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Heroes Community > Heroes 5 - Modders Workshop > Thread: Question about questions...
Thread: Question about questions...
Sunjah
Sunjah


Hired Hero
posted January 10, 2008 09:56 AM

Question about questions...

This really confuses me.  Several threads have been locked because they are asking questions.  If this is a forum for modding, and modding involves adjusting things and using files, paths, programs or other assorted items that you are not used to, aren't you supposed to "ask about it?"  Having one thread dedicated to question, to me, just doesn't seem as though it will answer needs.  If I had a question about the nightmare/hellmare/devil stallion, I don't want to have to sort through questions about adding heroes, and the inferno mod or the chinese graphic mod.  It will be much easier to go to the thread that is on the topic I know of that is dedicated to what I am working on.  This question is really directed towards Vokial, but anyone else feel free to comment as well.  I am just confused by this and don't think I have seen it before.

If you can't ask questions in the modder's forum, it seems to be asking for a real problem for people who need information.  I am just wondering where you can do it, because one thread for all of these people just doesn't seem like it will come near to being enough.

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VokialBG
VokialBG


Honorable
Legendary Hero
First in line
posted January 10, 2008 10:28 AM
Edited by VokialBG at 11:14, 10 Jan 2008.

Minor questions like download links for MODs, questions about explanations with already existing threads for it, are they needed? There are tones of mini question threads/posts for "Hey what is .h5m, how to change my .zip", or for editig textures and ".dds". Nothing bad in asking, but its not needed to ask something already described in the FAQ/Sowtware Tools/Members guides and etc. Like "Ultimate needs 4 kills instead of 5 ToE" - there are already 2 threads for this mod (3 with the locked one), why we need more? 3 threads are pretty enough. Same "for Sandro in ToE". Mini-questions threads are not needed. You can ask questions it the Questions Topic or in you your project thread (if you have one).

Ex: we already have nice tutorial for texture editing here  with links to other tutorials and examples, why we need to have tone of mini-questions threads for "how can I create new texture", "how to edit them", "what program I need" for such questions you can ask directly in the Questions Topic, for discussing it you can post in the tutorials topic.

Also never forget the forum has search function.
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Gnoll_Mage
Gnoll_Mage


Responsible
Supreme Hero
posted January 10, 2008 01:00 PM
Edited by Gnoll_Mage at 13:23, 10 Jan 2008.

I feel for you here Sunjah. I don't think having a single thread for questions is the most effective way of getting people's inquiries answered. Vokial is right to say that one should always search before posting to see if your thread may already exist. However, the simple fact for me is that lots of questions in the questions thread get jumbled up and not answered as effectively or `neatly` as they could be.

One of the possible solutions that I would investigate would be, to try having multiple question threads, say one for questions about modding ("How do I open the DDS files"...), another for questions about mods in themselves ("Where can I find the Beta Treant mod"...) - obviously plenty of room for refinement of these broad topics here.

Secondly we could have a new `answering system` in the question thread(s):
When someone posts a question, they post it in bold. They also repost any bolded questions that can be seen in the last e.g. 2 pages. When you get your question answered (answers could e.g. always be posted in green text) you edit your original question post so that it is no longer bold. This could fail miserably, or with adequate guidance, moderator's / moderators' input etc. (we might need another mod I suppose) could improve slightly on the usefulness of the question thread.

So person one asks: What does DDS stand for?
Person two arrives and asks: Where are the Black Dragon textures stored?, What does DDS stand for?
Person three says, DDS = DirectDraw Surface
Person one / a moderator then de-bolds person one's original question post, so that...
Person four then posts How do I attach an effect to a certain part of a creature?, Where are the Black Dragon textures stored?, Black Dragon textures can be found in folder "..." (I forget )
Person two's original post is then de-bolded, etc.

Another alternative could be to have two forums, one for questions about modding, one for threads about the mods themselves - again, overlap issues could cause problems but one or two stray posts wouldn't be too problematic.

For that matter Val / someone else could set up a system like Yahoo Answers where people's questions can be tagged by the answerer as answered (we could even have a points system to award the best answerers). Actually this could work quite well - it would be simple to use, would encourage good answers, would allow easy searching of existing questions, and would not clog up the forum. Hey, I'd even code it for him.

So there we go, all IMHO of course.
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Daystar
Daystar


Honorable
Legendary Hero
Back from the Dead
posted January 10, 2008 01:14 PM

I like the idea of having multiples, but that could be confusing to noobs.

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Gnoll_Mage
Gnoll_Mage


Responsible
Supreme Hero
posted January 10, 2008 01:18 PM
Edited by Gnoll_Mage at 13:27, 10 Jan 2008.

