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This thread is an attempt to agree upons some standards and practices for the Thread Masters so that the process of putting this list together will be smoother for everyone. While the opinions of the Thread Masters are important in this discussion (we have to live under whatever system we establish, after all 
), the input of the contributors is valued as well, since if our standards aren't giving you what you want, then we're doing the wrong thing.
There are a number of issues that we need to discuss. I intend to prod all of the Thread Masters to come to this thread and contribute. Even if you say "I don't care about ____, whatever everybody else decides is fine", this is important because then we know that we will not be doing something that is objectionable to you. We can't assume that people don't care if they don't post, because there is no way to tell the difference between that and you simply being away from the 'net for a few days.
Why are standards important? First of all, everyone should look at these forums from the perspective of somebody who says: "Wow, I just heard that Firaxis is making Civ III, and that they're compiling a list of suggestions to include in the game over at Apolyton! I'm there!!!". If that person shows up at this forum and is confused, and can't easily figure out how to contribute to the list, then we have all lost, because that person may have had the best idea yet. If every Thread Master does things differently in each different thread, the likelihood of that person getting confused increases exponentially. However, if we all agree on some simple standards, and make sure that we all try to do the same things in the same way, then it is far more likely that this forum will be easy to use for everybody who wants to contribute, and that is what we all want. Second of all, once we have standards, it makes it easier for us. We won't have to worry if we are doing the right thing or if there's a better way, because we will have the yardstick of the agreed upon standards to meaure ourselves by. If we establish as our standard the "best" methods for doing things known at the time, then we will all know that we are doing the best job we can do by sticking to them. And, we will know that if there is a better idea that comes along, we will all try to adopt it (because the person who notices the good idea would make it part of the standard) instead of just one person.
Currently, there are five issues that I am aware of:
1) How many posts before we start a new thread?
When we first started, yin established a rule of "50 posts per thread". I think that number was just what he came up with off the top of his head. Now that we have had some experience with this, some people are saying that we should lower it. We should agree on a number. With yin going to Denver for a while, this will be important to agree upon quickly, since we will have to "police" ourselves to keep to whatever the best system is.
2) Where do we post summaries?
We've agreed on the practice of summarizing your thread at least as often as you start a new one (nobody objects to more frequent summarizing, of course). The question has arisen as to where these summaries should be posted. The original practice was to put the summaries at the start of the new thread, but some people are beginning to object to that, since they think that as the summaries increase in length the download time will become prohibitive. Others think that the summaries inside the threads give the thread focus. We need to agree on a system.
3) Summary style.
We don't need to agree on anything right away here, but I think we should start critiquing each other's summaries, so we can make sure that they are easy to use (both for people following the discussions and for people who need to do the actual compiling of the list, i.e. us). I think we would probably benefit from standardizing things like the format (we all seem to be doing it differently).
4) Thread header or disclaimer
I think it is important to start off each thread with a brief explanation of what is going on, so that people new to the thread or the forum can quickly get up to speed. I also think it's important to explain what we will eventually be doing with the list and how we will be assigning credit, so that nobody feels "ripped off" or "cheated" if the way their idea is represented in the final list doesn't meet with their exact desires. If people know what they are going to get ahead of time, they have no right to complain. I have attempted to do this in my <a href=http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum28/HTML/000038.html>Technology</a> thread. I am obviously open to suggestions for improving it, or to somebody else's proposal for a different header altogether. I haven't noticed anybody else do this. I think it is important, both for the reasons I've already mentioned and also to make the thread look somewhat "official", rather than just the work of a bunch of disorganized obsessed fans (we're organized obsessed fans, dammit!)
5) Thread naming and numbering
This discussion exploded a little bit in the War Room thread (primarily because of my reaction to yin implementing a scheme before the Thread Masters had reached consensus on which system we liked).
So far, I believe there are three systems:
<u>Decimal Numbering</u> - like 1.2 or 3.7. We can use the numbers to the left of the decimal point for major changes, and the numbers to the right of the decimal for minor changes. When I originally described my feelings about this system, I said that we could use the "major revision" number to synch up when we compiled a "master list" together. For example, if we compiled Units 1.6, Technology 1.37, and Diplomacy 1.9 (no insult intended to any topics not mentioned
) in the master list version 1.0, we would start all of those threads into the new major revision (i.e. Units 2.0, Technology 2.0, Diplomacy 2.0). This way, you can tell at a glance which version of the master list a particular thread went into. It looks as if we are rolling over threads pretty fast, so it seems like we should start numbering from 1.00 if we want to truly maintain a "decimal" system (instead of saying 1.8, 1.9, 1.10, 1.11, 1.12, ...).
<u>Numbering System with Roman Numerals</u> - i.e. Units II and Diplomacy VIII would move to Units III and Diplomacy IX.
<u>Numbering System with Arabic Numerals</u> - i.e. Units 2 and Diplomacy 8 would move to Units 2 and Diplomacy 9.
I am not aware of any other proposals for systems, but obviously if you have a good idea, we want to discuss it.
It seems like we have settled upon naming our threads with a basic keyword in all caps (e.g. TECHNOLOGY or DIPLOMACY). I think everybody seems reasonably content with that system. If there are other proposals, we could discuss them, though.
In summary: I would like to see all of the thread masters participating in this thread, hashing these things out. These are minor issues. We need to be able to prove to each other that we can discuss these issues, agree on solutions, and act as a group if any of us are to have any confidence in the ability of the other Thread Masters to hang together and work as a team on the long hard road ahead of us.
