How to proceed, when having a list of small proposals?

[FLN]

Hi Everybody

When playing, now and then, some small things cross my mind, concerning the user interface (UI) for instance and sometimes even bigger thoughts of more fundamental character.
I used to think about them for a while and later forget them again, only to bump in to the same thoughts again and again, thus I started to make quick notes, while playing, for to later evolve this topics in to posts in the forum.

Well..    I, by now, have a list of like 30 proposals, I'd like to discuss in the forum, but I'm not quite sure how to appropriately introduce them, since it's such a bunch.
I know every thread should only cover one topic. But I'm neither inclined to flood the forum nor to spread this endeavor over 30 weeks neither


How should I proceed with my list of proposals?   How would you handle this "dilemma"?


As always thank you for your help and thoughts =)

[prissi]

Group them or have a file with an attachment ... ? In the end, there are very few people working on this, and you need to convince them.

[Matthew]

How should I proceed with my list of proposals?  How would you handle this "dilemma"?

FLN, I find it's helpful to clearly distinguish between two different kinds of proposals, both in my own mind and when posting.

The first are concrete proposals to actually change something now. These are the kind of proposals that Prissi is talking about. Can you write the code or draw the images for these proposals yourself? If so, then you can make the proposal in the Patches & Projects subforum or the pakset equivalents. If you can't do it yourself, then you will need to persuade other people to implement it and Prissi is right: it won't be easy. Simutrans only has a handful of active contributors and they are naturally more interested in spending their free time on their own ideas than other people's. If you think you have a strong argument and a realistic proposal, then I would create one thread for each idea in Extension Requests (or the pakset equivalents). However, submitting more than one thread+proposal at a time is likely to be counterproductive, because the active contributors just see it as people demanding their time.

The second type of proposals are dreams of how Simutrans might work one day. They are analogous to the suggestions that people make on the forums of commercial games companies or the suggestions for new railway lines or rolling stock that people make on railway forums. In my view, the fact that players make these suggestions is a good thing. It's a natural consequence of people enjoying Simutrans and wanting to see it become better. It's the first step on the road to people becoming contributors. In the UK, we have had two rail ministers who started out as rail enthusiasts drawing lines on maps in the pub and eventually got to the point where they authorized multi-billion budgets for real railway lines, because people encouraged their enthusiasm instead of rejecting it. And writing about things you love is fun in itself—lots of hobbies have fan fiction! However, at the moment, the forum does not distinguish between practical proposals and this second kind and so the active contributors tend to assume that all proposals are demands on their time.§ So I tend to post this kind of proposal on the Discord server with the 'dream' emoji, to try to make clear that I am not expecting the active contributors to cancel their holidays to implement my ideas. I recently experimented with using the Randomness Lounge in a similar way. The Gaming Discussion board might be a good place too, but I don't know whether the distinction between different boards is clear enough to the active contributors (some people read the forum by e-mail where the board is not so obvious).

I look forward to reading your proposals! And it's really great that you are thinking carefully about how to present them in a helpful way. To focus on your specific dilemma, I would try to get as close to one-topic-per-thread as you can. It's likely some of your ideas overlap. Could you group 3-6 proposals into one post on a particular aspect of this game?

§ I think some other open source projects avoid mitigate this problem by doing the serious development on GitHub/GitLab/Launchpad/Bugzilla/etc., and allowing users to speculate more freely on their forums. But our project leaders and active contributors prefer to co-ordinate development here on the forum, and if that works for them, then that's the best place for it! However, every choice has drawbacks, and the confusion of the two kinds of proposal is a disadvantage of co-ordinating development here.