Mahz's Dev Journal

[SugarRush]

Any sort of search implement would be terrific.

[Mahz]

Hey @Mahz, would it at all be possible to have to where new replies of topics are bolded and after said topics have been viewed they go back to normal?

@Altered Tundra

Yeah, that's a feature of the system that tracks read/unread posts in general. It's on my short-term list of essential features for sure.

Also, one thing we do wonder a bit on... Do you think that it is possible to auto-apply certain tags to older topics? Some sort of script to browse topic titles and add a few general tags as necessary? Or would such a feature be more effort than it is worth? A good year of backlogged topics without more than the Casual/advanced/free tags would restrict somewhat on topic results.

@Ellri

I think a reliable technical solution is infeasible. I'd rather incentivize humans with reasons to update the tags of their old roleplays. These incentives will accumulate as the tagging system matures and the Guild leans on it for features.

The tag system is currently in such an infant state that a topic tagged "Nation" and "Advanced" doesn't actually show up in both forums yet -- just the forum it was created in. It certainly has some ways to go! Also, I'll eventually let users recommend tags for their old roleplays with inactive GMs and I'll manually add the tags myself.

[Mahz]

<Snipped quote by Ellri>

I know absolutely nothing about coding, but could it be possible to apply something like an [old] tag based off the most recent activity of the topic?

@Aeonumbra

I have a rough idea outline for a system that can solve a variety of problems.

- A user can mark a roleplay as one of their "Active Roleplays". There are various ways of enforcing this that I don't want to ponder right now, but it can include things like: you can only post in roleplays on your "Active" list, a GM with a roleplay open to applications must manually add players to the "Active" list before they can post IC, etc.
- As a roleplay dies or comes to a conclusion, users remove the roleplay from the list of active roleplays.
- Roleplays are considered inactive/dead/concluded when the last person removes the roleplays from their list of active roleplays.
- Inactive roleplays simply don't show up in searches by default unless user opts in to viewing them.
- Before a GM can remove a roleplay from their list of active roleplays, if there are any active players, they either must elect one of them as a co-GM (so the roleplay can continue) or they must wait until there are no more active users. There will be some system to demote a roleplay from someone's active roleplays list if the user themself is inactive.

Some features that follow from the above system:

- You can see the roleplays someone is currently in and manage this list yourself.
- You can view the players currently participating in a roleplay.
- GMs of application-only roleplays can gatekeep users from posting IC until they are approved.
- The system overall now has a concept of active roleplays and inactive roleplays which can be used to reduce clutter in search results and the forums altogether.
- You can easily tell when a roleplay is dead or not, or if anyone is going to be posting in it anytime soon.
- Users are more likely to be upfront with other players -- instead of silently slinking away never to be seen again, they now may deliberately remove the roleplay from their active roleplays list.

I'm not really ready to brainstorm this feature yet, but those are some ideas.

[Ellri]

Quick question on that,@Mahz... How will the above system handle it if a user disappears from the guild while having Active RPs? Will those RPs remain tagged as active, or will you have some means for dealing with such?

Or for that matter, if the GM goes away?

[Mahz]

Loving the changes, especially the mobile friendly and new functionality.

• Is it necessary to show the disabled page navigation? I know that not having them would throw off the alignment so perhaps something as simple as below would work. The element won't be rendered but will still take up space to preserve the alignment.
  
  li.disabled{
visibility: hidden;
}
• We can hide forum sections, is it possible to also have users able to hide the widgets on the right as well?
• in post links on headers for those long, wiki article like posts. Would make things easier for those detail obsessed GMs.
  [url=#setting]setting[/url]
[h1=Setting]somethingsomething[/h1]
• Is there any way to have some sort of infinite pagination for the forum and topic views as seen on things like a facebook or twitter feed?

