After spending some months here on the site, I want to express some of my thoughts.

First, I really like the site and the project. The three main parts (game info and reviews, disk preservation, forum) works very well. Specially, the game reviews and exhibition articles are fun to read and very informative.

But I also see room for improvements.

Game/Review section
- Maybe it would be good to have the ability to add comments directly to reviews, eg to thank, ask and support their work. Some very good reviews were added recently (eg for Ultima and many by Mr Croesote). But for me it is unclear, if I should post in the forum or as comment on the game page, if it really reaches the correct person.
- How do I get aware of new comments? Are there included in the RSS or do I need to discover them by accident? I think this can be improved.

Disk image section
This was the part where I tried to contribute the most, since I really like the idea behind a project to organize, catalogue and preserve floppy disks.

- How do I get aware of new added disks? Maybe via RSS feed?
- I think it's difficult to keep track about open issues about some disks, since when the user is looking at a disk image, he does not know if there are some comments about it - they are "hidden" in the forum. How about an additional button and/or comment field on the disk image page to indicate pendig issues? E.g. for 'image is not working', 'was verified by user XX', 'wrong image', 'was modifiers', 'it is version X.X', 'wrong format', .... everything that is currently mentioned in the forum.
- By adding this^. Why not open the new "unprocessed" uploaded images for other people ("with enough points")? Then they are can collect informations and test it and comment back. This helps the persons who do the final work and include it in the database (only Wandell?). I could image that this would speed up the process.

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It seems that other similar projects are dead (TOSEC IBM floppy disk section) or not moving forward (PCGPP) or the people are "alone warriors" and are working only on their own. And therefore I have high hopes that TGOD can fill this gap.

I really would like to contribute more to the disk image database. And I would like to spend some of my programming expertise (e.g. to extract image infos and compare them) and help to go through the backlog of images to get them faster processed. But besides submitting images, the homepage does not show me how I can improve my contribution here. Currently it seems that TGOD is moving slowly further because of the 'big' workload (I read that in some posts). Is there something where I can help? Currently, I have time for such a project.

Not exactly sure. The comments displayed below the game reviews are not different from the threads in the forum. They are the same, just displayed in a different context, as plainly obvious following the link to post one.

If your suggestion is to split the current game-centric threads into review-centric ones, i.e. go for higher atomicity, I'm strictly against it. This would make things much worse in my view. Fragmentation of what is already hardly there will not help.

If your suggestion is to have a link/button to comment closer to each review, it could probably be done, though I doubt this will have any effect on the number or nature of comments. It is rather my subjective belief that people have nothing to say about the games after downloading, running them for 10 seconds and then forgetting about them again.


Probably you're right. I would argue it is easily seen by just visiting the forum, though that is PULL. If one is interested in a particular game, they can subscribe for mail notifications on the respective thread, though that is not too practical for large amounts of games.

Though what's the solution? I don't know anyone who still uses RSS for anything but downloading so-called "podcasts", so this seems like a bit of a solution from 10 years ago to me. Maybe I'm mistaken?

Rest of the post to be covered later. (The fact that nobody else responded to the floppy images thoughts yet should indicate part of the whole problem.)

I must preface the following. I'm not, in any way, actively working on the floppy images. So I am in no position to complain. At all. Like everybody else, I'm managing my free hobby time based on priorities. Collecting and cataloguing floppy images, although I do believe it is an excellent idea and an essential thing to do for preservation, is out of my list.

Nevertheless, while everything which is being done is highly appreciated, I do believe I am entitled to voice dissatisfaction.

I have qualms with the way the floppy images are being managed. The process is not nearly transparent enough. People actively working on it are not reachable, don't answer even direct questions. Which flags imply what is not properly documented ("verified" etc.). Recommendations about dumping techniques are being made sometimes in the forum, but never turned into structured information to be published e.g. as a FAQ. The knowledge seems to be there, but it is not really shared.


Good question! My personal motivation to program something along those lines honestly reached a new low after I made some proposals (in April!) to increase the floppy images' exposure on the overall website in our internal crew forum which was met with… total silence from those actually involved in the subject.

As with all subjects on this site, my own motivation is directly linked to my feeling of how important it is to other active people. If nobody cares, I don't care to spend my time on it.


Hm, there is a comment field already, isn't there? I see a number of notes very similar to the ones you gave as examples. I would hope that notes made in the forum are taken into the notes field of the respective entries as well, because otherwise, they'll be lost at some point for sure.

Do you see significant information not being carried over?

Thanks a lot for your reply, Mr Creosote! I really appreciate it.

Since you are not much involved in the disk image part, I would also like to hear additional opinions from the folks who are working on them and how the contribution can be improved and my ideas to perform the the processing faster.

Now to your comments:


Oh, they are the same? I didn't know that. (Maybe I should tried it before mentioning it here. Sorry for that.)


Yeah, if they are in the forum, too. Then it's easy to detect them under 'New Posts'.


In general, I would argue that the comments should be more close to the topic they belong to. But you might be right, it's not needed with the current (unfortunately low) rate of new comments.


Oh, I didn't know that RSS feeds are old-fashioned. I use them for most of my news sites to get the articles on my phone. I even use yours to get the newly added reviews. Sure, I'm using them for podcasts, too. But what are other people using them? However, if it's not used so often, there is no need for a change.

However, those 'improvements' are only minor things.

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'Transparency' is a very good keyword. If people are encouraged to trust this site and to upload their images, it's only fair to show how the images are processed and what happens to them in a reasonable time, and also (like you named it) to teach them to use the best dumping techniques.

Or do you mean another type of 'transparent' in this context?


According the RSS feed, I would argue in the same way as above. Usually, I check regularly on the homepage, if new images were processed and published - it would be nice to get this information automatically.

If your proposals do not contain confidential information, why not share them in the open forum? Since I started to think about such improvements, I would like to know what other and you have in mind. Maybe you get here more feedback, and your thoughts are not worthless.


Sure, that's understandable and time is always limited.


You are right, this information is added in the comment section on the disk image. However, I meant something different. Here is an example: I opened a forum post here http://www.goodolddays.net/forum/topic.php?id=3618 . This information stays only there till it is processed (which seems to take weeks or months). However, if someone looks at the disk image page http://www.goodolddays.net/diskimages/id%2C834/ , he reads that the file size is wrong, and he might be wondering. However, the reason is already discovered, but is hidden in the forum and not linked to the disk image page. He would need to actively search for it.

No, don't be. The question is: if this is not clear enough, how can it be made more obvious so that other people aren't confused as you were?


Understood. Issue is that opening the floppy pages for attachment of comments of all users would imply heavy moderation duties would have to be carried out by somebody, as obviously this would be mainly used to request access to the files (which would not really be the point), complaints etc. Who would do that? And if somebody volunteered, then why not instead use this person's time to carry information over from the forum to the site?