Captain Jordan

Mahz's Dev Journal

Latest push: Implemented a co-GM system, available in the edit-topic panel: A roleplay GM can now elect up to two co-GMs which will receive an orange "Co-GM" banner in their posts. It's purely ceremonial for now, but eventually GM/co-GMs will have some more controls available to them. However, it's a strong signal of authority to a roleplay's paticipants since players are required to obey GM/co-GMs (rather than bicker with them). Also implemented a username auto-suggest system which I'll eventually extend to the mention system to make mentions easier.

@Mahz

Bravo! Will the username auto-suggest system also be extended to PMs?

Mahz's Dev Journal

<Snipped quote by Rare> The question I have about signature image discussions, large signature images, and the ability to scroll down is 'Why do you need such a large area for a signatures in the first place?' A signature section is really meant for a few short links, a quote or saying and possibly a signature image. Having an area that scrolls down for 10 or 20 lines really does push beyond the boundaries of what a conventional signature section should contain and if you need that much information there are better ways to display that content. First thing I would use is the Bio section as that seems to be an appropriate area for listing such info. I dunno, it just seems silly having mini forms within a webpage with individual scrollable sections for people who wish to announce everything to the world when it's not needed.

@NuttsnBolts

This, plus the trend for people to put moving GIFs in their signatures, is why I've turned off signatures on the Guild. The experience isn't as colorful or lively, but it saves me a headache and a half.

Mahz's Dev Journal

What's the avatar limits?

@Ruby

They're 150 pixels (width) by 200 pixels (height). They should be on the... Oh, @Mahz, you forgot to add them back in on the profile edit page when you made the upload feature.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Just wanted to ask, will fonts be introduced to the BBcode on the Guild?

@HellOfALife

Your answer:

This is more a general inquiry rather than an actual question/request: Will there be an option to have different fonts in the near or distant future?

@Altered Tundra

Yes. Some day.

@Mahz

Mahz's Dev Journal

<Snipped quote by LegendBegins> When building my computer, I sourced my parts from a place which I could drive to and arranged to pick them up in person. Saves on postage costs and on stress waiting for postage. That's something possibly worth looking in to in future. Back on topic, I don't have a whole host of tags, but I have figured out one to suggest.

• Villain (players can play as the 'bad guys' rather than the 'heroes')

@BBeast

Legend may simply live in a place beyond the reach of proper electronics stores. I was at school when I built mine, and the nearest decent parts store was 3 hours away.

Mahz's Dev Journal

<Snipped quote by Captain Jordan> The thing with fandom tags is the majority of them are very "flavour of the month", going in and out of style constantly.

@KeysOfKayes

Indeed. But like it or not, the tag system is going to become polluted with the flavor of the month tags anyway. I'd just as soon head off any misspellings or weird acronyms to standardize the tags starting in. But that's just me.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Not to go with tag overload, but the fandom tags are likely to be the first of the user-generated stuff. Could be useful to have some popular fandom tags now.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Can we get ordered lists, too?

Mahz's Dev Journal

<Snipped quote by Aeonumbra> Can you elaborate?

@Mahz

Maybe tooltips would help discovery. EDIT: Sweet, awesome titles.

Mahz's Dev Journal

<Snipped quote by duck55223> I've been thinking about this for a while. I'm going to implement a trust system so that I can give trusted members more privileges while restricting the privileges of potential spammers (i.e. new users). My core philosophy is that trusted users (i.e. users that have no record of system abuse, users trusted by the system) should be given a full toolkit to use as they see fit. If a trusted user wants to start convos with 10+ people and all 10+ people are down with that (i.e. it's not abuse), then the system should let them do that. - New members are considered untrusted. They can only create a convo every 60 seconds (or some duration). They can only create a convo with 1 other participant. This is to put the final nail in the coffin of a special class of PM spammers. - As a member participates in the community, they become more trusted and unlock more privileges. - Gaining trust needs to be slow enough to punish people that get banned (they have to start from scratch), but it shouldn't feature-starve new users from basic functions. - Trusted users should be able to expedite the trust process by "vouching" for users. Vouching for someone will boost their trust a fraction of your trust and put you on their vouch list that mods can see. If done right, this system will be simple and nearly invisible. Current users will notice nothing different but enhanced privileges, mods will have a better toolkit for evaluating bad actors, the system will be harder to abuse, and new users will unlock more features as they get acclimated to the community. As the guild rapidly climbs back to its pre-guildfall activity levels, I'd like to get this sort of system in place sooner than later. (I spent a lot of time hacking similar countermeasures into oldguild's vBulletin)

@Mahz

Hmm. Ambitious. Certainly, users can tend to rack up a lot of posts in Spam or Free RPs. This could skew the system towards escalated privileges for these users, unless you implemented a weighting system for boards. It might be awkward and lead to some grumbling, but it would slow down the advance of someone formerly banned by simply posting heavily in Spam. You could do other things to accelerate users into trusted groups by detecting things that generally denotes thoughtful/helpful posts. Things like posting length, internal links to the Guild, or number of ratings a single post receives might add weight to someone's current trust level and boost them up faster. Perhaps these weights would be calculated randomly, so that not every post that satisfies the thresholds would be counted, allowing for a more realistic measure of trust and avoiding the ability to game the system. Honestly, I think the number one criteria for such a system is to keep its details hidden. Not that Guild members aren't trustworthy (indeed, that's the entire point of this measure) or that you must have secrets. But simply that such an invisible system should be like a black box to users. At some point, they get awarded with more trust, and huzzah! But the actual steps taken to that point shouldn't be possible to replicate exactly or document so that someone else could game the system. My $0.02, given freely.