Forums balancing.

Honestly, because people need more help with programming usually, than how to model a head, or make a gunshot noise.

As you point out, the Visual Arts forum is already low-traffic. Splitting it up would do it a disservice.

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Original post by Fruny As you point out, the Visual Arts forum is already low-traffic. Splitting it up would do it a disservice.

And unfortunately, the traffic is all very similar - basically just some miscellaneous package questions and occassional concept art. There doesn't seem to be any genuine interest in photography, video editing, broadcast, production, etc.

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Original post by Salsa Quote: Original post by Fruny As you point out, the Visual Arts forum is already low-traffic. Splitting it up would do it a disservice. And unfortunately, the traffic is all very similar - basically just some miscellaneous package questions and occassional concept art. There doesn't seem to be any genuine interest in photography, video editing, broadcast, production, etc.

There are other websites better suited for such topics.

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Original post by CGameProgrammer Quote: Original post by Salsa There doesn't seem to be any genuine interest in photography, video editing, broadcast, production, etc. There are other websites better suited for such topics.

And therein lies the problem.

GameDev.net can't be everything, even if it wanted to. There are, as CGameProgrammer pointed out, other sites and communities that are organized exclusively around various visual arts disciplines, while GameDev.net is likely to only attract those with a particular interest in creating video games, which I posit is a relatively small subset of the whole.

Perhaps a better option would be to explore various partnering initiatives with these other sites/resources/communities? (Note: personal opinion, not official comment!)

When you are operating a set of internet forums, you ideally want as few forums as possible. The only reason forums should be split/created is to stop a large amount of traffic about one specific subject from crowding out the rest of the content. If you create too many forums, then there isn't enough traffic to fill them all.

Just picture a lot of the newbie sites that open up with 10 or more forums pre-created for all possible subjects in their genre. Inevidably most of them sit empty or with just 1 or 2 threads. The reason is that people will post to and read active forums, while the empty forums will be rarely read, and rarely posted to (as posts there draw little to no attention). Because of this, the attempt to organize discussion backfires, with the most 1-3 most general purpose of the forums carrying 99% of the traffic, even though many of the posts technically belong in one of the specific forums.

The proper way is to start out with the smallest number of forums possible, then expand/split them as needed so that you never have unused forums. The Game Art forum is one the less active forums, putting it near the bottom of the list for the possiblity of a split.

Actually, the best way to organize a forum is similar to the way GMail organizes e-mails -- use labels instead of categories, with the difference being multiple labels can be applied to a single thread, and threads don't have to be separated by category.

So if someone posts a basic question about Direct3D, they can mark it as both a "Beginner" and "DirectX" thread (to prevent forum spamming, probably only two labels should be allowed per thread). Then if someone is viewing the Beginner's forum, they see the thread, or if they're viewing "DirectX" then they also see the thread. Someone can also view "Beginner OR DirectX" to view threads from both categories, or "Beginner AND DirectX" to only view threads that have both labels applied. You know? I think this would solve alot of problems, and it'll be easy to implement. Since each thread must already have an integer identifying the category, you just make each label a bitmask (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.) and OR them, and the resultant integer is stored in the "Category" field.

As has probably been said, there are so many forums that specialise in this kinda thing. This site has just cohered with where the interest has gone.

ace

If you want a good computer graphics board, go to www.cgtalk.com. Good community there and they even have a couple of game related boards. Also, the 3dbuzz forums are pretty good.

Not of them compare to gamedev, of course ;). But they're more geared towards art.

Good luck!

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Original post by Oluseyi GameDev.net can't be everything, even if it wanted to.

Aha, I was confused. I always thought GameDev was about people making games, from concept to finnish. While I know there are resources here to help in every regard, it seems that either artists don't come here often, or the site itself is geared more toward programmers. It would make sense to visit other forums for more art-specific things, however I thought GameDev wanted to be a consolidated place for all things game-related. I suppose it could still accomplish this, however we'd need more members from every community.

Thanks for your replies everyone!

~Alex

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Original post by m4d3c1ips3 Quote: Original post by Oluseyi GameDev.net can't be everything, even if it wanted to. Aha, I was confused. I always thought GameDev was about people making games, from concept to finnish.

It is, and that's why there are art, sound, etc forums, but as the majority of skilled people in these particular fields are not working on Game Development projects, other, more specialised communities are often better able to help out with things in these areas. That being said, I've always found the creative forums to be extremely helpful if I need to know anything. [smile]

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Original post by CGameProgrammer Actually, the best way to organize a forum is similar to the way GMail organizes e-mails -- use labels instead of categories, with the difference being multiple labels can be applied to a single thread, and threads don't have to be separated by category.

On a topic somewhat similar to that (as in, splitting things into categories), I have been thinking a lot lately about making an offshoot of the humour portal, which is designed to be an archive of helpful posts from all the forums (the site will be split into a section for each forum). I am thinking of making it so that each thread that gets added to the site has a attribute of what forum it came from, along with the specific topic it was about (concept art, 3D animation etc.). This way it could have a pretty advanced (well, advanced for me) filter that you can use where, if you are trying to learn 3D animation for example, you could select ‘Visual arts forum > 3D Animation' and get all the thready goodness that has been discussed on that topic.

Of course, the amount of work that it would take is going to be massive, and my head hurts just thinking about it. Also, it depends on wether the staff mind me making yet another site or not [smile].

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Original post by CGameProgrammer Actually, the best way to organize a forum is similar to the way GMail organizes e-mails -- use labels instead of categories, with the difference being multiple labels can be applied to a single thread, and threads don't have to be separated by category.

I agree, and I'm surreptitiously (there goes my cover) trying to get that into the requirements for the next GDNet tech.

I would love to talk more on this site about photography and video editing. But, sadly, VERY few people here seem to have any real interest or experience. At least Photoshop gets covered, but it's usually the same questions about transparency. In fact, the creative side forums are pathetically slow at times (and I admit that I don't help. I've stopped frequenting them), leading me to post in the Lounge if I actually need a response.

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Original post by Oluseyi Quote: Original post by CGameProgrammer Actually, the best way to organize a forum is similar to the way GMail organizes e-mails -- use labels instead of categories, with the difference being multiple labels can be applied to a single thread, and threads don't have to be separated by category. I agree, and I'm surreptitiously (there goes my cover) trying to get that into the requirements for the next GDNet tech.

Awesome. And given the turnaround getting the new forums implemented, I'm sure we can expect the next revision in 2009.

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Original post by CGameProgrammer Awesome. And given the turnaround getting the new forums implemented, I'm sure we can expect the next revision in 2009.

Pretty much, but that's the idea this time. Rather than hustling to graft a feature on to the current codebase, the idea is to initiate a parallel development effort which will evolve the current codebase into the next generation platform. Or something like that.

Again, this is simply my personal objective and speculation. No such official action has been taken or discussed!

Maybe more art related articles and tutorials would bring more people interested in art. There's not much original art content here in GD.