ModEnc talk:Community Portal
Ren: The Community portal is unordered to prevent any kind of disadvantage generated by ordering the list; using the first-come-first-serve principle it is in everybody's own hands where in the list his place should be - he can add his site right now, then he's under the first twenty, or he can wait another year, risking to be several pages down. Ordering the list alphabetical would mean that mods who start with "R", for example, are f_cked, no matter if they actually invest work (come here and add) or don't – they won't be at the beginning, they won't be at the end, they're just somewhere in the middle.
To clarify what I mean: This is no automatic link list, and neither is it some lame toplist. This is the Community portal, and it's a decision of the webmaster whether to add his site or not. And those who decide to join in early shouldn't be punished later on just because their first letter is at the end of the alphabet. It's a simple deal: The earlier you decide to join, the higher you're in the list. In this case, ordering is discriminating. Ordering is rating. You shouldn't be doomed to a place in the middle just because your mod starts with "MooMan" or something.
Blade: I disagree, and in anycase, the last editor has messed it up because my changes to the explaination of ordering no longer reflects the actual order. A ranking base on first come first served is no better than an arbitrary attempt to list in terms of actual importance. Since this site is relatively low profile at the moment, many important sites are unlikely to get here first and thus it becomes more likely that less useful sites that the newbies (who are more likey to actually need information from here) will find useless or confusing will be clicked on first. If the list is going to reflect the community, then alphabetically is better than the community being reflected as those who knew about the modenc first. At the very least, the inital list should have been alphabetical to remove any personal bias the initial poster had for various sites.
Ren: Actually, this behaviour reflects the community more than you would think: The newbies are the more active ones, and they deserve to be awarded for their activity. What you seem to forget is that ModEnc is not actually "secret" or something...it was mentioned on several forums, DCoder has the url in his sig, it was in his and mine MSN-name several times, we refer to it at DeeZire again and again – the hard core of the community knows of it's existence...yet, it does nothing. The best example for this is Arg's reaction to my question if I could use YRArg's tutorials for ModEnc: He said I could use them, if enough other sites joined it. And exactly that is the problem. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for what I get, and I consider Arg a great guy, but this situation symbolizes oldbie-behaviour all over the community: Wait and see. The oldbies wait for ModEnc to become big and beautiful before they even mention it. The newbies simply accept it as a source for help. Not much to read yet, but what's here is helpful. So, to put it blankly, their problem. They know we are here. They have the chance to come and update the list. If they don't do it, it's their personal decision. Why should I protect their importance, if they don't even consider ModEnc important enough to come here?
It all comes down to the community aspect: The newbies are not less important than established members of the community. They have the same right to put their site on the list as oldbies have. If the oldbies are too lazy or don't consider us important enough to actually do it, that's neither mine nor the newbies' fault.
And actually, first come first serve is far better than an attempt to rate by importance: Simply because everybody has the same chance. If I were to order these sites by importance, the list would reflect my own, personal opinion. If everyone has the possibility to add their site as soon as they want to, it's their personal decision how far up their site should be. Regardless of quality standards, how established the site is, or who it made. Pure community.
What you also seem to forget is that with alphabetical ordering, the "important sites" will be scattered all over the list, while the first entry could be some newbie-mod named "AA-Armament-Mod" or something. Simply think about your argument here: A newbie does not know which sites are important. All he sees are names. And it makes no difference whether these names are ordered alphabetical or not, because just seeing the name "DeeZire" doesn't tell the newb "This is an important site, go there". Plus, afaic, the most important sites (DeeZire, XCC) should be added by now...so, following my scheme, they'd stay on top, while following your scheme, DeeZire would be somewhere in the middle, and XCC at the bottom. Now which scheme has more important sites at the top to be clicked by newbies?
And just a sidenote about the initial post thing: That was actually a random order. I had some sites in mind, and simply put them there – no rating of any kind.
