Hosted Projects - Why do they fail?

[StoPCampinGn00b]

In the process of gathering up all the hosted project links to send to makemehost (so they can link these hosted projects on their site to ours), I thought about this. Why are our hosted project sub forums much less successful here, as opposed to other sites?

We've obviously had the most active users for any WC3 primary site for a decade plus, but many of these subforums are left with a multitude of threads with zero replies.

If you take a look at our affiliates Diplomunion.com and Brigandshaven.net, you would see that their hosted projects get a lot more attention. Perhaps it's just that that's both of those sites forte, but can that be the overwhelming factor? Is it just because Hive isn't advertised / known for these things? Is it that there are just to many modders only interested in their own projects?

How can we fix this?

 

[Ralle]

Define successful.

Also, I am thinking it could have something to do with us being picky about projects having to be very ambitious. Or that we leave abandoned projects on the site.

 

[StoPCampinGn00b]

Successful as in, at least a few posts a week not 95% of them being from the creator. Most sub forums get a post or two every few months.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

It depends. Most hosted project forums are active as soon as a new update is released on the project in question.

Which is normal and expected from a community that mostly consists of *mappers*, not players. People play the map once or twice when there is a new update and then go on doing other things.

Warcraft III in general is like a palate cleanser for other games. You drop by when you're bored between cool game releases.

 

[Chaosy]

I always thought "that is simply how it is."

I had no idea it was different at other sites, which is somewhat odd indeed.

There is one interesting thing about the hosted projects though, they are not the most hyped ones from the community. "Tides of War" got 1100 replies in the development thread, you bet that project would be way more active in it's own subforum if it had gotten selected. Same goes for the "The Legends of Arkain" series.

It feels like the wrong kind of projects get hosted, really. (generally speaking)

 

[Chaosy]

My problem was that everyone just talked in the map section instead of Hosted Project forums. The original idea was to move that discussion to the forums but it failed.

Your project was playable (being in the map section) while being hosted though. Not all the projects are 'finished' by the time they are hosted.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Same goes for the "The Legends of Arkain" series.

Of these 1000 posts, 900 are from the same 3 users, though. ;P


But I agree that some map developement projects should receive an "upgrade" to their own hosted forums. And some other "dead" hosted forums could probably be archived into the "finished outlines" subsection. I'm not sure how many of them are still in developement.

For example, Blades & Gore II and Paranoia had their last forum post in 2014.

 

[Chaosy]

Of these 1000 posts, 900 are from the same 3 users, though. ;P

Hah. Somewhat true.

 

[Duke]

I think it's because people just visit mostly Map develpement subforum and nobody bothers to check the hosted projects forum. Another thing is that when there is just one thread for the whole project, you can talk about everything there, in hosted forums there is huge number of threads for everything but there isn't really that much to talk about in every one of them.

 

[Shar Dundred]

So, we're rather talking about the lack of community activity instead of the project's success, right?

The bigger the project, the higher the chance it fails. No, it doesn't mean that all big projects fail, you should get my point though.

This is a lesson everyone's got to learn sooner or later. The stuff posted in Hosted Projects is usually very big and I think that somewhere deep within the subconscious, one might think that the project will fail and therefore not give it much attention. The lack of attention makes the creator of the project consider to stop working on it or not posting about progress regularly sooner or later. By giving less information, the project is considered dead or slow as hell and proves the subconscious right, further deepening this belief and making one stop visit the subforum at one point.

 

[pick-a-chew]

I have to be honest, i looked the other day, and was surprised to see the Hive hosts projects that are either rarely played in multiplayer (due to the smaller player base these days) or single player.

What are the purposes of hosted projects?

If you want the community to be involved with hosted projects, then the projects need to at least be community orientated...

 

[Jumbo]

It surprises me that no one has mentioned the layout of Hiveworkshop compared to for example Diplomunion (since you mentioned that site in the OP). Hive doesn't do a lot to show off it's hosted projects (the occasional news advertisement aside). They are banished to the near bottom of the Forums section unlike Diplomunion where the main page is all centered around these project news posters. I don't know whether this is a problem or not, but if you want hosted projects to be more visited, it would be a good idea to think about making a website layout that actually centers (at least somewhat) around the projects instead of putting them at the bottom of the forums section with generic icons of the exact same size/visibility as all other threads.

 

[Ralle]

Could someone who is skilled in Photoshop take every hosted project (or maybe just 5 or 10), take their image and put their title below and put it in the top above the links next to each other?

 

[StoPCampinGn00b]

Could someone who is skilled in Photoshop take every hosted project (or maybe just 5 or 10), take their image and put their title below and put it in the top above the links next to each other?

Honestly, I don't get any of this, Ralle. Perhaps you should draw a draft in paint?
I'm not skilled in photoshop yet though

 

[pred1980]

Like this?

example

 

[Aeroblyctos]

At least half or more of those projects are too inactive just move them already away. Rest of the projects just move under Map Development or something.

What Pred just suggested, I think that's just too "forcing".

Also I believe more than half us use that "New Posts" function.

 

[GhostThruster]

firstly, i think other sites have the benefit of focusing on a particular niche of wc3 maps (e.g. risk in diplomunion) whereas the hive is much more broader. consequently, while we have higher overall population of members, we have lower concentrations of members interested in specific genres, and this is reflected in the attention shown to each project.

secondly, the hosted project subforum is a mess of inactive projects, encouraging less views, and thus encouraging less activity.

i think there shouldn't be a separate category for 'finished outlines', because how 'finished' a project is depends on perception (i mean, one could reasonably classify D3W as 'unfinished' since they have yet to include the demon hunter class, and classify gaias as being in a 'finished' enough state). i've never understood the 'hosted forums' subforum either, it just adds to the mess.

hosted projects with zero new posts for a month should be put into the inactive projects depository, be they finished & 'fully designated' projects or otherwise. you don't even need a moderator, surely you could code it in to automatically move dead projects.

 

[Ralle]

pred1980, you did not at all read what I said. I said next to each other and image+name not description but thank you for taking the time anyway.