Can we please get a Kickstarter forum?

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**Oaka**

I only log on about once a week, to check on news and rumors and such, but can Dakka please make a new forum for Kickstarters under News and Rumors? These different start-up projects continue to delay my precious internet browsing time. It's very precious, I assure you!

**darefsky (Flight Medic Paints)**

I second this motion. Its hard to sort the news and rumors now.

**AllSeeingSkink**

I oppose the motion. I prefer it all in one place and don't find it hard to sort.

**BlapBlapBlap**

1) Check Nuts and Bolts. There are so many of these threads...
2) Nothing's going to happen, many have asked.

**Kilkrazy**

I shall move the thread to Nuts and Bolts.

**Alfndrate**

Just a few choice posts from one of the last threads about this idea:

insaniak wrote:As has been discussed previously, Kickstarter projects are no less newsworthy than any other upcoming release. They're ultimately no different to any other pre-release news snippet.

At the very least, they usually include concept art or WIP sculpts, which is more than can be said for the majority of Games Workshop-related news threads...

yakface wrote:
Ouze wrote:
I think I'd define the difference as such:

N&R: a product release in which the release is not contingent upon as-yet-unfulfilled funding as a precondition of being released.

Hypothetical Kickstarter forum: Product releases which will only exist if crowdfunding is successful.

True, but rumored products often don't ever get released (or do so in a modified state), and sometimes even announced products go belly-up before they ever go on sale.

Realistically, the News & Rumors forum is about all the news and rumors involving the world of wargaming, not just what is the newest product that is currently available (although that is obviously a big part of it). Like it or not, Kickstarter campaigns are a big item of interest to a lot of people because they're either unique new projects or they represent the ability to pull of cool projects that may have never happened otherwise. In either case, they tend to capture that 'ooh shiny, something new!' quotient that people like to read about.

Putting crowd-funding threads into their own section simply means a splintering of the general news and rumors experience, so instead of going to one forum to see basically what new topics are trending hot with conversation, you now have to go to a separate forum to see if the hottest thing out is really a kickstarter campaign.

It just doesn't make much sense to me. As long as the threads are properly titled, they are easy to skip and there's enough real estate on the first page to make sure topics that deserve to be seen aren't simply getting pushed out.

I agree that there is definitely a glut of crowd-funding projects going on right now and I doubt its going to stop anytime in the near future, but that really kind of is the current face of wargaming in a large way right now and therefore should be in the news section of the forum.

Really, the best thing that people can do who don't like these threads is to not post in them. Everytime someone sees a crowd-funding topic that they think is stupid or unworthy and they post in that thread, they're just giving more attention to the topic to help it out. If they just left dumb kickstarter threads to their own accord then those threads would drift away and nobody would bother with them.

Zweischneid wrote:I believe that the Kickstarter-craze was the best thing that ever happend to the News/Rumours Forum.

Before it, it was essentially a GW rumour-tarot & GW news-announcement (made even more frustrating by GW's information policy). Other things were rather far between.

Now it's become more and more a genuinely comprehensive forum covering the world of miniatures and wargaming.

And as noted, virtually all those threads on Kickstarter (indiegogo, etc..) already include these references in the title, so it wouldn't be hard to steer clear of them (in comparison, it's often a lot harder to avoid - for example - GW-related threads there, as people don't tend to have the cutesy of putting "Games Workshop" or something of that sort in the title),.

d-usa wrote:Current breakdown of N&R:

13 Games Workshop Threads (not counting the two GW related stickies on top)
10 Kickstarter/Indiegogo Threads
24 "Other" threads.

If you don't count the stickies on top you get:

51% Everything else
28% GW
21% Kickstarter

Is having Kickstarters take up ~20% of the News & Rumors really such a bad thing? Considering that they are actually news that relate to the hobby? Games Workshop takes up more real estate on the N&R than any other company, but nobody has suggested kicking them out and putting them in their own N&R forum.

Games Workshop is popular, but this is NOT a Games Workshop forum. It is a hobby forum, that includes tabletop, board games, role playing, and even some computer games, and a very demented off-topic section.

I am amazed how having an active N&R forum where actual News & Rumors are posted on a regular basis that cover so many different game systems that I have never even heard off seems to be a had thing in the eyes of some.

d-usa wrote:
Anpu-adom wrote:
I'm just going to say that there are more COMPLETED kickstarters in the News/Rumors section than news or rumors. There isn't any news in those threads anymore, and they should find a new home.

They include updates on ship times, updates on production, updated drawings/renders/sculpts, etc.

They include just as much news as any other thread in there, quite a few of them have more than the GW N&R threads which are often just wishlisting because there are no actual leaks.

