[Forums] New sub-forums

[NeuralStunner]

I think, having 3 forums, for mods, maps and combined projects is enough, if tags can be made mandatory.

Agreed. (If not mandatory, at least a "this is strongly suggested, otherwise people will have trouble finding your mod".)

What's needed for tags to do be worth much: Clickable search links (displayed as topics) for various tags. I'll even volunteer to write up such a post, if the subforums & guidelines happen.

I don't envy anyone that intends to retag a bunch of existing projects, though.

[wildweasel]

What'd probably work better is if there's a forum plugin that can be used specifically for the Projects forums, which lets users assign a tag from a predetermined list. Realm667's submission areas have a similar thing in place, but they don't run phpBB.

[Gez]

A previous version of the forum used phpBB, and there was a tag system.

There are a few tagging systems for phpBB, exempli gratia, and those are just the first two results from a quick search, not a real investigation into the subject. They actually seem better than the thread title tagging system I've seen before, because you can apparently easily add multiple tags -- e.g., "Heretic, GZDoom, maps, custom content" could be the tag list for HPack, and then someone could search for thread tags to get all the Heretic projects and find it. Something that works more like the categories on the wiki than like just a prefix on the thread title.

[Graf Zahl]

Of course that'd work only if it was enforced. Knowing how people are you can bet that most wouldn't bother tagging their threads.

[Gez]

In tagging systems I've used before, anyone could tag a thread. The OP could put up to five tags, other posters could put up to two tags. Moderators/admins had the ability to add and remove any tag without limitation, of course.

[NeuralStunner]

Of course that'd work only if it was enforced. Knowing how people are you can bet that most wouldn't bother tagging their threads.

So their mods would be more likely to get lost/missed/ignored. If they're that lazy, the consequences are their problem, IMO.

The opposite was actually just as much, if not more of, a problem. Dimwits grasping for attention will use anything (tags, topic icons, animated smilies, all caps titles, &c.) to get their trashpost noticed.

As far as plugin-based options: I settled on the Topic Multi-Moderation mod (which includes thread prefixing as a feature). Only issue I see with it is that you can only filter the post list by one tag at a time.

[DoomRater]

In tagging systems I've used before, anyone could tag a thread. The OP could put up to five tags, other posters could put up to two tags. Moderators/admins had the ability to add and remove any tag without limitation, of course.

This sounds ideal. Adding a report reason for tags under the report button would help too, just in case someone was incorrectly tagging things, since I assume normal users cannot remove tags that aren't part of their own threads.

[Gez]

IIRC, users could remove the tags that they had added themselves, whether it was their own topic or not.

[Xaser]

I like the idea of tags because they're not mutually exclusive. You can have individual "map" and "gameplay mod" tags and assign both to apply to something that has both (e.g. ZDCMP2). May be worth brainstorming which tags to "standardize".

Would need moderator help to work, as mentioned, but I'm all for it. Multi-tag filtering would be a must, though.

[NeuralStunner]

I wouldn't argue with 3DGE getting its own dedicated forum, though. It could use a place for dev, help and project threads. (And certainly deserves it.)

[The Ultimate DooMer]

All this talk of tags seemed to have stopped the idea from going through...wouldn't it be easier to have the original idea (maps forum) and people just adding [TC], [GZDoom], [Hexen] etc. on the front of their thread titles? (it's not like there's gonna be a huge list of projects for us to click on just to see what they are)

[Gez]

This is dependent on people not screwing it up when setting their thread title.

Also, [TC] would be a terrible tag. It's too short to be searchable.