Thanks DS. Well so long as they are clearly demarked and stickied we should probably be okay:
"Questions about modding - how can I ..., what does ... mean etc."
"Questions about mods - where can I find them, why doesn't the author ..."
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Daystar
Daystar


Honorable
Legendary Hero
Back from the Dead
posted January 10, 2008 09:54 PM

Q & A Topic: Sounds, Textures, and Animations
Q & A Topic: Stats, Hacking, and Programing (or sth)
Q & A Topic: Installing, Naming, and miscelaneous

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Cepheus
Cepheus


Honorable
Legendary Hero
Far-flung Keeper
posted January 10, 2008 10:08 PM

After having answered at least twenty or more of the questions in the current Question Topic, I can wholeheartedly agree with Gnoll_Mage.  It's frustrating to have to answer the same question six times over because only one thread is allowed and nobody is expected to rift through its thirteen pages for an answer they may find.  Then this just breeds more frustration because the person I don't want to answer will be left confused and annoyed that they can't start a new thread, they're being ignored in the Questions thread and thus they are not answered at all.

Just locking every thread which asks a minor question is not going to fix things or make anyone happier, at least not in this subforum.  At least the question should be answered properly and the original poster satisfied before the locking.  If it's for the sake of cleanliness... why?  This is a Workshop, it's not supposed to be so tidy  So a few extra question topics wouldn't go amiss, people would be able to categorise their questions and receive proper answers from people who have know-how about different subjects.  Plus a small FAQ could be provided at the start of each topic to meet even more needs.

Just my long-winded 2c

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Gnoll_Mage
Gnoll_Mage


Responsible
Supreme Hero
posted January 10, 2008 10:27 PM

Yay, support!
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alcibiades
alcibiades


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
posted January 10, 2008 11:16 PM

Quote:
After having answered at least twenty or more of the questions in the current Question Topic, I can wholeheartedly agree with Gnoll_Mage.  It's frustrating to have to answer the same question six times over because only one thread is allowed and nobody is expected to rift through its thirteen pages for an answer they may find.  Then this just breeds more frustration because the person I don't want to answer will be left confused and annoyed that they can't start a new thread, they're being ignored in the Questions thread and thus they are not answered at all.

Just locking every thread which asks a minor question is not going to fix things or make anyone happier, at least not in this subforum.  At least the question should be answered properly and the original poster satisfied before the locking.  If it's for the sake of cleanliness... why?  This is a Workshop, it's not supposed to be so tidy  So a few extra question topics wouldn't go amiss, people would be able to categorise their questions and receive proper answers from people who have know-how about different subjects.  Plus a small FAQ could be provided at the start of each topic to meet even more needs.

Just my long-winded 2c


Well you know me ... I have to diasgree with this. The reason is pretty simple - really. Take a look through some of the older fora, like the Altar - when forum reaches 50+ pages of threads, it starts to be a litteral hell to administrate it. Maybe the question topic will not reduce the number of time you have to answer each question - possibly not, although a Q&A section in beginning with most frequent questions might help out with this - but at least with a questions topic, it's all in one thread. That means that all the worthwhile threads will not be drowned in random minor threads, and that has a great value in my oppinion.

And then it's just SO much easier to find a specific thread if you have to browse through 10 pages rather than 50.

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Cepheus
Cepheus


Honorable
Legendary Hero
Far-flung Keeper
posted January 10, 2008 11:29 PM

Sure, but this is not the Altar.  It's a place of complicated learning, people are going to ask far more questions here.  I'm not saying "let's leave every stupid one-question thread unlocked forevermore and flood the forum with needless rubbish", instead I'm suggesting that A) give people a small chance to at least answer the person before locking the thread, and / or B) create a number of specialised Question threads with all the necessary information included rather than one big, messy thread full of random posts about random modding-branches which is another literal hell in which to try and derive an answer.

One thread for graphical modding, one for programming, one for miscellaneous stuff - I don't claim to be an expert or anything, but wouldn't it be so much easier to find / write an answer to a question when you have a specialised place to do it instead of a large mess of unrelated Q&A?

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VokialBG
VokialBG


Honorable
Legendary Hero
First in line
posted January 11, 2008 12:02 AM
Edited by VokialBG at 00:07, 11 Jan 2008.

We have tones of minor question thread, 3-4 for some common questions, having them is not plus, its minus. There is no problem in posting a question, but really separate threads for questions like "where I can download X or Y mod", when there is already thread for the same mod (or even if there is none in this case). Many of the question answers are in the FAQ (1st post), or in extant tutorials. These questions will be locked with link to this "tutorials" or/and examples.

