Rejected Doom News

@Chainmail:

Apparently you don't understand the meaning of the term 'news'. By your definition any news that might distract you wouldn't be newsworthy. Have you ever read a newspaper?

Chain Mail said:

It's annoying for anyone not visiting every day, plus it scatters discussion about wads even more (adding a third place over the chronicles and wads & mods). Not to mentiona that the people that visit every day pretty much also browse the forums, so they don't need every tidbit on the front page.

Of course they don't need every tidbit on the front page. That's why I've said a number of times what goes on the front page should be newsworthy. But having something on the front page (which, let's not forget, is titled "The definitive source for Doom news, information and development") that is up to date and dynamic is important. If you don't have that, you may as well drop the front page entirely and just have the forums. I know some people visit that way anyway but others don't.

Scattering of discussion - I don't really see a big problem with that. So what if a WAD that is posted about in the news is being discussed there and another is being discussed in "wads & mods"? Why does that matter if both places are generating an active discussion? Also, the nature of the discussion will tend to be different. If an item is posted as news, then it needs to be newsworthy and the items will be getting discussed in the context of news rather than as part of an ongoing development thread, or whatever.

Also, why is it annoying to someone not visiting everyday? What do you think people are going to miss if they only visit occasionally? Do you really think a major release will be missed by someone who only visits irregularly just because news about other, smaller, projects were also put on the front page? And if they are not going to miss the major events, why do you care about them possibly missing other items that you have already dismissed as unimportant? What's more, if they really want to catch up with missed items, why can't they browse the news forum thread and catch items that way if they are really worried about it? That sounds like a good way to make sure you catch all the things that are newsworthy (rather than miss them) because they will all be collected in one place - not scattered around the forum where you might be more likely to miss them.

Anyway, I can remember a time when the front page of Doomworld did change daily - sometimes hourly. Every day when you logged on you'd find almost an entire page of new things to read about. Some were important to me, others were less so and I filtered them accordingly. The situation we have just hopefully ditched was not a desirable one. Minimal news with nothing changing on the front page for days on end and little in the way of articles with any substance is not how Doomworld used to be. It used to have the rate of article publishing that you seem to be concerned about, and possibly even higher.

I'd say that the dilution and scattering of forum information - that you seem to be worried about - is actually putting the cart before the horse. I think that, because the front page couldn't be updated as often as it should have been, a lot of the news items that should have been front page news migrated to the various sub forums and became lost in the impenetrable (to the casual visitor) maze of the forums. I'm quite sure that a great deal of the stuff that appears deep in the forums would, at one time, have automatically been front page news when there was the manpower, and people had the time, to put it there. It's time to bring it back IMO.

Chain Mail said:

In this case it would just be a bigger flow of news for more or less the same people. More an illusion of activity than the substance. That's clear by the contents, anyway.

I disagree. The forums are still quite active and things are getting worked on. There are not as many things on the go as there used to be. I think it's pretty clear that less people are editing and there is less activity with source port coding as there was shortly after the source was released, etc, etc, but there are things going on. The mere fact that you are concerned about them cluttering the front page should be evidence of that. If things are going on, then I don't see why they shouldn't be reported as news - provided they are newsworthy. Is it such a leap of faith to imagine the release of a Doom project as being worthy of reporting on a Doom dedicated news page? I think if people are doing things that contribute to the community, and there is a tidbit of news to report about it, then the premiere community news site should be carrying that information on it's news page. And why not report on the activity that there is? It's better than what was happening before because that was only irregular reporting of what little activity there was from a small group of, as you put it, "more or less the same people" who were working on the bigger things. And that was an even smaller group than the one that seems to concern you.

I do still think there is room to decide the criteria for what is newsworthy though.

Chain Mail said:

There's a new system up to allow more news, so talking about the news stagnation during the old admin only news method is pointless. The news wouldn't stagnate if nonexceptional uploads were not to be considered news.

I think there is every point of discussing what went before. You seem to be suggesting that only the major items should be reported. Well, those were getting reported before with the old system. I'm not aware of the front page missing any really big announcements. So, if people are not allowed to post about minor, and what you consider "nonexceptional", uploads (how ever you define those) then all that is left is the big stuff. The big stuff was being reported before, and there wasn't enough of it to keep the front page lively (hence the new system). So you seem to be asking for something that isn't too different from what went before.

