The recruitment section of these forums are a complete waste of time.

Everyone bumped their threads 1, 2, and even 3 times. My thread which was brand spanking new, got sent to Page 2 on the first day, not by actual responses on existing threads, or even by new threads... nope, just by threads that came before mine, that keep getting bumped by the same person who made it.

It is utterly absurd.

Then to top things off, the forum's suggestion board is closed, but I'm leaving my complaints/suggestion anyway.

There's a feedback button on the left side that goes to this forum: http://www.gamedev.net/tracker which is the current feedback system.Also yes the help wanted system has been a mess for a while. I believe Superpig's version of the new gamedev was going to change that whole system so it no longer used a forum system. We'll see if any changes are made to it.

It is also hard to find people this way, until you have more. Its not just the bumping of threads, it's just so many people joining GDnet and thinking they are going to make a game and sell millions with no solid foundation of a game/team/management. My suggestion for the site would be do have a paid thread and non-paid thread to at least shape it up more. It is really hard to find people online and looking at your help wanted post doesn't really seem to separate you much from the previous mentioned people trying to make a game. You mainly just posted an idea in text and said we have modeled 3d stuff before. If you get further in dev and have some stuff to show thats interesting, you will get replies.

A couple ideas for the help section:

1) A post count limit, so only people who have participated in the forums a bit can post new threads in that forum. That may cut down on the kids with stars in their eyes.

2) A very small, token amount of money for posting in it. Maybe just optionally, so there are "premium" and free. I'm talking about like a dollar--not a serious barrier to any adult with even the slightest bit of commitment, but enough to weed out the sorry cases.

3) Limit the "bumping" ability somehow. Make it impossible to double post in a thread, so you can only "bump" a thread that has a reply.

We could do any combination of those 3 things and I think it would help.

I suggested the minimum post count thing as well. It would pretty much get rid of the "idea guy" MMO posts that infest help wanted. Those projects will never go anywhere and are just a waste of time and bandwidth. Splitting the forum into paid and non paid jobs would help as well. I would consider royalties only posts to be non paid. I'm not sure anybody who has helped in a project like that has made a dime. Might even be worthwhile to just lock replies to any help wanted post. Would prevent needless bumping and people nagging on MMO posts. There are PMs if somebody wants to inquire about more information. And some kind of timestamp check so that people can only post there every 2-4 weeks to prevent people from just creating a new post when theirs goes off the first page.

Then to top things off, the forum's suggestion board is closed, but I'm leaving my complaints/suggestion anyway.

I thought it was made quite clear, both in the forum description and the forum itself in a pinned topic, as to why the forum is closed.

I'm closing this and copying everything into an issue in the problem tracker. If you want to continue this discussion, do it there.