And just for comparison, the current total threads out of 50 on the first page:

14 Kickstarter/Indiegogo threads (28%)
10 GW threads (20%)

So Games Workshop takes up as much (and often more) threads in N&R than all the separate Kickstarter/Indiegogo threads combined.

One single company takes up almost as much real estate on page 1 as 14 separate companies who just happen to share the same funding source. If we break it down by actual companies we get what?

GW taking up 20%
14 companies taking up 2% each.

Yet everybody complains about these individual companies having their one thread when GW gets 10...

**purplefood**

We should make a kickstarter for a kickstarter forum...

**Casey's Law**

I would like a sub-forum dedicated to the appreciation of my toe hairs.

**Snrub**

I dunno whether its been suggested before, but maybe a "hide thread" feature might solve a lot of the N&R/Kickstarter problems. Just hide threads you don't want to see.

I'm not sure how difficult this would be to implement though.

**Oaka**

I didn't know Nuts & Bolts existed, thanks for pointing me in the right direction! I'll assume that, as it currently stands, the kickstarters will remain in news and rumors for the reasons stated. A lot of the kickstarters do look good, mind you, I just agree with those that have questioned whether they actually become a finished product. Some of these kickstarters appear to be as preliminary as a sketch of an idea for a figure range, and I'm pretty sure a "Here is concept art for a Space Skaven I drew and hope to someday sculpt and sell" wouldn't belong in the News and Rumors forum.

**insaniak**

Oaka wrote:
... and I'm pretty sure a "Here is concept art for a Space Skaven I drew and hope to someday sculpt and sell" wouldn't belong in the News and Rumors forum.

That really depends on the context. Concept art that hasn't been seen before from an established miniature company would most certainly be newsworthy.

So far as Kickstarters becoming finished products, to date I have backed 5 Kickstarters. and have received the goods from all of them. So at least from my point of view, KS's track record so far is pretty good

**Ouze**

Snrub wrote:
I dunno whether its been suggested before, but maybe a "hide thread" feature might solve a lot of the N&R/Kickstarter problems. Just hide threads you don't want to see.

I'm not sure how difficult this would be to implement though.

It has been suggested. In fact, the thread remains on this very page. Unfortunately the answer was

legoburner wrote:
Typically we would just say ignore with your eyes A cross-site user specific ignore feature for threads would be too database intensive. There is value in having people able to ignore threads as it lets us assign a negative score for algorithmic weighting, but it is nothing I'll add anytime soon on account of the level of work required.

**Snrub**

Hah i even commented on it in that thread. That's probably where i got my idea for it from. Some residual back of the brain memory of it.

**bubber**

I really think a sub-forum for kickstarters & the like is needed - I bet a good few of us don't read these & think it's a hassle trying to filter out these threads to read actual 'news'.
When they kickstarter has finished & the company makes a product, THEN move it to news.
I only want to read about 'real' models & rules, not ones that may or may not exist.
We could call it the 'Schrodinger forum'.

**Alfndrate**

I'm gonna link you to a post, where several people, including mods and admins/owners of the site talk about why we're not splitting N&R into News&Rumors and Kickstarters here

In fact, if you were to look at the 40 or so threads on the first page of News and Rumors, you can break them down like so:

3 Threads - Stickied at the Top, not news or rumors
8 Threads dedicated to GW (Note: 5 of these threads actually pertain to the news and rumors surrounding a release, though 1 of those threads is about the Hobbit Release, which is "done". The other 3 threads are bantering about retailers banning a book, armies missing from the cases at Warhammer World, and Games Day might be leaving)
12 Crowdfunding Threads from 12 different gaming companies each offering something different to us the consumer.
17 different threads about actual news and rumors pertaining from individual companies that aren't GW. Sorting through the Kickstarters isn't hard to do...as most of them tend to say, "Kickstarter" in their name.

Couple that with the changes in policy regarding N&R and kickstarters, that these threads are being put into their respective forums after the KS is over, means that we're seeing fresh things all the time. If you happen to catch one that was missed by the mods, all you have to do is click the triangle of friendship in the upper right hand corner of a post, and say, "Kickstarter has ended, please move to appropriate forum."

**insaniak**

bubber wrote:
I only want to read about 'real' models & rules, not ones that may or may not exist.

Then don't open anything with 'Kickstarter' in the title. Problem solved.

Well, it doesn't help you with all of the rumour threads, which in many cases have less substance than most kickstarters... but apparently kickstarters are the bigger problem, for some inexplicable reason.

**pretre**

As I said last time this thread came up:
"Can we get a Nuts and Bolts sub-forum for requests to split Kickstarter off from News and Rumors? I don't want to have to read through all of these requests every time I go to Nuts and Bolts."