Ask an admin suddenly became the Suggestions/Problems subforum huh?

Ask an admin suddenly became the Suggestions/Problems subforum huh?

It was recommended we turn it into a catch-all member/staff discussion thread. Whether you want to ask about a site policy, or want to recommend a new feature, since Mahz's thread is more or less dead by inactivity this thread is standing in for it until Mahz returns.

Something that popped into my head today:

Is there by chance we can see an improvement on the zeroth post system? We can use docs/pad/etc for this, but I was curious if there was a possibility of toggling a thread/post to be collaborative with one or more people on the site, such as a lore thread in The Gallery or even a test thread for whatever reason (building a RP?) with friends.

Co-GMs can do that, but it'd be nice if there was an option to add additional people to access it in the thread edit menu.

<Snipped quote by Kuro>

Co-GMs can do that, but it'd be nice if there was an option to add additional people to access it in the thread edit menu.

Yeah, that partly was what I was trying to get at, but I was also thinking that the collaboration system behind zeroth posts could be added to other areas in the site. Like, if we had the ability to collab with one or more people in the test thread, it would completely erase the need for google docs/pad/etc. for collab posts.

<Snipped quote by Ruby>

Yeah, that partly was what I was trying to get at, but I was also thinking that the collaboration system behind zeroth posts could be added to other areas in the site. Like, if we had the ability to collab with one or more people in the test thread, it would completely erase the need for google docs/pad/etc. for collab posts.

Seems possible given what I know.

The question is: how complicated would that be? Depends on the code for the 0th post system. Adding onto the Co-GM access may be easier than creating a new system from scratch, but I know this is a RP feature I'd like to see happen (aside from the site staff features on my wish list).

<Snipped quote by Ruby>

Yeah, that partly was what I was trying to get at, but I was also thinking that the collaboration system behind zeroth posts could be added to other areas in the site. Like, if we had the ability to collab with one or more people in the test thread, it would completely erase the need for google docs/pad/etc. for collab posts.

The main question when it comes to collaborative features like this is access control. I could pretty easily make a section of the site completely collaborative and allow any account at all able to access and edit what's on it. But you also run the risk of trolls coming by and wiping/defacing posts.

To defeat that, I could also add the collaborative revision system that currently exists on 0th posts (check out any thread with a 0-post you're able to access and click the revisions button on the top left, or get a perma-link to a post you created and add '/revisions' to the end of the URL). That would allow any person to revert the thread pretty easily and see who defaced it. It would also allow trolls to be caught and prevent your information from being lost. The only issue would be if people who don't know the feature exists end up thinking that they just lost everything—that'd be really unfortunate (along with any deletion wars that might pop up).

The most robust solution, true access control, would involve the thread creator adding verified editors to a post/thread like Co-GMs. That feature would more than likely require a change to the database (unless I did a hacky solution that may or may not work), increasing the amount of time it would take to implement.

That being said, I'd like to hear all of your thoughts and suggestions, along with what you'd like to see out of that kind of system. I can always throw the changes onto my experimental GitHub branch, so I can try mocking something up and seeing what it looks like. Let me know what you think ^_^

The most robust solution, true access control, would involve the thread creator adding verified editors to a post/thread like Co-GMs. That feature would more than likely require a change to the database (unless I did a hacky solution that may or may not work), increasing the amount of time it would take to implement.

This would probably be the optimal solution, or at least closest to what the concept I have in my head. People still have to go out their way to link to/give access if they're using docs/one of the various pad websites/whatever to collaborate on OOCs, lore docs, posts, etc., and while I'm not one for coding so I don't truly know the process behind it, I figured this way we could eliminate the need for a middle man website and keep things centralized on the guild. Personally, I feel it'd be better if you could directly write the post with the people at the same time (similar to how google docs or X collaborative writing program works) and be able to see their writing/changes in real time, but given this is a forum, something tells me that might be a little bit of a stretch and not exactly possible to do.

<Snipped quote by LegendBegins>

I feel it'd be better if you could directly write the post with the people at the same time (similar to how google docs or X collaborative writing program works) and be able to see their writing/changes in real time, but given this is a forum, something tells me that might be a little bit of a stretch and not exactly possible to do.

Given that the Guild's architecture wasn't built to cater to live feeds, it might be a lot to reinvent Google Docs. But I can look to see if any open-source live text editors like Firepad would integrate cleanly into the Guild.

<Snipped quote by Kuro>

Given that the Guild's architecture wasn't built to cater to live feeds, it might be a lot to reinvent Google Docs. But I can look to see if any open-source live text editors like Firepad would integrate cleanly into the Guild.

That's what I figured. If it doesn't work out then just expanding on the zeroth post system would be fine in itself and would probably the best next thing to this sort of suggestion.

