Mahz's Dev Journal

[kapuchu]

@Shienvien
I don't know why you're tagging me because I did not write that, an earlier comment did.

And @Ellri, I'm thinking like in an Option. Where you can simply turn off "Notify me of everything". Shouldn't be too hard, I don't think. As it is, the constant updates are obnoxious, even when I'm only subscribed to three RP's.

[Shienvien]

Eh? I'd say that's a definite problem with this current system - I didn't tag you. I just quoted the part of a post that was relevant... :-/

[skidcrow]

@Shienvien you quoted the wrong person. i was the one who proposed the idea, and in response to the statement i say this:

of course, there'd be the common sense to put each character on a separate post, so that they can be separated and listed as two individual posts. as for the gm editing thing, if a gm can't be trusted with something as menial as editing the name of a character on the roster sheet (since troll players would definitely abuse this by naming their character immature stuff), then the gm can't really be trusted at all.

as for "too long" character sheets, i don't have any experience with that so i can't really comment.

[Vesuvius00]

<Snipped quote by kapuchu> Would no work with any non-standard use of the tab (even something as simple as multiple characters), or even just character profiles that are too long (this far has only occurred with one of mine, really).
Also bad idea to make arbitrary bits editable by others, even the GM.

@Shienvien

The only way to fix a CS being too long for one post would be for Mahz to increase the number of characters we're allowed to put in a post, right? How do you even pass 150,000 chars though?

.... you people must really like writing or something.

[Mahz]

Okay, I have some ideas for consolidating the Subscriptions vs Archived Subscriptions tabs.

Putting them on two tabs was just the easiest thing to implement in a day.

But I think the next iteration will be to merge "Archived Subscriptions" back into the /me/subscriptions page, but instead of "archiving" subscriptions, each subscription is either muted or not. Obviously when I implement this change, all your existing archived subs will carry over as muted subscriptions.

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@Grimhildr Good idea about having a "Players" tab. That's the most natural place for it.

First-class character support would be dope.

For example, would be pretty cool if the "Players" tab also showed the characters that each player was playing, and you could choose which character you were posting as when writing an IC post. That's the kind of data I'd love the Guild to know about.

It would take some serious research to design this system well though. I started roleplaying recently on a secret account to get a feel for roleplaying again and regain an intuition for how things should work.

In the meantime, maybe something as simple as a textfield for "Posting As: <Name>" (like in your mockup) would be sufficient.

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@Lady Amalthea Yeah you're probably right. The bell-count made sense back when the Guild only had the bell, but now it's smart enough to also know how many PM notifications and Sub notifications you have. So it makes sense for the bell to only show you the count of notifications not already reflected on the other buttons.

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For fun, here are some mockups from 2013 on my imgur account.

Hider

The Guild has made some decent progress towards some of these ideas.

[skidcrow]

@Grimhildr Good idea about having a "Players" tab. That's the most natural place for it.

First-class character support would be dope.

For example, would be pretty cool if the "Players" tab also showed the characters that each player was playing, and you could choose which character you were posting as when writing an IC post. That's the kind of data I'd love the Guild to know about.

It would take some serious research to design this system well though. I started roleplaying recently on a secret account to get a feel for roleplaying again and regain an intuition for how things should work.

In the meantime, maybe something as simple as a textfield for "Posting As: <Name>" (like in your mockup) would be sufficient.

@Mahz

yeah, i figured it'd take a lot of coding to implement a system like that, especially if you want it to be automated and whatnot. but thanks for listening to the idea and taking it into consideration, these new features and stuff have been really good and it's nice to see the guild having a breath of fresh air blown into it.

*cough* i can't believe your 2013 mockups are better than mine *cough*

[Ellri]

it would be nice to have an archive as well as muted subscriptions, @Mahz. We dug up (most of) the RPs we've been in since the Guildfall to have access to them, but most of those we would not desire to have on the "front page" of our subscriptions, even as we want them available...

Now to go digging through the player base to find your hidden account... [insert mandatory galaxy-wide grin]

[Mahz]

@Ellri Oh yeah, good point. "Bookmarking" was one of the purposes of archiving.

I'll keep the archive system, but add a mute toggle to /me/subscriptions.

[Ellri]

that sounds like an excellent way of doing it.

Later on it might be useful to get means for sorting the archived non-RP threads, but that's low priority in our minds. Perhaps it could use a future version of the tag system?

[Mahz]

@Ellri and anyone else that might have an idea for this:

Alright, let's say I finish tweaking /me/subscriptions so that you can mute/unmute each thread.

That means that "Archived Subscriptions" are only for stuff you just want to bookmark so you aren't scrolling past them every time you refresh /me/subscriptions, and they are always muted.

An unmuted subscription will give you an on-site notification as they currently do.

But what about when I implement an (opt-in) email-notification system? It's one of the most requested features every time I ask for feedback in that feedback box on the homepage.

