Get Crewbies to put the forums to use.

[Sy_Accursed]

Just something I've noticed a lot lately that seems a bit counter productive when you try and encourage people to help research and want to get guides up-to-date speedily.

Each new update the thread in gen discussion gets loads of info posted and quite often helpful users post in website updates and corrections stats, examines, images etc etc for new items and elements of content; yet when the guides and databases of the site get updated several days later none of this info gets used or credited.

 

It would help speed up getting research completed for new stuff and make people less disheartened at submitting stuff that gets utterly ignored to just take a moment to check the forums for info before self-research. After all tip.it has an amazing community that digs up nso much information and details about new content, its a shame to see it being wasted so often.

 

Examples (just taken from where I've posted recently):

 

http://forum.tip.it/topic/300241-temple-treking-burg-de-rott-updating-info/

Loads of temple trekking info and corrections there that still hasn't made it to the guide

 

http://forum.tip.it/topic/300963-assorted-new-darkmeyer-items/

All the info on a fair chunk of the new items from Branches of Darkmeyer; posted way before even the quest guide went up; completely overlooked by crewbie research (judging by the fact I didn't get credit for any of the items when they appeared in item DB)

[All_Bogs]

Hey,

 

Some submissions stay around for a long period of time as they may be hard to confirm - quest submissions come to mind. Other, especially those related to recent content such as the Temple Trekking example you mention, should ideally be taken care of more quickly. We're aware of this problem, and we've already been discussing on how to improve the way we deal with submissions.

 

With regards to your second example, I'm sorry to say that much of the information in that submission isn't very useful to us. Take the Darkmeyer hood for example - you provide the item's statistics (or lack thereof, in this case), its weight, its examine and an inventory image. That just isn't enough to fully fill out an items database entry. We'll need more information to properly fill out the notes, uses and location boxes. To get this information, we basically have to collect the item ourselves in the game. Once we have the item, the information you provided (stats, weight, examine) is already at our fingertips, which makes some of the information in your submission not that useful to us.

 

This doesn't mean that we completely want to discourage people from making submissions related to quest items - noting obscure bits of information that we may miss, or information on items you don't necessarily run across is still appreciated. And again, we're working on improving how we handle submissions. Thanks for your concern.

[Sy_Accursed]

Still second example fact it's there shows I have the items and could easily of given anything else needed at request; I can see the case if its a 1 poster who just turned up to make a submission. But a lot of such submissions post-update are from active users who could quite happily, quickly and easily fill in any info they missed.

 

But yeah I still think the update gen discussion and submissions spawned from it could be put to much better use; this week is a prime example as corrections to the Vanstrom fight in particular I submitted after the guide come out was ALL info readily available and confirmed en-mass in the update thread itself.

 

Don't get me wrong you do a great job, and obviously some submissions do take a while to process. I just mean specifically post-update gen discussion and submissions seem to get entirely ignored these days; and their use could not only speed up many elements of getting the guides out but also often include details about items and quests that later have to be amended as the quest guide writer missed it.

[Jaffy1]

But yeah I still think the update gen discussion and submissions spawned from it could be put to much better use; this week is a prime example as corrections to the Vanstrom fight in particular I submitted after the guide come out was ALL info readily available and confirmed en-mass in the update thread itself.

 

The process of writing a quest guide involves doing the quest and basing the guide on that. Of course we do look at other available information, but you have to keep in mind that going through every post in general discussion adds a lot of work to the process, and does not always have the use as it could have in this case. Everything we add requires confirmation, and to go through all information would further delay the quest guide's release.

 

Getting a functional quest guide out asap is our first priority, and we appreciate user submissions to improve the guide after its release tremendously. As such, when things are posted in Website Updates & Corrections they deserve our direct attention.

 

As All_Bogs noted, some submissions are hard to confirm. They do get noticed, but aren't always of such quality that they can be used. We are aware of the problem you describe, and are working on a way to make things go more smoothly.

[Sy_Accursed]

When I was briefly on crew I wrote the MEP2 guide the day after quest release (having done it myself) and skimmed through the gen discussion thread gathering extra details; didn't take that long at all, added maybe 20 minutes to work time. Just requires skim reading over like 10 pages of posts to spot ones that post details then doing a closer read/look for quotes to see if others verify it etc.

Just to me it seems easily plausible to do given the time frame you guys take to get quest guides out of several days; I often find I beat the quest fully read the update threads learning lots of info and have time to go back to normal play + help clan mates through the quest and double check things and still have a time lapse of 1 or 2 days til tip.it guide appears.

 

Perhaps I'm just a hell of a lot quicker and proficient at speed reading/research than current crewbies (being an english lit student and all); but it really does seem given the time frame you guys take atm you could quite easily skim through the gen update and any submissions without it slowing down the process any. Especially given of late a fair few guides have had quite dramatically incorrect details which kinda of casts doubts on the "functional" part of the guide (though tbf mostly they do get fixed quickly).

[essiw]

I agree with Sy that there is usefull info in the general discussion threads but I also agree with the crew that it takes time to read those and much of them aren't 100% proved. It could be wise for someone of the crew or someone outside the crew (maybe you sy) to put them somewhere in the website updates & correction forum and put the usefull info and names of people that said it in a nice overview and let people comment on it and verify it. But I am not sure if this will work and if it does take a lot of time or not.

 

Also there is the problem that for some things in the website updates & corrections forum that can be easely updated and are already verified that take a long time for really being updated (like a lot of quest submissions some submitted by myself which could be updated in 1-3 minuts time and don't really need to be verified or are already verified). But that is a problem which is there already for years but I am sure that if you make some kind of rule that some persons should at least do one of those submissions each day (even if it is really small) it will be finished quicker then it is now.

In my time of website crew I couldn't acces quests (mostly because I was or still am not that good in english grammar) but if I could I would have done one a day at least if there were as much quest submissions as there are now.

 

Sorry for grammar and spelling mistakes in this text, being a bit tired right now.

[essiw]

I would like to thank Warriormonkx, Jaffy1 and all the other crewbies that have been cleaning the forum submissions up. It is looking great already :D