Revise Newgrounds

[gumOnShoe]

This is just personal curiosity.

Newgrounds is an awesome site, but we all come here for different reasons and because of that I'm sure we all have different things we'd like to see happen. I'm curious as to what you like to see Newgrounds as in 5 10, or 15 years.

This isn't a feature request topic. If you ask for it, chances are, it'll only happen if it was going to happen anyway. I'm not staff, I'm a moderator who's just a user who can delete things. So, if you tell me you want flying hippos on the front page, I've got just as much power to make that happen as you do.

Anyways, my vision for what I'd like Newgrounds to become:

I'd love to see something that engineered to further develop communication & collaboration on all levels while giving individuals a little more control over how they present themselves. If you've ever been to source forge you'll have an idea of what I'm talking about, but that's only hinting at it.

I want to see an online publishing software website of sorts and I think Newgrounds is in the prime position to do it. You have a "Create Project" link in your user profile. It hooks you up with the ability to create forums, albums of art & music, scripts and the ability to upload a quantity of files. You have the capability to add users into your projects. You can put parts of your project into preview mode. And importantly, everything is versioned.

On the userpage, you'd have the capability to add more too it. I'm assuming the website is eventually going widescreen, and so there'd be a lot more room on your userpage. It'd be really cool if newgrounds opened up some space for developers to create "flash apps" which could interact or do something cool. They'd be like widgets you could put up on your site and there could even be a small portal for them. More importantly, you'd have the organizational capabilities you have in the projects here as well. You could create albums of any content on the site and write them up however you want.

If you like horror games, you're free to collect your favorites, review them and then people can play them right on your userpage. If you have a group of people that like that kind of stuff, they could team up as well.

In this vision, I've assumed the art portal obtained albums, that the audio portal became a little bit better, and that flash content was less about static pages and collections of those pages and became a bit more mobile and viral just in the site itself. Additionally, I'm assuming a writing portal exists in some format as well and that blogs are far more accessible and can host richer content or be grouped together as well.

As far as the front page. I wouln't change much. I'd make it go widescreen and then, I'd probably make the game & video sections verticle with art & writing just below them with hotlinks up above.

It might even be possible to embed a flash player on the front page which loads the selected movie so that you don't have to navigate away from the front page to view the submission. Something similar could happen with the portal where you have a listing of recent entries on the left and you view the actual movie on the right, vote & review and then just click the next movie you want. Sort of like the way frames used to work, but this would be more javascript intensive.

Finally, it would be awesome to see some wave integration. I think Wave is really going to be a huge deal and offers some really great features. Newgrounds might want to look into either emulating or setting up its own wave server for its developers.

[Digital-Terror]

A portal-type function for Bytesize would be cool.

[Xatanxa]

I think that is a very good idea for what newgrounds could be like.

For all the portals, Flash, Audio, Art and hopefully the Lit portal if it comes out, I think a time limit should be put on before flash's are submitted, That way any flash's by groups such as the KK or the DD can be removed before entering the flash. Same should be for editing flash's. There should be a time limit on editing the files, thus to prevent any file swapping by said groups. And this way, we could have a spam free newgrounds.

I think the userpage should have more features, and that users can choose what features they have on their page, they dont have to have the same features that everyone else has.

If the chat is finished, That should be moderated, without a doubt

I Feel that overall there should be more interactivity with the site as a whole, So that everyone can view the site differently compared to others.

I feel this might improve things :)

[YeOldeSierra]

Some of the ideas you have for Newgrounds are pretty cool! I like quite a few of them. The only idea I have is that we could have more control over clubs. Perhaps if club control could be passed to another member, and the person with control over the club could remove or edit posts? It could be abused, but maybe not. It could work at the same time.

[hdxmike]

Yeah NG wave, maybe by then NG will be an internet super power and will be able to get some wave action integrated into NG, without the lag of course.

Personally i think NG is starting to feel a bit old , the content is great but the way its presented is pretty stale.

[ChocEliteBar]

That sounds great! Everything with fine detail like that might be something to see some day.

I need to learn about Wave, though. I have no idea what that is.

[142201]

I'd like to be able to mark threads as "favorite." Then there would be a little application on the page that shows who posted last in that thread and when, so you can keep an eye on it. It could be in the place of that "Some account type thingy here" message.