Is it possible to get tabs added to PMs? Tabs as in the IC/OOC/Char tab in the proper RP threads.

@Hey Im Jordan

What tabs would you want? I think Mahz threw the idea out there of user-selected tabs at one point.

@Hey Im Jordan

What tabs would you want? I think Mahz threw the idea out there of user-selected tabs at one point.

I think the three tabs in a normal RP thread would be fine to have in PMs. For me, when I write a 1x1, I tend to like to talk with my partner about the RP, and have more than a few characters. It gets kind of messy when I need to have a PM for OOC talk, a PM for character references, and a PM for the actual IC. For organization, it'd be great to have those three things tucked into one PM. And 0th posts, even!

User-selected tabs, would that mean we could check a box for each of the tabs while making a new PM? Would it be possible to add/remove tabs once a PM is live? I think that would be cool.

I dunno, I really love the tabs system that threads have, and I wish PMs got the same treatment.

On the subject of tabs, I think adding a LORE tab in addition to OOC, CHAR, and IC might be useful for some more detailed RPs that need more of a codex than just the basic OOC information.

Custom tab names are probably the solution to that, but tab deletion is tricky because we don't want players randomly losing content because a Setting tab is no longer useful to the GM. It wouldn't be horribly difficult to add the same system to PMs, but probably with just one tab by default for the people who aren't PMing to RP.

Fair enough.

While a dangerous thing to ask for, I'd like some opinions on the error-handling of the BBCode parser. More specifically, how would you as a user like to see the parser handle BBCode errors? We've all had the experience of hitting that Preview button and getting the dreaded Some tags appear to be misaligned. And when we see that, we're inspired to fix the issue and make our posts. But what if we didn't?

To clarify, what would you expect to happen if you made a post with broken BBCode? What would you expect to see in the Preview window? Right now, the Guild takes any BBCode that has an error and refuses to display any style in that BBCode "nest." For example, [b][i]Test[/b][/b][i]Test2[/i] displays as [b][i]Test[/b][/b]Test2.

In my version of the parser, if a user posts bad BBCode to the forum, it attempts to do error-correction, so any incorrect tags are automatically converted into the correct ones, and any missing tags are added to the end (it still displays the Some tags appear to be misaligned. error). There are pros and cons to every approach, and because it's going to be an error state either way, I would expect that most users are going to fix the error before posting it to the Guild. But I'd like to hear your opinions on what you would expect/like to happen in the Preview window and the forum if there's an error in your BBCode. Or if it doesn't matter, I'd like to hear that too.



As a final note, I'd love to collect more test cases, so if you'd like to help me out, PM me the most horrendously broken BBCode you can imagine. I'll plug it in and see what it does. If you don't mind putting a letter between each tag so I can see what it does at every step, I'd appreciate that too.

@LegendBegins I like the concept, but is there a chance for it to cause issues for BBCode-heavy RPs? I have a feeling it might throw in BBCode to fix one thing but ultimately mess up other BBCode. Maybe there's a way for it to highlight where the issues are, kind of like how spell check works or something of that nature.

@Kuro

On one hand, it won't mess up any RPs that rely on broken BBCode functions right now—it's not retroactive.

As for BBCode-heavy RPs, it shouldn't mess anything up unless they decide to make a post with errors in it (and if they do, even the existing Guild system will break those posts—it just doesn't try to self-correct and recover). I really like the spellcheck suggestion and I can easily add something like "misaligned tag <tagName> at character <number>." I can try to add something that highlights the error too.

@LegendBegins

As someone who uses a (private) forum which has the functionality of 'fixing' broken BBCode in a preview pane, I'd be against it.

In that forum's case, it ended up more frustrating than it's worth when autocorrecting anything more complex than simple bolding/italicising/colours, and it's generally not so hard to fix these errors anyway. It would seem to be an unnecessary addition. I'd be down for highlighting errors as a luxury, but automatically fixing them seems like it could cause more problems than it's worth.

A further worry is that it would end up like the previous BBCode update from years back. It may not break current RP threads which rely on these errors until edited, but for some of us with active roleplays who edit/update posts fairly frequently, it could be extremely annoying. As an example, old accounts with posts from before the last update have... considerable glitches, as in you literally cannot save any edits you make/delete the content of them/etc.

@Roach

It does have to handle the errors in some way or another (including not processing the tags at all), so while I can remove the auto-correct features, it needs to do something with the broken BBCode. Does it scan for the correct closing tag and then return everything in between as plaintext (can also break styling), does it try to unwind until it's at the base level of the post, send that as plaintext, and then parse the rest as BBCode (i.e. the existing system)? Does it send the entire thing as plaintext?

It's a difficult problem to solve.