Mahz's Dev Journal

[Sypherkhode822]

First off, I'd like to say that the notifications bar is great. It lets people send out general announcement posts to everyone without having to go into each and every thread, and it's also awesome for us comedian hacks who like to pretend they're funny and post wisecracks for all to appreciate. But could we go further with that? A 'popular notification' box would be really cool, with the highly liked notifications (presumably because they made a rhyme along the lines of 'Advanced is for smarty pants') lingering there for a day or so before being swept away.

It would just be another cool thing for people to look at as they scroll down the page to find whatever sub-forum they're trying to get to, and I can see it adding even more of a sense of community to the guild.

And I'm not just recommending this because I got six likes on this one notification and I'm hella proud of it and want more people to like it so I can achieve Guild apotheosis.

[Shienvien]

@Sypherkhode822 Notification bar? Notifications? You mean statuses and the sidebar?

On another note, @Mahz, the logout issue is back...

[Mahz]

Okay, I'm back again.

Will be catching up on my backlog of responsibilities this week starting with the contest/trophies. @Hank also let me know via Facebook that we've had a bit of an adbot problem, so I'll also be introducing his preventative measure idea of requiring new users to create a new topic in the Introduce Yourself forum before they can do anything else. I also have other ideas in mind if that's insufficient.

People often ask me why I leave for long durations of time, and it's because when I shift focus to the Guild, since it's so close to what I do for a living (web development), I've noticed a pattern where my focus on the Guild often comes at the expense of neglecting my work. So that the Guild doesn't interfere with my work, I tend to wait until tackling critical objectives at work before allocating time to the Guild.

Wish I could find a moderate middleground, but I've been trying to do that since 2007. Thankfully the Guild's staff is always so consistent that they make up for lulls in my burst-fire, and one of my main goals for the remainder of the year is to continue improving their tools so that I'm not the bottleneck of things like contests/trophies.

[Rilla]

@Mahz Get dat ass to them PMs, yo. :D

[Shienvien]

I'll also be introducing his preventative measure idea of requiring new users to create a new topic in the Introduce Yourself forum before they can do anything else.

Mahz

Erh... I don't like the idea of mandatory introductory posts. There are a few reasons why I never make them unless I absolutely have to, and generally tend to consider "Introduce Yourself" subforums spam. Did bots get better than humans at captchas and other anti-bot measures already?

[NuttsnBolts]

@Shienvien All there needs to be is a sticky thread (quick intros here) for people to post and a short delay, (eg: 30 min) before they can post in the rest of the forum. Most bots will log off before that time so the mods will only have to deal with it on a smaller scale.

You only have to introduce yourself once, so having a small hurdle for people is plenty if it avoids getting the bot problems that I have witnessed before.

[Hank]

<Snipped quote by Mahz> Erh... I don't like the idea of mandatory introductory posts. There are a few reasons why I never make them unless I absolutely have to, and generally tend to consider "Introduce Yourself" subforums spam. Did bots get better than humans at captchas and other anti-bot measures already?

@Shienvien

We had the same measure in place before, on the OldGuild, and it worked fine. Nobody complained about it.

Also, it isn't really "my" idea per se. I just suggested re-implementing it.

[Ruby]

I actually kinda like it.

Gives me a chance to welcome Mofos.

[Shienvien]

We had the same measure in place before, on the OldGuild, and it worked fine. Nobody complained about it.

It definitely wasn't there when I personally registered. I've only ever made two introductory threads on forums during my entire life, both of which due to hard requirements. Neither of which was RPG.

[Do stuff to prove you're either human or AI of sufficient mental capacity] widgets avoid bot problems, too.

[Hank]

<Snipped quote> It definitely wasn't there when I personally registered. I've only ever made two introductory threads on forums during my entire life, both of which due to hard requirements. Neither of which was RPG.

@Shienvien

RPG didn't have that measure during its entire lifetime. Either way, it's a band-aid fix, not necessarily a permanent solution. I'm sure @Mahz would rather work on other improvements before devising a sophisticated anti-adbot system.

[Shienvien]

Here is a sentence: [Sentence]
Now write the [n][st/nd/th] word of the above sentence into the blank here: [ ]

Otherwise I'll volunteer as an anti-bot system myself. I'm around most of the time.

[Ellri]

it'll serve as containment till a more complex anti-bot measure can be coded. If every bot has to post there first, then identifying them is much quicker for the mods.

[Shienvien]

As they say: "There's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution."

(I've personally seen it in the form of TODOs from 1998...)

EDIT: Mind you, Mahz has to code in the restriction anyway, so it's vastly preferable if he does it right in one go, rather than makes an effort to do it this rather questionable way now and then later redoes it properly. (Also: People who have problems with introduction threads typically do not get to the point where they can even announce it. I could name at least one example, but won't, for the sake of their privacy. They only parttake in 1x1es and closed RPs wtih people they know, and being forced to make something like a public thread themselves could actually induce a panic attack if they didn't avoid such things like plague to begin with.)

[Webmaster]

The Guild is fluctuating from being down to being up. It's down about 50% of the time, enough for me to not risk switching my account.

-LegendBegins

[Mahz]

The Guild is fluctuating from being down to being up. It's down about 50% of the time, enough for me to not risk switching my account.

@Webmaster

Weird, the server reports zero downtime over the past 24 hours aside from one automated reboot.

[Hank]

<Snipped quote by Webmaster>
Weird, the server reports zero downtime over the past 24 hours aside from one automated reboot.

@Mahz

Check this: roleplayerguild.com/topics/85833-stran..

[Mahz]

Thanks. Looks like two of the guild's servers were down briefly until they realized they had to reboot. Many people didn't encounter an issue because they were routed to one of the servers that was still online until the others became available again.

On another note, @Mahz, the logout issue is back...

@Shienvien

Thanks for the report. Is it the exact same issue you were having before, how "Remember Me" just doesn't seem to do anything? Anything smell different from last time?

Erh... I don't like the idea of mandatory introductory posts. There are a few reasons why I never make them unless I absolutely have to, and generally tend to consider "Introduce Yourself" subforums spam. Did bots get better than humans at captchas and other anti-bot measures already?

@Shienvien

The spammers are actually cheap human labor.

My first priority on the spam front is to create a Report Post system and improve the mod tooling. I'm unlikely to do anything more until it turns out that the Guild's spam problem is growing, but for the most part it seems to just come in waves.

[Hank]

a Report Post system

@Mahz

Excellent. I've been waiting for that. Welcoming people to the Guild just doesn't feel right without adding "Don't hesitate to use the Report button to alert the moderators, whether this is to remove a post that violates the rules or to move a thread to the appropriate subforum".

Also, don't forget to add the above to the introductory PM sent by the @Guild Mods account once you've implemented the Report Post system.

[Shienvien]

Is it the exact same issue you were having before, how "Remember Me" just doesn't seem to do anything? Anything smell different from last time?

Mahz

By behaviour, yes. As the last edits dictate, though, the cookie has an expiration date in 2016 ... it simply isn't respected. Tried several times to make sure it was not a browser update or similar one time occurrence messing with it, but no, it keeps happening, and only for RPG. All other cookies seem to work as intended. (FF 40.0.3 for Ubuntu canonical 1.0, at the time being.)

[ravenDivinity]

Anybody else notice that quotes and hiders are eating tabs all of a sudden?