Mahz's Dev Journal

[Syben]

Anyways, I'm going to launch a basic search system tonight. I'd just like to prime yall and say it has kind of a shitty user experience right now. 95% of my time was spent on the technical implementation. Search is pretty hard.

@Mahz

Search Function: Beta Version - Spam

Go for launch captain

Also, it's good to hear that you are lurking, regardless of what nonsense we are droning on about. Endlessly, in circles. I hope it never comes to the point where we need paid subscribers. Although I do not fear the rising of the ad bots. Their kind are not tolerated 'round these parts.

[Captain Jordan]

<Snipped quote by LegendBegins>

Speaking of money for the site and ads, could there eventually be a subscription enabling people to turn off ads? Also, I've seen sites where they have fake posts when not logged in that contain ads. Could that be utilised as well?

@NuttsnBolts

I'm in support of this (EDIT: this being turning off ads. Sponsored posts are annoying and I hate those, too). Mostly because ads are the means by which Mahz generates revenue to keep the site running, and if a donation (it would require a minimum amount, I think, to make it fair) would be made of equal or greater revenue, it seems fair that someone who does so can turn those off.

I don't think donations require user titles, special features (aside from turning off ads) or private forums, however. A donation is a gift, not a payment. The easy way to avert abuse here is to kindly refuse the donations of anyone who decides donation entitles them to special treatment. My own website that runs off ads uses this same policy, and I have a former staff member who is banned from donating for just this reason.

[Mahz]

Latest push:

- [Experimental] Introduced search
- Added convenience button at the top of each topic for "Search in this topic" and "Find my posts in this topic":

- Posts are synced to the indexer every 10 minutes
- It's under construction

Lemme know if you encounter issues, particularly if the search results are incorrect or not what you expected. I'll clean up the UI soon and add some missing search parameters.

Search only returns 50 results right now and doesn't paginate. I'll add pagination, I just wanted to launch a basic demo to see if there are any issues with my syncing system.

[Captain Jordan]

Latest push:

- [Experimental] Introduced search
- Added convenience button at the top of each topic for "Search in this topic" and "Find my posts in this topic":

- Posts are synced to the indexer every 10 minutes
- It's under construction

Lemme know if you encounter issues, particularly if the search results are incorrect or not what you expected. I'll clean up the UI soon and add some missing search parameters.

Search only returns 50 results right now and doesn't paginate. I'll add pagination, I just wanted to launch a basic demo to see if there are any issues with my syncing system.

@Mahz

Whooo! The username finding is awesome!

Eventually, a distinction between searching for posts and searching for topics would be nice. When someone has a lot of posts in a single topic, returning all the individual posts can really clog up the search results.

[Mahz]

Eventually, a distinction between searching for posts and searching for topics would be nice.

@Captain Jordan

Oh yeah, forgot to mention: This is purely a search for posts right now. I still need to add topics to the search.

The hard part is done, though (integrating with a search indexer).

[Mahz]

@Genkai I added a dinky "← Fresh" indicator to roleplays/checks newer than 24 hours.



Maybe it helps you skim for new threads until I build a sort-by-newly-created toggle.

[The Harbinger of Ferocity]

@Genkai I added a dinky "← Fresh" indicator to roleplays/checks newer than 24 hours.



Maybe it helps you skim for new threads until I build a sort-by-newly-created toggle.

@Mahz

A fine addition, given that many will skim for newer topics than older ones.

My only suggestion @Mahz, is to make it contained within a light cyan box, more similar to the category types and have a tool tip component of something along the lines of;

"A "Fresh" topic is a new topic that has been posted for less than 24 hours."

[Shienvien]

Eugh... That is an uncomfortably bright cyan. It hurts my contrast-sensitive eyes...

[Mahz]

@Shienvien: I attempted to dampen it. If that bothers you, does the white text of posts bother you too?

Should it be more of a white-grey?
Should it be more of a white-grey?
Should it be more of a white-grey?

