Can we add the tag to existing threads?
Yes. It's in the same setting used to change the thread title: Thread Tools > Edit Thread
I think the tags should all have the same font color. The white ones stand out more than the black ones atm.
Font color is just the default, it can be fixed.
Also woulndn't it make more sense to go from red-ish when the project is in development to greenish when the project is finished?
Current color scheme is because there's enough phases to cover most of the color spectrum, green is in the middle and conveniently Kickstarter's color is green and it's crowdfunding is toward the middle of the development stages, and in the context of production cases the project being done is more of a bad thing since people can't buy it anymore so red is at the end.
I think it works nicely but it's not set in stone.
About required tags: most tags don't apply to cases that aren't sold. While there's some that do apply, forcing the tags may be confusing to people who don't intend to sell their project. This could be solved by adding documentation to the field though.
Prefix requirement just means
a label has to be picked, not that all of them have to be used in succession. So for non-commercial projects it'd just go from CONCEPT to PROTOTYPING to either COMPLETED or STALLED.
But in general, the destinction between build logs and potential commercial projects is a useful one. If we agree that one subforum is only for commercial ideas, a tag should be mandatory.
I've been debating whether to have a commercial project only sub-forum. But my thought is it's not always clear when starting a project whether it'll be commercial or not. Maybe there's so much interest a one-off prototype turns into serialized production, or maybe something intended for production just gets no interest at all and ends up a one-off for the creator.
Something I'd also like to propose is to automatically mark a thread as stalled if it has not been updated by the OP for a certain amount of time. Not sure if that's doable, but it would certainly be useful.
I'll look into that.
What I'm not sure about is how this is to be handled for cases that were produced in the past but aren't anymore, cases that are in stock and can be ordered. I guess the latter could say "Production", but that communicates that you can't buy it right now. And for the former, there is a distinction between "Completed (but actively supported)" and "Completed (and never to appear again)" to be made. Maybe "Stalled" could be expanded to "Stalled/Discontinued"?
Yeah, this stage of a project is the trickiest to convey. But since it has the widest number of possible states I lean to just encompassing it all under PRODUCTION and it'll be up to readers to actually read the thread to check for details.
Post-production is also tricky since all these projects are batch production. I think COMPLETED suffices for any project where it was produced and will be no longer, regardless of whether there's active support or not.
What I'm not sure on is the gap between batches. If there are plans for another production run in the not too distant future, should the status just be left at PRODUCTION?
Looks pretty good to me. I'm not entirely sure that crowdfunding should be a separate tag. It seems like it's quite similar to pre-ordering, but maybe the distinction is useful.
Crowdfunding and pre-order could be condensed into FUNDING, maybe.
Yeah, I think just lumping them together is better in the end.
