Comment 2 for bug 341620

attachements to the forums are nice (we had it at the old forum as well) - but it's not a solution as "sharebase" for widelands game files. The reason is simply, that (even if you open a completely new forum named "Files" with subforums like "maps", "world") that a forum is not that simple to handle and a lot of nice feature a missing, as these are normally not used in a forum.
For example:
* There was a simple list of download/upload categories with description for each category
* Users where able to comment (possible in forum as well) and rate a download (not possible in forums)
* Besides ratings, the download count of each file was saved, which enables the features like a "Most Popular" (most often downloaded) and "Best Ratings" pages (both surely not easy implemented in a forum). This feature wasn't just nice for users to see whether a download is worth a look (or even a must have) - it's also nice for the creators of the file, to have a review on the file.
* The download/upload section should have a link in left menu, so users can easily find it. Of course it's possible to create a link to a specif tag in forum there - but it would be for sure that some users would get confused why the forum is loading again and would either simply give up or ask in one of the forums if they should really place the files there (at least I am not used to use a forum as file share base, so I surely would behave like that on other websites)
* In the old downloadsection it was able to specify a download on another page (like the downloads on SF.net) - from number of downloads from our website compared with total downloads on SF.net f.e. more than the half of all downloaded Build13 version (~ up to 3/4) have been download via widelands.org - that's simply because users enter a page, see some screenshots and read a short description and than either want to download a file or leave the page again.
But surely the users don't want to

Another point is simply, that you would need at least one new category and *at least* four new extra forums -> which would higher the size of forums available -> which would make the "real/normal" forums overview more complicated to read (the more forums on the screen, the harder to find out where to post a specific topic - f.e. I hate http://mandrivauser.de/forum.php because I simply don't know where to place my topics there.)
Well one or two new forums won't do harm, but if you would add forums for all old categories (Widelands releases, Widelands release archive, Maps, Music, Tribes & Worlds, Wallpapers, Other Artwork, Widelands tools (gaming, development) this point isn't to forgot.

well just some points against *ONLY* implementing forum attachments and *FOR* implementing a real upload/downloadsection. ;-)