Hello Scawen,

Just saw that you closed the thread where you posted regular updates on the progress you are making. It actually saddens me that some people can really spoil it for the majority of us looking silenty at the progress you made and appreciating it.

I think a solution to this problem would be to create a thread where no one exept you could post, just so we could read it like a dev blog or some kind of diary. It's not as good as a fully opened thread where we can interact with you to try and help you on your quest, but I think it's still better than staying silent far from us.

Tell me what you think.

Another idea I have would be to have a curated list of people in some private threads to discuss with you on certains subjects, like physics, graphics etc, as some of us are also programmer, game developers, etc.
As you might know already I'm a Graphics Programmer at Eden Games for example, and I would be gladly try to help you.

yep good idea.

Hi, thanks.

Yes I was wondering about a locked thread. Though I do like the feedback and community interaction, so it would be nice to have it open for replies. Comments by people sometimes lead to a new experiment or bit of research, so that can be helpful. I just can't really understand why any such conversation about development and progress has to have people coming on and writing random complaints about the rate of development.

So I was wondering if the thread could have a big red warning at the top that any random posts about the developers rate of progress, etc. would result in post deletion and instant forum ban?

It's harsh but there are a few crazies about and it's probably better to keep them out of conversations!

But yeah, maybe a closed one could be interesting and at least it's safe. I'll think a bit more about it, if the next experiment brings any decent results I'd like to report.

Quote from Scawen :

I just can't really understand why any such conversation about development and progress has to have people coming on and writing random complaints about the rate of development.

Just shows you that they don't have much of else occupying their mind but LFS. Maybe it has become an obsession to them

Quote from Scawen :

So I was wondering if the thread could have a big red warning at the top that any random posts about the developers rate of progress, etc. would result in post deletion and instant forum ban?

Thing is with that you'll spend a lot of time moderating the thread rather than doing what you enjoy.
Unless someone else is doing the moderation, and even like that it might create a cat and mouse game where people create throwaway accounts to troll, using VPNs/proxies if IP banned, etc. People do have a lot of time to waste to mess with others, yet no time to do their own things.
Does LFS forum has a feature where only accounts with a certain age are allowed to reply ? That would make the banning a bit more robust maybe if only accounts that are only 6 months/1 year old are allowed to post on theses threads ?

Quote from nacim :

That would make the banning a bit more robust maybe if only accounts that are only 6 months/1 year old are allowed to post on theses threads ?

I would add a certain amount of posts to that as well.
Otherwise people will start creating accounts now (or maybe did so in the past) and can use them ofter 6 or 12 months.
Okay, setting a certain amount of posts can be bypassed as well by giving random reactions to crank up the numbers, but mods will catch that and if the percentage of 'non-reactions' is too high ...

1. Moderators should take over the moderating job,there are quite few here.
2. If the thread is so prone to receive negative comments,maybe add some option that only licenced users can comment. Then creation of new accounts would even an income.

I'm also curious what's happening and what's being worked on now,so I'm interested to read. Somehow happens that I'm the one who relays such info to other communities - in latvian simracing discord (where people are more focused on that italian product) I'm the one who gets tagged if something needs to be known about LFS.

After thinking sbout it I'd prefer a split approach. One kind of locked update thread and one discussion thread. That would make it easier to get an update on current lfs developments (pun intended) while also allow for some hopefully sensible discussion.

Not sure how sensible this would be overall, maybe it would just be easier to to copy development relevant posts to the locked thread later on (by moderator?). Sometimes it's very hard to keep track on the relevant stuff and searching for Scawen's posts in the forum kinda feels like stalking sometimes

However, I fear the kind of moderation of this thread would require given previous threads of a similar kind.

Quote from Scawen :

Hi, thanks.

Yes I was wondering about a locked thread. Though I do like the feedback and community interaction, so it would be nice to have it open for replies.
So I was wondering if the thread could have a big red warning at the top that any random posts about the developers rate of progress, etc. would result in post deletion and instant forum ban?

It's harsh but there are a few crazies about and it's probably better to keep them out of conversations!

But yeah, maybe a closed one could be interesting and at least it's safe. I'll think a bit more about it, if the next experiment brings any decent results I'd like to report.

I know that talking about the development progress and exchanging ideas is motivating. Just simply put a warning in the first post, and ban such people from the thread. Contributing & positive attitude people will stay, while those who disturb the environment will be able to look but won't be able to touch.

Forum ban would be too harsh since those people, despite dragging the thread into a collection of useless whiny comments, do care about LFS. If you only ban specific behavior instead of trashing the whole thread, they will be careful since this time only they will be burned. Not having a chance to do the same stuff "in the next one".

A month ban would be about right, that's not exactly a big deal, hopefully that would curb the idiocy.

why not have a voting system where the readers could vote if a post is good or bad. the bad posts get removed and the good stuff stays. I've always enjoyed coming to this forum and reading about the progress. others inputs 9for the most part) offer some good value too.

Quote from markknightpz :

A month ban would be about right, that's not exactly a big deal, hopefully that would curb the idiocy.

Past has shown that some people tend to be uncurable,hence the "in the corner" is often tunred into "no longer welcome" after few days. Also - ban from forum just means they cannot write,they can still read all the threads,in worst case at least the public ones as the forum is publically reachable.

Best idea is for Scawen to stop responding. People are always gonna complain, there's been 20 threads of people asking about "development progress" this year alone.

Quote from VladM :

Best idea is for Scawen to stop responding. People are always gonna complain, there's been 20 threads of people asking about "development progress" this year alone.

the hype is high !

Odd that two people have actually posted here to deliberately antagonise the developers. It's really strange. Some people should re-evaluate their priorities.

All I can say is there is progress, but we aren't in any hurry to report progress. Eric is working on things and I am working on things. These things take time. We are working several hours every day. Don't hold your breath waiting for updates!

Bugging us will certainly not speed anything up. If anything, it can slow us down a little because sometimes you succeed in irritating us. A happy developer is a productive developer. We have never increased our rate of work as a response to people bugging us. That would be quite impossible as we are working as hard as we can sustain already. No-one wants the updates released more than we do.

This is a huge project we are working on. We work very hard on it and there was a massive update last year, probably the biggest update for years. But some people just want the next thing and are losing patience. It's quite pathetic really but all I can suggest is you go and find a hobby, other than LFS. Do something, maybe get a bike and get outside a bit. Because if you are impatient for updates, it's going to get a lot worse for you before something arrives. Make sure you are subscribed to the newsletter and you will get notified when there is something interesting.

Anyway, I got the message from this thread and will now close it. Thanks for the input!