I've made a few tweaks to the game submission process. The aim of this is to make life much easier for moderators, who are doing an amazing job despite being completely swamped by submissions.
We now ask a few questions, and the answer to each one determines what happens next:
Who can access this game?
- Only people I give the link to
- Everybody
"Only people I give the link to" is the default, and corresponds to "unlisted". If you pick this option, there are no further questions. You can fill in the Description box, but it's now optional.
If you choose "Everybody", you get the next question:
Is it finished?
- Work in progress
- Ready for release
"Work in progress" is the default. If you pick this option, there are no further questions. Description is optional. Your game goes directly to the new Work in Progress category - a moderator does not need to look at your game and move it there for you.
If you choose "Ready for release", you get the next question:
Do you want to apply to put the game into a category?
- No
- Yes
"No" is the default. If you pick this option, there are no further questions. Description is optional. Your game goes directly to the Sandpit - a moderator does not need to look at your game and move it there for you.
If you choose "Yes", only then do you get to pick a category. You can still choose "Work in Progress" and "Sandpit" from here if you like. If you choose any other category, then you must enter a description. The process is the same as before, i.e. your game goes into Uncategorised until a moderator checks it.
If you update your game and want to submit it to a different category (for example, you put your game in "Work in Progress", and now you've finished it, or your game was put in "Sandpit" by a moderator and you've finished/fixed/improved it), you can now do so - just edit the listing and answer the questions again. All the same rules as above apply.
Hopefully, by steering people to submit games to "Sandpit" or "Work in Progress" (where a moderator doesn't need to check them) unless the game is really ready, this will cut down on the amount of work moderators need to do. And by (finally!) allowing you to re-submit to a different category, games that do get finished eventually can be properly categorised instead of languishing unfairly in the Sandpit.
Any feedback and questions are appreciated as always!
P.S. "Latest Games" now sorts by approval date if one exists. This is the date that a game gets first approved into a non-Sandpit/non-WIP category. This means that if you've had a game unlisted or in Sandpit/WIP while you've been privately testing it, it will get a fresh date once it's approved to a category, so it won't disappear among old games.
I mentioned this elsewhere, but I think another thing that could potentially cut down on work for moderators is, when someone first makes an account here, require them to answer a question about whether they want to use Quest with a class or group, or just for themselves, and if they do want to set up accounts for a class/group, take them to ActiveLit instead.
While I agree with the idea of trying to get school groups to split out, doing that at the point of signup is too late - by that point the class group is getting to work. The teacher is unlikely to set up an ActiveLit account for everybody when they're just trying to get a lesson done.
The account registration page does inform users about ActiveLit, but I don't want to stop school groups setting up textadventures.co.uk accounts if that's what they want to do.
However, the site can detect blocks of users registering from the same IP address, which most school groups do. We might decide to have a way of block-Sandpitting games if we detect they've been submitted from the same place. I'll look into this if we still get floods of school submissions submitted to categories.
Sounds great. But what about games from other sites like inklestudios.com Such games seem to be categorized by the other site so is it necessary to categorize it here again?
However, the site can detect blocks of users registering from the same IP address, which most school groups do. We might decide to have a way of block-Sandpitting games if we detect they've been submitted from the same place. I'll look into this if we still get floods of school submissions submitted to categories.
Perhaps its possible to show a same IP game block warning to the moderators so they only must check one of them and can move the other to the sandpit directly?
And a general question: What should we do with foreign language games? There are lots of spanish games uncategorized because non of the mods can read them
Do you mean the inklewriter games? They're not categorized anywhere else - if you hit the Publish button in inklewriter, it takes you to this site to publish the link. (Unless something has changed recently)
Let's see how well the new submission questions work... if we still get lots of low-quality submissions then I'll look to see how much it will help to add IP group features to the moderation tools.
For foreign language games, I tend to stick some of the text in Google translate. That's usually enough to show you if any effort has gone into writing the game, which is all that moderating a game requires.
