I have been a member of Gamedev.net for over three years (I recently opened an account under a second name due to a hard drive crash and loss of password and user name), and I am noticing that many are going wanting in Help Wanted these days. I remember when there were dozens of new posts and countless responders every day! Now I go and I see over a dozen un-answered posts, as far as 2 or 3 days back! I'm not really complaining; I was persistent and got a good team. But, has anyone else noticed the lack of popularity? Just wondering...

I don't check this forum that often, but when I posted about help wanted, I got no response either. Granted, I still have my doubts that anyone out of 6 billion people in the world actually wants to look at code from 1992 for a map-editor for a 45 degree isometric tile set in a free software project, outside of our current tiny team. But then people somewhere still probably making mods to some more popular proprietary retro games.

I actually like the older code base, because it is relativley dependency hunt free, and when all the "cool" kids got on board with the latest library hell editions of software, I prefer to label myself a hardcore dork. If it is going to be painful for users, I'm not going to use it, no matter how shiny and new it is going to be.

Sometimes I want to live in a glorified past, a past that did not actually exist, but rather a fantasy of what it should have been.

Could be they're getting PMed instead or people are working on their own projects. I've never really looked at Help Wanted except to get a quick laugh from the MMO posts.

I can tell you that we're getting at least 2 new topics posted almost every day recently, and that most days have more than that -- weekends tend to see a bit of a spike, with up to 10 or 15 new topics added each day on some of them.

There are a few things that might be making the forum seem quieter and/or less responsive than it used to be:

1. Topics now require approval before being visible in the forum, meaning you no longer see the topics who did not use the template getting bumped by a notice from a moderator, or in some cases closed and re-posted; they instead don't appear until posted correctly. Likewise, in cases where we notice it happening you won't see projects that infringe upon existing IP appear and then be closed by a moderator like you used to -- there were 3 of these in the last week.
2. The new system unfortunately behaves a bit silly -- when a topic is approved, it appears in the order it was posted, meaning that topics sometimes appear lower down on the page, or if the forum has been busy sometimes even already on the second page -- some of those topics you see without responses on the second page may not have actually started at the top of the listing before dropping to that spot -- we do allow a couple of bumps, providing users with a way to work around this particular problem -- I'm considering bumping topics once myself as they are approved to fix this particular issue more properly.
3. A larger portion of the topics in Help Wanted are offering services than in the old days.
4. From conversations with some users it would seem that quite a lot of responses are often sent as emails or private messages.

I do think that persistence is very important for anyone who wants to get good results out of Help Wanted, and also that the majority of projects should probably be more picky about their recruiting, choosing only those people they actually need rather than recruiting almost everyone who offers to join.

When I've ever posted any requests in HW, 90%+ of responses are through PM or email.

The new system unfortunately behaves a bit silly -- when a topic is approved, it appears in the order it was posted, meaning that topics sometimes appear lower down on the page, or if the forum has been busy sometimes even already on the second page -- some of those topics you see without responses on the second page may not have actually started at the top of the listing before dropping to that spot -- we do allow a couple of bumps, providing users with a way to work around this particular problem -- I'm considering bumping topics once myself as they are approved to fix this particular issue more properly.

Augh I had to deal with that same problem under the old news system (back on the old site). Yea after approval just edit the OP or post then remove a reply to bump it would be a good thing IMO

post then remove a reply to bump it would be a good thing IMO

Unfortunately I'm lead to believe that particular trick no longer works with the new software -- removing the post removes the "Bump".

[quote name='Gaiiden' timestamp='1306207545' post='4814865']
post then remove a reply to bump it would be a good thing IMO

Unfortunately I'm lead to believe that particular trick no longer works with the new software -- removing the post removes the "Bump".
[/quote]
Tricksy!!

How bout an edit to the OP? Add a character, remove a character?

How about a reply from a moderator "This post has been approved" to bump it