ID:120182
 
So I was reading about Tafe's return when I had, what I thought, was a pretty neato idea.

What if someone (Perhaps I could integrate it into my interactive development studio idea that might turn into something) were to make a system, much like the BYOND's help forum, that was a lot more anonymous. People could opt out of putting their name down with their questions, and opt out of putting names down with replies. A small voting system by the side of replies would give the Original Poster a little clue as to whether or not this was a good answer or not.

This would reduce the issue of 'LOL I WONT HELP U CUZ U NOOOOOOOOOB', and hopefully will result in some of the newer, more timid developers in BYOND getting a little more help.



On topic: I'll always try my best to help anyone who asks me anything regarding development, so feel free.
Not a bad idea. Be nice to possibly see this in the near future.
Good idea. ;D
whats currently at play wouldnt be so bad if more people read the guide
your idea will only deem matters worse by indifferentiating liabilities from trolls
Obviously there would be a way of telling who said what if required via administrators, however there would only be (hopefully) need for this in the case of obvious trolls.
Better yet, unique IDs could be assigned, so we would know to ban unique ID 'John Smith' from the environment, without ever knowing who said it.
Wookie this is a good idea, it will help less capable coders get a bit more comfortable with asking a question and it being answered appropriately, only thing is it could go the same way as developer forum which is people linking to the reference.
Maybe some set of guidelines and rating system for the answers and questions.
I don't know if that's really going to make much of a difference. The way people are, if they see a "dumb" question, they'll respond with a poor answer. I feel our development forum doesn't do this too often, however, and I don't know many who are afraid to post in there. If they are truly afraid, they could make an alternate key to be a "noob" on the forums while maintaining their respectability on their primary key.
It's not a bad idea, especially with the system to allow voting of "good" answers. This would help the issue of "stupid answers" a lot, by allowing the more proper and well-written answers to be up-voted and displayed better. The original poster of the topic's up-vote would be worth more than the up-vote of others just to give more props to the answer the original poster found the most helpful.

Definitely wouldn't be hard to create something like this.
Is this currently a problem on the development forums? I can't say I've seen it, bar the odd person being rather too aggressive in their tone, which we've tried to slap appropriately. If this is a problem, clearly we're doing something wrong.
If someone asks for "the attack code" or "the gm code", you'll be able to tell they're a noob even if you can't see their name. Hiding the name of the poster won't make their post look any smarter.
Towers wrote:
whats currently at play wouldnt be so bad if more people read the guide
your idea will only deem matters worse by indifferentiating liabilities from trolls

The guide only goes to version 2.0... lol.
Nadrew wrote:
It's not a bad idea, especially with the system to allow voting of "good" answers. This would help the issue of "stupid answers" a lot, by allowing the more proper and well-written answers to be up-voted and displayed better. The original poster of the topic's up-vote would be worth more than the up-vote of others just to give more props to the answer the original poster found the most helpful.

So basically, Yahoo! Answers.

There's nothing wrong with the current system. If someone is trying to protect their ego over the anonymity that is the internet, over something as silly as asking for help, they're being retarded. This is as bad as the people that sit in class who clearly need help but never ask for it. "I don't want to look stupid." Oh, but you want your game to look stupid? Either way, you're either going to have to ask someone for help, figure it out yourself, or not figure it out at all. Asking for help, fixes it right away and makes life easier. Figuring it out yourself might pop up bugs (my games often turn out buggy because I prefer to figure things out myself for the most part) but nothing terribly unforgiveable. You just have to put forth more effort to fix your game. Not figuring it out at all, your game either gets published incomplete or not at all.

Removing the keys will change nothing. The posts will be the same, you just won't know who is who. And now you don't know who to run to if they're on BYOND for help. Goddess knows that I've had to go to pager and ask for things here and there from people that have helped me on the dev forums. (If a person reveals their key on the dev forums, then it defeats the purpose of the anonymity)

All in all, the idea has heart in it, but it effectively accomplishes nothing. The ego is hit in the snarky remarks whether or not your name is shown, and now you don't know who to be angry at!