Proposal: new sub-category for new crawler perspective

[RoGGa]

As per my signature, I am focusing my contribution to the new crawler perspective.
After about week of taking this new approach, I find that there isn't a natural category within the Board Index that is specific to the new crawlers' initial experience, feedback, perspective and constructive criticism.

I suggest that a new category be created under section "The Annex".
My reason for such a specific suggestion is three fold:
1. the primary category "The Tavern" already has many sub-groupings and is more about having fun and getting feedback. Also, having a new crawler subcategory there might elicit a bit too much negative criticism.
2. the section "The Back Room" also already has many sub-groupings and is more about the technical aspects of the game.
3. "The Annex" only has 1 sub-cat and it stipulates: "New rooms will be created upon request." How perfect! lol

As for the name, I am not feeling inspired by anything really interesting at the moment so I invite suggestions that are better than:

The new crawlers' lounge

with a description like: a place for sharing initial experience and constructive feedback with a focus on improving the experience for future new crawlers.

What say ye to this proposal?

[KoboldLord]

It's called 'Dungeon Crawling Advice'. New players are also perfectly welcome to post CIP threads in YASD! YAVP! too.

[RoGGa]

The Dungeon Crawling Advice is for

Ask fellow adventurers how to stay alive in the deep, dark, dangerous dungeon below, or share your own accumulated wisdom.

It doesn't explicitly invite new crawlers for their initial thoughts and ideas...and if it did, those thoughts would get lost quickly within the continuous flow of new posts.

I looked a few days ago at the Usability Projects on the wiki
(https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:usability_project:start)
and since the last such project occurred in early 2012, I thought this might be a way of creating an informal process that collects similar feedback.

I think new crawlers have a perspective that could be quite different than experienced crawlers who has been involved with the game for a while, and we should try to get them to contribute with that fresh perspective that comes with playing the game during those first 100 hours of play time.

[KoboldLord]

I don't think there's any particular need to restrict new players to a special ghetto forum. Most new players probably actually want to be able to interact with more experienced players, otherwise they wouldn't be posting at all. It is true that we don't have a whole lot of truly new players posting threads here, but that is because most people don't even find out this forum exists until they've been Crawling long enough that they aren't truly new any more. Adding a new forum won't change that.

[RoGGa]

I'm not at all suggesting that new players be restricted to a special ghetto forum. On the contrary!

For my first 6 months of visiting the tavern, I did not have an account. I was simply using it to search for specific topics using the Search capabilities since I had outgrown http://crawl.chaosforge.org
Had there been a section like I am proposing, I likely would have created an account sooner.

KoboldLord: fyi, I don't get the sense that you understand my proposal.

I don't see how I could improve on the subject:

Proposal: new sub-category for new crawler perspective

(except to correct my typo)
Maybe I was too wordy in my initial post and now rereading it,

The new crawlers' lounge

is definitely not the right title.

In essence, it's a specific place where new crawlers and those interested in improving that initial experience can come together to discuss such ideas.
It would be a pre-GDD area where the better ideas would then be brought to the attention of those in GDD.

[all before]

RoGGa: Can you say more about what you mean by "new crawler perspective" that's different than asking for advice or posting CiPs? I don't quite get it. Difficulties learning interface? Surprise pleasures and unexpected frustrations?

[RoGGa]

Can you say more about what you mean by "new crawler perspective" that's different than asking for advice or posting CiPs? I don't quite get it. Difficulties learning interface? Surprise pleasures and unexpected frustrations?

It's more about improving what already exists for future new crawlers.
New crawlers who are not techies or programmers will not necessarily share their ideas or provide constructive feedback in GDD...and are even less likely to use Mantis.

As I mentioned earlier, the Usability Projects on the wiki
https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:usability_project:start
pointed out many things that could be improved to make DCSS more accessible to new players, and most of those were improved or fixed by those projects.
There were 3 such projects from 2009 to 2012 and there might not be anymore, so I am thinking we could setup a sub-category where new crawlers could share ideas, such as:
- maybe a 6th tutorial on such&such might help; or
- the Help needs a major spring cleanup;
just to name some possibilities.
But the biggest argument for such a sub-category is to capture what hasn't been thought about or voiced by anyone yet.

Other than that, the only other additional benefit to my proposal is that Posts related to the new crawler experience/perspective would stay focused on a non-technical level, which isn't always the case for posts in GDD.
See: viewtopic.php?p=196427#p196427

And as a last argument, such a new sub-category would be a place to discuss how to address such a situation:

It is true that we don't have a whole lot of truly new players posting threads here, but that is because most people don't even find out this forum exists until they've been Crawling long enough that they aren't truly new any more. Adding a new forum won't change that.

Maybe something could be done to entice new crawlers within the game to visit The Tavern sooner than later...and to also participate from their initial experience of this incredible yet very technical game.