The time has come for us to finally tackle the multi-author system on Newgrounds. This has been discussed by many people in the past, and potential issues have been explored.
I will try to describe our rough idea, and will then open the floor to all comments / criticisms. This is a VERY IMPORTANT forum - the discussion that results from this thread will be taken under heavy advisement as we build the new system. Therefore, put on your thinking caps and submit some good ideas!
To provide a brief history - Newgrounds currently allows only one author to submit a piece of content. More and more, we are seeing collaborations between Flash users, often an artist and a programmer. I've felt the bite of our current system; many of my collaborations are not listed under my user account. :)
Some users have come up with creative workarounds. Ben Spurgin has a Section8Studios user account for his collaborated works. While this works out ok, we think it would be much cooler if the authors could retain their individual accounts with credits for what they have done.
So here is the system... A single author submits a piece of Flash to Newgrounds. The music credit will still be the same as it is now - so musicians will still have their own spot (this works best because we have so many submissions with audio credits other than NG users). For any remaining credits, the person submitting will be able to enter user names of up to three or four additional contributors (we are thinking between a four and five author credit limit).
We have talked a lot about how they should credit these users - and the bottom line is, it becomes a mess. Therefore, the authors listed in the left column will not have specific credits. A visit to Alien Hominid may look like this:
Authors: Synj (profile | site)
TomFulp (profile | site)
Below the voting panel, we will have the dropdown boxes like this:
Other submissions by Synj:
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Other submissions by TomFulp:
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We will then leave it up to the person submitting the content to attribute proper credits in the AUTHORS DESCRIPTION. Most people already attribute credits there.
The main benefit of this system is to tie collaborations to the accounts of all users involved. This way, when you view the profile for TomFulp OR Synj, both will have links to Alien Hominid.
Going back to the submission process... The person who submits the content will have sole control over editing that submission. He is basically the "team leader", which means he can also ADD and REMOVE credits at will. When additional credit is provided, it does not immediately appear on the page. Otherwise, someone could submit really naughty content and attribute credit to other users. Instead, those additional users must log in to their accounts and VALIDATE their proposed credit.
Example: If SYNJ submitted Alien Hominid and listed me as an additional credit, I would then log in to my user account and click the button to CONFIRM that I was involved with the project.
The person submitting will have a choice; the submission can either be embargoed (put on hold) until all additional authors sign off on their credits, OR the submission can be listed INSTANTLY, at which point the credits will be added as the additional authors sign off.
Most teams will want to embargo their submission until everyone signs off. This way, the submission will appear in the Portal with full credits intact. Some people, however, may prefer to just get the content on-line. I'd like to keep the system flexible in this respect.
I hope I have described this well. I'm now opening the floor to comments. LET YOUR IDEAS AND OPINIONS BE HEARD!