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 Ouze wrote:
All joking aside though - now that we officially now have pre-kickstarter kickstarter threads, is there ever any intention to sort of... I dunno, moderate the threads to separate the wheat for the chaff? How do you determine if a project s "real" or not? I mean, this is a problem that I imagine is going to snowball over time.

There's generally no need to separate them. So far as I'm aware, we have not yet had a single thread started by someone claiming to be about to start a kickstarter without any actual intention of doing so.

And if we do get them... so what? Is it really any different to 'I went to [insert event] and [insert Games Dev] told me that [insert codex] is being released [insert rough date estimate]...'?


As with any other news or rumours, anything that is obviously bogus will be locked or removed. Anything that seems legit, we would let it go... because that's what the News and Rumours forum is for.

What is the usual timeframe for moving completed KS threads to a different sub-forum. I know it is easy to argue that the fact that it closed is news itself, so do we usually let it sit in N&R for a day or so before moving?

This certainly led to something...interesting!

You can't accuse Dakka of not being responsive to feedback.

My problem with Kickstarter is that it's thin line between a Kickstarter and an advertisement for a product, with the latter not being allowed. Sure, it's news and I totally think that Kickstarters are awesome as they allow for indies to get on the market and, hopefully, dig some GW customers away...but Kickstarter threads are the same as advertisements in that regard

So are the "Forge World News" threads that contain their advertising emails copied and pasted in there.

I copypaste the FFG news articles from their website and put them into the 40K RPG thread I maintain. I don't really see any problem with that. People want to know the news, and keeping it in a central source makes sense rather than starting a new thread every time.

I didn't mean for that to come across as if I think it is a bad thing, sorry if it did.

Just saying that news threads about Kickstarters are not any more advertisements than the threads you maintain, or the Warmachine Thread, or the Infinity Thread, etc..

"Advertising" something is basically a core function of news. Why should it be less valid because it comes from a corporate email instead of a "My brothers, uncles, fathers roommate heard...".

I'd prefer to see Kickstarter threads in a separate forum. If you're so hung up on them also being "news and rumors" then why not a sub forum in the News and Rumors forum titled "kickstarters"?

I agree 100% with Ahtman..

The majority of "news" items likely to be posted on Dakka are basically advertisements of one kind or another. The major reason for having a News & Rumors section is so that people can read about and discuss upcoming miniatures wargaming products that they might purchase.

Old fashioned rumor-mongering, however, doesn't stand much of a chance against the KS mode where the companies themselves are engaging with customers in a sustained and interactive manner. GW's black out policy, surprise surprise, simply cannot compete. Neither can other game companies' equally static (if less misanthropic) approach. Despite the dynamism of KS marketing, the front page of N&R still contains a good mix of news items. And it is ultimately the users who decide, by volume of discussion, what's on page one.

I think that raises the point of what Dakka is for vis-a-vis news. This isn't a blog that simply re-announces company announcements, like TTGN. Dakka's N&R subforum is for discussing what's currently going on in the world of miniatures gaming. A company might announce X but that doesn't mean Dakkanauts will have much to say about it.

Finally, why not have a non-KS N&R subforum alongside a KS N&R subforum? To paraphrase d-usa ITT, the better question is why do so? I agree with d-usa that the argument seems to be "because I'm not interested in KS projects." This takes me back to the days before KS, when people complained that there should be a non-GW N&R subforum. I definitely get that some users don't care about KS projects or GW releases or whatever BUT these things remain a big part of "what's up with the hobby now."

That said, efficiently directing users to the discussion they are most interested in reading and participating in is definitely a basic goal. It just needs to be balanced against other goals, like not pigeon holing information/exposing users to information beyond whatever they are thinking about right this minute.

 Manchu wrote:

Old fashioned rumor-mongering, however, doesn't stand much of a chance against the KS mode where the companies themselves are engaging with customers in a sustained and interactive manner. GW's black out policy, surprise surprise, simply cannot compete.

I think the running tally of "this is what is on page 1 right not" that I usually post is pretty telling of what GW has done.

It seems that over the last year, almost every tally has been something like:

Right now there are around 10 KS threads, which seems about average for the usual count every time I have bothered to count.
And every other time before the current thread we are in right now GW has always been a few threads ahead of KS in terms of volume.