Now more site modifications to bug the staff about!

[citricsquid]

I like it, if there was a way to improve the "fairness" of the portal that'd be good, but eh, not really possible. I think the staff have done extremely well to get such a great balance here, it works well. I hope NG "stays true" to how it's been run so far in the future, it's very nice now :3

[gumOnShoe]

At 11/9/09 01:07 PM, hdxmike wrote: Yeah NG wave, maybe by then NG will be an internet super power and will be able to get some wave action integrated into NG, without the lag of course.

Personally i think NG is starting to feel a bit old , the content is great but the way its presented is pretty stale.

You're from 09, that's just a typical sentiment of getting used to things. I know, I know, there was this golden age and things happened and they'll never happen again, but that's just not the way it is. Pretty soon you'll notice all the cycles and you'll become embittered because you've seen 2 or 3 flash spam groups flood the portal or you've seen a n00b as the same question one too many times and then you'll either leave because the entire site got too lame or you'll realize you haven't been coming to newgrounds for the right reasons anymore and you'll revise why you do come and you'll back off of assuming things are old or whatever and you'll start appreciating content or contacts.

Honestly, that's what Newgrounds has content & contacts. If we couldn't share info and express opinions and develop and produce, this place wouldn't be a place, it'd be this static thing that occasionally changed.

[Sheizenhammer]

Realy, there's only 2 things I'd add to NG to make me happy for the rest of my time here:

Portal mods
I never undrstood why we have audio and art mods, but no flash portal mods. It would make Wade's job a lot easier if he could rely on some people to help him get rid of the crap that shouldn't be in the portal, as well as reduce the time taken for stolen stuff to be removed. It would also be a lot harder to smartass your way around than the judgement filter and whistle (fooling both is child's play to any determined spammer / thief).

A 'mature' forum.
Remembr that mature forum idea that was being thrown around in the open dicussion thread? Well, something like the scouting system could be used to ensure only mature people are allowed in, making it a viable (and therefore desireable) idea. Imagine BBS mods being given the ability to scout regulars into a mature-only forum as like a reward for good posting standards, and the forum itself could be used for much more intelligent conversations than what happens in General right now. It would also serve as something to aim for, something to improve your post history for, so it would likely improve the quality of the forums no-end.

[Porkchop]

Adding a functional chat would be nice, something with the feel of Stickam on NG

Also, could be used for Jade taking off her top.

K, but seriously, there's a lot of things that are generally selected. Forum post deletion, Friends list, better lists n shit, Chat, etc etc.

All of those would be great, but would probably take away from the portal and what NG is mostly built on.

[hdxmike]

At 11/9/09 01:11 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: You're from 09

It seems like that but i found NG in 04 and started coming here in 06 , i thought you needed flash to join which is why ive only just signed up.

To be honest i think NG was better in someways before the redesign all im saying is i get a bit sick of refreshing and skipping around pages , ithink it lacks some functions that other site offer and there is much room for improvement Userpage wise

[Eltro2kneo]

That's a great idea!

Having more details and flash apps in the user page.

[Scarab]

Those are some interesting ideas, to say the least. I can't really add anything to those off the top of my head, but the concept of Facebook/widget styled apps for the userpages is a really cool one I think, especially because it's so open-ended, like most of the things NG is founded upon in relation to creativity. You could leave a tab or window open that shows your userpage, and from there you could possibly play around with some things, like... an audio portal radio for example. Like other Internet based random radio stations, you could choose which genres you'd like on your playlist, and you'd get randomly selected submissions from that playing, allowing you to favourite or skip any of them that come up quickly. Maybe you could have little features like that built into the chat too. On the subject of the chat, I get the impression that the real-life chat will have different rooms, which seems like a nifty little idea, working in a similar nature to the current forums and such. I think the Bytesize styled Flash would be very much home in the app format too, if that were to ever come back into the mix.

I've taken hypothetical to mean basic here, but now I'm thinking how awesome it would be to have every pre-production tool you'd need, in-browser, on Newgrounds. Example, someone could write a script and stick it in some sort of "script portal", where artists can look and make contacts; voice-actors are cast similarly. Whether things like that will ever pan out that way in reality (mostly in regards to scripts), it's uncertain, but it would be a great way to challenge yourself and hopefully gain something at the end I think!

