Is there a way to keep all of the art submissions in one topic that is stickied. I say this because all of the normal topics get completely buried by the art topics (and sometimes there can be 10 or more art topics on top of a normal topic!). Not really a big deal but just wondering if there is something you can do for the sake of clutter and organization.
I hope you donât mind, I made your private message into a public topic for discussion with the community.
Currently the Contributions category is used to discuss new contributions to the Panzer Dragoon Legacy website. Sometimes it will be months, or even years, before these contributions are ready to go on the site. Many contributions need further discussion before they are ready. It is useful for me (and other admins) to be able to filter the contributions by topic so that we can see which cases have been resolved or not. For example, this filter shows which topics have yet to be âsolvedâ:
https://discuss.panzerdragoonlegacy.com/c/contributions/15?solved=no
By putting all of the art contributions in one topic, we would lose the ability to see which art topics have been solved.
That said, maybe there is something else that can be done about this. Any thoughts from other members of the community would be welcomed.
I am fine with them each having a topic. Maybe if there was a way to filter categories? Other than that, Iâm now worried that if I submit art it will bother people.
How about this: when we click on forum it brings us to two separate categories: âArt contributionsâ and âDiscussionâ. Solo, I think you had the forums sort of set up this way back in the past. But, now you will only need two categories to separate the art, from the normal topics.
That way the normal topics wont get buried under all of the art contributionsâŚ
One option is that you browse the Categories view instead of the Latest view, which works more like a traditional forum - e.g. you select a category, and then a topic in that category. Some Discourse forums have the Categories view set as the default view, which is possible. I personally prefer the Latest view, as it allows me to see every new topic at a glance. Would using the Categories view solve the problem for you, @legaiaflame?
The problem with only having two categories is that itâs useful to be able to sort by âPanzer Dragoonâ, âOther Gamesâ, etc. We already have many more categories than two.
Well, by default when anyone goes to the forum the art is always going to be burying the normal topics because there is more art than normal topics.
And like you said: itâs nice to see all the new topics in every category in the same location. If I clicked on lets say only the âPanzer Dragoon related topicsâ Iâd only see that and might miss a âSegaâ topic or an âOther gamesâ topic.
Itâs just the main problem is the countless art submissions are taking the fore front and itâs annoying to have to scroll down 7 or 8 art contributions to get back to the normal topics. Itâs very cluttered imo. And sometimes there can be 10 or more art contributions filling up the forum.
We might be in a discussion about say Panzer Dragoon Saga and then the next day it gets burred under 10 art submissionsâŚ
If you made two subdivisions from the forum link, âartâ and âDiscussionâ there is no way we still wouldnât be able to use sort by new submissions in the âart sectionâ and sort by âPanzer Dragoonâ, âOther Gamesâ, etc. in the âDiscussionâ section? That way all of the new art contributions could be in one neat place.
You would just have two separate branches. With the sort by âPanzer Dragoonâ, âOther Gamesâ, etc. still being contained in the âDiscussionsâ branch.
It seems to me that are three issues here:
First is the question of whether a piece of fan art should be considered a topic of discussion in its own right. While Iâve (hopefully) presented a case that justifies this, I am open to alternative ways of organising contributions (but Iâm not going back to discussing contributions via email, PM, or chat - these are an organisational nightmare that does not scale).
The second issue is, assuming that we are going to keep having individual art topics, how they should be presented by default. It would be somewhat misleading to hide them from the âLatestâ view by default, so this isnât really a clean solution to the clutter issue that @legaiaflame brought up (if this is indeed a problem for others who continue to use the default view).
The third issue is what to do with the (non-default) categories view. We might be able to implement subcategories. This is apparently possible in Discourse. So a possible solution would be leave the default âLatestâ view as-is, but set up sub-categories that people can âdrill downâ into in the Categories view. Hereâs an example of a Categories view with sub-categories.
How about just submitting and discussing the Art submissions on the Panzer Dragoon discord only. And just posting all of the new art in one self contained topic on these forums?
That way we could get rid of the clutter and have them stickied in one topic. Unless, thatâs not possible and all submissions get linked to this forumâŚ
You mean the discord? There was a submission place there, but it was removed because no one used it.
There is no way to make a sub forum containing the new art submissions that branches off of the main discussions here?
My main issue with using Discord for contributions is that I couldnât see how we could use it to deal with this problem:
A forum is the ideal place for discussing something over a longer period of time.
Maybe we could link to the dicord art submission, from the main site here? That is if more people submit through the site.
So, then we just need a way to organize them so they donât clutter the default view.
To the best of my knowledge, Discourse supports categories, subcategories, and tags for organising topics. There are no forums, it is all one big forum. There are some muting options we can apply too, but thereâs the question of how that would work without obscuring something useful.
The default view is a necessity because it shows us all new topics in every category at once. Itâs just the countless art submissions are covering up the normal discussions.
Letâs all have a think and sleep on how this could work (within the Discourse feature set). We have to consider how everything works together, not just individual problems. I would like to hear from others as well, as Iâm hesitant to change how things work on the request of one member.
Letâs think to the future for a moment: with the release of the new Panzer Dragoon Remake and a possible Zwei and Saga remake; what would happen if we got a hundred more people coming to these forums?
What if 50+ new art submissions were submitted at once? That would mean we would have 50+ art topics burying the normal topics.
Itâs just hypothetical and we most likely wonât get that many at once, but itâs not impossible. But even 20+ would be an excessive amount amongst the normal topics in the default view.
My thoughts are that promoting discussion should be of the utmost importance on a forum, so making it easy to find topics and jump in should be the goal here. To that end, I agree with Legaia and judging by the amount of comments that the art topics get they donât instigate conversation themselves.
Perhaps the best way to proceed would be to make the contributions category private for moderators, as it is primarily moderators that create these topics. We can then use these posts to keep track of contributions, and when theyâve been added to the site perhaps an âUpdatesâ topic could be updated (perhaps this could be where all updates to the site are posted too?).
And if anyone other than a moderator posts art etc in their own topic, well, thatâs fine too. We can tag these (I think) to keep track of them. It means looking in two locations (âContributionsâ category and âContributionsâ tags) but perhaps the trade off is worth it.
I donât think art posts are less worthy of their own thread than other topics.