Post date: Apr 08, 2011 5:47:55 AM
Reading Flunders' response on Tekken Zaibatsu (available here) confirmed something for me that I realize is one of the faults of an open community, such as TZ. There becomes so much information readily available that it nearly becomes impossible to sift through. Unfortunately forum searches are notoriously bad at picking up relevant information, though admittedly TZ's is well above average, and instead of getting thousands of threads and posts, one gets hundreds. The cliche "feast or famine" immediately comes to mind in regards to TZ as a whole.
One can argue that newer players are lazy in the fact that they don't do the leg work that a more experienced (both in game and forum) player does, instead I argue that newer players aren't matured enough to properly use whatever information they may stumble upon. I purposefully use the word "stumble" as a newer player may come across an incredible, game changing idea and think nothing of it, solid information being lost in a sea of posts. Obviously this is not the expected end result of the original post and who knows, it's possible at the time the poster wasn't aware of this potential greatness. In my opinion a forum should be viewed as a well preserved, chronological, train of thought. While ideas may jump from place to place, overall the end result is usually the same. To see an idea develop at an exponential rate is remarkable and honestly I can see this being lost on a player with little to no experience.
Experience is the end goal and the only way to get better is through it. The quicker a newer player becomes an experienced player, the quicker they can start contributing and reciprocating whatever they have gained. Natural progression is to be expected and this newly enlightened player will most likely discover for themselves 95% of the information out there, but my (personal) end goal is that untapped 5%. Whatever rough contribution that can be added will be thrown into the fray, through wringer, beaten to a pulp, and finally exit a strong contribution.
I don't mind people using what I've written on my blog, otherwise I would have never written it in the first place, but this is an open call to give back to the community. What's stronger than one person working on an idea? Two people. What's stronger than two people working on an idea? Four people, so on and so forth. This cascades to the point where new "tech" is discovered in places that were initially thought completely tapped. The community as a whole becomes stronger the more knowledge flows through it, today's beginners may be tomorrow's experts.
Over the next couple of days I'll be adding a section for beginner/novice players to better navigate through the information on this site. I'll also be going through my post history looking for solid information and linking them in this new section as well. Basically if I find something useful, I'll be posting it there.
---
Just a reminder, the character tool ranking is now available for public additions. The list can be found here and a description of my goals and expectations can be found at here. I've been slacking lately on its development, but I promise to add some more information this upcoming week.
PS: I've been toying with the idea of creating a video series but I'm not 100% sure how to approach it. The goal would be to release the series with a much greater frequency than the Practical Series, as everything would be in a controlled environment. I'm open to any suggestions.
PSS: I'm moving my update deadlines back to Wednesday, pushing them back a day (due to me normally posting them at 11:30-ish on Wednesdays) has been counter productive.