At 11/9/09 01:15 PM, Sheizenhammer wrote: A 'mature' forum.

This is another idea I think would work quite well in an ideal world, and that concept of using a scouting system similar to the art portal is actually quite a refreshing one. I've certainly never seen it before. That would make a considerable amount of users happy I think, though there would be some rifts amongst some. At least it would be backed by Newgrounds though: most of the user-created forums made to cater to that crowd tend to die off after the initial buzz (or get mindlessly criticised for "being a forum about a forum", which is silly, because it's hardly being used to discussed the BBS), though some have survived a few years.

As long as the British definition of "mature" is used, if we're going by ages. Otherwise I'll be locked out of a exclusive community! It would be like every episode of Frasier where they don't get invited to the opening of a trendy restaurant/wine bar, only I make more of an arse out of myself trying to get in, making several alts and using those to stir up good words about myself on General before getting caught by some older user.

[Sheizenhammer]

At 11/9/09 01:52 PM, Scarab wrote: As long as the British definition of "mature" is used, if we're going by ages. Otherwise I'll be locked out of a exclusive community!

Hahahaha! Hell, as long as the definition of 'mature' is anything equal to or above 'not a stupid, +1'ing, trollish meme-spewer', I think it would be a considrable improvement regardless of the technicalities.

As long as you can avoid partaking in the childish crap that gets General its reputation of being "one big spam thread", who cares about the ages of everyone allowed into a (currently hypothetical) mature forum?

[EclecticEnnui]

Wait... So, this thread is basically a fantasy version of Ideas for Newgrounds' Evolution MK3? In any case, I dunno what I'd wanna see on this site in 5 or 10 years. There's one or a couple of small things I'd like to see in the meantime, but other than that, I like the site the way it is.

[The-Great-One]

At 11/9/09 12:52 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: This is just personal curiosity.

Curiosity killed the cat you know.

Newgrounds is an awesome site, but we all come here for different reasons and because of that I'm sure we all have different things we'd like to see happen. I'm curious as to what you like to see Newgrounds as in 5 10, or 15 years.

Well I'm working on something top secret for the time being that I hope will be put to good use in the future.

Anyways, my vision for what I'd like Newgrounds to become:

Preach brother preach!

I'd love to see something that engineered to further develop communication & collaboration on all levels while giving individuals a little more control over how they present themselves. If you've ever been to source forge you'll have an idea of what I'm talking about, but that's only hinting at it.

You mean kind of turn Newgrounds into something like Facebook, but without the corny stupid bullshit.

I want to see an online publishing software website of sorts and I think Newgrounds is in the prime position to do it. You have a "Create Project" link in your user profile. It hooks you up with the ability to create forums, albums of art & music, scripts and the ability to upload a quantity of files. You have the capability to add users into your projects. You can put parts of your project into preview mode. And importantly, everything is versioned.

Well as for forums go I don't think that would work out well and it would get complicated. As for making projects such as albums for art, music, scripts, and more... that would certainly help out with the different collaborations that people want. However at the same time a simple blog post can do the same job, unless you want to upload something without having to first upload to the Art Portal or Audio Portal. It could also be a place to keep flash movies that are completed and ready to be put into a collab and these project folders could remain either public or private to a select group of users a maximum of 25.

On the userpage, you'd have the capability to add more too it. I'm assuming the website is eventually going widescreen, and so there'd be a lot more room on your userpage. It'd be really cool if newgrounds opened up some space for developers to create "flash apps" which could interact or do something cool. They'd be like widgets you could put up on your site and there could even be a small portal for them. More importantly, you'd have the organizational capabilities you have in the projects here as well. You could create albums of any content on the site and write them up however you want.

Well yeah one thing a lot of people want is to be able to make a music playlist of your favorite audio portal songs to play on your profile. It would also be nice to have your latest flash submission, audio submission, and art submission showcased on your profile, but that's thinking a lot at a time... we need to take baby steps in that process you see.

If you like horror games, you're free to collect your favorites, review them and then people can play them right on your userpage. If you have a group of people that like that kind of stuff, they could team up as well.

