look at the discussion happening here. why isn't this happening in map threads?
edbeard wrote:we just have to realise that if you want a map on this site, you're going to have to work hard and be very patient. I'd make an uneducated guess that the average map takes 5 months to be completed in the modern CC map making era. some people might say this is bad to take so long but it is good in that it prevents people from making low quality maps. I guess it's bad because we'll miss out on some maps that would've been completed otherwise (fudomuerte's maps, the south africa one, the pangea one (future pangea so not really pangea) to name a few).
5 months is definitely a bad thing and i'm absolutely sure that time has nothing to do with quality. we have maps that receive little feedback sit for months and eventually get moved around and quenched. this sucks because:
a. few feedback comments means the maps will not become the best they can be
b. staying for months in production causes frustration for both the map maker and the people waiting for that map.
remember when AoR2 got quenched in 2 weeks? i agree it started from an existing idea and the original image was pretty good but comments were flying all over the place and in the first 24 hours it had almost 10 pages of comments and most of them were constructive comments. people were debating neutrals bonuses names objectives graphics, everything. now if i look at some maps in the main foundry they've been started for months and barely have 20-30 pages and most of those pages are filled with nonsense.
of course it would be absurd to expect people to post this much on each and every thread. we have much more maps being produced now and it would be impossible but a rhythm of 1 page per day can be easily achieved. and i'm talking about constructive feedback not spam. if 3 people and the map maker are online at the same time they can fill a page with constructive feedback in less than 30 minutes. then the map maker does an update and next day some other 3 people come and post and so on. a map like this can be quenched in less than a month if it's in the hands of a capable map maker that has both the skills and the time to do it. and i'm pretty sure that map would have a much better quality than a map that sits for 5 months and gets 1 good feedback per week.
constructive feedback and sustained rhythm can do miracles. during the AoR 2 making i remember i had the photoshop open and the thread open and i was switching back and forth between the two working franticly and churning out updates. it would have been impossible to do this on my own and the whole merit goes to those that kept posting and debating.
now i don't see people gathering in a thread at the same time and debating stuff about the map. one guy posts, several days later somebody relates to that posts and speaks his mind then several more days pass before another response comes and between these responses there are meaningless posts that make the discussion harder to follow both for people that want to provide feedback and also for the map maker.
MrBenn wrote:The decision to accept the CA position was not one I have undertaken lightly... my biggest concern was -and still is - how to combat all the needless and thoughtless comments that have started to become the norm. In an ideal world, I would love to go through threads deleting mindless drivel, or moving it to a 'Foundry Spam' topic, but am not convinced that that this kind of heavy moderating would be beneficial in the long run
deleting posts would certainly not be good. people would get pissed and leave. on the other hand if a spammer leaves that's a good thing
seriously now, i can think of several ways to combat spam. not sure if they are good or bad but here i go:
1. give warnings for spam. 3 warnings and you get a 2 day bann another 3 and you get 4 days and so on. however this takes a lot of time to moderate issue warnings and banns respond to pms (from people complaining they've been warned/banned), etc
so we go to #2:
2. the main reason we have spam and nonsense (besides the fact that some people are born spammers) is that we have too many maps and nobody is able to focus. i think that limiting the number of active maps in production would both increase the number of constructive feedback and it would also improve the speed at which the maps are developed. so instead of having 100 maps sit in production for 5 months with half of them being abandoned vacationed or whatever i'd rather have 20 maps sit in production at the same time and get quenched in 1 month. over the same period of time (5 months) we'd have more successful maps (quenched) and a more vibrant and happier foundry.
now comes the tricky part. how to limit the number of maps?
1. no map that is xml impossible should be allowed. it gets presented and then gets locked until xml updates are provided or until the map maker decides to change it and make it possible
2. same goes for the size restricted maps. as much as i would have loved to see the trojan map it was an impossible task and it wasted time for other maps. people went there and commented instead of commenting on other maps. and i have nothing against mibi on this one. my life i prison map did the same thing and wasted people's time.
surely these 2 measures won't solve the problem but they will help a bit.
other measures must be implemented. i'm thinking of a ranking system of ideas. take the sticky/non sticky idea to the next level.
how does this work? let's say 20 people come to the foundry and want to make maps. they start their threads. those threads are left to develop for a week. then they get locked and a committee (preferably made of respected icons of the foundry) comes and analyses each map. they look at the quantity of support and feedback, they look at the graphical updates and they way the map maker works. and they decide if the map is liked/disliked, if the map maker has the skills to do the map or not if the map is heading in the right direction or not, etc. then they weed out the maps that have no support, the maps that have an incapable map maker, and generally the maps that have no immediate future. then they split the remaining maps into several categories:
a. good to go maps. thread is unlocked and made sticky and progress continues as normal
b. promising maps. where the idea is good and there is support but something is not clicking right. they unlock the thread but nobody is allowed to post except the committee and the map maker and they try to iron out the problems. perhaps the map maker is stubborn and doesn't accept feedback or perhaps he is not implementing updates fast enough or perhaps the map is simply too complicated for the average poster and people can't provide enough constructive feedback. then 1-2 weeks later they decide if the map is worth continuing or not.
this would ensure that:
a. in the ideas thread feedback is concentrated where it should be (on maps that are truly good)
b. young map makers get quality feedback from the committee as well as getting a tutorial on how they should act in the foundry and how maps are produced resulting in better map makers
c. less maps actually make it to the main foundry and again feedback is concentrated
d. maps are produced faster and are much better (because they get more feedback and because only the good map makers get advanced.
“In the beginning God said, the four-dimensional divergence of an antisymmetric, second rank tensor equals zero, and there was light, and it was good. And on the seventh day he rested.”- Michio Kaku
Most importantly, while it's always been a half-funny joke that it takes months and months for a map to progress through the foundry, it's worse now than it's ever been, and the days when AoR 2 just sailed through the foundry seem long gone. Maps sit around and stagnate. For instance, Forbidden City has been graphic and gameplay stamped for a month. Why isn't it in Final Forge? If it's not there for a solid reason, what's that reason? If it's not there because Andy hasn't had the time to look it over, then with all due respect to Mr. Bananas, maybe it's time for him to bring in a co-foreman or two to expedite things. 