Since the blackout, and the take down of a well known rumor blog, the GW threads have gone down in number. I think the count in this threads was 11 KS v. 7 GW v. all others.

Now less GW threads mean more threads about other companies, which can be seen as bad news for GW and fans wanting to know more about GW. There are now less people talking about GW than before, at least with the limited evidence a thread count provides.

But this is probably going into a separate topic.

By the way - to weigh in with my opinion: Don't separate KS threads. I've actually started coming to Dakka much more often because Warseer worked so hard to make it difficult to find all the rumour threads. Having to check Warhammer, 40k, Sci-fi news and rumours, and the buried Kickstarter forum is ridiculous.

I think that the amount of KS threads is just a reflection of what's going on on the wargaming scene. I think they belong there, because it is what's happening.

decker_cky wrote:
By the way - to weigh in with my opinion: Don't separate KS threads. I've actually started coming to Dakka much more often because Warseer worked so hard to make it difficult to find all the rumour threads. Having to check Warhammer, 40k, Sci-fi news and rumours, and the buried Kickstarter forum is ridiculous.

I have to agree with this. I came mostly to Dakka because here at least you can easily find out about things which are not related to GW, especially in the N&R section with regards to other companies and even (their) kickstarters. Would you prefer it happens like it does on Warseer where the dreamforge KS news page gets a place in a subforum somewhere far away and even gets locked or deleted because Mark himself posted in it? KS are news aswell, arguably more news than the current amount of news and rumours coming from GW.

 Sigvatr wrote:
My problem with Kickstarter is that it's thin line between a Kickstarter and an advertisement for a product, with the latter not being allowed.

Where did you get that idea?

Dakka has absolutely zero problem with companies advertising their products. We would much prefer that a company posts honestly (Hey, I'm Bob from Totally A Miniatures Company, and here's my new range of stuff!) than creating anonymous accounts and posting about how they just 'found' this awesome new company on the net. The former encourages discussion between the company and their potential customers. The latter just annoys people because it looks dishonest.

 insaniak wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
My problem with Kickstarter is that it's thin line between a Kickstarter and an advertisement for a product, with the latter not being allowed.

Where did you get that idea?

Dakka has absolutely zero problem with companies advertising their products. We would much prefer that a company posts honestly (Hey, I'm Bob from Totally A Miniatures Company, and here's my new range of stuff!) than creating anonymous accounts and posting about how they just 'found' this awesome new company on the net. The former encourages discussion between the company and their potential customers. The latter just annoys people because it looks dishonest.

agreed, there are lots of threads from smaller companies that are basically an advertising thread for said company. Speaking specifically to kickstarters, threads always seem to go better when a person is up front about it being theres, the random thread that pops up from a poster with 1 post saying something like hey look at this kickstarter I came across tends to not get as much positive feedback

I'd prefer to see Kickstarter threads in a separate forum.

Why don't we just have a member wide vote on it when everyone logs in?

I can see kick starters being news and all, but how many times do I have to see "OMFG ANOTHER LASER CUT TERRAIN COMPANY ON KICKSTARTER LOLKTHXBAI!!!" and with the amount of failed kick starters I kind of see them as "Kinda" news. Now if a company passes a kickstarter then I could see it being in news and rumors. I'd like a news subform for kick starters myself just to clean things up a bit. Thats my opinion though, just like d-usa has one and Ouza, I really think if we are that divided on the issue we should have a fourm member wide vote. but then again I have less than 5k posts so who cares what I think.

I'll put what I put in another thread not too long ago (asking for gw and/or kickstarter news and other news to be split into different forums). If it wasn't for the current dakkadakka way of combining news into one forum, I wouldn't have discovered most of the new companies and miniatures I'm now buying and enjoying.

Compare to how Warseer do things - many different news boards split up across the forums - it's hard to keep track and theres no interest amongst the users in attempting to discover alternatives. Keeping it in one forum will make it easier to discover new stuff and encourage people to branch out from the traditional 40k/fantasy/lotr three.