The Favorites page on our profiles already take care of that, but it would be nice for the flash to load up in our favorites page. A lot of design work would have to go into effect for that to change, I don't think it's a good idea though, but then again I've been wrong before.

In this vision, I've assumed the art portal obtained albums, that the audio portal became a little bit better, and that flash content was less about static pages and collections of those pages and became a bit more mobile and viral just in the site itself. Additionally, I'm assuming a writing portal exists in some format as well and that blogs are far more accessible and can host richer content or be grouped together as well.

You kind of lost me here, perhaps you could explain this a little bit more in depth. However from what I see yes we do need a writers portal, because then any flash artist who needs a story can simply go and find one in the writers portal and thus be credited, however it also causes a problem due to a lacking animator who can't draw well, thus possibly ruining a really good story.

The Audio Portal needs serious attention made to it. I know when the Art Portal came out it was an exciting thing and a lot of people wanted it, I also understand that when something new is brought up attention is given to it, but come on... awards to Art Portal submissions, but nothing for the Audio Portal. I want a Writers Portal as much as the next guy, but I say the Audio Portal should be fixed first... end of story.

As for the Flash Portal I think it's doing fine, but then again I'm not sure what you're trying to say about the Flash Portal.

As far as the front page. I wouln't change much. I'd make it go widescreen and then, I'd probably make the game & video sections verticle with art & writing just below them with hotlinks up above.

That makes more sense. Make it resemble the Main Blog Posts page in a way... or the Flash Portal's design. Am I right there?

It might even be possible to embed a flash player on the front page which loads the selected movie so that you don't have to navigate away from the front page to view the submission. Something similar could happen with the portal where you have a listing of recent entries on the left and you view the actual movie on the right, vote & review and then just click the next movie you want. Sort of like the way frames used to work, but this would be more javascript intensive.

That might be kind of awkward to handle and work out. Remember not everything "golden" is put on the front page. It would be better just to navigate away from the page. In other words I don't think this is a good idea.

Finally, it would be awesome to see some wave integration. I think Wave is really going to be a huge deal and offers some really great features. Newgrounds might want to look into either emulating or setting up its own wave server for its developers.

Again I'm lost here. Could you explain please?

[The-Great-One]

At 11/9/09 01:04 PM, Xatanxa wrote: There should be a time limit on editing the files, thus to prevent any file swapping by said groups. And this way, we could have a spam free newgrounds.

Alright, well what about people who make games. What if there is a bug or glitch they didn't know about. They find out about it 10 minutes later. So they go to fix it and replace said flash file. Uh-Oh... time limit's up, so now the broken game must remain.

[Warface]

Yeah Newgrounds Woohoo !!!

[Goldfire64]

I think that after a flash is submited the reviews for it are only for a limited time. Like after 3 years the ablity to review a flash is cut off. I'm tired of watching old flashes only to see a reveiw made yesterday saying the audio and video suck. The flash is six years old. It was AWESOME back then so shut up.

Sorry kinda ranted there.

[The-Great-One]

At 11/9/09 02:55 PM, Goldfire64 wrote: I think that after a flash is submited the reviews for it are only for a limited time. Like after 3 years the ablity to review a flash is cut off. I'm tired of watching old flashes only to see a reveiw made yesterday saying the audio and video suck. The flash is six years old. It was AWESOME back then so shut up.

Well that's kind of bullshit. What if you just came across a really cool flash movie or game and you wanted to give your opinion. Or possibly a flash movie or game you believe to be overrated and you want to vent why in a review.

Well if we go with your action then that would be impossible to do. Shoot if we go with what you want then people will never get to give their reviews on TankMen.

Besides if they bitch and whine just mark the review as useless and move on. You don't like that review then mark it as thus... if it's abusive then mark it as thus and move on, but don't punish the good reviewers.

[quagmire690]

If you don't want to read all of the writing here then you can skip to the end and read the final sentence and get the jist of what I am trying to say.

