Forum improvements

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Riamus

Riamus

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Okay, so we obviously have a new forum. It is bland and boring, but there is hope that they will improve the look of it at some point. But there are other changes that are also negative, so here are some things to improve the forum and make it more useful again.

  • Allow editing old posts again. This made it easy to have a topic that you could update regularly. For example, topics about have suggestions where a person would add more to the original post over time, or a fan version of a new dev diary with info about the upcoming version while waiting for the official one to be posted where the original post can be updated as new information becomes available. Being able to update the original post is extremely useful. Losing that ability in under 24 hours makes no sense.
  • Bring back the mods forums as they were before. You can still do the new submissions form tied to the mods page, but there should be a way to just post mods to the forum as before. The new mods section has benefits, but it's too restrictive and so loses those benefits. Or allow mods submissions that don't have direct download links as it was originally.
  • Allow disabling the side sections of the main forum page such as forum starts and trending or most recent posts. Those aren't so bad on the mobile page because they are under the forum, but in the computer, they take up too much width and are mostly useless. Few people care about forum stats. And online users isn't important on a forum (this isn't a chat room). Tending or recent posts can be useful, but are easy to access from the top menu without having to take up space.
  • Widen the forum. We aren't on 800x600 anymore.
  • Improve the themes. The current two themes are really bland and boring and look like they are from 2000.
 
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I totally subscribe all of the above, specially:

1- Remove the editing time limit (which does not make much sense to me).

2- Make the addition of a Direct download link button in new mods submission OPTIONAL, like it was before. I understand the concerns by allowing using 3rd party sites in that "go to download" button, as Brains has explained (thank you 💜) but in that case please, consider making the "go to download" button OPTIONAL instead. Make it mandatory to have a direct download in the mod description if you want, fine, but please do not enforce having a direct download link right after opening the mod page, in a shiny "download" button.
Instead, it is a healthy practice for people to actually having to scroll down and read the mod description and instructions before actually finding the download links and download the mod. That also allows more people to see what different DL alternatives exists.

There is a reason why, in the vast majority of cases, for years, and in most games, people adds the DL links close to the bottom of the "mod description".
And reason is, because people should actually READ the mod information before downloading the mod. Just so that we prevent the 90% of the "bug reports"/"it does not work"/"do I need EAC OFF" questions/complaints because people did not read the instructions.

No, having the DL links in the mod description instead of in a separate button does not guarantee that people would actually read, but it encourages it.

I hope you will at least think about some of the suggestions to make the forums better for everybody. Thank you in any case 💜
 
I got lost in the previous discussion about download links for Mods and then that conversation got shutdown and I couldn't reply. My modlet is too big for the forums, so it has to be external.

There was something about not wanting people to have to login to some other site to download, which would leave out NexusMods. While I don't mind finding an alternative if that is required, NexusMods comes with some advantages not found on the forums, such as several metrics that describe downloads, views, and more. These forums aren't quite as good at that.
 
I thought I'd share what I mean by NexusMod stats and history... This is showing a Daily history. I can also see Weekly and Monthly.

Mod-Stats.png
 
One other thing. NexusMods lets me offer older versions of the modlet for download. I currently have releases available for:

1.4
1.3
1.2
1.1
1.0
A21.2
A21.1
A20.7
A19.6

... because sometimes, rarely, somebody wants to play an older version of the game.
 
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In the old forum it was easier to see and select the latst new reaction/post, also the entire layout was much more inviting to read and more pleasant on the eye.
In the current state it feels more like a mobile only forum.
 
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