The fundamental issues with this forum, and their solutions, are simple.
There is no separation of content whatsoever. There are so many different types of content just mashed all together, all fighting for the same front page. We have guides, questions, complaints, rules, skins, skin elements, etc. all in the same space. How is anyone supposed to find anything in this mess? It's total chaos in here.
The little separation that does exist is almost completely pointless. Why are we putting all the support for this forum in a single thread? Does anyone really want to read a six year old, 220 page, 4000 post long thread to find an answer for their question, or expect anyone else to do this to answer their question? When's the last time a mod has looked at the completed skins queue? The completed skins subforum is basically a repository of legacy content at this point.
This community also has no safeguards against the flood of people coming from osu!skinner. There's nothing stopping someone who has no integration with the community from coming in here, ignoring the rules and posting whatever they want. This problem exacerbates the content separation issue - it's already really difficult to find good content when everything is thrown into one big box, much less when you dump piles of random trash on top of said box every day.
So how do we solve these issues? It's very easy. We need to separate different types of content out from each other. Why this hasn't been done already is a mystery, honestly. Look at how other topics are all cleanly sorted out amongst different forums and subforums in this community, and then look at how Skinning is treated. We have just "Skinning". There is no structure or organization whatsoever. It's like we're a sideshow that nobody cares about. No wonder random users treat our forum that way. No wonder users rely on third party websites like osu!skinner or osu! skins instead of the forum in order to get their skinning content. Why would anyone want to come here over those places, really?
This is how I would divvy everything up and organize it to be a structured, efficient forum:
The main forum should be for questions, tutorials, etc. so that it gets more traffic and doesn't languish in obscurity like it would as a subforum since it doesn't have the same draw for traffic as the subforums for skins will.
Then, we need a subforum for incomplete skins - anything from individual element design to partial skins (for people who don't want to go through the trouble of making a whole skin, but don't want to make a mixed skin. Mixed skins will obviously still be banned.
Next, we need a subforum for completed skins - we already have that, thankfully, though there will need to be some changes made to use this forum to its fullest. First, the name should be changed to something along the lines of "qualified" or "approved" skins for reasons that will be made clear momentarily. Then, the forum should be made so that only moderators can post new topics, but users can still post in threads, just as it is now. Then, we make a full subforum for the "qualified skin queue", instead of having just a thread for it, where anyone can post new skins that are looking to be moved into the approved skin subforum. In this forum, moderators either lock/delete/move to graveyard content that breaks the rules, or promote good content to the approved skin subforum.
This works much better than the current system for a bunch of ways:
There is no separation of content whatsoever. There are so many different types of content just mashed all together, all fighting for the same front page. We have guides, questions, complaints, rules, skins, skin elements, etc. all in the same space. How is anyone supposed to find anything in this mess? It's total chaos in here.
The little separation that does exist is almost completely pointless. Why are we putting all the support for this forum in a single thread? Does anyone really want to read a six year old, 220 page, 4000 post long thread to find an answer for their question, or expect anyone else to do this to answer their question? When's the last time a mod has looked at the completed skins queue? The completed skins subforum is basically a repository of legacy content at this point.
This community also has no safeguards against the flood of people coming from osu!skinner. There's nothing stopping someone who has no integration with the community from coming in here, ignoring the rules and posting whatever they want. This problem exacerbates the content separation issue - it's already really difficult to find good content when everything is thrown into one big box, much less when you dump piles of random trash on top of said box every day.
So how do we solve these issues? It's very easy. We need to separate different types of content out from each other. Why this hasn't been done already is a mystery, honestly. Look at how other topics are all cleanly sorted out amongst different forums and subforums in this community, and then look at how Skinning is treated. We have just "Skinning". There is no structure or organization whatsoever. It's like we're a sideshow that nobody cares about. No wonder random users treat our forum that way. No wonder users rely on third party websites like osu!skinner or osu! skins instead of the forum in order to get their skinning content. Why would anyone want to come here over those places, really?
This is how I would divvy everything up and organize it to be a structured, efficient forum:
The main forum should be for questions, tutorials, etc. so that it gets more traffic and doesn't languish in obscurity like it would as a subforum since it doesn't have the same draw for traffic as the subforums for skins will.
Then, we need a subforum for incomplete skins - anything from individual element design to partial skins (for people who don't want to go through the trouble of making a whole skin, but don't want to make a mixed skin. Mixed skins will obviously still be banned.
Next, we need a subforum for completed skins - we already have that, thankfully, though there will need to be some changes made to use this forum to its fullest. First, the name should be changed to something along the lines of "qualified" or "approved" skins for reasons that will be made clear momentarily. Then, the forum should be made so that only moderators can post new topics, but users can still post in threads, just as it is now. Then, we make a full subforum for the "qualified skin queue", instead of having just a thread for it, where anyone can post new skins that are looking to be moved into the approved skin subforum. In this forum, moderators either lock/delete/move to graveyard content that breaks the rules, or promote good content to the approved skin subforum.
This works much better than the current system for a bunch of ways:
- It acts as a filter and a highlighter for all of the new content so that it gets the attention it deserves if it is good, and the different attention it deserves if it isn't.
- It holds moderators accountable for processing or not processing content because in a properly working system, the subforum should be close to empty - it is very difficult to accomplish the same effect with a thread because there is no way to tell how up to date the moderator processing on it is.
- When it is empty, as it should be, it should serve as an even better highlighter for new content.
- The kinds of people who don't read the rules or integrate into the community will post their garbage into the main forum, where it obviously doesn't belong, so it will stick out like a sore thumb and be dealt with quickly instead of blending in with good content as it does now.
- Different types of content will no longer have to fight for the same limited space on the front page, improving not only the readability of the forum, but also the amount of topics and discussions the forum can sustain at the same time.
