Alpha Forums

[Patrick of the Isles]

So... a question about the state of posts in this forum for alpha games.

Instead of being a place where discussion of the games themselves occurs, most topics lately seem to be just dozens and dozens of people asking to be added to the given alpha group, with perhaps an occasional post about the game implementation, where discussion is difficult because of all the intervening posts asking to be added to the group.

Is there a better way for people to be added to make that request? Should new posts about alpha games be divided into one thread for discussion of the game, and another for people requesting to be added? Would it be too harsh to delete posts asking to be added from the post about game discussion?

Basically, would these forums be more useful for discussion if it was not just page after page of people asking to be added?

[MoiMagnus]

I agree the current state of the forum is counterproductive.

But I'm not convinced much can be done as long as anyone is allowed to post here.
Just look at the Agricola thread, the initial post literally says to send a PM to get added, and there is still 5 pages of peoples answering "I'm interested" by post.

[mrdoctor]

I'm not an alpha tester (though likely will be in a few 100 more games), and I'm surprised I can post in this forum, to be honest! A better way may be to limit those who aren't testers to read-only on the forum - that way programmers can still post threads asking to be PMd, but would cut down on people just posting asking to be made into a tester?

[ViolentSilence]

I'm not an alpha tester (though likely will be in a few 100 more games), and I'm surprised I can post in this forum, to be honest! A better way may be to limit those who aren't testers to read-only on the forum - that way programmers can still post threads asking to be PMd, but would cut down on people just posting asking to be made into a tester?

Yeah, I'd agree with that - my suggestion would be to split the alpha forum in two:
Alpha Games - only accessible to people who have permission for Alpha games (either hidden completely, or that people only have the ability to view posts if they aren't a tester)
Alpha Testers - A forum where only the developers can post new topics, specifically to appeal for people to test who don't currently have the permissions to do so

There have been a few posts in here of people trying to suggest a game so this format would cut those out too