1. Yep, makes sense. Keeps the "carrot" on page 2 which will hopefully get people clicking on it.

2. No, I think doing so would detract from the "kapow" of launching the article itself.

1) I think it's fine the way it is. The focus is on the gems, and I think that many (if not most) readers will not advance beyond the first page. That's simply a sad result of paged article layouts (only Liam can confirm this via server logs, though).

2) Originally, I strongly suggested that we work out in the open. However, now that we've run this for nearly six-months (wow!), I'm not so certain that all of our discussion is best aired in public. Sometimes we have requests from the community, which we do our best to write-up, but occasionally for projects that none of us are excited about. Those are difficult to write, but we do our best. Without t the PM thread, we will certainly curtail our grumbling (it's human nature). How will that affect our interaction? I don't know. I fear that the lack of such an outlet for frank discussion will make it less fun (i.e., motivational decrease). Then again, we could show our bias publicly and let the community see which projects we're truly passionate about... I just kind of feel that things we write could be taken out of context, and probably will end up so eventually.

So, that said, I think that all of our "administrivia" should be out in the open, such as issues of formatting and presentation. I think that this thread would be great for readers to interact with us, nominate projects for write-ups, and sign up to contribute if they wish.

We could run a trial issue or two here and see how that pans out, but I'm cautiously skeptical at present.

1. Yep, makes sense. Keeps the "carrot" on page 2 which will hopefully get people clicking on it.

Ooohh, I hadn't considered that. Are we supposed to get them to click more? I thought we just wanted to share cool projects with them and make them happy :)

2. No, I think doing so would detract from the "kapow" of launching the article itself.

Wow, that's even better than my point. Then again, it's not like any part of the article itself is actually secret ;)

Yeah, the article-in-progress is already on the wiki where people could stumble across it, but I strongly suspect having a forum post keep coming up under Latest Posts will result in more people casually checking by. That would be true for me at least, if I weren't already on the team. I don't know if that's good or bad; maybe we should put up *spoiler* in the thread title for readers who don't want to see the picks until the article is posted in all its glory ;)

I'm not sure what to think of the public grumbling part... it's probably ok among community members but getting indexed on google and everything? Hm.

Now all the regulars have spoken, I think I owe you my opinion on the subjects at hand:

1) I don't have a strong formed opinion about this. On one hand it feels more natural to begin with the finished projects and continue with the current stuff, until the grand finale that are the Gems. But on the other hand I'm also afraid of losing readership if we organize the articles in this way (s_d, the more readers TFC has, the more people we can make happy :))

2) While it's true that anyone can see what's cooking by looking at the wiki, I'd prefer to keep our reasons and motives private. We do accept all kinds of suggestions (and this thread could certainly be the perfect spot for doing so), but we of course reserve our right to include them in the final article or not. What we'll never refuse is a fully written review for a Gem of a Biggie! :P

That's a crucial point, Munts. If someone asks, "can you cover <game>?", it might be covered, it might not.

But if someone asks "can you insert my researched review of <game>?", that's wonderful. My only slight concern would be if we start getting lots of requests like this from the team's behind the game - I don't want the Funding Crowd to turn into an advertising agency. People will only read the articles if they're of a decent quality, after all.

Still, it would be great to have a "problem" like that! :D

Going back to the original points - I'm not too fussed about point one, but I really think we should keep the private thread for point 2. Even if we use it less and less (and do a forum post simultaneously), it's still a handy avenue. I don't know you guys, at all, outside of GoL, so I feel we should keep some camaraderie going.

On that last point too, it's probably time to retire Znurre and Rick01457 from the discussion. It's been, as S_D notes, 6 months, and without a peep from either of them. Which is fine, but they're probably just too polite to say "please remove me".

I'm not sure what to think of the public grumbling part... it's probably ok among community members but getting indexed on google and everything? Hm.

Yes, I don't always have the time to fully explain my opinions in a nuanced way (despite my wordiness). It would be a shame for my words to come bite me later, or worse, to bring grief to a fan or project creator due to my poorly stated private opinion. Not everybody likes everything, or we wouldn't have much of a need for this column at all.

While it's true that anyone can see what's cooking by looking at the wiki, I'd prefer to keep our reasons and motives private.

Sounds like we're unanimous on this. As an aside to your second point, it looks like our page view counts are actually pretty reasonable these days! It could all be robots and such, but I like to think that there are happy readers getting involved in crowd-funding.

What we'll never refuse is a fully written review for a Gem of a Biggie! :P

Goodness, wouldn't that be something! :D

Still, it would be great to have a "problem" like that! :D

Indeed! Then, surely, we will have arrived...

I don't know you guys, at all, outside of GoL, so I feel we should keep some camaraderie going.

Yeah, this is fun. I like you lot :)

On that last point too, it's probably time to retire Znurre and Rick01457 from the discussion.

Speed, would you ping them directly and see? Maybe send a PM asking them to reply if they'd like to be included on TFC #31. That way, if they'd prefer not to, they could have the option of simply ignoring the PM. Of course, an actual response saying "yes" or "no" would be better, but if Scaine is right, then we'll probably not see one.

You know, speaking to the point of user-contributed reviews, we might as well make a policy for that as well (to set expectations). I propose that we reserve the right to modify community contributes as we see fit. I'd imagine that this would tend to result in spelling and grammar adjustments, but I'd prefer not to upset a first-time contributor by rewriting their review without preparing them for that possibility.

Then, whomever does the copy-editing (a role I'd volunteered for originally) could send the revised copy to them and ask if they'd like to be credited. That way, if they don't like how it turned out, we could either work with them or simply leave their name off (their choice).

Is that reasonable, or overcomplicating things? I'm just looking at the new open world for this writing and thinking about how we could keep the quality up without upsetting them.

As an aside to your second point, it looks like our page view counts are actually pretty reasonable these days! It could all be robots and such, but I like to think that there are happy readers getting involved in crowd-funding.

I'm afraid that might be due to the pagination: a single reader who clicks on the 2 pages of our latest article counts as 2 views, so I guess we should divide the displayed figure by something between 1 and 2 (I'm sure not everybody gets past the first page, unfortunately) to estimate the actual readership.

Hmmm... Being always a bit on the pessimistic side, I think we'd better leave all these considerations for when someone actually sends us a review and we feel it needs some editing.