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CIV3-THE MASTER LIST-TECHNOLOGY "THREAD MASTER"
), the input of the contributors is valued as well, since if our standards aren't giving you what you want, then we're doing the wrong thing.There are a number of issues that we need to discuss. I intend to prod all of the Thread Masters to come to this thread and contribute. Even if you say "I don't care about ____, whatever everybody else decides is fine", this is important because then we know that we will not be doing something that is objectionable to you. We can't assume that people don't care if they don't post, because there is no way to tell the difference between that and you simply being away from the 'net for a few days.
Why are standards important? First of all, everyone should look at these forums from the perspective of somebody who says: "Wow, I just heard that Firaxis is making Civ III, and that they're compiling a list of suggestions to include in the game over at Apolyton! I'm there!!!". If that person shows up at this forum and is confused, and can't easily figure out how to contribute to the list, then we have all lost, because that person may have had the best idea yet. If every Thread Master does things differently in each different thread, the likelihood of that person getting confused increases exponentially. However, if we all agree on some simple standards, and make sure that we all try to do the same things in the same way, then it is far more likely that this forum will be easy to use for everybody who wants to contribute, and that is what we all want. Second of all, once we have standards, it makes it easier for us. We won't have to worry if we are doing the right thing or if there's a better way, because we will have the yardstick of the agreed upon standards to meaure ourselves by. If we establish as our standard the "best" methods for doing things known at the time, then we will all know that we are doing the best job we can do by sticking to them. And, we will know that if there is a better idea that comes along, we will all try to adopt it (because the person who notices the good idea would make it part of the standard) instead of just one person.
Currently, there are five issues that I am aware of:
1) How many posts before we start a new thread?
When we first started, yin established a rule of "50 posts per thread". I think that number was just what he came up with off the top of his head. Now that we have had some experience with this, some people are saying that we should lower it. We should agree on a number. With yin going to Denver for a while, this will be important to agree upon quickly, since we will have to "police" ourselves to keep to whatever the best system is.
2) Where do we post summaries?
We've agreed on the practice of summarizing your thread at least as often as you start a new one (nobody objects to more frequent summarizing, of course). The question has arisen as to where these summaries should be posted. The original practice was to put the summaries at the start of the new thread, but some people are beginning to object to that, since they think that as the summaries increase in length the download time will become prohibitive. Others think that the summaries inside the threads give the thread focus. We need to agree on a system.
3) Summary style.
We don't need to agree on anything right away here, but I think we should start critiquing each other's summaries, so we can make sure that they are easy to use (both for people following the discussions and for people who need to do the actual compiling of the list, i.e. us). I think we would probably benefit from standardizing things like the format (we all seem to be doing it differently).
4) Thread header or disclaimer
I think it is important to start off each thread with a brief explanation of what is going on, so that people new to the thread or the forum can quickly get up to speed. I also think it's important to explain what we will eventually be doing with the list and how we will be assigning credit, so that nobody feels "ripped off" or "cheated" if the way their idea is represented in the final list doesn't meet with their exact desires. If people know what they are going to get ahead of time, they have no right to complain. I have attempted to do this in my <a href=http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum28/HTML/000038.html>Technology</a> thread. I am obviously open to suggestions for improving it, or to somebody else's proposal for a different header altogether. I haven't noticed anybody else do this. I think it is important, both for the reasons I've already mentioned and also to make the thread look somewhat "official", rather than just the work of a bunch of disorganized obsessed fans (we're organized obsessed fans, dammit!
)5) Thread naming and numbering
This discussion exploded a little bit in the War Room thread (primarily because of my reaction to yin implementing a scheme before the Thread Masters had reached consensus on which system we liked).
So far, I believe there are three systems:
<u>Decimal Numbering</u> - like 1.2 or 3.7. We can use the numbers to the left of the decimal point for major changes, and the numbers to the right of the decimal for minor changes. When I originally described my feelings about this system, I said that we could use the "major revision" number to synch up when we compiled a "master list" together. For example, if we compiled Units 1.6, Technology 1.37, and Diplomacy 1.9 (no insult intended to any topics not mentioned
) in the master list version 1.0, we would start all of those threads into the new major revision (i.e. Units 2.0, Technology 2.0, Diplomacy 2.0). This way, you can tell at a glance which version of the master list a particular thread went into. It looks as if we are rolling over threads pretty fast, so it seems like we should start numbering from 1.00 if we want to truly maintain a "decimal" system (instead of saying 1.8, 1.9, 1.10, 1.11, 1.12, ...).<u>Numbering System with Roman Numerals</u> - i.e. Units II and Diplomacy VIII would move to Units III and Diplomacy IX.
<u>Numbering System with Arabic Numerals</u> - i.e. Units 2 and Diplomacy 8 would move to Units 2 and Diplomacy 9.
I am not aware of any other proposals for systems, but obviously if you have a good idea, we want to discuss it.
It seems like we have settled upon naming our threads with a basic keyword in all caps (e.g. TECHNOLOGY or DIPLOMACY). I think everybody seems reasonably content with that system. If there are other proposals, we could discuss them, though.
In summary: I would like to see all of the thread masters participating in this thread, hashing these things out. These are minor issues. We need to be able to prove to each other that we can discuss these issues, agree on solutions, and act as a group if any of us are to have any confidence in the ability of the other Thread Masters to hang together and work as a team on the long hard road ahead of us.
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CIV3-THE MASTER LIST-TECHNOLOGY "THREAD MASTER"
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