For a while, I've had a train of thought that went like this:

If we look like RPG.net (or other forum-based sites), then the chances of us turning into RPG.net is high. To explain, if we have a forum, we encourage things like one-line posts, line-by-line replies, pile-on flame wars, and the like. We've kept this down through sheer moderator will, but as the Forge expands, it's going to get harder.

If we want to encourage longer article-type posts, identification of people who can and can't write (ok, I have to explain this one. For example, on RPG.net, you might know the names of people because of their sheer volume of posts, not because of quality. I don't want that.), and a different paradigm, then we should have a different physical paradigm.

We're considering using the software Everything for our glossary. To be honest, it's too powerful for just a glossary, but it'll do. In my perfect world, though, we'd close the forums and start anew. Look at Perl Monks for this software in action. People post questions, thoughts, and answers and they're very identifiable. You could post entire games with this system and not clutter up other people's experience.

I'm not saying the forums will ever close. I want to make sure people understand that - I haven't even discussed this with Ron. What I do want is your opinions. If discussion, articles, and reviews were all presented within the same framework - an expandable framework which could handle other types of content in the future - would you enjoy it? Would this further differentiate us from other RPG sites? If so, would that be positive?

Clinton,

As the descendent of prophets, let me make another prediction:

I think the glossary effort is going to tank. I think the articles effort is going to tank. I think the reviews effort is going to tank.

People don't come to The Forge to teach. They come to learn. That's reason the "middle guard" isn't stepping up to the plate to mentor the "new guard." Having learned what they need to know, they feel no social obligation to pass on the knowledge.

Documentation is the hardest thing for open source software development initiatives to produce. Those involved are interested in the collaborative, creative act of developing, learning, and problem solving, and not in the retrospective capturing of what was developed.

However, the Everything suggestion is so outside the box that I'm not sure how to react. It potentially introduces a new reward paradigm. Let me ask, how do you envision it working at a social level? And what is the typical daily experience of an active user?

Paul

Ouch Paul...I'm going to go read Revelations again to cheer up...John's much more optimistic that you ;-)

Specifically Clinton...I can't really give you much constructive feedback. Its difficult for me to even comprehend what such a thing would look like.

I tend to be a creature of habit. I go to a spot...it looks like its always looked, I know where I'm going and how to get there and what I'll find. I'm still grumbling because I've finally been forced to upgrade to XP and the damn thing works differently than 98.

But perhaps introducing this technology for the glossary, and expanding to include serving up articles etc. will demonstrate that making it an all inclusive source is a natural progression.

Ok. First things first - remember that this is my dream vision of how the Forge would work, and in no way represents what will actually happen.

Paul's questions:
People don't come to The Forge to teach. They come to learn. That's reason the "middle guard" isn't stepping up to the plate to mentor the "new guard." Having learned what they need to know, they feel no social obligation to pass on the knowledge. ... However, the Everything suggestion is so outside the box that I'm not sure how to react. It potentially introduces a new reward paradigm. Let me ask, how do you envision it working at a social level? And what is the typical daily experience of an active user?

It's hard to pass on knowledge in this current system. Even Ron usually links to old posts, which is much much more than most do. Everything (I'm bolding this so it won't be confusing) would reward people by actually ranking them, similar to the number of posts do now. Of course, currently, you can post "I like that" a hundred times. With Everything, others could rank a "node" - like a thread or post - on how useful it was, and influence your 'score'. All this talk of scores and whatnot sounds scary and competitive, but does work well. Slashdot.org has a similar karma system that seems to work for them.

Also, with the current forums, there's no incentive to post something great, as it'll be gone in two-three days, tops. I think Everything archives old information bettter, and allows its retrieval easier.

A daily experience might look like this: you come to the site, look at all the newest 'nodes', comment on some that interest you, check out your favorite users' personal pages to see if anything is new, jot down ideas that you got from today's 'nodes' in your scratchpad (a private note-taking thing each user has), and link to the nodes you find most useful on your personal page. Lastly, if you had an interesting question, tip, or whatever, you'd post it.

The ARMA forum, which just went up, has a similar user-based ranking system that, while in numbers your posts, "rewards" you through what others think of you and the quality of threads you participate in. It's all about the reward system, man.

Anyway, it's a little underdeveloped over there--I mean that almost no one knows that's how that works, and so some folks have 5 stars and others have none, and it has little to do with their actual "prestige" except in a few cases (like me, I've only got 4! ::winks::).

So I could see it as working, but then there's also a popularity contest issue and the re-education issue.

Jake

I've seen similar community structures to the "Everything" idea. I actually kind of like the notion, because it diminishes the importance of TIME versus, say, space or more importantly quality.

I think of all the communities I'm involved in, the Forge is likeliest to succeed in overcoming the popularity / pissing match such ranking systems might incite.

So, I'll count my vote as ... sounds intriguing. Certainly worth discussion. Anyone else?