I can imagine with the advances in technology that we are soon going to have massive touch screen abilities with our computers... I hope to see more details on the fly... who is on, and an up to date really world friends list... I want to see a rating system for people... like on the XBOX thing... avoid this player and prefer this player... it would allow people and the BBS to see who is really talking shit to the people that are actually worth viewing things about...
I want a chat system set up so that people can either text to the site and put up messages or other things... it could be like a scrolling BBS system and the people that buy into it could pay for it and then get a little money back for everyone that texts into it... it would allow the site to make a bit more money and as a result it could be rated on the international scale of money profits... it would then make more and more money..
I want to see a up to date news section... things that are happening... so that this could be the first place to talk about everything news... it would bring what I would believe hundreds of new moderators of the news world... and would allow people all over the world to zoom into something and follow it closely in a matter of seconds...
I want to see a more professional portal... one that can be shown on the international scale so that NG can get international recognition... I was in my speech class and I talked about NG and no one knew what NG was... I was almost a little offended...
I want to see a few things transferred over from MYSPACE FACEBOOK HABOHOTEL 4CHAN ADDICTINGGAMES MICROSOFT VGCATS KONGREGATE FLASHFLASHREVOLUTION XBOX AND PS3... all those sites have things that I would love to see here...
Over all we need primary portals and sub portals in those portals...
A more advanced BBS system and operating system
A better organized flash portal
A better organized audio portal.
a link portal... maybe a movie portal... where tom or the other admins can upload a movie at the OK's of the movie industry and people to be able to watch the movie for like a dollar... sure it would not bring in the revenue that a movie theater would bring in... But it would allow the site to get more recognition... a sales portal that would allow people to sell things... we could get a program that is offered through NG that anyone can log in and make a flash or a audio file or a art file... and be able to give it back to NG... more money could be provided there...
As I sit here and write all of this I wonder how much money NG could put together and get it all happening... could we get programmers to come in professionally and make the site better... could the users of NG help foot the bill for that to happen... and would it be worth it...

But if all these things are going to go through and be put up we need a few more things...
More people
More moderators
More sets of rules and guidelines.

We could have moderators of the moderators... the entire internet could be seen through just thins one site... and it would be cool because it would add a better world to NG

Other things that would also happen as a result is... what I remember a while ago are the fact that we could get different names, a different icon for the user, and so forth... I want a better way to express my self ... even going into a blog about the user... it would allow people to use this site as a relationship place, as a flash place, as a audio place, as a up to date news place, as a place to make flash, audio and art, as a place to get to everywhere else on the net and so forth

[TheRadicalOne]

I'd personally like to see a "matchmaking" feature put on NG. You know dating websites? I think it would be cool to see

Animator looking for Programmer

Musician looking for Artist

14 year old looking for free labor

On it's own page. It may sound silly, but look on the Flash,Programming and audio sub-forums and you will see tons of topics just like those, someone looking for someone else with the skills and talents they need.

So basically my idea for revising Newgrounds would be about bringing more artists together and actually getting the service out in the open, not just burying it deep in the confines of the flash board.

Imagine it! Here you are, some young Animator with the blood of AWESOME running through your veins, you go on NG and look for a AS3 programmer to help make your vision real, you get a huge grocery list of all the available programmers and their recent projects, batting averages and comments about them, then you lean back in your chair and say... "Shit just got real."

[XxPoppinfreshxX]

At 11/9/09 12:53 PM, Digital-Terror wrote: A portal-type function for Bytesize would be cool.

Agree.

[quagmire690]

fail.... u wont get anyone to do anything that you want... there has to be a reward for that person

[The-Great-One]

At 11/9/09 04:14 PM, TheRadicalOne wrote: I'd personally like to see a "matchmaking" feature put on NG. You know dating websites? I think it would be cool to see

That sounds cool and would certainly help others out.

[StrangelyMauled]

Portal Mods - to keep shit from going through the portal.
Favorites Bar - For forum topics

These are my main 2.

[13oobs]

More cock jokes...
But I would really love a chat so I can criticize our everday lives...

wai......

[yurgenburgen]

A much better forum search.
Chickens back in their rightful place.

That'll do for me.

[The-Great-One]

At 11/9/09 09:00 PM, yurgenburgen wrote: A much better forum search.

Forum search. Finding a specific flash movie or audio submission with that damn 20 Limit bullshit is hard. So yes that needs to be revised.

Also um gumOnshoe... isn't this just a blatant copy of liljim's thread and/or just you posting your opinions on what you want for Newgrounds and thus should go in that thread.

Just wondering.