I still have plans to introduce a button that toggles to a dark-text-on-white-background theme. Apparently the vast majority of people prefer it and find it more readable. It wouldn't be too hard.

Latest Push:

- When you click the Subscribe/Unsubscribe buttons on a topic, you are no longer redirected back to the first page of the topic.

Man, what are some other gross user-experience destroyers I need to fix?

[The Harbinger of Ferocity]

@Shienvien: I attempted to dampen it. If that bothers you, does the white text of posts bother you too?

Should it be more of a white-grey?
Should it be more of a white-grey?
Should it be more of a white-grey?

I still have plans to introduce a button that toggles to a dark-text-on-white-background theme. Apparently the vast majority of people prefer it and find it more readable. It wouldn't be too hard.

Latest Push:

- When you click the Subscribe/Unsubscribe buttons on a topic, you are no longer redirected back to the first page of the topic.

Man, what are some other gross user-experience destroyers I need to fix?

@Mahz

I personally enjoy the nice dark theme of the site as is, but to each's own. Though from a reading stand point, I do believe the second shade of "Should it be more of a white-grey?" is the most comfortable.

However, I do need give you kudos on the updated "Fresh" box. Not only is it easier to see and more distinct, but the tool tip is simple as well.

[Ellri]

ugh. White background. The only ones who truly prefer that are the ones who don't know exactly how much sharper a white background with backlight is upon the eyes than a dark one...

Or as someone once said, "It burns us, precious!"

[Shienvien]

@Mahz:
The "fresh" tag is a bit better than it was before - it is now mildly annoying rather than ouch-damn-please-take-this-thing-away-now. I'd personally make it even darker - for instance #00a9a9 look goods to my eyes now that I tested different mildly similar text colors on RPG's background gray for a bit. (Personally not fond of the newly-added box-border around it ... eh.)
The white-ish text on Guild is agreeable with me - the background it is on is medium-gray rather than black, and hence the difference in brightness works out well. (Of the three listed, I'd say the second looks best, followed by the first and finally the third. The difference between how convenient the first two are to read is fairly marginal, but if I had to pick one, it'd be option two, so Harbinger and I am in the same boat.)
It can be a bit hard to explain how my specific brand of contrast/color sensitivity works... (Sunglasses are a good invention, I can tell you that, though.) Some color combinations are worse, some are better. That particular brand of bright cyan which was originally used for the "fresh" tag is almost universally painful, no matter on which background it is ... it just is a type of inherently evil color, I suppose. There is also a specific leaf-green, certain type of especially vibrant magenta (slightly less) and a very specific type of medium-light blue (worse on light backgrounds) which seem to have the same effect. There also are many reds which are absolutely fine on black background, but are terrible on any light background. Pure white backgrounds are especially bad - almost anything that isn't at least eighty percent black tends to feel uncomfortable, and even then the white background itself is too bright after a while, especially in a darker room. As a general rule, faded dark themes are the way to go for me (I have painted almost everything in my devices I can black and iron/steel/silver gray, including text editors ... especially text editors).
As for things that are perhaps a bit tiring to read (they aren't painful or particularly hard to make out, but just the kind which you probably wouldn't want as longer text), then the white text on almost any lighter gray hiders and buttons? (Same deal as with tags originally, really.) Else I'd actually say the Guild has actually done better than many other sites as far as color schemes are concerned...

I wonder whether the duration of the "fresh" tags should be applied somewhat according to the average level of activity of the forum, say a day for Free RPs, three days for Casual, a week for Advanced? Would make sense, at least for me.

As a sidenote, hey, I just noticed tags don't eat spaces anymore.

[AlteredTundra]

@Shienvien: I attempted to dampen it. If that bothers you, does the white text of posts bother you too?

Should it be more of a white-grey?
Should it be more of a white-grey?
Should it be more of a white-grey?

I still have plans to introduce a button that toggles to a dark-text-on-white-background theme. Apparently the vast majority of people prefer it and find it more readable. It wouldn't be too hard.

