Mahz's Dev Journal

[The Elvenqueen]

@Odin nah I haven't changed my name at all, just my computer while my laptop is in for repairs ;o; *confused elvenqueen noises*

[The Elvenqueen]

@Odin nah I haven't changed my name at all, just my computer while my laptop is in for repairs ;o; *confused elvenqueen noises*

[Dion]

@The Elvenqueen the only thing I can imagine is that your keyboard has a different configuration and that sounds super stupid so that's 100% not what it is.

[Mahz]

@The Elvenqueen Damn, not sure what that could be, I'll have to take a look tomorrow.

@Odin Oh, thanks for letting me know.

I tried to make it so that you can log in with your new name OR any of your old names, but it sounds like the logic isn't quite there yet.

Might be related to Elvenqueen's problem.

[Dion]

@Mahz Do you think it'd be possible for people to set their own front page, so that we could re-arrange the subforums to our own likes? I.e. I don't care about the persistent world stuff and frankly don't really want it at the top of my page. I care more for suggestions/problem forum (I like to read it sometimes) so I could move that upwards more.

Is that a thing that you can possibly do or is that literally impossible?

[Mahz]

It would be a cool feature, but it's not a priority.

In the short term, I'm going to focus on bugs/stability.

[Mahz]

@Odin Can you tell me more about the "Invalid Creds" error you got after the name change?

Since I've been changing names lately, I know other people are going to run into this issue.

Did it occur when you were trying to login via your old username?

[Dion]

@Odin Can you tell me more about the "Invalid Creds" error you got after the name change?

Since I've been changing names lately, I know other people are going to run into this issue.

Did it occur when you were trying to login via your old username?

@Mahz

It occurred when I logged in via old username, I went 'huh that's funny' because I let it auto-fill my password so it couldn't be wrong. I just re-logged and it worked perfectly fine after that. I've not had issues since.

[Mao Mao]

What bugs are causing problems to the site? And what are you going to do to improve the stability of this site?

[skidcrow]

What bugs are causing problems to the site? And what are you going to do to improve the stability of this site?

@The Spectre

this.

i mean, it's mahz's website and it's free so apparently i shouldn't complain or offer any criticism. however, i don't get how minor bugs have a priority over filtering the front page to your preferences. wouldn't the latter allow for easier finding of roleplays that interest users? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Mao Mao]

To be fair, many people might be dealing with bugs that many people don't have. I am just curious to see what bugs that Mahz plans on fixing since I haven't experienced any bugs and problems with the site so far.

[Meta]

<Snipped quote by The Spectre>

this.

i mean, it's mahz's website and it's free so apparently i shouldn't complain or offer any criticism. however, i don't get how minor bugs have a priority over filtering the front page to your preferences. wouldn't the latter allow for easier finding of roleplays that interest users? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@Grimhildr

Because UI is for convenience and takes a long time. Bugs actually hinder the use of the site. You can't make something look nice before you have a stable product.

[Mahz]

There are random errors in the error logs I need to fix that are causing some people issues. I don't even know their root cause yet or what they are affecting. Elvenqueen can't even log in on desktop. And /search is still down due to some issues I need to figure out.

Homepage customization is a cool feature, but a pretty niche one.

If I could afford to work on the Guild full-time, I could get these done in a couple days. But Guild development is at the mercy of my free time.

[Dion]

It would be a cool feature, but it's not a priority.

In the short term, I'm going to focus on bugs/stability.

@Mahz

Makes sense. Another cool feature I have would be a way to mass-delete statuses, or maybe just a button that deletes all of them and essentially nukes all my statuses.

A simpler way to do that would be to just make statuses expire so that after a week they get purged and even if you delete all prior statuses, it'll never come back. Or a hard-limit on the amount of statuses you can have saved.

[skidcrow]

<Snipped quote by Mahz>

Makes sense. Another cool feature I have would be a way to mass-delete statuses, or maybe just a button that deletes all of them and essentially nukes all my statuses.

A simpler way to do that would be to just make statuses expire so that after a week they get purged and even if you delete all prior statuses, it'll never come back. Or a hard-limit on the amount of statuses you can have saved.

@Odin

buddha bully wants to hide the evidence of his bullying

[Light the Dark]

A simpler way to do that would be to just make statuses expire so that after a week they get purged

@Odin

I'm opposed to that idea. I know some people use their status as a quick 'I'm going to be gone for a while', just in case they missed telling any of their partners. It makes sense for it not to delete/expire after a short amount of time.

Unless you're talking about non-current statuses.

[Dion]

@Light the Dark yeah, non-current or, better, the statuses that aren't in the latest statuses list. That's why I think a hard limit on the amount of saved statuses is better, but IDK how possible that is in the grand scheme of all the code.

[NuttsnBolts]

<Snipped quote by The Spectre>

this.

i mean, it's mahz's website and it's free so apparently i shouldn't complain or offer any criticism. however, i don't get how minor bugs have a priority over filtering the front page to your preferences. wouldn't the latter allow for easier finding of roleplays that interest users? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@Grimhildr

Adding in new features without resolving the problems and errors of the old ones turns the few bugs that the site will have into a list of bugs that can cause a major hindrance, it makes it harder to resolve the problems because you are burying it under layers of code, and it makes it more difficult to resolve as you link more and more features into an already broken system.

Let me point out that you are the only one who has said "minor bugs" and yet you are not a coder, nor have you read the code to understand what errors are occurring.

Coding and bug fixing is like going to the doctor when your sick. You notice a cough or a runny nose and you either have the choice to ignore it, stating that it's man-flu, or address the problem. However by choosing to ignore it you are allowing that bug to remain, to possibly grow worse, and—if it was like me last year—turn into swine flu and pneumonia where you pass out on the floor because you loose the ability to breathe. (Yes I had tests done, yes I was contagious, and cause I ignored the early stages and went to work for a half day, I risked spreading it to other people I worked with)

So my suggestion, don't criticise Mahz when he is doing work and you believe he is not working hard enough because "you" can't see it.

[Dion]

@NuttsnBolts I believe it was also on the list of suggestions from the few users that entered that thread to fix existing systems before making new ones IIRC. To me it's a decision that makes sense. I'd rather have our current features function perfectly with no new features ever over having half broken features while we continuously get new features.

[Mahz]

It would seem to make the most sense to have some sort of global queue of bugs and features where I work on each one to completion one after another.

But I've found it more productive to listen to my energy levels and the other unpredictable factors like it.

Sometimes I'm at 1%, sometimes I'm at 1,000%. Sometimes I hit a writer's block where I'm stuck til I make progress in unrelated features/bugs. Sometimes I'm just burned on one subsystem yet am motivated to make progress on other subsystems. Sometimes I don't have enough contiguous uninterrupted time to tank and spank a hard subsystem. Sometimes I have to invest time on systems that aren't even visible to users.

It's just the nature of choosing among imperfect trade-offs and finite resources.

Unfortunately that does mean some subsystems and features languish far longer than I'd like.