Kudos to all who are maintaining this site, but I feel it is lacking in features compared to other sites like myApertureLabs.com. I love the contests and forum integration, but here's what I really think would make this site much more attractive: (if any of this exists and I just missed it, tell me)

• Expanded thumbnail, and screenshot gallery- "Length/size" and "Difficulty" fields that show up at the top of a listing and in lists of maps- Mapper's name should appear in lists of maps- Comments/reviews- Possibly voting on length and difficulty- Maybe even separate voting on visual design, layout, mechanics, if you guys really have nothing else to work on . That's probably overkill.- Mapper's profile should show all of his maps (with all of the maps' statistics nearby), not just his forum activity- Sorting by rating (best/worst), downloads (most alltime, least alltime, most last month, least last month), difficulty (hardest/easiest), length (longest/shortest), upload date (earliest/latest)- If a map won any contests or awards, the contest/award should be linked at the top of a listing and with a little tag in lists of maps.
  A big Upload button and another Donate button on the sidebar/header couldn't hurt, either.
  The stuff I would be most interested in is sorting and comments.

Keep up the good work. Hope you guys aren't short on programmers .

We use a phpBB mod for the download database and have been very carefully adding features and changing things. You have to be careful not to make the universe explode when you're modifying other peoples software. I'm told sorting should be here in an upcoming update (and possibly search too).

This belongs in General, not "Portal 2 Discussion". Users do not have the ability to delete their own topics because, well, that's really stupid.

A map's "comments/reviews" are generally in the upload's thread. When you are looking at a download, click on "View Topic". Instead of having a separate comment area, the DLDB creates a thread for each file and the discussion is kept there.

Adding in two dozen different rating methods would be cluttered at best and would be completely ignored at worst. Having a single overall rating keeps things concise and simple, both for people coming here simply to download maps, and for users to rate the maps they played.

Contest winners and "Community Spotlight" highlighted maps are in their own download category at the very top of the download database. Each week-ish we put a new spotlight on the left hand menu which, in case you didn't notice, shows up on every single page. Spotlighted maps get about 1,000 downloads a day.

Adding the list of downloads to a user's profile, and the ability to sort downloads, is coming shortly. I was planning on doing it this week actually, but the contest is taking precedence and I don't want to make major changes to the download system during something as critical as this contest.

There is not a "big donate button" because I'm not in this for the money. The donation info is in the big "rules and info" global announcement if you are really interested, but TWP is going to stick around regardless if people send me money or not.

msleeper wrote:
This belongs in General, not "Portal 2 Discussion". Users do not have the ability to delete their own topics because, well, that's really stupid.

No, I realize that; I thought that I had put it in the Single Player board, since that's what it said at the top, dunno why. I deleted that line. Steam forums allow you to delete topics, though; don't see anything wrong with it.

Quote:
A map's "comments/reviews" are generally in the upload's thread. When you are looking at a download, click on "View Topic". Instead of having a separate comment area, the DLDB creates a thread for each file and the discussion is kept there.

Ah, ok then. I feel that it's a bit nicer to have it all all on one page, but eh, there's not much difference.

Quote:
Adding in two dozen different rating methods would be cluttered at best and would be completely ignored at worst. Having a single overall rating keeps things concise and simple, both for people coming here simply to download maps, and for users to rate the maps they played.

Adding the list of downloads to a user's profile, and the ability to sort downloads, is coming shortly. I was planning on doing it this week actually, but the contest is taking precedence and I don't want to make major changes to the download system during something as critical as this contest.

Yeah, by all means focus on important stuff, I'm just offering some suggestions. About the many methods of voting; I wasn't being very serious about the visual etc. voting, but I feel that a useful measure of difficulty and length could only come from voting.

Quote:
There is not a "big donate button" because I'm not in this for the money. The donation info is in the big "rules and info" global announcement if you are really interested, but TWP is going to stick around regardless if people send me money or not.

Well, that tidbit is buried in a sticky in the News section of the forum; more people might be compelled to donate if it's right up front. And you could always put that money back into the development and upkeep of this site. But hey, your site, you can do what you want.

Seems to me you're being very passive-aggressive in your post, and I'm not sure why, but I could just be misinterpreting you. I'm just offering my thoughts.
Thanks again for your effort.

The Steam forums are basically one of the worst boards in the world, though that's mostly due to the extremely high dumb ass quotient than anything else probably.

re: "Having comments all in one place", I'm not sure if you realize but the threads that are created for downloads go in the Community Releases board. The Download page acts as an extension of the forum - but the forum is the heart and soul of the site. You can read release threads before you even go to download a file. The download link is always in the first post of a thread.

The giant "forum rules and important info" thread is a Global Announcement, meaning that it appears at the top of every single forum. It also says "Read Before Posting" which I would hope that people actually do. I can't force people to read the most important thread on the boards, but I can certainly try and get their attention to it. Not to mention that if someone really wanted to donate and missed that sticky, usually I get a PM about it and direct them to that thread.

msleeper wrote:
The Steam forums are basically one of the worst boards in the world, though that's mostly due to the extremely high dumb ass quotient than anything else probably.

Agreed, but I was talking about their technical aspect.

As for everything else, well, ok. I didn't realize that the site revolves around the forums rather than the download pages.

Well I guess that is only partially true. The download page is a major aspect of the site; we are a Portal and Portal 2 map hosting website after all. But all discussion about maps should be on the forums - which is why it automagically creates a thread for that discussion, rather than having the map discussion quarantined in another page/database.

msleeper wrote:
...extremely high dumb ass quotient...

Hmm. Don't remember that one from my Algebra textbook.

Also keep in mind this forum has been around since BEFORE the Portal 1 SDK... Alot of us have been around since then too. The site was THE first, and best, mappers forum for all things portal before most people even knew what portal was. That being said, alot of what you see has been hammered out into a fine workable paste that's easy for anyone to digest. And beyond that, what you have suggested has been suggested, and brought up probably 20-30-100 times before. Any passive aggressiveness was most likely not intentional, and rather just the sound of things being repeated for the 50th time. We understand you're new here, and you are most welcomed. But the site is ANYTHING but new. It is what it is, because it works. Most of us that have been here a long time are silly smartasses at heart, and like to burn one another. Sometimes that seems passive aggressive to newcomers, and from one of the biggest dumb smart asses here, I apologize and say again, Welcome to the site

WinstonSmith wrote:
Hmm. Don't remember that one from my Algebra textbook.

Here it is! /0

Hi
I want to add that you should add an option to precise if the map is a solo or coop map, a BIG option, by the way we can identify each kind of map easily while browsing the download section.

I think it's more important than any other feature

mistic100 wrote:
you should add an option to precise if the map is a solo or coop map, a BIG option, by the way we can identify each kind of map easily while browsing the download section.

msleeper wrote:

I've seen like 3 of these today, I'm getting suspicious.

edit: nvm