Latest Push:

- When you click the Subscribe/Unsubscribe buttons on a topic, you are no longer redirected back to the first page of the topic.

Man, what are some other gross user-experience destroyers I need to fix?

@Mahz

I honestly wouldn't mind some more options for the ratings system. Maybe some fun ones like "cookies" or "props". Even a dislike-esque one would be fun. Though, I can understand if the last one would cause some problems for some members. If it isn't a viable option, maybe a "wow"-esque one that is given when a post is so great that the like rating isn't good enough.

[Ellri]

Interesting idea of more choices,@Altered Tundra...

We think it would be fun to have a "here, have a goblin!" button. Fairly nonsensical, but surely someone will find uses for it.

[Captain Jordan]

Interesting idea of more choices,@Altered Tundra...

We think it would be fun to have a "here, have a goblin!" button. Fairly nonsensical, but surely someone will find uses for it.

@Ellri

If we're adding more choices, we need the rating first. ;)

[Ellri]

but but... that one's too joyful, @Captain Jordan... That has far too much of a useful purpose!

@Mahz: Is it by design that the @Mention buttons remove any non-character space between the position the code appears and any characters, including new lines?

[Shienvien]

We think it would be fun to have a "here, have a goblin!" button. Fairly nonsensical, but surely someone will find uses for it.

@Ellri

I wonder how long it'd take before someone would be deliberately trying to build a virtual army of RPG goblins?

On a more serious note, I'd rather new ratings were only added if they were sufficiently different form the pre-existing ones. Well, and that we'd perhaps not have *too* many joke ratings over semi-serious ones.

[Ellri]

In spam, a few hours at most, @Shienvien.

Agreed on the sufficiently different from others bit, Shienvien. And as joke things go, we'd say one or two max, depending on the total number available. There should also be a limit on the total number of ratings. Preferably something in the single-digit region.

[Mahz]

<Snipped quote by Mahz>

I honestly wouldn't mind some more options for the ratings system. Maybe some fun ones like "cookies" or "props". Even a dislike-esque one would be fun. Though, I can understand if the last one would cause some problems for some members. If it isn't a viable option, maybe a "wow"-esque one that is given when a post is so great that the like rating isn't good enough.

@Altered Tundra

An idea for a "negative" rating is "You need a hug". I don't really like "Dislike"/"Disagree", but I kinda like funner negative ones.

I agree that too many ratings or too many similar ratings just becomes cumbersome, though.

but but... that one's too joyful, @Captain Jordan... That has far too much of a useful purpose!

@Mahz: Is it by design that the @Mention buttons remove any non-character space between the position the code appears and any characters, including new lines?

@Ellri

It's not by design, I just haven't touched it since I hacked it together. I probably just need to remove an unnecessary string.trim() to fix this behavior in the interim. It's still on my list to make the @mention inject wherever your cursor was.

Also, I noticed poor user-experience when you have the editor in preview-mode and then try to click @mention/quote buttons. #willfix

Finally, when trying to debug a search issue last week, I noticed that 100% of all posts with a length between 90k and 150k characters (the upper limit) were pure spam. And I don't mean spam-forum spam, but rather people in random OOC topics, off-topics, test forum topics, etc. just copy and pasting garbage until they hit the upper limit. Usually in a hider tag so when someone clicked it, they'd be greeted by a bunch of "".

Maybe I can fix that by adding a reminder above the editor to not inject garbage into the database for the lulz.

[Captain Jordan]

Finally, when trying to debug a search issue last week, I noticed that 100% of all posts with a length between 90k and 150k characters (the upper limit) were pure spam. And I don't mean spam-forum spam, but rather people in random OOC topics, off-topics, test forum topics, etc. just copy and pasting garbage until they hit the upper limit. Usually in a hider tag so when someone clicked it, they'd be greeted by a bunch of "".

Maybe I can fix that by adding a reminder above the editor to not inject garbage into the database for the lulz.

@Mahz

Mind only triggering that when the character count breaches 90k?