Generally these don't really work for several reasons.

The intention is that the category is a way for the devteam to tell the community what it/an individual dev is working on or has done. The community can then comment on the thing.

While community feedback is always important, it's not meant to be for suggestions as such (although no reason why devs can't specifically ask for community-advice/opinions), rather for devs to say 'FYI this is what I am doing/have done'. Hence only devs can start new topics here although of course anyone can reply.

The problem is that for a number of reasons, only a few devs (ATM notably Torchwood in Artists' blogs) actually post here at all.

Obviously I can't force devs to post here if they don't want to/don't have anything to post, but maybe a reorganisation would make it easier to use/browse for those that do choose to post here (and for the community to read).

Simply, rather than a board per type of development (ie, Artists', Programmers') have a board per dev (eg, Torchwoods' blog). Torchwood then posts about his latest artwork here, and about a bit of code he has implemented, and so on.

This also would allow him to split his artwork thread into several -- Elephants, lizardmen, trees, etc. which would make such threads easier to browse and give a better idea of what his ideas were rather than having a huge (currently 21 pages!) graveyard of ideas.

Reply, damn you!

But ... but ... I don't want to split my mega-thread - its now got over 8,000 views meaning I've overtaken Sherock's graphic thread!!!!  I'm about 5rd or so in the all time lists (although I'm not going to overtake the current #1 (I think) ... "My Pic" ... which has over 39,000 views anytime soon ).  I'm not sure my ego would cope with having lots of smaller threads ...

I do map work, the odd bit of coding and obviously quite a few graphics - it doesn't make sense to have all that stuff put together in one board - its better if map questions and comments are together, coding stuff is together, etc.

To be honest, I'm not sure we need a Blogs board at all with the current amount of input ... when my artwork thread was moved to the Blogs board there was at least one comment about it being in the wrong place, which I can understand - after all, the thread is about graphics, so surely it should be in the graphics board?

All joking in my first paragraph aside, that thread could do with splitting up, but I'd prefer to be able to keep my posts together ... so maybe ...

In graphics we have a bunch of stickies for each artist - which is good - keeps their stuff visible and easy to find.  My thread used to be a sticky ... but once some of my images made it in-game I got moved to Blogs.  Maybe a better solution would be to create a sub-board under graphics that only I can post in (but all can reply) and put my thread in there.  I can then split up my mega-thread into different topics (trees ... lizardmen ... etc.).  Other graphic artists like Sherock would have the same if wanted.

Not sure if the same approach can be used for programming blogs, etc. ?

Anyway - just an idea!

Sorry, I haven't gotten around to updating my music thread lately (as you can see). But then again, TPK hasn't touched his thread for a while either!

That's my excuse

Cheers,
Anich

Regarding forum organization, I think that most of the people who are around here all the time use http://www.daimonin.com/unread.html so the structure to me doesn't matter, I just don't read some stuff in Community forum and Marketplace, so I believe that the structure of forums should be made as simple as possible so newbs orientate around here...

About developers dropping a line about what are they doing now is a good idea, also they should write what they plan to do next when they finish what are they doing, I'm very curious what MT is doing now, and when he will implement the features I'm interested in...

I think the current structure is good for a much larger community, but since we are currently very small, it is "too large of shoes for us to fill".

The other thing is: I don't blog about what i do, because everything i do is very in-the-moment, and i kinda do a little of everything.  It would be hard for me to fit "My Blog" into any of the categories.

I might suggest that "Official Announcements" be just that, and blogs be left in a seperate "Developer Blogs" board under development.  I Also was never sure why we had a "contributions" board separate from a "Development" board.  The only other thing i can think of is putting the "Community" Board physically directly below
"official announcements" board so newbs can see where to go fist with the whole "Game rules" and "Newbies" boards.  (instead of admin/development boards being below it)

Don't take this too seriously though, because i like it how it is, and i don't want to be the one doing the changes.