The /newstuff Chronicles #532

On 3/8/2017 at 5:59 PM, The Ultimate DooMer said:

Also the fact there's a lot more wads being made than there was back then, together with the extreme narrowing of scope and quality in DW's mapping/playing preferences over this decade...meaning that newstuff is now full of wads that are undesirable to most.

Tbh it's from a while (around when I was still writing reviews) that I started to mature the feeling that no one cares so much about the /newstuff Chronicles anymore. There's still some interest obviously but all the talking here seems to be only about the lack of reviews. Compare this to the older /newstuff Chronicles of the past years which they have many more comments and discussions. Regarding the more ambitious stuff they all have their stand-alone thread (with some exceptions of course) where most of the discussion happens there. It's only 2 years since I'm around here so I'm probabaly missing something to how the things were back then and how and when they started to change.

Pardon the late reply / necropost, life's been so chaotic I forgot to keep checking the wad Reviews.

Thanks for your review of "Area 02 Temple Extraction" Csonicgo. 

It made it clear that I need to do a lot more work on leading / hinting the player since there's only one area that's actually inaccessible and just there for scenery.  Also, I really need to add clear indication when at the Exit Level switch to prevent the surprise exit.

It's cool to hear you enjoyed various Mancubi encounters for they're one of my favorite Doom Enemies although I felt I went heavy with the Cacodemons on this level.

I'll try it out in Lithium to know what you experienced.

Thanks again, keep up the rad work.

True, it is wad related as well so it would be on topic so it makes sense to do that.

The whole point of /newstuff being in news before was for visibility I’m assuming. Now news is buried. I always enjoyed seeing a new /newstuff but now I hardly remember it’s a thing. But I’m always checking out Wads and Mods, and I’m sure I’m not the only one, so that move seems like a good one to me.

Newstuff either needs to be more visible or abandoned as a relic of doomworld's past. I would be in favor of pinning it in the Wads and Mods forum.

wipe the slate perhaps and start fresh? i wonder how many people just look at the list and feel bogged down, especially with all the junk wads in there.

Well, I think with that count of reviewed wads, new stuff chronicles could go out now. It shouldn't be long, but still it's better than staying somewhere between earth and sky.

Also, some encouragement needed. How people(those who are new here and stays a bit longer) suppose to know that they can review maps in that review place.

13 minutes ago, Myst.Haruko said:

Also, some encouragement needed. How people(those who are new here and stays a bit longer) suppose to know that they can review maps in that review place.

The real question is why anybody would want to do that, since the file reviews are just more convenient to begin with. I can easily write an essay about any WAD I like right there if I wanted, slap on some screenshots without any hassle at all, and it automatically gets front-page for some time as well. Writing an article for newstuff, even if it might be interesting to do at times, is less convenient, limits my choices, and inconveniences me in terms of screenshots.

Essentially, file reviews "outperform" newstuff articles in certain ways, and on top of that newstuff also has to compete with the file reviews such as they are. Even in case of some of the one-liner reviews, that competition still stands just by virtue of something having 4-5 stars, and that's what people are looking for: The key information about quality is there already. So all you do is look for a bunch of stars, scroll around a little for a thourough review in case you want more info, and that's it.

One may argue newstuff articles have a fanbase of sorts, I can see why that is the case, but it has to stop being inconvenient for reviewers as well as limiting choices "just because backlog".

And it should be released more often :v Though I guess that relies on people taking the time to write reviews I guess...

Regarding the visibility I wonder if it's more worth to change the whole news subforum to something different (for example something similar to what was done with this year cacowards), iirc was it also suggested back when the forum was changed?

As for now there are 13 reviews ready in the review center but I wonder if this long hiatus is related to the works in progress with the new Downloads. I would hate to see /newstuff disappear, for sure I think that it could benefit from having a less awkward uploading process.

dead?

Just now, Memfis said:

dead?

I hope not! I just started doing reviews for newstuff. I agree having it be a part of wads/mods would help viewership.

There are already many reviews submitted, it would be perfect time time to post those reviews and move on... I'll try add two more reviews and see if they will be accepted.

Agreed that it makes no sense having news features tucked away at the bottom. Perhaps /newstuff could be featured in the downloads area seeing as it is relevant there too. It might even encourage more community involvement to help clear the backlog - even if is it just one or two people who have played some of the megawads that are still to be reviewed.

I'd gladly do more reviews but the limit of 3 claims, despite having submitted all 3 reviews, is stopping that - maybe submitted reviews should not count as pending claims?

Additionally, it seems as though there is a bottleneck in that this all relies on Bloodshedder to validate and post everything... maybe there is a way to reduce the reliance upon a single admin here?

Additional pt. 2 - some users write sizeable file reviews on content in the downloads area, perhaps those reviews could be used (with poster permission) to help clear the backlog, regardless of the date

It would be a shame if newstuff outright died because it's a useful resource that goes into more depth than simple file review saying "it's good" or whatever. Even if it only stuck around for things that people actually want to review, then it would still serve a purpose even if this massive backlog was not properly cleared as a result of shifting the focus like that.

14 minutes ago, Scotty said:

It would be a shame if newstuff outright died because it's a useful resource that goes into more depth than simple file review saying "it's good" or whatever. Even if it only stuck around for things that people actually want to review, then it would still serve a purpose even if this massive backlog was not properly cleared as a result of shifting the focus like that.

After all, it's feedback that serves its purpose for the mapper and also it can give ideas for other mappers as well....

On 7/31/2017 at 10:57 PM, Bloodshedder said:

• DMMPST: DooM MaP StaTistics - Frans P. de Vries
• Reviewed by: Walter confetti
  This is a little Java program created by Frans P. de Vries for Unix / Windows machines that finds all the type of things in a map; let's say this is a modern version of WadSpy.

Small correction: it is written in C.