Twine authoring folder?

I would like to suggest the creation of a Twine authoring folder to go beside the I6/7 and TADS folders

The rise of Twine games in this year’s IFComp demonstrates that there’s a strong Twine audience that wants to participate in this community. Dedicating space to Twine here would demonstrate a commitment to including this audience.

(Also, I want to ask my Twine questions locally instead of wandering off this site, because I’m a creature of habit.)

I second this motion.

Sounds reasonable. If it doesn’t get much traction it can always get merged back in the future.

Doesn’t Twine already have its own discussion group elsewhere, and are there that many Twine discussions under “Other Development Systems”?

(I’m just repeating the same arguments that have been made against setting up Quest and ADRIFT forums here)

My impression was that the Twine platform, like Quest and Adrift, has its own pretty distinct community loci (which enable them to support their own set of values and concerns) and may not be all that interested in shifting that into intfiction.org’s space. (Particularly since we have a small but vocal minority of folks here who kvetch vigorously whenever CYOA comes up.) But, I dunno, ask them.

My memory may be a bit off, but I don’t think that putting Quest and Adrift forum links and moving their discussion to “other” was necessarily meant to discourage Quest and Adrift discussion here. The links were added because – unless I’m mistaken – the forums already existed and somebody requested that we link to them. Originally, I wanted (maybe even had) a board for several other systems, including Hugo, which was my own preference.

A sticky link to the Google Group for Twine would probably make sense. Ideally, I’d like to just see everything discussed here. I’m about to release my first game in Twine, and I’d prefer talking about it here than elsewhere. But ultimately, nothing is set in stone. Boards can be added, removed, and merged to meet current trends.

We did originally have separate boards for Adrift and Hugo, but they didn’t get much use because Adrift discussion happened on the Adrift site and Hugo just didn’t have a large enough user base. So they were merged into Other Development Systems (with a certain amount of sadness).

If we don’t want to add a new board for Twine, we should at least include a mention of Twine in the Other Development Systems description and a link to its main discussion group, same as we do for Adrift and Quest. I’m not opposed to adding a separate Twine board, but I’m vaguely concerned that if we set one up and it was barely used and then we merged it back into Other Development Systems, that could be confusing, or even seen as a slight.

I added the mention in the description earlier, but I haven’t added a sticky post for the Google group. I can do that now.

I’m not against a Twine-specific authoring board. I just don’t know if there’s enough discussion yet to warrant it.

I see three at the moment, so it’s probably not worth a separate board yet.

I think it would be more welcoming if we had a dedicated Twine folder ourselves. As matters stand, I think we’ll be redirecting traffic instead of growing that section of our community.

But I’m willing to sway to the greater consensus. Thanks for considering the suggestion.

That’s a fair point. On the other hand (or maybe this is the same hand?), a separate Twine board is only going to be useful if there are enough experienced users here to actually answer questions about it. I see a lot of posts in Other Development Systems (about various systems, not just Twine) go unanswered at the moment.

Maybe it would be a good idea to approach the Twine community and ask if they would be interested in having a board here, or at least whether some of the users there would be willing to lurk here as well and answer questions when they come up?

Yeah, I think the way to go here is definitely to see whether the Twine community would be interested in this or not. If they are, this’ll be a useful addition; if they’re not, it won’t.

That makes total sense to me.

zarf asked on Twitter if anyone would be interested in a Twine authoring board here, and it looks like he only got a couple of responses (one yes, one no), even after the official Twine account retweeted it. I guess that means there’s probably not enough interest at this point.

Fair enough.