However I'm working on something, it will make the forum better classified. It will probably start with special threads for modding discussions like the Heroes 5 Strategy threads but with modding subjects. But not everything can be done in several days, right?
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Sunjah
Sunjah


Hired Hero
posted January 11, 2008 02:33 AM

Quote:
Sure, but this is not the Altar.  It's a place of complicated learning, people are going to ask far more questions here...
I pretty much really agree with this, it's basically why I posed the original question on this thread.  I certainly don't want this to be a problem for anyone to have to moderate, but I also think far too much information is shared by "noobs" (I really hate that term), full veterans and people who have some experience when they are modding.  Cleave and I had a thread of several questions back and forth, and I appreciate him adjusting his mod for my specific needs.  When threads just started getting locked so quickly I wondered, "Wow, if people can't ask it here, where can they ask it?"

I also disagree about the 'use the search' or 'why do I have to read the same question over and over.'  There are newcomers all the time.  I joined a few months ago, but have done some modding with some other games so graphically I can do some, and sfidanza and experimentation have helped me with some of the "easy programming" that the *.h5u's present.  I have used the search, though, and had it give me no direction or insight towards what I've needed, yet eventually I found it did exist already.  Usually it was completely by accident that I stumbled upon it.  

Sometimes the phrasing can be different, and you get no results for what you are looking for.  I don't mean this statement as an argument starter in any form, but now that I have been using these pages I would ABSOLUTEY prefer that a "noob" (did I say I hate that term, because I do?) posted his question if he wasn't having luck as opposed to just giving up or being so frustrated.  I had a Zombie question that 97 people looked at before anyone gave me an answer.  It was a graphics issue, and once someone did answer it led me to the exact solution I need.  If someone else has a problem like that and my thread is buried all the way on page 34 and they use different terminology then I did, personally I would rather they post a new question thread so that I can let them know what they need to with what they are working on (again, I am not trying to say this is the correct thing, just how I feel about it personally and would rather have the freedom to be able to do this).  Wow, that last sentence was a long one.

Anyway, thanks for the input and views from all sides so far.  As I stated, personally I would love this forum to be very open in the sharing of information.  Anyway it can be achieved, various question threads, quick answers and "de-highlighting" the question as someone previously suggested, whatever works is good.  I have no problem quickly skimming over question I have heard before rather than have someone get as frustrated as I did with that zombie thing.  It really took up about 10 hours looking and looking for what I needed, then when I was shown it answered every question I needed about that topic.

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william
william


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
LummoxLewis
posted January 11, 2008 02:47 AM
Edited by william at 02:48, 11 Jan 2008.

Quote:


Well you know me ... I have to diasgree with this. The reason is pretty simple - really. Take a look through some of the older fora, like the Altar - when forum reaches 50+ pages of threads, it starts to be a litteral hell to administrate it.


Yes but all those pages don't have threads that are still active. You may have about 5 or 7 pages with currently active threads, not 50+, so I don't see how that could make it hell to administrate it, seeing as though they are not all active.

If the threads are no active and have not been posting in in years, then what is the point of doing something about those threads. I was just browsing through Altar the other day, and I saw a thread that's last post was in either 2002, 2003 or 2004, and I saw a moderators edit that said it was closed because it was too old, and that edit was made by you Alcibiades. Now I don't see the point in that seeing as though the last post was made years ago, and I doubt anybody would actually go through the pages in order to look for it. I just happened to stumble upon it by chance, and I saw that a QP had been given to it, so I checked it out.

I have seen you lock numerous threads because somebody asks a question. That's fine, but when you see the forum becoming littered with locked threads, it looks a bit weird. This might confuse newbies to forums, because they might see the topic and have the same problem, but when they try to reply to it, they can't because it is locked, and then they make their own thread and then it will also get locked because you want all the questions to go into one question forum.

I think that Altar has been doing fine without the need for locking nearly every thread where someone tries to ask a question. Temple is alright for that since HOMM5 is very active at the moment, but that does not need to happen in Altar too.

That's all I have to say. Alc I don't think you are a bad moderator or anything, just that the locking of so many topics where someone just wants to ask a question is getting a bit weird. I understand that you want all posts to go into just one thread that regard questions and so forth, but that does not need to happen to the Altar as well.

P.S I know I hardly post here in Modder's Workshop, but I just had to quote what Alcibiades said.

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fiur
fiur


Promising
Supreme Hero
Map Creator
posted January 11, 2008 06:34 AM

Quote:

However I'm working on something, it will make the forum better classified. It will probably start with special threads for modding discussions like the Heroes 5 Strategy threads but with modding subjects. But not everything can be done in several days, right?


Yes that will become very useful then it's gonna be 100+ times easier to navigate!!  
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