WAD Releases Subforum Reorganization Proposal

[Xaser]

Hey y'all,

 

While the split of the old WADs and Mods forum into separate subforums is overall a good thing, I've noticed lately that there's been a lot of threads posted in the wrong one (e.g. a project with maps in "Mods & Resources"). A big chunk of that is 'cause we've had a big uptick in new user accounts lately (e.g. general growing pains), but the mod subforums are getting hit the most and many of the threads look like they're posted by folks that otherwise seem to know what they're doing -- i.e. even the good posters are tripping up. :P

 

At any rate, I have a theory of sorts. Here's how it currently looks on the front page:

 

There's a few possible points of confusion here:

• "WAD Releases & Development" is for maps, but its title and description don't say the word "map" anywhere

• Neither the "Mods & Resources" and "WAD Discussion" forums have their descriptions visible here -- you have to click into one of the subforums to see them at all

• The description for "Mods & Resources" says "non-map" in it, but it's a really small piece of text that's hard to see if you jump straight to the forum from the front page.

• The word "Mod" is frankly a bit too generic here -- outside the Doom community, "mod" is used to describe any kind of user-created content (i.e. a map is a type of mod), while inside the Doom community we use the more-specific term "gameplay mod" to refer to a thing without maps in it. Just plain "mod" is not enough to describe what the forum is intended for.

 

tl;dr: My guess is that when a new user wants to post their new map, they click on the forum that says "Mod" in the title since they know what that is and then miss the tiny little text at the top that says "non-map" in it. Welp.

 

So, the proposal -- let's pull all 3 forums up to the top level under a new category, like so:

 

This way, descriptions for all three are visible, and the forum titles make it much clearer what things go where.

 

I'm still not totally sold on the "Mod discussion" forum title and description -- trying to come up with something that captures the idea of "hey if you wanna talk about someone else's mod that doesn't have a thread in the other two forums, post it here" -- but that's hard to sum up. Suggestions welcome.

 

This isn't a panacea obviously -- some folks are going to not read at all and Do Whatever(tm), but that shouldn't stop us from making improvements that will help out the literate types.

 

 

 

P.S.: How common is the word "map" used to describe levels outside of the Doom community? I wonder if it would make more sense to say "levels" instead of "maps" here, but I dunno if I'm overthinking it.

 

[Biodegradable]

23 minutes ago, Xaser said:

P.S.: How common is the word "map" used to describe levels outside of the Doom community? I wonder if it would make more sense to say "levels" instead of "maps" here, but I dunno if I'm overthinking it.

 

I'd say it's pretty common, mate. Most people who make them refer to themselves as "mappers" rather than level designers and say things like, "Check out my new map!" and, "thanks for playing my map, guys".

[Daytime Waitress]

42 minutes ago, Xaser said:

P.S.: How common is the word "map" used to describe levels outside of the Doom community? I wonder if it would make more sense to say "levels" instead of "maps" here, but I dunno if I'm overthinking it.

 

I know this comes from a case of wanting better clarification for those fresh off the boat from Elsewhere, but it definitely feels like you're overthinking that one. There's an established vocabulary within the Doom community to refer to dem tings as "maps", so I don't think it's really too much to ask of newcomers to make the connection between what they might know elsewhere as stages or levels or whatchamacallits and "maps".

 

"Mods" is way more vague, though, and so your other proposals seem pretty on-point. And I wish I had a better suggestion for the "Mod Discussion" section, because as you pointed out, that's a prickly one.

[Lucius Wooding]

I think "Gameplay Mods" is much better than just "Mods", and it also reinforces the distinction between mod and wad. 

 

Spoiler

My IRL friend conflates the terms mod and wad constantly, it triggers me a little bit ngl

 

I also think it's good to mention things like textures and midi and make those terms visible with minimal browsing. 

[Shepardus]

I think pulling the WAD subforums up to the top level is justified; WADs are so fundamental to why people still play Doom and come here that it's funny shoving them all into a single top-level forum. The current WAD forum has the most posts of any top-level forum (even more than Doom General or Everything Else, impressively), so it's not like there's too little activity for it.

 

One thing I've never been clear on, though, is what distinguishes "WAD Discussion" from "General" - there are topics that obviously belong in General because they have nothing to do with WADs, but it feels to me that a lot of threads could just as easily go in either.

 

Another common mistake I see is to post editing questions in the WADs section. I would have thought that "Doom Editing" was clear enough, but apparently people still miss it on a regular basis (or perhaps they think making a map isn't "editing"?).

 

Not to beat a dead horse, but I think "map" is well understood, especially among 3D games (for example, every multiplayer FPS; in fact, if you Google "CounterStrike levels" you get an explanation of the CS:GO ranking system, not a list of its maps).

 

Spoiler

Your screenshot made me check the Sunder thread for MAP21 >:(

 

[Doomy__Doom]

3 hours ago, Shepardus said:

Another common mistake I see is to post editing questions in the WADs section. I would have thought that "Doom Editing" was clear enough, but apparently people still miss it on a regular basis (or perhaps they think making a map isn't "editing"?).

Tbf, if I pretend for a moment that it's unclear what "Doom Editing" refers to, then the subforum's description suddenly looks completely unhelpful. It basically just repeats the term "editing", which if already unclear does not improve the situation one bit. Contrast to zdoom forums' editing subforums, which say stuff like "Ask about editing graphics, sounds, models, music, etc here!" - keywords which can be associated more directly with what one is doing. I don't really have a good "general" phrase suggestion (and I don't think DW traffic warrants specific subforums like scripting or assets), but it should probably say something to the effect of "questions about making your maps/wads/mods go here".

[Blast_Brothers]

I think putting renaming "Doom Editing" to something with "Help" in the title would go a long way towards clarifying that it's a help subforum.

 

Something like "Doom Editing Help and Utilities" would be good- including "and utilities" because stuff like the DoomTools thread is in there... even though I wish all those utility threads (and Doom Launcher, which is just chilling in Doom General) were in a renamed "Source Ports and Utilities" subforum, and then Doom Editing could just be Doom Help... But I digress.

Edited August 9, 2023 by Blast_Brothers

[tornado potato]

I like this. I can say as a new member that indeed this proposal is very much clearer. I mean I did figure out what each subforum was for but I was not a fan of the nested structure.

[Individualised]

Maps is very common outside of the Doom community especially in modern FPS games - in fact no one would call a map in a modern FPS game a level.

[Mr. Alexander]

This is a sensible idea. "Maps and Megawads" has a nice ring to it, and it would abbreviate easily to M&M, which is funny because the compulsiveness of playing Doom maps resembles the compulsiveness of eating M&Ms. The "discussion" subforum's name presents more interesting problems than the question of whether to call "levels" "maps," and I don't have a good solution for any of them. Thanks for raising the issue in the general forum.

[Tiramisu]

Here's my 2 cents on the proposal:

 

- Maps & Megawads (using the word "map" here is a good direction, but this sounds a bit ambiguous and clouds the purpose of the discussion forum)

- Gameplay Mods & Resources (this is a good change)

- Mod Discussion (the word "mod" in this context makes it sound like it's only for discussing gameplay mods)

 

Here's how I would do it, instead:

 

- Map Releases & Development (a mixture of old and new)

- Gameplay Mods & Resources (Xaser's new version)

- WAD Discussion ("wad" is more all-inclusive in this context)

 

Splitting the sub-forums up into a new category is a good idea overall (I mean, it doesn't even make sense for resources and discussion to be a sub-category of new releases)!

Edited August 11, 2023 by sq. Tiramisu