Mahz's Dev Journal

[Mahz]

Should the Guild let you opt-in to receiving on-site notifications (using the existing notification system) when a topic/roleplay you're subscribed to receives new posts?

I reckon I could then expand this into an optional email notification system as well.

And then into an optional Discord notification system where GuildBot sends you a private message on Discord.

You know, the hardest part of building Guild features isn't the technical part, it's usually the UI part.

[Landaus Five-One]

@Mahz That is most of the problem with many things. The UI is a pos in some video games. >.>

[JBRam2002]

@Mahz By on-site notifications, do you mean push to desktop notifications?

I think a push notification could be interesting, as would emails. I would suggest they be default to off, and options be accessible under the notifications tab as well as in user options. As for Discord, that feels like it could get more annoying than helpful, but some might like it.

[Mahz]

@JBRam2002 By on-site, I mean the existing notification system.

Right now, /subscriptions is the most popular page on the Guild. I assume many people keep it open in a tab and then periodically refresh it to see if anybody posted in their RPs.

Seems like the first order of business is to let people opt-in to receiving one of these when a subscription gets posted in.

From there it seems straight-forward to let people configure if they want to receive an email notification.

The nice thing about email notifications is that most people already have email notifications setup on their phones and such.

[AlteredTundra]

@Mahz I really like the idea behind this. I'm sure it'll make a lot of people happy - especially those who might forget to mention people in posts.

But I do have a question: will it notify people of any thread they are subbed to or just the ones they themselves created?

[Mahz]

@Altered Tundra No, I think that there's a difference between topics you just want to 'bookmark' vs topics you also want to receive notifications for (whether you are happy with just the on-site notifications or if you want emails when they are updated).

I think communicating that while making it easy to manage this difference via the UI is the hardest part.

[JBRam2002]

Why not a checkbox next to the thread in /subscriptions? Check the box if you want notifications, etc. Clean and can be easily explained

[Mahz]

Thanks for all the quality feedback that yall've been submitting so far. It's really helped me out and made it obvious what I need to be working on over the next couple weeks!

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@JBRam2002 Well, I guess people should be able to choose if they get on-site notifications and/or email notifications for a given topic or roleplay, so that would be two checkboxes.

Maybe instead of checkboxes, there's a drop-down box next to each topic/roleplay where you can choose:

1. No notifications (default)
2. On-site notifications
3. Email notifications (+ on-site notifications)

Of course, visiting a topic/roleplay should automatically clear all notifications for that topic/roleplay so that you don't have to delete stale notifications yourself.

How does that sound?

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Updates:

1. Post deletion: You can now delete your own posts within 10 minutes after creation. The 10 minute limit for now just lets you delete your own double-posts or wrong-tab posts. What's a more reasonable limit that prevents people from vandalizing a roleplay by deleting all of their posts?

2. FAQ: I just started stubbing out an FAQ page linked from the navbar:



All staff members can edit that page, so we'll be filling it with more stuff soon. It's pretty empty right now.

[Ellri]

'tis hard to pick just one thing for that feedback, @Mahz.

There's too many things that all clearly have highest priority.

On one hand, its nice to suggest the major features that might be (in the good way) gamechangers for the guild, but on the other, the features that are quickly implemented provide less work for ya.

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We thought of another thing that you could do for the subscriptions page... add an "archive" section of sorts... Where you can put topics you want to keep track of, but don't want listed with the other Roleplay/non-roleplay threads...
Examples of things we at least would put in such:

• Old RPs that are dead but memorable (its dead, so it'd clutter up RP list, but its also memorable)
• Old Interest checks (useful for when making new ones, as reference material for what worked/didn't work)
• Useful guides (kinda self-explanatory, no?)

[Mahz]

@Ellri Maybe I need to rethink the UI in general.

