Moderation!
Partly due to the release of Bgt, we now have more developers than ever posting various projects on the forum. I'm very disappointed however to see that often discussion of these projects has lead to some extremely! impolite and unpleasant behaviour among various forum members.
this is most distinctly not! acceptable, and unless certain people alter their atitude and show some more respect to those around them, whatever differences of opinion they have, stricter moderation tactics may need to be employed.
Ie, suspentions or even bans will become a more common thing.
i'd rather this not happen, sinse I'd much rather the forum stay relaxed.
i therefore urge all members to carefully considder the following points when dealing with new developers posting their various projects.
1: Nothing is bug free. any piece of newly developed software will contain bugs, simply because the developer cannot test it on every configuration of machine.
While a developers' experience, how wide the circle of private testers is, and how complex the software is all play a factor, it's rare indeed to find a piece of software that is totally bug free upon first release.
the best way to deal with bugs is either to wait until a bugfix version is released, or to offer a detailed and comprehensive report to a developer of what the bug is, with error text if possible.
This is even more true if a developer is posting a public beta or even alpha of the game.
Complaining about bugs, saying the game is "crappy" or other such insulting behaviour will not get bugs fixed, indeed it'll probably make the developer less inclined to fix them.
2: practice games. As per the db guidelines, it's fine for developers to post practice games or code exercizes on the forum.
these are simple projects designed as a test of the developers' own skill, posted either to let the community know how the developer is progressing with his/her code, or even to see how well the developers projects work on other systems.
As practice games, these may be simple, repetative or even completely pointless, but their intention is not as serious game projects, thus when passing judgement and opinions on them this should be taken into account.
Afterall, if a person started off learning the piano, you wouldn't expect Grieg's concerto from them, indeed at the beginning even nursery rhymes may be an achievement given their level of skill.
3: considderate Cryticism. Remember that anyone posting a project online has worked on it.
Anyone who has even looked at the Bgt tutorial will know that coding games is a long way from being easy, thus anything a person posts here has taken some degree of work.
to have a comment like "this is a really crappy game" after putting in that work is just demoralizing to a developer, and also extremely unhelpful if they are to improve in the future.
This is not to say only give good comments on a developers work, but attempt to recognize the fact that you are discussing something that has taken them time and effort to create, rather than just being negative, or stil worse insulting.
For example, rather than saying "The sounds are terrible, the explosion sound is too loud" say "Perhaps the sound could be improved in the next version sinse I found the explosion sound too loud" focusing on what the developer can improve, rather than what he/she has done wrong.
Also, if there are! any good points that can be mentioned mention these too and don't concentrate only upon the negative.
4: differences of opinion.
Different people will have different opinions on any subject, games in particular. Discussion of different points of view about newly created games are deffinately welcome, but please remember that any such discussion must remain amicable, and remain about the issues at hand. if a person thinks differently to yourself, this is either because A, they have not considdered some reason you have for holding your opinion or B, because they simply have a wildly different preference.
In either case a discussion may be valuable to have, either to illuminate your preferences, or to offer the reasons for a given point of view, however please remember that neither is a reason to call another person stupid or dismiss their views as simply bad.
5: Language and tone.
Just because you are on the internet, this is not an excuse to behave in a way that you wouldn't in real life, thus all the rules of politeness and considderation for others apply just as equally.
indeed, sinse on the internet the only thing people will see is your text, and not the tone of voice in which you meant it, careful considderation of what you say is even more necessary.
A comment like "and another stupid game" could be incredibly insulting if just taken as read, and without the addition of tone of voice is even more open to missinterpretation.
So, politeness and plane speaking are even more necessary on the internet than in real life.
I hope people will cconsidder these points carefully, sinse the behaviour I've seen in several recent threads about new games has certainly! been less than acceptable, and if things do not improve more drastic measures, including more serious punishments may become necessary!
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)