However! I would like to see more mod control of news and rumour threads. Far too often I see a thread bumped even though there's not been any news for a while (the current Eldar thread being a perfect example - packed with wishlisting and speculation but little concrete detail). I've also seen instances of some important detail or a snippet of a rumour lost in between posts debating said wish-listing.

As long as it says [Kickstarter] or [Indiegogo] in the title, it's east for me to pass over and read something I'm interested in.

 kronk wrote:
As long as it says [Kickstarter] or [Indiegogo] in the title, it's east for me to pass over and read something I'm interested in.

This. I think there should be clear rules on Titles on them (sort of how the swap shop has) That said its not too big of a problem as most of them do find a way to jam "Kickstarter" in somewhere

 Erasoketa wrote:
I think that the amount of KS threads is just a reflection of what's going on on the wargaming scene. I think they belong there, because it is what's happening.

I think this is a great insight.

For all the people who are for adding more subforums for crowdfunded projects (or legal issues, complaints, what have you) I wonder how much time you spend on the other wargaming forums. If it's "not much"; then I suggest you briefly browse Bell of Lost Souls or Warseer. They're both great communities, but I think they also went too far with creating subforums (BOLS has 5 and a half full screens of categories, at 1280x1024!) and I think that vigilance is required to prevent a similar factionalization here. As Linux proves year after year after year on the desktop, sometimes too many choices is not actually appealing.

I dont really mind what kickstarter policy dakka adopts as long as it is CONSISTENTLY applied. The robotech KS thread got turfed to misc games within hours hours of its end yet mantic threads containing news about only kickstarted minis stick around for almost a year and others like myth and secret weapon stick around for weeks so far and counting.

 warboss wrote:
I dont really mind what kickstarter policy dakka adopts as long as it is CONSISTENTLY applied. The robotech KS thread got turfed to misc games within hours hours of its end yet mantic threads containing news about only kickstarted minis stick around for almost a year and others like myth and secret weapon stick around for weeks so far and counting.

The Dreadball thread is a N&R thread started after the kickstarter ended, rather then being the 'We're at X Goal!!' thread. When Robotech has some new news (actual model pics for instance) feel free to start a N&R Thread for it.

If you see a thread in N&R that is an 'active' Kickstarter thread please hit the Triforce of Friendship in the corner of the OP to report to a mod and have it moved. They are human afterall, and can miss things.

I personally feel that's splitting hairs (it's a kickstarter thread that only deals with stuff from the kickstarter but it's not an goal update kickstarter thread!) but, like I said, I'm fine with any policy towards kickstarters as long as its enforced equally. Frankly, I'd like the non-GW and WM forums to get a bit more traffic personally as I think its good for those games as well as this site. I've submitted a few triforces so we'll see if on dakka farms all kickstarters are created equal or if some are more equal than others.

 warboss wrote:
The robotech KS thread got turfed to misc games within hours hours of its end yet mantic threads containing news about only kickstarted minis stick around for almost a year and others like myth and secret weapon stick around for weeks so far and counting.

I can explain why the RT thread got chucked so quick -- because I did it; which in turn is because I had been reading it since you started it.

The general policy is, a KS thread gets moved out of N&R when the funding period ends. If you see something that needs moving out of N&R, please hit modalert or PM me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Cyporiean wrote:
When Robotech has some new news (actual model pics for instance) feel free to start a N&R Thread for it.

Yes, this is how I think of it.

Like I said, I don't have a problem with it being moved per se but rather that it seemed to be moved while others for weeks since their end haven't been. I've got no issues with it being in misc games and saw that Lorek moved a few other threads as well in the meantime. Thanks for the reply.

Actually, what I would appreciate is some sort of mandatory (!) tag in front of each thread aka [Kickstarter] or [WHFB] as already been suggested a few times.

I am not interested in any Kickstarter myself and it's incredibly annoying to carefully scan each thread in N&R just to find the WHFB rumors thread again. A small tag doesn't hurt anyone but would make the forum a lot easier to navigate.

I think the [tags] are a good idea. I also don't think enforcing them would be an issue either since most of the people who start N&R threads are reliable Dakka users who know the score.

Pretty much all Kickstarters have 'Kickstarter' in the title, so it a not that hard to find them. But it would be nice if we had tags for the most popular things like [KS], [GW], etc