@TheFake

- In general I prefer the principle of least astonishment in UIs which involves showing buttons in a disabled state rather than hiding them, but I think pagination is a good candidate for hiding the non-options. Thanks, I'll play with it.
- I'd eventually like users to be able to hide the sidebar. Right now it'd be kind of a pain to implement a collapse because of how the HTML is structured. Also, at the moment until the sidebar/forum matures, I kinda like that I can rely on the sidebar being visible to all so that I can eventually put more important information on it. It's something I'm willing to give up eventually though.
- Support for anchor navigation (for example, table of contents) would be hot. Agreed. Great feature. Random crazy idea: Allow author to opt-in to an autogenerated table of contents for their post based on header tags.
- Infinite loading/scroll is a plan I'd like to implement eventually for sure. Particularly once I've implemented the view that allows users to filter down the list of all roleplays/checks.

Good feedback, thanks!

[Mahz]

Quick question on that,@Mahz... How will the above system handle it if a user disappears from the guild while having Active RPs? Will those RPs remain tagged as active, or will you have some means for dealing with such?

Or for that matter, if the GM goes away?

@Ellri

Yeah, there will be some way to handle this. An aggressive solution example would be to automatically demote a roleplay from a user's active roleplays list if they are inactive. A conservative solution would be for a moderator to review these cases.

There are a lot of existing roleplays right now where the GM is MIA yet the players are still participating in the roleplay. I'd like to eventually roll out a system for remaining players to elect a new co-GM that can, for example, update the tags and mark the roleplay as "recruiting". Maybe I can introduce this with the report system -- one of the options you can pick when creating a report is new co-GM election or something.

[Ellri]

yes, report function should have features like "inactive user", "inactive GMs", "Needs new GM", and of course the "user is a spambot" one.

[Mahz]

I'd like to bring back the "user status" system that the Guild used to have long ago -- probably this weekend to take a break from whatever I come up with for the v1.0 search system. New forum platforms (like forums that use Xenforo) usually have this feature, and it's one of the most requested features since relaunch.

I often find it helpful myself. For example, I'd like to set my status to "Currently working on a search system" so people can see what I'm working on despite my activity in this thread.

Other examples of useful statuses:

- "I'm visiting grandma so I'll be away til mid-April" (3 days ago) -- Signal to your friends that you're away but will be coming back.
- "Currently writing post for <name of roleplay>" (12 min ago) -- Signal to your fellow players that your next post is imminent.

Statuses can be up to 140 chars.

So that people will actually read your status, I'm thinking of including it as a small button next to the "bio" button. When clicked, it can pop up a small window that shows the status with a small form that allows you to comment on it or rate it like you can a post. Perhaps the button even saturates into some color when you haven't read the user's latest status.

What do yall think? Any better ideas for how the status should be displayed on posts? It'd be possible to display the [possibly truncated] status directly on the post, but I'm reluctant to add clutter to posts.

[LegendBegins]

<Snipped quote by Ellri>
Yeah, there will be some way to handle this. An aggressive solution example would be to automatically demote a roleplay from a user's active roleplays list if they are inactive. A conservative solution would be for a moderator to review these cases.

There are a lot of existing roleplays right now where the GM is MIA yet the players are still participating in the roleplay. I'd like to eventually roll out a system for remaining players to elect a new co-GM that can, for example, update the tags and mark the roleplay as "recruiting". Maybe I can introduce this with the report system -- one of the options you can pick when creating a report is new co-GM election or something.

@Mahz

I think that if the GM leaves or randomly disappear mods/the Co-GM elected should be awarded the merit of full GM, including the title.

[Shienvien]

So that people will actually read your status, I'm thinking of including it as a small button next to the "bio" button. When clicked, it can pop up a small window that shows the status with a small form that allows you to comment on it or rate it like you can a post. Perhaps the button even saturates into some color when you haven't read the user's latest status.

What do yall think? Any better ideas for how the status should be displayed on posts? It'd be possible to display the [possibly truncated] status directly on the post, but I'm reluctant to add clutter to posts.

