[quote]Originally posted by madmax559:
<strong>not to mention the longest post award
ok well im a systems engineer /dba so os's & db's are my area of interest hence the suggestion
games is something everyone plays or atleast
i hope they do.the state of mac gaming sucks
so they more people participate the better the
chance that the gaming companies will take note.</strong><hr></blockquote>
True, but we had a gaming forum, back when this board was doing a lot better (it's amazing what a front page and a working, stable board will do for that...). There was nothing much going on in it. To the extent that any game developer sizes up the market by looking for gaming forums, an empty one isn't going to look much better than no forum at all.
M3D Jack made a good point: This forum has succeeded to the extent that it has by being relatively focused. People come here for particular things, and we provide those things with a minimum of distraction. One thing I can tell you for certain is that, if there isn't much discussion, fragmenting it into smaller pieces doesn't help. There has to be a critical mass of people in the same place before you get a robust discussion forum going. I've seen a lot of would-be communities die because they started out with as many topics as MacNN now has, and not enough members to keep
one of those topics going.
Ordinarily, we create new forums the same way USENET creates new (non-alt) newsgroups: Once the number of threads on a particular subtopic threatens to drown out all the other subthreads, we look to see if it should get its own forum. This doesn't happen often, and frankly there aren't enough posts about either development or gaming to justify forums dedicated to those topics. Even MacNN's developer forums are relatively slow, and that board is much bigger than ours. On the other hand, the Apple and Omni and StepWise mailing lists are busy.
[quote]<strong>out of all the mac boards ive seen ever since buying one this one seems to be the least anti pc. but it also seems slightly overmoderated...</strong><hr></blockquote>
AI has always prided itself on being relatively temperate, articulate and clean. That was Mark's vision for it. There have been some recent exceptions, but basically this place has never been a free for all, by design. If you have a particular, concrete complaint about moderation, feel free to PM me, or Jonathan, or the moderator in question. We're all reasonable people volunteering our time to make this forum helpful and enjoyable.
[quote]<strong>also noticed a significant % of people are gfx guys/girls so if you want the platform to be widespread you need to open up.
true people can go elsewhere for info, but its precisely this "elitist" perception that makes good developers shy away from osx.</strong><hr></blockquote>
There's nothing elitist about that, frankly, anymore than there's something elitist about the paucity of graphics people on the Omni OS X developer list. Kickaha, M3D Jack, myself, Brad and Belle have all done development work, or are full time developers, so we're not at all hostile to the subject. It's just that there aren't enough other people here to keep a development forum alive.
[quote]<strong>i code on linux & theres a wealth of info & help available. for the mac currently oreilly's making a great effort.</strong><hr></blockquote>
There is for the Mac as well. You just have to look in the right places. This isn't one of the right places.
[quote]<strong>like i said earlier...doesnt cost a dime to test new forums. & while we are at it why not have a musicians forum too so people who make music can pitch in with help & patches.</strong><hr></blockquote>
It does cost to create new forums: They add clutter and break up discussion groups that might already be small. There are <a href="
http://www.osxaudio.com/forums/index.php?maddi=b845548db09f562a7e643b915782b51e" target="_blank">other forums</a> that handle that need better than we can.
You identify the real problem here:
[quote]<strong>i've run a forum before & its incredibly hard to keep it fresh so people keep coming back. eventually people just leave when theres no new infusion of ideas...</strong><hr></blockquote>
This is true. So, there has to be a way to infuse ideas. OSXAudio.com has its front page, with plenty of articles and reviews to fuel a (small) forum. AI has published rumors now and again, and fortunately it was able to generate a community large enough (and well-connected enough) to continue after the articles stopped coming. We've had other problems, like a long period of instability followed by a months-long blackout, followed by not being linked from MacNN at the same time that we couldn't accept new registrations, etc. Now we have a new owner, a front page, and new users can register again. The front page will (try to
) publish rumors, so people will go there looking for rumors, and they'll come here to discuss them. Therefor, to avoid the problem you've identified, we should focus on rumors, and provide other forums on an as-needed basis. AI isn't a developer, musician or gaming resource - it isn't even a design resource, the number of designers here notwithstanding - so it won't really help anyone to try to address those niches. There's simply no content to fuel discussion of those issues at AI, and no-one comes here looking for them.
If you were a developer interested in OS X, would you come to "AppleInsider" to do your research? Or at all? As opposed to any of the (very nice) resources targeted specifically at developers by the likes of Apple, OmniGroup, Stepwise, O'Reilly, iDevGames, MacDevCenter, and the venerable comp.sys.mac.programmer.* hierarchy on USENET?
All that said, keep in mind that if there's a need, we will create a forum. We are not ideologically opposed to there being a Developers forum here. So, post development-related topics in OS X or Software as appropriate, and see if you can't get something going.
