[Meta] Why do we have a template now?

We hear you. There are discussions going on behind the scenes regarding the template and what direction to head toward next. Not all of us mods agree 100% with the template or its implementation, despite us all "enforcing" it. My hope (personally) is to shift focus onward to spotlighting certain members and their creations with GameMaker in our community. It's well-known that many members in the community want to stray from the typical "help forum" style we've maintained and move in a new direction. While I (again personally) agree with them, I also know that we've got some great support here that people just wouldn't be able to find in other places.

People like yourself and many others have provided invaluable insight throughout posts that quite frankly didn't follow the template. Not even close. But if the template had been so strictly enforced at the time, we might never have seen those responses. While I wouldn't want the subreddit to be flooded with low-quality content, I would also never want to make the subreddit feel robotic in nature. I'd like to keep our excellent support around as we move forward. It's not easy being a mod, especially given the current state of our subreddit. (I'm doing my best!)

So I'd ask you to bear with us while we figure out what it is that we need to do in order to support our community rather than divide it. We're just as confused and frustrated as the rest of you are. We just need some time. We've got a huge influx of new users (gained 1,000+ new subs just today alone) and that figure is steadily rising. We're also now a featured subreddit. The recent Humble Bundle has, no doubt, had a huge impact as well.

With that being said, we can expect to see a lot of posts regarding very day one, basic things that could have been answered with a simple search on Google or within this subreddit. Drawing the line between which posts are okay to keep and which ones are deemed to be such minimal effort that they aren't up-to-par with the community standard is difficult. Again, I'd ask that you bear with us while we all come to an agreement on a way to provide the most just and fair way to accomplish this task so that we can come to expect quality content as the norm.

You've been heard loud and clear throughout multiple posts you've created. All of us mods are aware of your opinion. None of us are ignoring you. When we get quiet, it's because we are talking amongst ourselves and bouncing ideas off each other. We'll eventually all settle on a solution and when we do, it'll be a comfortable transition that makes the community feel right again.

/r/gamemaker Thread Parent