Requests?

[kklouzal]

Who else thinks Irrlicht forum needs a requests section? Obviously it would get filled with junk but some things would be quite valid.

[ACE247]

Not sure what it would be worth though. The main devs are overworked as it is.
We would be lucky to come across a few reliable, respectable , capable, hard working and loyal(and whatever else they are) extra programmers willing to spend of their free time on irrlicht, as our current devs are doing.

Also I just have to take note, The irrlicht devs and forum admins are probably some of the most friendly around and it shows itself.

[CuteAlien]

You can add requests at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_i ... tid=540679 and maybe add a thread in the discussion forum. And well yeah - finding time is always trouble :-(

[kklouzal]

Oh most definitely, the dev's are most appreciated and likely very busy fixing bugs and increasing performance, I just thought it would be nice for them to have some input from their user-base as to what they would like to see to come from the engine as possibly another motivating factor :) It could even bring to light some things they never thought about in the first place, not to mention get the users more connected with the development process, just good all round :D

Maybe a sub category "Requests" in the main category "Other Irrlicht Stuff" and have a sticky "Strict Posting Rules" something to the effect of "please be mindful and courteous to the developers as their main focus is fixing bugs and increasing performance, and, possibly, if they have spare time from here and there or are 'feeling their oats' will start a side project to incorporate some meaningful ideas" aswell as a rule of thumb the request will be ignored without a poll added to the topic and wont even be considered unless there are a certain number of votes and a certain percentage of yes vs no votes on the poll

Just an idea to help both the forum and engine grow!

[ACE247]

Sure I can agree with that. That's also why I voted Yes.
But If we have a requests section, it needs to have some good rules to avoid junk and tonnes of duplication.
And It's not just supposed to be for example: "I want this"
It would be better to have "I want this, because of, and this is how we can do it"
So maybe for a valid request thread require some "tags" in the post such as What, Why, How?
Also if we have a requests section, why not a submit section where people can directly submitt code snip improvements and ideas.
Perhaps actually call the section 'Help improve irrlicht' and put requests and submits into there as they're not too different.

[hybrid]

We already have these kinds of discussion in the open discussions forum. Just start a valid thread there, and also add the request tracker item in case it becomes an appreciated feature.

[fmx]

since we're on the subject of requests (sortof)

how about adding a "like" button for all posts in the forum, similar to idea of facebook and various other forums?
notice i only mentioned "like" button, not "dislike" (or "thumbs down") which isn't practical

the main purpose of that that would be give a quick visual indicator to people seeking answers and opinions, particularly if said question has been asked (many times) in the past.

it might even allow forum admins to do funky stuff with the boards, for instance list out the most "liked" questions and answers for a FAQ section

[serengeor]

@fmx: Nice idea.
Though I'd like irrlicht to have voting system like stackoverflow has(For questions, answers, also user reputations).
Though I guess it would be too much of a pain to integrate something like this into these forums

[ACE247]

Well, seing that this is a phpbb forum, there might be several plugins already around

[REDDemon]

voted yes for whislist(epic lol) wishlist

[hendu]

I'd consider leaving if that like crap comes here.

[kklouzal]

Takes less than 5 minutes to add a Like button to phpbb3
and less than that to tweak this code to add a dislike button along with it
http://help.forumotion.com/t108561-a-ne ... d-invision

[REDDemon]

I'd consider leaving if that like crap comes here.

that sounds like a threat.

having a reputation system will help against spambots and spammers i think.

[hendu]

Any kind of post voting is directly against free speech. Everyone must have equal voice, equal opportunity to be heard, no matter how much their opinions are against the majority's.

If you want to see how well majority's rule works, go on reddit. Not a single different opinion in sight.


Any such voting will always pull the opinions in line with the majority's to the top, making viewing the others difficult or impossible. I don't want that. That's the "Fox News" behavior. That stagnates progress. Eliminates learning and reinforces what you want to see.


Spam is a completely different problem, and already handled just by the admins.

[CuteAlien]

We are on reddit (see my .sig), but not much interest so far. The strongest "voting" in opensource is with good patches anyway - code beats talking every time. We also already have report buttons for flagging spam on each post - please use it whenever we miss some for a while (it's an ongoing fight and we continue to try out other stuff as well, but so far spammers even get around manual modifications to the register process so it seems we have to continue to just clean-up spammers per hand several times per day).