If you're not, what magically appearing news items do you have in mind that are significant enough to meet your criteria but which weren't getting mentioned previously? If there's no news about big projects, there's no news about big projects. I think we'd have it a bit wrong if an item along the lines of "Team Big has let us know that their project has had another day of minimal work done on it, it should be out sometime next year or maybe the year after" was reported just because it was a big project but something like "John Doe's little project has been released, you can grab it now" wasn't due to it being "nonexceptional".

Remember, the new system won't create new projects. There won't be a sudden flurry of big projects to be reported just because of the new system. The same small handful of big projects will be around in the coming weeks as there has been in recent months. So, if there is not an increase in big projects, what is the new system going to report? If you only report about the big stuff, then the new system is virtually redundant because the big stuff was already covered. You seem to be saying that everything else is "nonexceptional" and not worth reporting.

To me the new system should be used for reporting the activity that there is, not just waiting for an attention grabbing headline for one of the big, highly anticipated projects. Because, if that's all that gets reported, then we will be back to /newstuff more or less once a week and a very occasional news item about a big project: just like before. To me, the big projects are headline news and the other projects are just news. Is that such a problem?

The new system has been put in place, but if there isn't a discussion about what is acceptable as news, then the rules may not be clear and people may not use it. In which case, nothing has improved and we need to remember why it needs to.

Over the years, the front page has been less and less useful to me. Even to the point where I changed my bookmark to the forums as opposed to the main page. I really like the idea of this system, and I hope people actually continue to use it. My only complaint is that a few days have gone by and nothing new has appeared, heh. At any rate, I plan to make use of this myself, that is when I see something that crosses my mind as newsworthy.

My question is, is it okay to post about something that you heavily contributed to, or does someone else have to report it for you, even if it can benefit the community by them knowing about it?

I agree with Enjay that "minor" stuff ought to be reported, I guess. I mean back in the day we would have updates to the effect of "Captain Mellow has updated his page with the news that he likes black cats more than white cats" or whatever. And yeah, the novelty of the news submission system seems to have worn off pretty quick.

EarthQuake said:

My question is, is it okay to post about something that you heavily contributed to, or does someone else have to report it for you, even if it can benefit the community by them knowing about it?

Define "heavily". My reasoning is that project leaders, authors of individual WADs, and those who are the primary contributor to a project (well they'd probably be the leader then anyway) shouldn't report about their own stuff. Remember, you can still send your news in by e-mail.

Linguica said:

I agree with Enjay that "minor" stuff ought to be reported, I guess. I mean back in the day we would have updates to the effect of "Captain Mellow has updated his page with the news that he likes black cats more than white cats" or whatever. And yeah, the novelty of the news submission system seems to have worn off pretty quick.

It's certainly getting a little out of hand. I'm all for news of any type, just as long as its earnest and not some plug for a crappy wad that nobody cares about. Not saying this is the case for Torm's map, but it's worth emphasizing because not every joe needs a post on the front page.

I still think the forums and newstuff are the way to get the word out about your map. I would also think that most people who read the front page are also browsing the forums. Obviously, there were plenty of people involved in the discussion over Torm's map, so it became news-worthy in that sense. But I don't think that beatfarmer34, who just made his first wad, really needs a post on the front page.

Linguica said:

I agree with Enjay that "minor" stuff ought to be reported, I guess. I mean back in the day we would have updates to the effect of "Captain Mellow has updated his page with the news that he likes black cats more than white cats" or whatever. And yeah, the novelty of the news submission system seems to have worn off pretty quick.

The first time ever I have to agree with Ling :P Nevertheless, Enjay is very right with what he said and his arguments are valid. I'd be happy to have lots of news on the frontpage of Doomworld - not only because I'm a daily visitor ;)

Graf Zahl said:

Apparently you don't understand the meaning of the term 'news'. By your definition any news that might distract you wouldn't be newsworthy. Have you ever read a newspaper?

Maybe where you live newspapers come in a single page, I don't know.

Enjay said:
Of course they don't need every tidbit on the front page. That's why I've said a number of times what goes on the front page should be newsworthy.

One thing that could be done is to place the evidently special, funny, or big news on the front page and a link that says "more news", either expanding the front page to include what can be considered lesser news by the admins, or opening another page with the rest of the news. This would have the advantage of keeping the front page pretty clean without obscuring or excluding minor news. It would be a hybrid between the "staff" method and the current wikilike one without losing the strengths of either.

PS: I aplogise for inciting you to such a "tl;dr" word storm.

Chain Mail said:

PS: I aplogise for inciting you to such a "tl;dr" word storm.

Heh, don't worry about it. I like to "sound off" every now and again and my fingers needed a work out. Even if some people "dr" it. ;)