Matt Snyder wrote: I think of all the communities I'm involved in, the Forge is likeliest to succeed in overcoming the popularity / pissing match such ranking systems might incite.

I'm all for the "neural networking" solution. Go for it!

Mike

Hey Clinton,

Everything (I'm bolding this so it won't be confusing) would reward people by actually ranking them, similar to the number of posts do now.

What's the algorithm? Tabulation of manually applied "votes" by users? Number of views? Number of responses? Calculation based on how many other users have the poster in their "favorite users"?

Paul

Paul,

I'm not certain what the algorithm would be - it would be coded by me. As for now, Everything only tabulates the number of entries someone has made.

All,

I've been thinking about this idea all day. There may well be a way to convert the current forums to this system, populating the database to begin with. If I can do this, this idea might happen.

Clinton R. Nixon wrote: I've been thinking about this idea all day. There may well be a way to convert the current forums to this system, populating the database to begin with. If I can do this, this idea might happen.

I really do think there's a fundamental difference in the psychological approach to participation between folks who come to the Forge and regulars on other gaming discussion sites. Folks on sites elsewhere are active in pursuit of significance, as defined by the social context of the given forum. What that means is largely, on other sites, each participant is their own self-contained teaching machine. I find it difficult to make the same large generalization about The Forge. Largely, folks come to the Forge to learn. When the learning is done, they move on. Though there's always the chance they'll return for additional learning, it's quite rare for the social fabric to produce a motivated teacher.

So with that said, regarding Everything, and in light of the possibility of preserving legacy content, I like it, with the following two caveats:

1) I think "number of posts" is the wrong ranking algorithm for The Forge. And I think a tally of manually applied "votes" will go largely unused. Some calculation based on being linked to, viewed, ranked among the "bookmarked users" of others, and replied too seems more like what we're after, though we'd want to be careful not to reward the user who works toward significance by trolling out "dense questions."

What we're after, in my mind, is a system that eliminates the need for post-facto articles, reviews, and glossary entries as a vehicle for documentation and teaching separate from the creative process that produced/revealed the original insights to the community. It seems to me that if Everything is to produce this outcome for us, a great deal depends on the significance algorithm.

Still, the risk in trying is minor. Everything may not work, but given that Clinton has indicated a possibility of migrating from phpBB to Everything, we could presumably go back to phpBB.

2) I think we should give some serious self-reflective thought to admissions from Jared and Ralph and others that they like the clique-ish, small community of The Forge as it was eight or ten months ago better than the current community. Would we be pursuing this change to Everything out of similar, unacknowledged motives? Jake's position contrary to Jared and Ralph should give us pause. Are we addressing a problem, or creating one just so we can implement a solution? If we're considering making a change to The Forge out of consciously denied belief that our own personal dedication and that of the rest of the "old guard" married to a more challenging and unfamiliar application, less like forums than what other sites are delivering, is likely to produce a leaner active population of users, then I think the change is a mistake.

Paul

First: I keep seeing assumptions that this might happen. Even though I said "There may well be a way to convert the current forums to this system, populating the database to begin with. If I can do this, this idea might happen," remember that this is the remotest possibility in the world. Ron would most likely strike it down, to begin with. This is a bit of a thought experiment as to see what the Forge would be like if we could start all over again.

Paul said: I think "number of posts" is the wrong ranking algorithm for The Forge. And I think a tally of manually applied "votes" will go largely unused. Some calculation based on being linked to, viewed, ranked among the "bookmarked users" of others, and replied too seems more like what we're after, though we'd want to be careful not to reward the user who works toward significance by trolling out "dense questions."

That sounds very much like Google's PageRank algorithm, which is complex, but I bet I could emulate.

When you say that we're looking for "a system that eliminates the need for post-facto articles, reviews, and glossary entries as a vehicle for documentation and teaching separate from the creative process that produced/revealed the original insights to the community," you're completely on the right track. We have people complaining about there being no response to their questions, but it's hard to respond when you've already answered that question before. A system that made it easy to find answers would solve many problems. (Also: a system that helps us write articles, not forum posts will help us write things that can be used later on.

Lastly, I caught a sense of "clique-ish, bad; current, good" from you, Paul. I don't mean in the "making-the-community-easy-to-use" sense, but almost in a moral sense. I think we should avoid that sort of thinking: if, after taking into consideration, all arguments on both sides, it appears a smaller community would be better, I see no reason to not create that smaller community.

Hey Clinton,

That sounds very much like Google's PageRank algorithm, which is complex, but I bet I could emulate.

One way that might be programmatically simpler for The Forge to semi-achieve Google-type significance ranking in a way that wouldn't be possible for Google would be to base it on views, with a multiplier for the time elapsed since the post was created. More recent views of older content would be worth more "significance." It would eliminate the need to parse the content of posts for links, working instead on the assumption that links and references to older discussions in more recent discussions would contribute to the significance ranking of those discussions through the views generated.

Paul