Other: Staff Announcement

[BlazeHeatnix]

We're not talking about people making submissions in good faith(giving proper credit where it's due) for projects that were abandoned or where the author doesn't care if it's reposted.

Except you are, actually:

Effective immediately, no user may submit any new(to RHDN) work or project unless they are the author/creator or contributor of said work.

How is anyone supposed to interpret this other than "it doesn't matter whether you give credit, or if it's abandoned, or if the author doesn't care, it's not allowed"? If that's the case, then it doesn't really matter what you're "talking about", because at the end of the day, that IS the effect.

It makes no sense. RHDN has never allowed people to post others' work and claim it as their own, period. This new policy does almost nothing to prevent people from doing that, though. All it ends up doing is hurting the ones who post in good faith. Think about it. The problem, supposedly, is that people are claiming ownership of the hacks that they submit. So your solution is to not allow them to submit a hack...unless they claim ownership. What.

This policy has been in effect on trial basis for several months and has proven to be effective, though not perfect.

Prove it. Show us your numbers.

[lexluthermiester]

Prove it. Show us your numbers.

We have zero accountability to you. Lose the aggression or we will show you the way out.

MathonNapkins has rightfully given several warnings and asked people to be nice and I'm adding my two cents: Let's lose the aggression folks. This is a positive thing for RHDN and the community!

This decision was made for good reason and it will not be unmade without good reason. It is how we will be operating going forward, with respect for both fair-use and authors. It's a difficult balance to make, but this is the line that's been drawn.

If everyone thinks about it, you'll find not much is changing except for the very clear warning to frauds trying to pass off other peoples work as their own.

[Prof. 9]

Not really. It's common sense. When patches are submitted which have serious problems(no, we reviewers don't and will not test every patch) and the authors have no point of contact, users end up posting "Reviews" bemoaning the issues with we then have to deal with. If authors are going to make the commitment of posting projects, they should care enough to have a line of communication open so users of those works can report problems.

Thanks for the response. I get that you want a line of communication. Just for the sake of understanding the reasoning behind this decision, why would an external link to an issue tracker or forum topic not suffice? I personally don't mind it, but some may prefer not wanting to create the suggestion tech support will be actively provided through RHDN, e.g. if RHDN is not your primary channel for publishing works.

To be clear, I think requiring a forum account is a valid approach to take, but it does make the submission process somewhat less frictionless.

[bigbob]

This policy has been in effect on trial basis for several months and has proven to be effective, though not perfect.

It can explain my feeling about the decrease on the site activity.
Now many new hacks' information are only on Discord, Twitter, GiHub...

After all, if someone gets a kick out of playing a Castlevania game as MegaMan(or Mario), who are we to say they shouldn't be able to?

But someone deleted the page about EarthBound Halloween Hack several years after its creation.

[Reiska]

We're not talking about people making submissions in good faith(giving proper credit where it's due) for projects that were abandoned or where the author doesn't care if it's reposted. We're talking about the constant and incessant stream of submissions where people/groups are posting other peoples work and claiming them as their own. It's caused A LOT of needless drama, bad blood and headaches. It's dishonest and unacceptable.

Respectfully, nothing about the policy as announced will prevent people from doing this.  If anything, it will encourage them to do it *more*, as it will now be the only on-paper way to get orphaned work preserved - you can say all you want that exceptions will be made on a case by case basis, but that is nowhere in the actual policy.

I don't see this policy accomplishing much of anything beyond making RHDN actively worse as an archive of ROM hacking material.  If that's not the purpose of the site anymore, well, you do you, but I think it's a shame if so.

[Chronosplit]

I think the main problem here was bad wording in the OP.  There should have been more thought as to the common questions that would immediately pop up given the message, and it would have nipped a lot of this in the bud.  If there was a thought about preservation while the decision was being made, why wasn't that immediately put forward?  Giving old patches that don't have a home a download link is one of the main tenets of RHDN to many, after all.

It can explain my feeling about the decrease on the site activity.
Now many new hacks' information are only on Discord, Twitter, GiHub...

That's actually been going on for a good while as well.  It's not about where the hack is hosted, it's about where its development takes place.  Discord is much easier to use than a forum a lot of times when it comes to bugs, and GitHub's tools are a goldmine to patches and contributions to such.

You could even say RHDN was never the sole place to put things anyway.  See Pokemon or Sonic, they have radically different places (and in Sonic's case methods) for distribution.

[USC]

Please see the updated announcement for further discussion.