I've noticed a couple of trends on the posts in the forums lately that I though might warrant a "suggestions" post from one of the admins, but I thought I'd see what you guys thought before proceeding.
The first trend is unspecific naming of posts. Someone might name a post, for example, "A new game idea". This title is so vague as to be pretty much useless, and I thought a post suggesting people be more descriptive with their post titling might be helpful.
A second trend is a pattern of "reflexive" posting, in which, as soon as someone has even the vaguest idea for a game, they'll post about it and solicit others to do the design work for them. E.g, "Hey, I just had an idea for an awesome game. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a game about giant zombie alien robot hermaphrodites? Anyone want to tell me how I could make a game about this theme?"
I think that these posts are permissable, but I also think there's a sense in which they gunk up the site a bit, whereas if such posters spent a little more time trying to flesh out a few possible mechanics or implementation ideas, there might be a possibility of some actual discussion taking place. My position is, in general, to not get too involved in such discussions (although I broke my own rule once this week), but I wonder if it makes sense to encourage people to be a little bit more patient with posting about new games until there's something a little bit more detailed than just an idea for a theme.
I welcome comments or rebuttals, as well as observations of other posting patterns, either positive or negative, and how we could encourage the good patterns and discourage the negative ones...
-Jeff
My concern wasn't entirely the solicitous nature of the posts, so much as the "so what" factor. As we know, ideas are a dime a dozen, and if each of us started a thread every time we came up with an idea for a theme, the site would be overloaded and the overall quality of the site would deteriorate.
I don't mind brainstorming sessions at all, and indeed, I might even start one myself at some point if I had a cool idea for a theme but after wrestling with it for a week just couldn't figure out how to get started. What I wouldn't ever do is, 30 seconds after coming up with a theme for a game, rush to the computer, and put up a post on the site about it assuming that someone would actually be interested.
I don't disagree that the best way to discourage such postings as one personally finds distasteful is simply to ignore them. I simply wanted to see if others felt that the practice was distateful enough that it might be worth encouraging people to have a little more substance in their posts. No problem either way on my end...
-J