I'd rather have it as hover-over tooltip for PC (disappears as soon as you move off the element) and tap-activated tooltip for touch-devices (goes away as soon as you tap anywhere but the button), also visible on profile above the bio; popup windows tend to be somewhat more annoying even when you can dismiss them with one button-press/tap/click. It being a popup-window rather than hover-over element will make me significantly less likely to actually ever look at those things, whereas hover-over statuses such as seen on Skype or the forum I'm thinking of below I occasionally do read them. (You can CSS-style tooltips, so appearances shouldn't be a problem.)
I've seen a quite functional forum-implementation of something very similar with the avatar working like the status not-button element described above - although the element being avatar rather than a thing with the word "status" written on it underneath the avatar tends to result in new people discovering the feature every now and then.
Uhh... But commenting and rating statuses? Don't like that thought. Far too social media gimmick for my tastes. (Whatever would even happen to these hypthetical comments and ratings whenever an user changes status - would they just get wiped with each and every edit, or would there be a graveyard of past statuses somewhere...?)

The active/nonactive RP system implementation seems ... interesting, but horribly cumbersome in its described form. (As I've said before, the fewer additional things an user will have to do, the better; anything more advanced and/or complex should remain opt-in.)

[Ellri]

I think that if the GM leaves or randomly disappear mods/the Co-GM elected should be awarded the merit of full GM, including the title.

@LegendBegins

Maybe a sort of recognition for those stripped of GM, like an "ex-GM" tag where there are currently OP, GM & Co-GM tags?

[TomeBinder]

<Snipped quote by LegendBegins>

Maybe a sort of recognition for those stripped of GM, like an "ex-GM" tag where there are currently OP, GM & Co-GM tags?

@Ellri

Why?

[Shienvien]

Why?

Sometimes people may return and resume their duties? You never know why a person left when they did so without notice; they could be in hospital for months from some unexpected accident or illness from what you know.

They should also retain creative rights, or at the very least recognition for their creations, especially if it is an original creation RP.

[TomeBinder]

<Snipped quote> Sometimes people may return and resume their duties? You never know why a person left when they did so without notice; they could be in hospital for months from some unexpected accident or illness from what you know.

They should also retain creative rights, or at the very least recognition for their creations, especially if it is an original creation RP.

@Shienvien

Meh, if a GM abandons an RP and leaves the others to pick up the pieces, they should be stripped of everything in my book. If they had a legitimate reason, then that could be cleared up later on.

Better to leave things as they are I think. Though maybe it'd be better to credit people for coming up with ideas, that others then developed.

That way they get credit for coming up with the idea, but not the credit for breathing life into it. An "Author" title would do well.

Though at the end of the day, do we need it? I don't think so, but I'm still new here so my words carry less weight than most of you. Either way it's an interesting point.

[Captain Jordan]

I have a rough idea outline for a system that can solve a variety of problems.

...

@Mahz

I agree with @Shienvien that this is fairly cumbersome. I'll try to mull it over and be ready once you start brainstorming this feature.

[LegendBegins]

@TomeBinder@Shienvien@Ellri@Mahz

I believe there should also be a method to handle special situations, such as if the thread creator is not the creator of the RP itself, or something else that would warrant an exception.

[Ellri]

<Snipped quote by Ellri>

Why?

@TomeBinder

while they may or may not be around anymore, they still deserve credit for what they did in the past.

[Syben]

<Snipped quote by TomeBinder>

while they may or may not be around anymore, they still deserve credit for what they did in the past.

@Ellri

Easy.
GM - <name> Co-gm <name> Created By - <name>

Right at the top.

[Captain Jordan]

<Snipped quote by Ellri>

Easy.
GM - <name> Co-gm <name> Created By - <name>

Right at the top.

@Aeonumbra

No, I think @Ellri's point is good. When you see posts by the original creator/former GM, it's important to know what significance they hold. Otherwise, someone who misses that line may think, "What is this player doing talking like s/he's a GM?" It should be something really indicative, like "Former GM" or something obvious that the person is no longer in power, but that makes it easy to tell why there seems to be a deference or a measure of authority to their posts.

[Syben]

<Snipped quote by Aeonumbra>

No, I think @Ellri's point is good. When you see posts by the original creator/former GM, it's important to know what significance they hold. Otherwise, someone who misses that line may think, "What is this player doing talking like s/he's a GM?" It should be something really indicative, like "Former GM" or something obvious that the person is no longer in power, but that makes it easy to tell why there seems to be a deference or a measure of authority to their posts.

@Captain Jordan

Perhaps a banner signifying their importance then? It's actually quite hard to miss those.