I've been seeing a lot of version spam in Splore while browsing, and I'd like to avoid doing that myself if I can avoid it. But I'm not entirely sure how Splore works. Is there some sort of wiki info about it? Or a guide some where? Are there best practices for stuff like versioning/cart data/naming?
Unfortunately, the version spam is due to the invalid use of the BBS by developers, and there's nothing you personally can do about it. When you upload a game to the BBS (this site), it will also show up in Splore, the same way it does here. You have two options when you upload: either make a new thread, or update an existing one. The first option is for new games, the second is for updates of WIP ones. Unfortunately, lots of people seem to choose to post a new thread even when their game is already on here instead of updating the old one, which leads to... that. The only thing which can prevent it is moderation of the BBS for such things.
@Tim In the past week I've seen devs posting updates in a single thread and that still resulted in Splore spam.
Does anybody know if there is there some way to remove an older version of a cart from Splore?
some time ago I could make a cart 'disappear' by removing its tag from any thread. I don't think it was deleted but it wasn't referenced anymore, nor in splore nor in you personal cartridge list.
edit: hey, that still works it seems!
wondering what happened with the nude cyclist though, whole thread gone but cart revs still there in splore...
actually a cart version is nothing more than a number at the end of the cart name. maybe zep should scan the carts and only keep the latest in splore.
for now I think the best practice would be to refrain from updating too often. wait for bigger updates, don't use the bbs for your own versioning.
I agree that Splore needs some tweaking. As Pico-8 gets more and more developers, it's going to be near impossible to sift through everything, spam or not.
I know Zep is working on some additional categorization for BBS threads and carts, so that will help. Hopefully a "Games" category can get made so it's easy to pick out the true games from all the demos, experiments and art projects.
I'm not sure how the behind-the-scenes works with cart versions and such...but it could/should probably be updated as well to better handle or guide people through the process to try and avoid duplicates. Instead of asking someone to add a New or an Update, put some smarts in it to say, "hey, it looks like you've already submitted that game, is this an update?" and so on from there. It'll take more steps but would help reduce accidental dupes. It won't curb spammers really, that's just gonna be good ol' moderating and can't be automated really.
I've managed several forums/communities and it's not easy to keep things tidy as it grows. It becomes a job before too long. I'm sure Zep & Co. are doing their best in juggling the forum while keeping Pico-8 development moving forward.
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