is not there does your post get published?
Certainly not; they are two different things. I honestly don’t understand the desire to add needless complexity for no gain…frankly these ideas seem to be trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
–Eric
Scripting is…unpredictable. It’s hard for people to define whether the scripts should be placed on a difficulty level. Unlike modelling, you might not know the difference between a basic and an intermediate level in your scripts. To add different sections of scripting based on level would further impede the community to effectively helping others. People might be confused whether they should stick to a ‘certain’ level if they are experienced or not.
Someone might be an intermediate scripter as you would put it, but he might be discouraged to give advice in the advanced Section. Maybe because he felt he isnt prepared enough to give advice, because it’s for advanced scripters only. A universal section that we have now is doing quite alright, anyone can chip in to help and regardless if everyone’s opinions are reliable or not, eventually some will make sense and help solve the problems.
And different sections means more unnesscecary work. If it isn’t broken, there is no use fixing it.
One of these threads again?
I have seen so many of these and we only have one forum. I can only imagine the double posting that would go on if there were multiple.
If anyone wants to search the forum better use Google and type
I don’t get why people want to add more sections to the forums. If there are more sections, the forums would become too hard to navigate. If any of you have been to forums that have a lot of sections, you would sympathise with me. Hell, even now quite a few people post specialized problems in the general “support” section, and some people post their unity problems in the gossip section.
Even ignoring that, a basic and professional forum is a terrible idea. People who are genuinely new and have basic problems would post in the basic section, but all the people who have the answers for them would be in the professional forum, ignoring the basic forum because it is too low for them. However, the kids who haven’t opened the Unity editor once and are recruiting for an mmo would post in the professional section because they think they are awesome and professional, even when they aren’t. So really, it would just be a huge spectacle that would make people on the forums even more annoyed.
They wouldn’t post there if they didn’t have a Unity Pro key tied to their account.
Every pro must have had this thought at least once if they are regular forum members. After all, just how many teenage MMO threads can one read in a week? The inexperienced will always over-estimate the value of their work and the frequency that others wish to see it. So even in open “pro” threads, the noobs would keep posting.
There is an argument that all those with experience will simply move to the restricted pro threads, making learning difficult for newcomers if they couldn’t see the posts. Even pros when evaluating new packages sometimes need additional information, especially if the reference documentation is lacking in an area.
I’d support a community 3-month trial of a pro area, but visible to all. Only pro license holders would have the ability to make posts. Exclusive, hell yeah. $1500 worth of exclusive. It’d be another reason to buy a license. A pro area would also be worth promoting, because potential buyers of Unity would have a single place to see most of the best work being done with the engine.
Let’s face it. If you are the helping type, you’d browse the non-pro forums too and make your support posts. That community support isn’t about to stop. But if you are a pro and have a limited amount of browsing time, you want to spend that reading worthy content.
+1
but like you said, us noobs would get less attention 
As someone who regularily does help out… WTF?
If I want to help out on a small thing… I specifically look for that. If I want to solve a difficult or challenging problem… I look for that.
The only way the basic users are going to get less help is because the ‘helpers’ are currently wasting time that could be spent investing in the community. Much in the same way we have separate sub-forums for Commercial and Collaboration. It simply makes things more efficient which is good for everyone.