Grazer is planning to move to discourse (a different forum software). However, it still hasn’t happened yet but I think he really should do it.
Some of the categories in this forum are just terrible. We don’t even have a specific category for asking help. “How To” is meant for “tips and tricks for using flowlab”, so basically for tutorials/example games. “Game Design” and “Art & Sound” are almost never used, they’re just redundant and fit perfectly fine in the general category. Even reviews didn’t need its own category. This forum isn’t that populated.
The new categories should be:
Announcements
General
Just anything related to flowlab; includes tutorials, reviews, game design, art and sound
Asking help
If you need help with your game you can use this category
Feature Requests
Bug Reports
Play my game
Also, the home page of the forum should show the categories instead of listing all discussions from every category together. That way it’s a bit more organized.
Coming from a decade of BB forums, I was never a fan of vanilla in the first place. If he switches over, that could have a lot of advantages for organizing the topics.
Having a “Help” category up top with only one “Help” tag for when users need help would help so much.
I also like “General” not being the first thing you see, it just feels like a trash bin for where all the discussions go. Selecting General would at least show the other options the Forum has to offer.
If you ask for help in this forum and you get the help you needed, you shouldn’t be able to delete the discussion right after. It isn’t all “done” yet. People who encounter the same problem in the future should be able to find your discussion through google so that way people don’t repeatedly keep asking the same questions in the forum. That’s literally the whole point of a support forum.
Discussions should be closed automatically when nobody has commented on it for a while (30 days maybe). People still comment on discussions from years ago and it just clutters up the front page.
I agree with @meburningslime especially if his wiki answers whatever question
@Latif I’m not just talking about help discussions I’m talking about discussions that mean nothing to you. Like a discussion talking about a new game you are making. You don’t want some commenting on it 3 months later saying “Cool” or something but, I do agree with the 30 day statement but there should be an option to disable the th time limit
@gameraider374 I get what you mean, but I still don’t see any reason to delete your thread. Just stop commenting on your discussion and it’ll get locked automatically after 30 days. Nobody will be able to comment on it anymore except for you, and if you decide to do that, the discussion will be unlocked again.
The limit should only be disabled for discussions in the “play my game” category so people can always give feedback to your game. For the other categories I don’t see a reason for it to be disabled, pretty much every discussion dies if nobody comments on it for a month, but discussions where you show your game can be revived if you update it.