Right now, /subscriptions contains all things that you have bookmarked for various potential reasons:

1. Topics/roleplays that you are actively posting in and want to know when there's new activity. Updates in these topics are basically what people are waiting for when they refresh /subscriptions multiple times per day.
2. Then there's stuff you just pointed out: topics/roleplays that are more "points of interest" of some sort. You don't necessarily care if people post, or they may be old/dead and will never have anybody post in them.

I think your proposal has some legs: maybe everything starts off as a subscription. At the very least, you get an on-site notification for it. And you can opt-in to receiving email-notifications for those as well.

Then you can "Archive" each subscription. Archived subscriptions moves them to a separate tab (/subscriptions/archive) and you'll get no notifications for those.

Of course, to make this bearable, I'd have to increase the sub limit from 200 to 1000. And I'd want to give the /subscriptions page some mass-moderation tools like a checkbox on each subscription and the ability to mass-archive and the ability to update the notification settings for multiples subs at once.

This seems doable to me without being too confusing, and it cleans up the /subscriptions page to contain only the topics/roleplays that will create a notification.

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Updates

1. Post Autosaving: Posts (not PMs or topics, yet) now autosave to your browser every five seconds as you write them.



If you submit the form and the forum successfully saves your post, then the draft is cleared from your browser.

Otherwise, visiting the topic/roleplay again will repopulate the reply form with your draft so that you can recover it or try to submit it.

Autosaved drafts only save for six hours right now since the purpose is for you to be able to recover your post from things like server errors and connectivity errors.

[Ellri]

That sounds like a good way to deal with it.

[Mahz]

Update: Nerfed ghost-mode

Ghost-mode no longer displays "Invisible".

Instead, it simply says if you've been on within the past 12 hours.



If it's been more than 12 hours since you were last online, then ghost-mode doesn't apply anymore and the forum shows an accurate timestamp.

Also, the friends list now correctly checks if your friend has ghost-mode enabled.

[Ellri]

what? No more friends list stalking people? Curses... foiled again!
_{good change for the secretive folks}

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Oh, and one other thing... would it be possible to relabel the post reaction thingy from "like" to "approve"?

[NuttsnBolts]

Update: Nerfed ghost-mode

Ghost-mode no longer displays "Invisible".

Instead, it simply says if you've been on within the past 12 hours.



If it's been more than 12 hours since you were last online, then ghost-mode doesn't apply anymore and the forum shows an accurate timestamp.

Also, the friends list now correctly checks if your friend has ghost-mode enabled.

@Mahz

I do like this. It's an improvement on the privacy but also an indication to if someone is still active on the forum or left for a while. (And by while I mean those who disappear for a month and don't say anything)

[Mahz]

@Ellri "Like" and "Approve" mean different things, no?

[SilverRain]

Update: Nerfed ghost-mode

Ghost-mode no longer displays "Invisible".

Instead, it simply says if you've been on within the past 12 hours.



If it's been more than 12 hours since you were last online, then ghost-mode doesn't apply anymore and the forum shows an accurate timestamp.

Also, the friends list now correctly checks if your friend has ghost-mode enabled.

@Mahz

Yay, Ghost Mode! Thanks Mahz! :D

[0Z]

-

[Ellri]

@Ellri "Like" and "Approve" mean different things, no?

@Mahz

to some degree, yes. Unfortunately in today's internet, so many people can't make the distinction between the two. What does it even mean when people press that they "Like" a post?

We personally rarely find situations we would ever use "like" whereas approving of something is common.

[Mahz]

@0Z It's a good idea and certainly something I want to do.

I think I'd have to make it asynchronous. Like you click "Download Archive" on a topic/convo, and the forum notifies you when the archive has been created with a download link.

It's something I want to revisit after I crunch through the popular feedback issues/requests.

[Mahz]

What does it even mean when people press that they "Like" a post?

@Ellri

It certainly ranges from "I like this" to "I approve of this" yet sometimes means little more than "I acknowledge this". So I'm unlikely to put a finer point on it.

It's about as meaningless as "+1", just a generic token of positivity.