23-03-2005 01:03									#1
	'ACSR Weekly' Production Delay Full PM-box? Change here!

Is this really the most important news headline that we should have? Why not the Civ 4 tidbits?

From checking the news flashes, It seems the ACSR weekly hasn't went out on time in the past month. But it still gets a news item - often pushing away much more important new (civ 4 tidbits). Maybe instead news bits should be published when the show DOES keep schedule?

I come to the site for the community, the off-topic - and most imporantly - Civ IV. There is no real civ 4 section of the site I can visit yet, and civ 4 news are terribly rare - so each new event, I imagine - should create exciting headlines in a site called "Apolyton Civilization Site".

Instead it is burried under "ACSR weekly" production delay, which, does not interest too large a crowd, if i'm not mistaken. It is sort of a technical announcement for a really specific site function getting too much audience.

Speaking of which - I really liked how Apolyton decided to cover RON - basically an RTS with several "civ-like" qualities and part of the original Civ III team. However, RON is old news now, and frankly - it is not that exciting to see a news flash like "Anonymous Chechen gaming site finally discovers RON; rates it 4 out of 5 stars claiming 'we've seen more impressive Russian tanks on our street corners' " or like "RON nominated best liked pirated game in Mexico for 2004".

I mean, yes rankings are fun - but not when it is over a year since the game came out, and unless it has some high importance.

There are important news and less important news. There should be a way to distinguish between those.

	23-03-2005 01:49									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

Sirotnikov, you have voiced what I myself have been thinking for a long time. That the news section of Apolyton could do with an overhaul.

I fully agree with you, that some of the news posted in the news section are, well, less important.

A way to solve this:

CIVILIZATION III
(Updated 19.Mar)
06.Mar: P.B.E.M. MOD IN THE WORKS
02.Mar: 7 NEW FILES
05.Feb: C3C DEMOCRACY GAME BEGINS!

I have taken this from the real Civ3 news page as it is, but I have removed review stuff, and ratings. What we end up with is a list of news that a large potion of current players of the game might find interesting. For readers who want everything, I have added the line below the header. There you can see that the news section for Civ3 was updated on 19.Mar, but you would have to click the header, to read that article, because it wasn't deemed important enough to make the front page.

Any thoughts about my idea?

Asmodean

	23-03-2005 01:54									#3
	Put an end to popups!

Agreed... we need to make it so that news are easier to notice. I've got nothing against ACSR, but it's indeed a relatively minor site feauture, so I think it would be sensible to just release ACSR when available, without these delay notices.

Civ4 needs a separate section. Civ3 had its for longer before the release, while Civ4 is going to be released in 8 months, at most, unless it is rescheduled. Not much to put into the Civ4 section yet, but at least it could be a decent source for news. Besides, it looks like we will finally start getting more of those. Seeing Civ4 news under "Misc" just isn't that.

	23-03-2005 03:53									#4
	Put an end to popups!

Btw, I wish to stress that I have the deepest respect and interest for ACSR, and at a certain time I even thought of hosting yet another poly radio show. An idea I discussed with DanQ and I even created a rough pilot which was... well... forgotten when 9/11 suddenly befell upon us.

	23-03-2005 03:58									#5
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

quote: Originally posted by Solver Agreed... we need to make it so that news are easier to notice.

Speaking of usability changes... this needs an overhaul IMO

	23-03-2005 04:04									#6
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

This is my thoughts exactly.

	23-03-2005 05:09									#7
	Increase Your PM Length

I could agree that it would be nice if the latest 3 news items were displayed rather than just the latest one (maybe by using a listbox rather than a dropdownbox?), but other than that I think the news system works okay. If you want to know what else is going on, the main forum page displays all recent news items as well, and it doesn't take terribly much effort to click on either the 'news' link that's visible on every page or on the arrow next to the dropdown box, or to just visit the forum/section of your liking.

I will agree though that the weekly ACSR delay messages are rather pointless: it's news that there is no news. And it makes up almost a 3rd of the Misc news and almost 15% of the total site news (figures of the last 3 months). That while I don't think there's a single person on this site who's actually interested in it. It would make more sense to just report when the ACSR reports *are* available again, something which at least some people *will* be interested in.

As for the other news, importance is in the eye of the beholder. Who's to call the shots there? I couldn't care less about MP but modding news is very important to me. For an MPer it would just be the other way around. I also don't particularly care about reviews by Chechen websites but I do care about rankings... Again, with at most one click you can get a complete overview of all recent news and make your own selection on what's interesting to you.

I for one am just very grateful Apolyton offers the most comprehensive news coverage of any gaming site I know and I probably read about 80-90% of all news items posted (the only stuff that I don't read is SMAC, Civ3 and some RoN/GalCiv MP related news).

	23-03-2005 06:30									#8
	Got spare money?

quote: Originally posted by Sirotnikov Speaking of usability changes... this needs an overhaul IMO

what's wrong with it?

	23-03-2005 09:29									#9
	Increase the size of your Attachments

To alleviate one of the more immediate concerns here, I will work to structure news postings such that on Sunday's I have the ACSR item posted earlier when at least one other item is pending. This way, the ACSR item will not appear as the lead headline on the drop-down menu when there is another production delay (and perhaps even if there is not).

Speaking of production delays in general, I have at last started the "catch up" process... again. Earlier this evening I posted six archived weeks of shows: from mid-October to the end of November, 2004. Given the age of these shows, I am not going to start an individual thread for them as I have for a number of shows before them in the past. As such, feel free to comment directly on one or more of these broadcasts in this thread.

By this time next week I hope to have all December shows archived, and the week after that all of January, 2005's if not more. My plan is to be caught up completely on/by April 17th, 2005, and then stay current thereafter -- hopefully for some time to come.

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Dan; Apolyton CS

	24-03-2005 02:05									#10
	Increase the size of your Attachments

quote: Originally posted by MarkG what's wrong with it?

i dunno
it feels cluttered. too many stuff...

just like the topmost bar that says "today on apolyton | plus: email forwarding" and so on. never used it.

sorta just like the search function i just noticed under the thread title. never used it - its hidden away and adds to clutter.

just my 2 pennies

	25-03-2005 23:22									#11
	Suffering from ads?

Two days ago, I completed the processes of getting the December 2004 shows up. Yesterday, the shows for January 2005 went live. Today, I have managed to get all of February and March 2005 shows to date up -- "ACSR Weekly" is now 'current' for the first time in way too long, the extended delay of which I apologize for.

Any comments on December, January and February shows as well as those I mentioned before are welcome in this thread. All March shows have their own separate threads accessible from this forum.

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Dan; Apolyton CS