[ENHANCEMENT] Forum Restructuring

Bukkit and the plugins are great and all people concerned (developers, bukkit team, people helping in the forums) are doing a great job. But bukkit is on a rocky road and the usuability for the admin and user isn't at the point where it should be.

This thread is ONE part of several threads, please do me the favour and read them all and only reply in here with information which help this thread become productive. Thanks..

Bukkit has the following issues:

Permissions... different plugins, different concepts, complicated, error prone and shattered
Help.. complicated, not to the point, not really translatable / customizable.
Aliases.. Complicated and plugin specific
Forums.. Difficult to navigate and missing structures
Plugins.. Plugin Standards allow for to many issues

I already mentioned some of the issues in this thread (only read if you want to, but usefull feeback in there from lukegb and evilseph!) : http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/help-support-and-release-threads.19660/

The forum structure and how the release threads are handled atm make it very hard for an admin or an developer to use the plugin.

I would like to suggest the following changes in structure and look.

Bukkit.org
- Bukkit News
- Community News...
- Website Feedback
Bukkit
- Bukkit Help
- Bukkit Discussions
- Bukkit Tools
- Recommended Builds
Bukkit Plugins
- Get Plugins
- Approved Plugins
- Plugins
- Unsupported Plugins
- Non-Working Plugins
Bukkit Plugin Help
- [MECH] Plugin Help
- etc...
- Essential Help
- Minecart Mania Help
- etc
Bukkit Plugin Development
- Plugin Submissions
- Plugin Requests
- WIP
- Resources
Other
- Minecraft Discussions
- Show of your Minecraft Server
- Offtopic

IF we still have a sub - sub form the sub - sub forum should become better visable.

So why the changes?

First, to support changes in the plugin release process and changes with fill,.
Second, the forums should be easy to navigate and information should be quickly retrievable.
At the moment it is almost impossible to quickly get needed information or help. Look at threads from Minecart Mania, Essentials or other bigger / popular plugins. Questions are repeated again and again and release notes are drowned.

Having forums dedicated to releases and threads only writeable to the OP would allow a lean structure and quick retrievable information. Seperated Help Forumd for the different plugin types would make it easy to search for common issues and keep the amount of posts in the same thread low.
Having dedicated forums for the bigger / popular plugins would help the developers of those plugins to focus on supporting their plugin and keep the amount of work for the forum admins low too.

Some standards for posting should be given though:

a) search before you post
b) use the following template for your subject [Pluginname] Issue, eg.

[Permissions] Can't place blocks
[Permissions] How to setup SQL
[NoCheat] Getting kicked for moving
[MM] Obisidian blocks don't work anymore correclty

What do you think?

 

I really like the forum restructuring idea. Actually, I really like the whole idea. However, it seems like a lot of work. Who is going to actually implement this? The Bukkit team is super busy as is, and although this might lessen the load for them in the long run, this will require a huge amount of work in the short term which I quite frankly don't see happening anytime soon.

 

Couldn't you just make it all one thread, instead of four? :l

 

I am getting the feeling that some of these issues are really going to take off and maybe some of them are going to plummet right into the ground. However, keeping them separate will really help when it comes to figuring out which one is the most popular (which one should be dealt with first) and it will also keep the conversations organized. Think of it as a miniature reenactment of the potential future forum system

 

well bukkit is a community system right? get more moderators and helpers for the forum software..

yeah easy said, hard done..

don't know xenforo but normally creating forums and subforums isn't hard.
The theme would need to be changed / edited

The major problem would probably be that in the Bukkit Plugins forums only the developers are allowed to write in their own threads.

But perhaps that could be solved by granting all developers access to that forum and an iron first from the moderators if somebody is abusing his powers there.

All other people would write into the Bukkit Plugin Help forum, and that would require not so much work, again some moderators doing some guiding in posting threads or moving threads into the correct subforum

hmm what about this approach..

Bukkit.org
- Bukkit News
- Community News...
- Website Feedback
Bukkit
- Bukkit Help
- Bukkit Discussions
- Bukkit Tools
- Recommended Builds
Bukkit Plugin Help
- [MECH] Plugin Help
- etc...
- Essential Help
- Minecart Mania Help
- etc
Bukkit Plugins
- Get Plugins
- Approved Plugins
- Supported Plugins
- Unsupported Plugins
Bukkit Plugin Development
- Plugins to grandfather (aka Non-Working Plugins)
- Plugin Submissions
- Plugin Requests
- WIP
- Resources
Other
- Minecraft Discussions
- Show of your Minecraft Server
- Offtopic

EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.

 

Honestly, I think you're making it even more complicated than it is now. A lot of your suggested forums seem to server the same purpose. For example, "Recommended Builds" could be merged with "Bukkit News". Also, what's the difference between "Get Plugins", "Approved Plugins", and "Supported Plugins"? They all seem the same to me. No need to separate them out like that, especially since a lot of plugins will be both approved and supported. Also, creating forums for every plugin for support is going to be way too much. There's nothing wrong with the way we do it now, with the help going in the plugin's thread. "Unsupported Plugins" and "Plugins to grandfather" can go together, they're essentially the same thing.