It's too noisy to send an email for every post in every unmuted subscription. It makes sense that people would only opt-in to email notifications for the subset of subscriptions they particularly don't want to miss.

So maybe next to each subscription on /me/subscriptions, you can choose one of these options:



What do yall think?

[JBRam2002]

@Ellri and anyone else that might have an idea for this:

Alright, let's say I finish tweaking /me/subscriptions so that you can mute/unmute each thread.

That means that "Archived Subscriptions" are only for stuff you just want to bookmark so you aren't scrolling past them every time you refresh /me/subscriptions, and they are always muted.

An unmuted subscription will give you an on-site notification as they currently do.

But what about when I implement an (opt-in) email-notification system? It's one of the most requested features every time I ask for feedback in that feedback box on the homepage.

It's too noisy to send an email for every post in every unmuted subscription. It makes sense that people would only opt-in to email notifications for the subset of subscriptions they particularly don't want to miss.

So maybe next to each subscription on /me/subscriptions, you can choose one of these options:



What do yall think?

@Mahz

One thing I've seen done for emails is an option (set in your User Settings) for an email for EVERY item or an email that summarizes everything in a period of time (like per hour, per day, per week, etc).

[BBeast]

@Mahz, with characters, remember that often posts may contain multiple characters, and sometimes even multiple authors, so keep that in mind when you eventually attempt to implement it.

[Ellri]

hmm... the email stuff we can't answer much for, as we can't see ourselves using it... However, it might also be a bit much with an email for each time there's activity in a thread with email notifications enabled. At least if it is a group RP. on a 1x1 it might be different.

one level we could see some desiring to use for email notification is this:
- on @mention
- on new IC posts

Having all the options always visible might also be a bit cluttery... especially for mobile users... maybe have a separate page or somesuch for "alter subscription notification levels"?

[Meta]

@Mahz

With emails, would it be best for them to be sent every fifteen minutes to not oversaturate our inbox? It could do a quick check every quarter hour to see if we had unread posts and email us if we do. Though then it may need a check so we aren't spammed with the same notification every fifteen minutes.

@BBeast

I don't know if that use case is big enough to warrant redesigning a system though. That kind of functionality wouldn't hinder the old way of doing things.

But for my two cents on that system, I think being able to have profile pictures for each character would also be important. Though it's possible that it might be simpler to have an account-switched instead of a character switcher, but I don't know the implications of one versus the other.

[Mahz]

Yeah, the hardest thing about coming up with an email system is that I've never used a forum's email-notification system.

Maybe I could start off with this UI at the top of the subscriptions page:

For subscriptions set to "Email Me", send me an email: Immediately | 15min Digest | Hourly Digest | Daily Digest
For roleplays set to "Email Me", send me an email for new [ ] OOC posts, [X] IC posts, [X] Char posts

[Save]

Further granularity makes sense, but I don't want to over-encumber my first attempt at this feature.

Obviously, as you use the forum and naturally clear your notifications, nothing should be emailed to you if you opted into one of the digest options.

[Light the Dark]

I just really want emails when I get a PM. I think it's a damn useful feature. And it stops me from refreshing the guild every 10 mins. xD

[Mahz]

Mutual friendships no longer show up as ghosts on the friends list (homepage sidebar and roleplayerguild.com/me/friendships).

Edit: Actually, not yet. Gotta fix it. brb

Edit: Okay, think it works now.

[JBRam2002]

@BBeast

I don't know if that use case is big enough to warrant redesigning a system though. That kind of functionality wouldn't hinder the old way of doing things.

@Meta

I've been in RPs where nearly every post had multiple contributors. Most RPs I've been in end up having a handful of combo posts. I don't feel like this is a fringe case; having multiple characters linked to a post should not be much more coding work than having a single character linked. I don't feel that adding a profile pic for each character (and thus creating a pseudo-profile for them all) would be simple or worth filling the Guild's server space, but I could be wrong.

@Mahz - not sure how much thought you've put into this system, so if you have ideas that are better, please ignore me. One option I thought of would be to have the character indicator link to a CHAR tab post that is associated with that PC. An option for GUI side (pardon my lack of edits, I'm on phone):

Posted: 6 hrs ago -- PC: Mahzbot 3000, Mahzbot's Lover -- View Raw - Link

I think there should be plenty of room to put most names up in that section, even on edited posts. On the edit window, a dropdown menu on the lower left above the post button could work with the option to remove added PCs.

[Meta]

@JBRam2002

From a coding standpoint, it is rather simple, especially if the post just has the profile picture of the main character rather than the profile picture of the user. As for space, it is insignificant—no more than the current system, really.

[Ruby]

Mutual friendships no longer show up as ghosts on the friends list (homepage sidebar and roleplayerguild.com/me/friendships).

Edit: Actually, not yet. Gotta fix it. brb

Edit: Okay, think it works now.

@Mahz

@GreenGrenade ayy, we'll know the last time each other were last online now. :D